Olympics Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Sunday Stealing: traveled

travel advisories

This week’s Sunday is all about where I’ve traveled, or want to.

1. Have you traveled abroad? Where have you been? If you haven’t been overseas, which country would you most like to visit?

Barbados, 1999; France, 2023; Mexico, at least twice in the 1980 and/or 1990s; Canada, several times, most recently in Ontario in 2011

2. Where did you go on your last trip? Talk about where you went and what you did.

The last trip abroad? I wrote a LOT about France in 2023. One of the most recent posts was this. The last trip out of state was in Las Vegas, NV, also in 2023; one of those posts is here.

3. What is the best place for a vacation in your country? Why is it good?

I have no idea. It tends to be a personal thing. I’m not one to hang out on the beach. Since my 1994 knee injury, I haven’t gone climbing. Generally speaking, I like places that are walkable (Savannah, GA; Newport, RI) or have decent mass transit (many, but not all, major cities).

4. What is the longest time you have been away from home? Did you feel homesick?

We’re not counting college or the like, I suspect. Maybe two weeks. I wouldn’t call it homesick as much as tired of living from a suitcase, since none of those trips were going to one place and staying there.

How long is too long?

5. How long should a vacation be? How long does it take you to really relax?

I may be constitutionally incapable of relaxing on vacation. In the ’80s, when I worked at FantaCo, the owner FORCED me to take some time. So I took eight successive Wednesdays off. I could pay bills, do chores, and see a matinee.

6. What forms of transportation do you prefer to use when you travel?

All things being equal, I always prefer the train, the only civilized form of transportation. It’s a pain in the US because freight trains take precedence over passenger trains for access to the tracks.

7. How do you choose where to go? Are you inspired by other people’s travel stories? Or photos? Or advertising?

I went to Las Vegas because I had never been to Las Vegas. There were family reunions in Peterborough, ON, Canada in 2011 and Ashtabula, OH in 2016, and we found things to do en route. If I were going to a US city, I would check out the CityPASS program. It was great when my family went to Toronto, ON, Canada in 2011.

8. What’s more important to you when you travel – comfort and relaxation, or stimulating new experiences?

New experiences, obviously, since relaxation is not my strength.

9. Do you like to try local foods when you go somewhere? Have you ever had something really delicious?

I had some food in old Montreal in 1991 or 1992. I don’t remember what it was, but it was very good. The food in France was generally great.

Airports!

10. Things can go wrong when you travel. Have you had any bad travel experiences?

By far, the worst travel experience was flying into JFK from Barbados in May 1999. The Customs line was terrible. Actually, entering France at DeGaulle in 2023 was pretty chaotic too.

11. Do you take a lot with you when you travel? Or do you try to pack light?

As little as possible.

12. Which places in the world do you think are too dangerous to visit? Why are they dangerous?

I’d use the US State Department travel advisory list. As of today, Burma (Myanmar), Belarus, South Sudan, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), Libya, Mali, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, Burkina Faso, and Central African Republic are all listed as Level 4: Do Not Travel. Israel/the West Bank/Gaza and Mexico are mixed bags. Dave Koz was going to have a music cruise featuring Rebecca Jade that would have included Israel, but after October 7, 2023, the itinerary was changed.

13. What is the best age to travel? Can children appreciate the experience?

The younger your joints, the better. Of course, children can appreciate the experience. My daughter went on those reunion circuits.

Going it alone

14. What are the advantages and disadvantages of traveling alone?

My 1998 trip to Detroit, Cleveland, and Washington, DC was by myself. It was great. But going to France or Las Vegas would have likely been boring and logistically challenging going by myself.

15. What kind of accommodation do you like to stay in when you travel?

In France, we were at four very different venues, from a lovely modern hotel to an equivalent of a B&B. It was all good.

16. Do you like to talk to the local people when you travel? Why or why not?

Always. Even in France, it was great, and my French was tres mal. Also, talking to people on the train has historically been fruitful.

17. Would you like to go to a big international event, such as the Olympics or an international film festival? What would be good or bad about attending such an event?

I’ve been to two cities the year before the Olympics: Atlanta in 1995, and Paris in 2023. I’m pretty sure I would have hated being there the following years because of the touristy crowds. But I could imagine going to the Toronto Film Festival because people are there to see the movies.

ARA: Baseball and the Olympics

Designated runner rule – yuck

Kelly, who’s now been writing over at ForgottenWorlds.net, asked a few questions for Ask Roger Anything.

Should we still be having the Olympics? And if so, is it time to just pick a permanent location for the Summer and Winter Games and stop all this business of Olympic bids and cities and countries spending billions for this stuff?

I had been just having this discussion about the outsized impact of sports on society. Is it social good, exercise, comradery? Is it glorified too much? I know that there are folks around Albany trying to restart youth baseball in a particular neighborhood, not just for sport’s sake but to encourage discipline and teamwork.

On the other hand, I’m rather annoyed by corporate welfare. Specifically, New York State taxpayer money is going towards building a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills.

Here’s a video about how the Olympics hurt the poor of the host city and add to the militarization of the communities where the games are being held.

Optimally, I would like to see the Olympics, and the Paralympics continue. But the power needs to be ceded to some non-IOC entity that includes athletes. Perhaps they could root out cheating far earlier than what happened with that poor Russian 15-year-old skater this year. The grownups have to do better.

Finding a single country, or two, for the Olympics, will be quite difficult, I’d think. I mean, it can’t be Russia, China, the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, or a bunch of others. One could certainly make the case for Greece for the Summer Olympics, although the 2004 games were a fiscal debacle.

And what of the Winter Games? Politically, I doubt they could have both sets of Games in Europe. I’d love to see them in southern Africa or southern parts of South America. Or Uruguay in the summer and Switzerland in the winter.

Peanuts and Cracker Jack

You can make ONE change to something about Major League Baseball. What is it?

Let’s go with two because I know you already agree with the first. The baseball playoff games and World Series should start by 7 pm Eastern at the LATEST. How are you supposed to generate a new generation of fans when the premier games finish after their bedtime?

The other change is controversial, I imagine. And for a baseball traditionalist like myself, it’s surprising. Allow for a tie after 12 innings. This would only apply to the regular season.

And count the ties as half a win and half a loss. This is why this matters: in a 10-game pretend season, one team could go 6-4 and another 5-3-2, If you ignore the ties altogether, one team would have a .600 record, and the other .625. I don’t want to reward the tie.

Many pro sports have ties: NFL football, NHL hockey, soccer. Chess has the stalemate.

I thought about this because the bizarre thing MLB implemented during COVID, the designated runner rule, may not be dead. It’s that… thing established in 2020 and 2021 to shorten the game. A runner mysteriously is placed on second base in extra innings. I HATE, HATE HATE this rule, WAY more than I dislike the designated hitter.

Totally unrelated, Deep Space Nine Innings: A Star Trek Spinoff’s Unlikely Baseball Obsession.

Sportscaster Bob Costas turns 70

Later

Bob Costas has covered a LOT of sporting events. Hockey, basketball, boxing, golf, football, just to name a few. But most people who have followed his career know that his great, first love is baseball. For years, he carried a Mickey Mantle baseball card in his wallet. Once, he hosted an interview show called Studio 42 with Bob Costas, 42 being Jackie Robinson’s number.

Costas is also well-known as a host for a dozen Olympics between 1988 and 2016, with a vast knowledge of sports. And other topics, as I discovered when he hosted Later, a late-late talk show (1:30 – 2 a.m.) he hosted on NBC between 1988 and 1994. He won one of his first of about two dozen Emmys for his last season of the program.

Brooks and Marsh describe the show: “Each telecast was devoted to a single guest, whose life was profiled with film clips and who then joined Bob in later’s overstuffed chairs.” I set my VCR to record episodes that interested me, so quite often. The guests were “TV celebrities, sports stars, with a few newsmen and politicians thrown in.” IMDB calls him “a smart interviewer with encyclopedic knowledge and a devilish sense of humor.”

Roots

“His father’s roots are Greek…and his mother is of Irish and German descent.” He was born in Queens, New York City, and grew up in Commack in Suffolk County on Long Island. He worked in Syracuse, NY radio and television even before he graduated in 1974 from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Much has been made over the years of his appearance. “Don Ohlmeyer, who at the time ran the network’s sports division, told 28-year-old Costas he looked like a 14-year-old.” Additionally, at 5’7″ (170 cm), he is a man of modest height.

He has appeared in about two dozen TV programs and movies as Bob Costas, and in Cars and Cars 2 voicing Bob Cutlass. This doesn’t count the hundreds of times he served as a host, guest, or announcer. In 2021, he has a new show on HBO called Back-on-the-record with “interviews with the biggest names in sports, entertainment, and popular culture, which he discussed on the 7 November 2021 episode of CBS Sunday Morning.

His Wikipedia page lists some of his many accolades. I imagine, though, that receiving the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018 has to be the highlight.

Sha’Carri Richardson, athletics and marijuana

Tokyo Olympics

The 30-day suspension of American Sha’Carri Richardson for a positive marijuana test means she is barred from competing in the women’s 100-meter dash at this summer’s Tokyo Olympics. But as I’ve read reactions across the board, I’ve concluded that her suspension is stupid.

From the Denver Post: She should have nothing to apologize for. “There is only one reason why the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) should exist: To ensure athletes’ success on the international stage is determined more by pure athletic ability than who they employ as their pharmacist. Which is why [the suspension] makes absolutely zero sense.

“Back in 2011, a WADA-sponsored paper determined marijuana was a performance-enhancing drug, which might hold more water… if Richardson were a competitive eater or gamer.

A ‘substance of abuse’

“Now a decade later, marijuana’s inclusion on WADA’s list of banned substances is tied to its classification as a ‘substance of abuse.’ Of course, that bit of paternal moralizing has nothing to do with ensuring Richardson doesn’t have an unfair advantage on the track.

“Another unfortunate and devastating development? That Richardson felt compelled to appear on NBC’s TODAY show to apologize for her marijuana use and explain how it was tied to her own personal attempts to cope with her [biological] mother’s death.”

As she told NBC: “To hear that information coming from a complete stranger, it was definitely triggering. It was definitely nerve-shocking. It was just like, who are you to tell me that? No offense against him at all. He was just doing his job. But definitely, that sent me into a state of mind, a state of emotional panic.

“I still have to go out and put out a performance for my dream, go out there and still compete. From there, just blinded by emotions, just blinded by hurting. I knew I couldn’t hide myself. In some type of way, I was just trying to hide my pain.”

Boston wouldn’t ban her

From the Boston Globe: Sha’Carri Richardson isn’t a cheater. She’s human. And she got caught up in a system that might need to change.

“With her newly tinted orange hair trailing behind her like flames, she captured our hearts not only with her performance on the track, but with her moving story off it, seen in the emotional hug she climbed into the stands to share with her grandmother.

“As we know now, it wasn’t any sort of steroid or performance-enhancer that was found in Richardson’s test sample. It was marijuana, a drug that is legal in Oregon, where the trials were held, continues to be legalized in states across the country…

“The mental health of athletes is a similarly heavy topic, one that has gained more and more public attention in recent years, so much so it was listed by both USOPC chairperson Susanne Lyons and chief executive Sarah Hirshland as one of the organization’s top priorities in a recent teleconference with reporters. As Hirshland said, the emphasis on mental health needs isn’t just important for Olympians on their watch, but ‘for society writ large.’

Coincidentally, from the National Memo: “Justice Clarence Thomas Says Federal Laws Against Marijuana No Longer Needed.” Clarence Thomas!

According to the Washington Post, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list published on Jan. 1 lists the chemical compound found in marijuana, THC, next to cocaine, MDMA/ecstasy, and heroin as a substance of abuse and that the rule book says they are considered substances of abuse because they “are frequently abused in society outside of the context of sport.”

The rules

A right-wing rag complained, in that eye-rolling way, that AOC said that Richardson’s suspension was “racist.” I do find this MoveOn piece interesting. “Elite Black women Olympic athletes undergo exceptional levels of scrutiny, from Simone Biles’ recent record-breaking double pike vault which received artificially suppressed scores despite its difficulty to Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi, two Namibian runners who won’t be permitted to run in their main events because of their naturally high testosterone levels. And we learned the Olympics decided to ban swim caps designed for the hair of Black swimmers.

Even International Olympic Committee member and a founder of the World Anti-Doping Agency Dick Pound thinks this marijuana ban needs to go, saying, “One of these days, we should probably either take it off the list entirely or say it’s there but the minimum sanction should be something like a warning, so you’re not losing any period of eligibility.” So why is it being enforced now?

Patchwork quilt

In my latter days working as a librarian, the Small Business Administration and by extension SBDCs were, for a relatively brief time, banned from helping any business that was dealing with cannabis. This included people growing hemp for non-consumable purposes. It was, fortunately, rescinded, because it was an inane policy.

The fact that marijuana is treated as though it were heroin at the federal level is crazy. To that end, I support the cannabis banking bill passed by the House in 2021.
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“Banks have generally been unwilling to do business with companies that sell marijuana or related products, fearing they could run afoul of federal laws.

“That has left companies in the marijuana industry with few options, including relying on just a handful of small financial institutions or doing business in cash. The American Bankers Association has lobbied aggressively for the ‘SAFE Banking Act’ bill.”

Sports activism is working, maybe

Money changes everything

Colin Last week, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play basketball against the Orlando Magic. Other NBA teams followed suit, and players from the WNBA, MLB, and other sports did likewise. And I felt that maybe, just maybe progress is slowly being made.

Sports activism, of course, is not new. Here is Athletes and activism: The long, defiant history of sports protests. One could argue whether some of the particulars are actually protesting, but that’s a quibble.

In my recollection, this story is one of the reasons I always loved Bill Russell. In 1961, “while in Lexington, Kentucky, for an exhibition before the 1961-62 season, Russell and the other black members of the Boston Celtics were refused service at a restaurant. They boycotted the game, a groundbreaking statement at a time when blacks were still expected not to complain publicly about discrimination.”

I remember a photo, probably in Ebony and/or JET from June 4, 1967. Jim Brown, Russell, Lew Alcindor, and “other prominent black athletes met in Cleveland in a show of support for Muhammad Ali, who had refused induction into the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector. Two weeks later, he was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison, and stripped of his heavyweight title.” Alcindor, who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, continued to be an outspoken advocate for change.

Mexico City, 1968

I was watching the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the podium after winning the gold and the bronze, respectively, in the 200-meter run. “They stepped onto the podium shoeless but decked out in black socks and gloves. Then they raised their fists above their bowed heads to silently protest racial discrimination.”

It was not a spontaneous act. “It was only months after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr… In the lead-up to the Olympics, Smith, and Carlos helped organize the Olympic Project for Human Rights…” The group saw the Olympic Games as an opportunity to agitate for better treatment of black athletes and black people around the world… Though the project initially proposed a boycott of the Olympics altogether, Smith and Carlos decided to compete in the hopes they could use their achievements as a platform for broader change.”

A massacre in Mexico took place just 10 days before the opening of the Summer Games. The Mexican government “killed four (the government’s official count) or 3,000 students. Carlos and Smith were deeply affected by these events and the plight of marginalized people around the world.” Smith told Smithsonian magazine in 2008, “We had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.”

The third man on the podium, Peter Norman of Australia, “became part of the protest, too, albeit in a less direct way.” Norman “supported his fellow Olympians’ protest, in part because of the intolerance he had witnessed in Australia.” His backing cost him his track-and-field career.

Black Lives Matter

In the 2010s, several prominent players wore apparel bringing attention to the situation on the streets. “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts were worn by Cavaliers teammates LeBron James and Kyrie Irving and other NBA players before their games on Dec. 8, 2014. Those were, unfortunately, the last words of Eric Garner in July of that year. And of George Floyd almost six years later.

In July 2016, members of the three WNBA teams began wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts to WNBA games to protest the recent deaths of unarmed black people in police custody.

That autumn, Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem started a movement in the NFL. In early June 2020, the NFL’s Roger Goodell admitted the league was “wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier, and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest.”

Only a week earlier, the NFL releases a statement on the death of George “Floyd and the ensuing global protests… The reactions were … in “the vein of, ‘You could have led the fight against police brutality and racial injustice four years ago, but instead, you worked against peaceful protesters like Kaepernick.'” Indeed, Kaepernick is “now a 32-year-old free agent quarterback who hasn’t played in the NFL since the last week of the 2016 season.”

As Slate noted: “Think back to the outrage of certain white NFL fans [most prominently, IMPOTUS] over the peaceful sideline protests of Kaepernick and other players against police brutality. It’s a worldview that grants Black people the right to work and entertain, to ‘shut up and play,’ but not to be full human beings or coequal members of the populace. It is not a stretch to say that this attitude is a bedrock of American racism.”

After George Floyd

The dynamics changed when the Bucks and the other NBA teams stopped playing. What they did was “several orders of magnitude greater than any act of protest we have seen in major American team sports. With the simple act of refusing to work under present conditions, they brought an entire lucrative industry to a halt and have undoubtedly brought terror to some of the country’s powerful people.

“The NBA is a league run by billionaires, in a country in which billionaires wield obscene amounts of political influence. ‘But what do the players actually want?’ people will ask, many of whom not remotely interested in the answer to that question. Well, for starters, they want more power in shaping the conditions of the country they live in. And now they unquestionably have that.

“The fact that it was the Milwaukee Bucks who took this stand is crucial in several respects. The Bucks play in the same state where Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times. In the wake of their decision, the Bucks soon found themselves on a conference call with both the attorney general ( the drug crime lawyers in Festus) and lieutenant governor of Wisconsin.

“But the Bucks also have the best record in the NBA and are one of the two or three teams considered most likely to win this year’s bubble championship… If the Bucks refuse to play… the general premise of this entire NBA playoffs is instantly invalidated.”

Power

“The bubble has thus far been a smashing success. The level of play has been terrific, the television presentation has deftly mitigated the absence of fans, and, most importantly, there have been no virus outbreaks…” For an extraordinary two days, “all of this was put in jeopardy, because the league’s players, a group of people to whom sports are more important than literally anyone else in America, collectively declared to all Americans that certain things are far more important than sports.”

Sports analyst Jared Kushner tweeted: “What I’d love to see from the players in the NBA–again they have the luxury of taking a night off from work, most Americans don’t…I’d like to see them start moving into concrete solutions that are productive.”

From the First SIL’s lips. “Players needed something. Owners were in a position to give it to them. The asks were reasonable. They wanted a bigger voice internally. The NBA agreed to establish a social justice coalition, one represented by players, coaches, and owners.” It will “tackle a broad range of issues, from civic engagement [including voting initiatives] to advocating for meaningful police and criminal justice reform.”

Still, I continue to be pained by the poignant statement of Doc Rivers, the coach of the Los Angeles Clippers. “It’s amazing to me why we keep loving this country and this country does not love us back.”

Being a well-paid black athlete in America doesn’t prevent one from becoming a dead black person in America. Two-thirds of players in the NFL are large (scary!) black men. About three-quarters of NBA players are tall (scary!) black men. They are not immune to what has happened to, among many others, Stephon Clark or Philando Castile.