So the first round was more or less what we expected. Cubs out in 3. 100-win Angels bounced in 4. Yeah, I'm sure we all thought back in April that Manny Ramirez would be leading the Dodgers to the NLCS and the Tampa Rays would be right there on the World Series doorstep. Oh yeah, all pretty predictable. Not! But at least I have Joe Torre to pull for and my Phillies pick is still alive. Now if only someone could take out the BoSox this might not be so bad afterall.Anyhow, our apologies to anyone who tuned in this week as the station wasn't up and runnning. We'll be back on the air again this Tuesday from 5-7 so tune in and drop us a line in the meantime. And for those who hadn't noticed, the Giants are 4-0. Shhhhhhhhh! Maybe it's best to keep it a secret.
2 comments:
Wow. Great poll. My finalists were Simpson, Tyson and Rose.
In retrospect, Tyson has an air of inevitability about him. The guy was vicious -- animalistic really. That he couldn't be trained or tethered is unfortunate, but understandable.
Simpson was one of the all-time greats for 10 years or so between college and the pros. And he extended his "greatness" by being in movies and commercials. I don't know if I've seen film of him running more than a handful of times, but I distinctly remember Hertz commercials and Naked Gun. When he derailed in a white Bronco, it was shocking, but I don't remember talking to anyone who took it personally or who had to re-think their hero worship. In a weird sense, his 15-year, slow-motion train wreck has been an extension of his late-career celebrity. He was always kind of otherworldly.
I ended up choosing Pete Rose for biggest train wreck. At least in the midwest, he was a cult figure in a way that OJ wasn't. The mythology that surrounded him made it seem like he could have been your neighbor or cousin. Dads wanted to have a drink with him and taught their unathletic sons that they could grow up to be just like him if they worked hard enough. He was a Horatio Alger story for baseball-loving families of the 70s and 80s.
When his train came off the tracks, people here took it personally in a way nobody did with OJ or Tyson. If OJ's wreck was like a freight train tumbling down a gorge (fascinating, but ultimately unimportant), Pete Rose's was like a passenger train and a train of caustic, flammable chemicals sandwiching a school bus full of kindergarteners in a small town (devastating, cataclysmic).
Seeing that Tim Montgomery (former track star) was sentenced to something like five years in prison yesterday, another name occurred to me as worthy of consideration on the train wreck list: Marion Jones. From golden girl of the 2004 Olympics to a prison cell, it was quite a precipitous fall.
Plus I think it's only fair that we have a female rep on this list as well.
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