Hey, you know what i should do? I should get back to that Baseball 100 list.
In the meantime, here are a few more links:
HELEN MAROULIS: A story about a wrestler, a legend and junk food.
TEN EVENTS, ONE DAY: It was an idea that seemed better in the middle of the night.
LOCHTE: Fame and infamy are not opposites. They are twin brothers, the sort few can tell apart.
VOLLEYBALL: A top college coach has invited me to stand at the net during their volleyball practice. I’ll probably pass on that.
WOMEN’S HOOPS: Forty years ago, the U.S. team was not even expected to QUALIFY for the Olympics. Now, they’re the most dominant team in the world, any sport.
TRIPLE JUMP: I came to Brazil to watch Christian Taylor break the triple jump record. He gave it a shot.
The one about the 10 events in one day was great. Joe, the thing with the horse stopping and hitting the fence and the rider going over is common in show jumping. It happening a second time on a subsequent fence is pretty common, too. Once the horse and rider get freaked out it can be hard to let that go, especially at a major competition with lots of people watching.
Article/series idea: gotta love when a small country wins a medal, especially if they haven’t won one before–look at Fiji going bananas for their rugby team. Looks like there are 22 countries that won exactly one medal at these Games; I bet there are some great stories, there.
I second that idea
For the record, nine (ten if you count the Kuwaiti athletes competing under the “Independent Olympic Athletes” banner) nations (according to the IOC’s definition) won their first ever gold medals this time around: Fiji, Kosovo, Jordan, Tajikistan, Cote d’Ivoire, Vietnam, Singapore, Bahrain, and Puerto Rico…..
Thanks so much for all your wonderful articles during the olympics–they really enriched my understanding and experience of them this year. As always, you’re the best.
I’m guessing she shared the friend chicken with her good buddy, Charlton Heston. “Friend Chicken is people!”
Joe, I love your stuff, but the 10 events in one day looked very similar to a Rick Reilly feature from the Barcelona Olympics when he tried to visit every sport on $2,000.
And that was similar to that time in college when I tried to do 10 hookers in one day for $500.
/thread?
Baseball 100!
“It should be noted that the horse promptly slammed into the next obstacle, throwing Kuf over it again. The horse then ran off, seemingly with glee, and the rest of us were left in the rain pondering the mysteries of life and the Olympics.”
Sitting in my cubicle, laughing out loud.
A few days late but same here. I never use texty typing shortcuts but I finally have a reason to type LMAO.
Thanks Joe.
RE: the triple jump – at this point, shouldn’t the triple jump and long jump just measure from the takeoff point to the landing point? The takeoff board had a purpose pre-video, but it’s pretty basic tech at this point to measure the end of the toe to the back of the sand impact, isn’t it? I know universities could manage it, and prior to that, who cares? I guess the current setup mimics jumping over a chasm, which should definitely be how they make it look on TV (make the sand green and CGI a cliff or some alligators in there). Tokyo just might make it happen, since they’ve hinted at video game inspiration in the closing ceremony already.
Louie Anderson commenting on his trying the broad jump:
“Killer her!”
that’s “Killed Her”
don’t think I’ve ever messed up a punch line that bad before – lmao
I got tired of seeing invitro’s posts–on a recent article, he has 32 of the 80 comments–so I wrote a userscript to tell my browser to hide them automatically. I thought others might find it useful. You will need a userscript extension (GreaseMonkey in Firefox, or TamperMonkey in Chrome) and then you can just paste the code below into a new userscript, and voila! No more invitro (or if you want to hide someone else, insert their ID). This will only affect joeposnanski.com, and just looks for any comment containing “invitro”, then hides it.
// ==UserScript==
// @name Hide invitro comments
// @description Any comment containing “invitro” on Joe’s site disappears
// @match https://joeposnanski.com/*
// @require http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js
// ==/UserScript==
$( “div.comment-body:contains(‘invitro’)” ).hide();
Is it time for an article on Gary Sanchez? After another big game today, he’s the 1st player ever to get 10 HRs and 30 hits in his 1st 22 games. The 10 HRs are tied for the most in a 1st 22 games with George Scott and Trevor Story. So I guess he’s the most on-fire rookie since Trevor Story. Or the hottest Yankee rookie since Shane Spencer or Kevin Maas. He’s fun to watch, too, and looks like a star. And he gave the most cliche-ridden interview I’ve ever read — it was a work of art.