More cycling

The Vuelta a Espana -- the third and last Grand Tour of 2007 -- is taking place right now in Spain. How many Americans know or care?

Maybe that's why Team Discovery Channel, the most successful team in the history of US cycling, is breaking up for lack of a replacement sponsor at the end of this year. It's too bad, now that we've finally got three major one-week stage races in the US (Georgia, California, and now Missouri), that our top team in the States is exiting the sport -- but it is.

Basically, there have only been two successful US-based teams: 7-11/Motorola, which was the first US-based team to compete in the Tour de France and to win a Grand Tour (the Giro, behind Andy Hampsten), and USPS/Discovery Channel, which has had an unmatched record of Grand Tour success during the past 9 years -- 13 podiums, including 10 titles, with five different riders (Lance Armstrong (TdF winner 1999-2005), Alberto Contador (TdF winner 2007), Paolo Savoldelli (Giro winner 2005), Roberto Heras (Vuelta second 2002, winner 2003) and Levi Leipheimer (Vuelta third 2001, TdF third 2007)).

Discovery Channel brought a second-string team to the Vuelta, and the team immediately became weaker when American Tom Danielson, the winner of the 2005 Tour de Georgia and sixth last year in the Vuelta, crashed in the first stage and broke his collarbone. However, after the stage 8 time trial, the overall leader was Discovery's Stijn Devolder. He's fallen back as the race had two straight mountain stages, but it was still an impressive feat: another overall leader jersey for Discovery in its last Grand Tour, even without its top guns of Contador, Leipheimer, Popovych and Hincapie ... who are all competing in Missouri right now.

While the other two US races draw international fields, the only top-level teams in Missouri are Discovery Channel and Prodir-Saunier Duval. Not even the US-sponsored (but Europe-based) Team CSC is present in Missouri (boo CSC!!).

You have to wonder if Discovery Channel director sportif Johann Bruyneel still has hope of finding a US sponsor, considering the caliber of riders that the team brought to Missouri. Or maybe it's just his way of giving US cycling a big send-off. It's hard to see how US cycling recovers from the loss of USPS/Discovery Channel in the short term. Then again, US cycling DID recover from the loss of Motorola.

BTW, the Vuelta looks to be a battle between Rabobank's Denis Menchov (Russia) and Predictor-Lotto's Cadel Evans (Australia). But enough about Europe; let's focus on Missouri!

Meanwhile...

Enough cycling. Back later with some other topics.

Tour de France redux

Alberto Contador won the Tour de France. Contador was a 24-year-old Spaniard riding on the Discovery Channel team, and like two others before him (Laurent Fignon in 1983 and Jan Ullrich in 1997), he won both the maillot jeune (race winner) and maillot blanc (top rider under 25).

More interesting was how close the race was. Australian Cadel Evans finished 23 seconds back, becoming the first podium finisher EVER from Australia, and Contador's Discovery Channel teammate Levi Leipheimer finished another 8 seconds back in third. 31 seconds separating the top 3. Wow.

Leipheimer, America's hope, won the final time trial. He had been 59 seconds behind Predictor-Lotto's Cadel Evans and 2:49 behind Contador going into it and rode the best time trial of his life -- even better than the one that got him 3rd place overall in the last stage of the 2001 Vuelta, when he was previously riding for U.S. Postal (the team that became Discovery Channel). And, behind Contador, Leipheimer and Ukranian Yaroslav Popovich (8th overall), Discovery Channel also won the team award for the first time.

Interestingly, this was only the second time in the 94 runnings of the Tour de France that two native English speakers (Evans and Leipheimer) had placed on the podium. The first time was 1985, when American Greg Lemond finished second and Irishman Stephen Roche finished third.

Although Discovery Channel is the American team, there were only two Americans riding for it: Leipheimer and George Hincapie (24th overall). Other Americans in the race included Evans' teammate Chris Horner (15th overall) and Team CSC's Christian Vandervelde (25th overall), another former USPS rider. Only six Americans started the race this year -- three teams (Discovery Channel, Predictor-Lotto, and CSC) each had two. The two dropouts were CSC's David Zabriskie, a time trialist without enough strength in the mountains, and Predictor-Lotto's Fred Rodriguez, who developed stomach problems in the Pyrenees in stage 15.

Leipheimer becomes just the fifth American to finish on the podium in the TdF. The others were Greg Lemond (third, 1984; second, 1985; first, 1986, 1989-90), Bobby Julich (third, 1998), Lance Armstrong (first, 1999-2005), and (for now, at least) Floyd Landis (first, 2006, although he recorded a positive drug test during the race and his victory is contested).

American podium finishes in the other Grand Tours are even rarer. In the Giro, only three Americans have ever reached the podium: Lemond (third, 1985); Andy Hampsten (first, 1988; third, 1989) and the drug-suspended Tyler Hamilton (second, 2002). Interstingly, Hampsten (1986, 1992) and Hamilton (2003) are also the only two Americans to finish fourth in the TdF. In the Vuelta, the only US podium finish ever was Leipheimer's third in 2001.

Seven Americans have stood on a Grand Tour podium. That's all. Of course, no American even rode in a Grand Tour until Jock Boyer in 1981, so maybe that isn't so bad -- and, keep in mind that those seven Americans have a total of 20 podiums, even though only four of them (Lemond, Hampsten, Armstrong and Leipheimer) have more than one podium.

With Leipheimer's stage win, there are now 10 Americans who have won a stage at the TdF, beginnin with Lemond in 1985. In order, they are Lemond (1985-86, 1989(3)), Davis Phinney (1986-87), Jeff Pierce (1987), Hampsten (1992), Armstrong (1993, 1995, 1999(4), 2000-01(4)-02(4)-03(1+TTT)-04(5+TTT)-05(1+TTT)), Hamilton (2003), Zabriskie (2005), Hincapie (2005, plus TTT in 2003-05), Landis (2006, plus TTT in 2003-04), and Leipheimer (2007). TTT stands for the "Team Time Trial", where each member of the winning team that doesn't get dropped is credited with a win; the USPS/Discovery Channel team won it from 2003-05, with Armstrong, Hincapie and Landis ('03-'04) on board.

When you consider that three of the six Americans who rode in the TdF this year have actually won stages in it, it shows that the US may not be producing a lot of quantity in Grand Tour racing, but there is still a lot of quality. Maybe the addition of two U.S.-based one-week tours, the Tour de Georgia and the Tour of California (which were both won by Discovery Channel riders this year) to the annual racing season will help keep the quality level up....

2007 Tour de France

Good heavens. With the amount of bloviating going on over the Tour this year, you'd think the world was going to end if anyone who ever touched an illegal substance won the race.

As if TdF winners haven't been using illegal drugs back into the 1950s, from amphetamines to blood doping to steroids to EPO. The Tour winners have a lot in common with Barry Bonds: they were great riders to start out with, then they doped to get even better.

That's not to say that Michael Rasmussen doped. I don't know whether he did or not. All I know is that, in an era when people have Blackberrys, wireless Internet, cell phones, etc., it seems unbelievable to me that he wouldn't have kept in touch with the cycling doping agencies unless he wanted to hide out. And the only reason for wanting to hide out is to let the drugs pass through your system before you get tested.

Right now I'm thrilled to see that Discovery Channel has two of the top three riders in the race. We'll see how it goes at the time trial tomorrow.

Hiding the past

OK, I already know that school adminstrators are detached from reality. But this week I read something that would be hilarious if it didn't illustrate the insanity at the heart of political correctness.

One of the most powerful books on Southern small-town racism is To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which was made into a powerful movie with a screenplay by Horton Foote. The story basically only has one plot device: a young girl (based on Lee herself) and two boys (one based on her real-life childhood friend Truman Capote) learn how to empathize with others, in particular Southern blacks (during a time of pervasive racism) and the mentally ill (during a time of prejudice). One of the main plot lines includes the girl's father, the unforgettable Atticus Finch, defending a black man accused of attempted rape of a white woman. As Atticus clearly proves during the trial, the rape charges were concocted, because the woman was beaten by her father after he saw her flirting with a black man; nevertheless, the black man is convicted by an all-white jury and then murdered "trying to escape" before he can appeal.

By focusing on the horrors of one case, the book (and the subsequent movie) made a memorable statement about racism in the rural South before the civil-rights movement. Apparently this is a subject that some Southerners would rather forget, because this story depicts the efforts of a South Carolina school principal to block a high school production of the play. The only interesting part of this story is the evidence that people like this principal are growing smarter about how to attack unflattering material without ending up skewered in the national media. In this case, the principal's argument is that the play should be cancelled for reasons of political correctness: because the bigots in the story utter bigoted lines that might offend blacks when taken out of context.

You've gotta love the brilliance of this argument. If it works, I picture neo-Nazis arguing that there can't be any more depictions of the Holocaust because the Jewish might be offended by lines and actions taken out of context; Chinese arguing that there can't be any more depictions of Mao's Great Leap Forward because intellectuals might be offended; etc.

Heck, before it's over, I expect Democrats to argue that there shouldn't be any more depictions of the Jimmy Carter presidency because everyone who was alive at the time and not a member of the Carter family might be offended.

Time flies ...

I can't believe I haven't posted on this blog for over a year. So what's new?

For one thing, my wife has been hospitalized for the past two months. Her problems with bipolar disorder and borderline personality syndrome frequently made it impossible for her to get out of bed for weeks on end. We hired a full-time nanny to take the "kid pressure" off, but it didn't really help. Between some intensive DBT sessions and ECT treatments, she's finally recovered somewhat from her constant depression.

She should come home next week. How the kids will react to that is anyone's guess; they've been really happy that she's been gone. I guess it was rougher for them than I realized.

From the last post (in October 2005), the Houston Astros did beat the St. Louis Cardinals but were crushed by the Chicago White Sox. The next year, the Cardinals were back in the World Series and upset the Detroit Tigers, who had pulled a few upsets of their own along the way, to steal a Series victory for the "senior circuit." In Boston, the big news went as follows:

1. The Red Sox spent over $100 million to sign Japanese ace Daisuke Matsuzaka to a multi-year contract. The Dice Man was the star in the 2006 baseball world championships, pitching Japan to a convincing victory. Let's hope he still looks as commanding when the major leaguers see him every day.

2. Red Sox rookie ace Jon Lester appears to have defeated lymphoma, which had threatened both his career and his life last season. Whether the Sox, who also have Dice, Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield, Jonathan Papelbon, and Josh Beckett as starters (not to mention Matt Clement), will figure out how to use him before the season starts is uncertain.

3. Manny Ramirez is staying. I can't ever remember a future Hall of Famer who caused more trouble every year than Manny.

More soon. At least, sooner than sixteen months.

Pujols

The Houston Astros were just one out away from their first trip ever to the World Series. Nolan Ryan hadn't been able to get them there, even with Advil. Ken Caminiti hadn't been able to get them there, even with steroids. Jeff Kent hadn't been able to get them there, even without his motorcycle. J.R. Richard hadn't been able to get them there. Cesar Cedeno, likewise. Jimmy Wynn, ditto. Carlos Beltran came close as a "rent-a-body" last year. But now it looked like the Astros' "Big Three" of Andy Pettitte, Roy Oswalt and Roger Clemens would finally do it. Just one out to go, with a 4-2 lead, ace reliever Brad Lidge pitching and no one on in the top of the ninth. Oh, and two strikes on light-hitting St. Louis Cardinals' shortstop David Eckstein.

People won't forget what happened next for a long time. Eckstein drove a ground ball just outside the reach of 'Stros third baseman Morgan Ensberg. Then Jim Edmonds walked on five pitches. And then, with two strikes, Albert Pujols connected with a hanging slider ... which slid well over 400 feet before returning to earth. 5-4, Cardinals. And that's how it ended.

The Astros should still win the NLCS. But the drama of that moment won't be forgotten for years and years to come. That's how it should be.

The Iraqi elections

For all of Bush's blunders on the domestic front, his biggest gamble continues to pay off, as the elections in Iraq this past weekend proved once again.

Based on the preliminary count, it appears that the Iraqi constitution is going down to defeat in just two heavily Sunni provinces -- Anbar (the province containing Fallujah, which remains the heart of the al-Qaeda in Iraq operations) and Salahuddin. It appears to be passing in all other provinces, even the heavily Sunni Diyala and Nineveh provinces.

Average voting participation throughout Iraq was over 60% -- despite the fact that participation in Anbar province was only about 15%. In fact, it's hard to know how low Anbar's participation would have been without the huge turnout in Fallujah (thanks to the U.S. cleanout of terrorists in the town). Of course, the Fallujah voters overwhelmingly opposed the draft, but what else could be expected when Iraq's two oppressed groups (Shi'a and Kurds) got to write the new constitution with virtually no Sunni participation?

In fact, the Sunni in the "mixed" provinces broke about 40-60 (or even better) on the constitution, which indicates that the Sunni opposition isn't as monolithic as portrayed in the U.S., except in the two areas which still form the core of al-Qaeda in Iraq's support.

The final key showdown will be the December elections for the new Iraqi assembly set up under this constitution. If the Sunni political parties have any hope for a continuing role in the country, they'll participate, and that could be bad news for the al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists. Then again, the terrorists could turn running in the election into bad news for Sunni politicians if they are able to continue to assassinate at will.

"If anything in this life is certain -- if history has taught us anything -- it's that you can kill anyone." -- Michael Corleone.

Right now, though, any American who isn't please by the events of the weekend in Iraq should defect. Maybe the Liberals in Canada would like to reinforce their tenuous hold on Parliament with a bunch more leftist immigrants?

It's also bad news for other authoritarian Arab regimes that have suppressed the Shi'ites, with tacit support from the West, for decades. Unless, of course, Iraq turns into a theocracy like Iran ... unlikely, but never out of the question anywhere in the world where there is a predominant religious group. Not even in the U.S.!

The religion test?

Doug Eddings is a major-league baseball umpire. Umpires are the forgotten men of pro baseball. While steroid abusers topple Babe Ruth's records and actually have fools defend their right to turn themselves into grotesque chemically-altered freaks, umpires become famous only when they really screw up. Think of Don Denkinger.

Doug Eddings is now famous.

In game 2 of the playoff series between the Anaheim Angels (I don't care what the owner wants to call the team, because I don't work for him) and the Chicago White Sox, Eddings made one of the worst calls in MLB history, taking away the third out of the ninth inning and giving the White Sox a gift baserunner when he clearly had no idea what had really happened. His incompetence became a national disgrace when the gift baserunner promptly scored, handing the White Sox an undeserved win.

Yet Eddings' incompetence is only a sideshow to the real story. After all, umpires are human. They make mistakes. If Eddings had simply owned up to his mistake, this story would have continued life only if the Angels lost the series.

But neither Eddings nor his fellow umpires did that. Instead, to a man, they insisted that Eddings had made the correct call ... an assertion so laughable that it was amazing that people could make it with a straight face. Even the supervisor of MLB umpires defended his accuracy (and should be canned for doing so). Why? Did these umpires find it easier to revel in their incompetence instead of admitting their shortcomings? Why would that be the case?

I don't know. But I do know that umpires aren't the only people who do that. Doug Eddings, meet George W. Bush.

Bush has had a bad six months. Iraq and Afghanistan are going better, but that doesn't come close to offsetting his out-and-out blunders: supporting intervention in the Terri Schiavo case; appointing crony Michael Brown to head FEMA; and now trying to appoint crony Harriet Miers (pronounced "Myers") to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Miers nomination has had a hard time, with both legal scholars and conservative scholars blasting it. Under the old theory that when your opponents are ripping each other to shreds, the best idea is to remain quiet, Democrats have generally been quiet about Miers. But now Bush and his generally-astute handler Karl Rove have made a blunder that should doom the Miers nomination and handicap future nominations to the federal courts for the rest of Bush's presidency.

What have they done? It's simple in its stupidity. They have been trying to reassure religious conservatives about Miers by telling them about Miers' religious "bonafides" for the Supreme Court. Unfortunately for Bush and Rove, but fortunately for America, some of these religious leaders have decided to "blab" about these private phone calls. Foremost among those is James Dobson of 'Focus on the Family', a demagogue who decided that showing off his importance to the White House was more important than merely supporting the nomination.

Dobson has stated that Karl Rove told him about Miers' conversion to evangelical Christianity and her longstanding involvement with anti-abortion groups. Dobson thinks this ... and the fact that Miers is a lawyer ... is sufficient to get her a seat on the Supreme Court.

It's perfectly OK for Dobson to think that way. After all, he leads a religious pressure group. But why would Bush and Rove think that way?

After all, there is nothing in Harriet Miers' background that makes her more qualified than any of 10,000 other lawyers in this country to serve on the Supreme Court. Nothing except for her fawning devotion to Dubya, that is. And it's easy for any lawyer, liberal or conservative, to name 100 lawyers substantially more qualified than her to be one of the nine people in this country referred to as "Justice." Not "Judge." "Justice."

Others have gone through Miers' shortcomings at length. I don't want to focus on that now. Instead, I'd like to focus on Bush's inept reaction to the controversy. What did he do? The same thing that Doug Eddings and his brethren have done. Pretend that he made the right call.

Bush has claimed that he believes Harriet Miers to be the absolute best candidate available for the Supreme Court. There are only three possible reasons for that comment: 1) Bush suffered severe brain damage sometime after he graduated from Harvard Business School; 2) Bush is lying; or 3) Bush believes that a passing a religion test is required for potential judicial candidates, and only people who pass the test are qualified candidates.

Bipolar disorder

Blogging is an inherently bipolar activity. Bloggers are expected to get manic over issues that they care about. But then they look at their readership statistics and become seriously depressed.

And so it will go here, when I post.