Rocky Becker has been a barber for nearly 50 years. He attributes his success and longevity to keeping it simple. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

The words every man dreads hearing: “You’re getting a little thin up there.”  And with that – no fanfare, no drama, no time for a neurotic outbreak – my barber Daniel snipped off the strands of my faux combover.  ”It’s 2010,” he went on.  ”Time for a fresh start.”

It was true.   One always wonders about the guy who has that one strand of hair carefully arranged over an obviously bald head.  How does he do that?  How does he face his loved ones when he gets wet?  Isn’t he worried it might be windy today?  For the last year, I was well down the road to becoming one of those guys.

What I learned over the last few years is that nobody plans for a combover.  They’re insidious.  They are the product of years of attrition, denial, compensation and the simple refusal to adapt to new ways of brushing your hair.

There’s something comforting about the No BS treatment at traditional men’s barber shops, a fading breed, run for the most part by old guys who have been doing nothing but giving no-BS quick & dirty haircuts for eons.  San Francisco has a couple of fancy locations – Mister and The Barber Lounge – which say they are barber shops but are in reality more like ultra-masculine salons.  More memorable, though, is Original Palace Barber Shop at 2nd and Mission.  Basically a bunch of chairs pushed together in a mound of the eccentric absentee owner’s garbage (must be seen to be believed), Original Palace is staffed by a crew of several 50+ men, all foreign with indeterminate nationalities, and one terribly unlucky woman. Never a wait and never out of there in more than 20 minutes.

My local barber shop is the simply-named Montclair Barber Shop.  Its proprietor, Rocky Becker, a near-silent character I see all the time on Mountain Boulevard smoking and sucking down coffee, was recently profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle.   To be in Rocky’s chair is to be transported somewhere into the early 1970s.  He’s got his Raiders calendar, a few shots of his Harley – and that’s all you get to see because after 5 minutes you are done, $20 and a pile of hair lighter. Not the greatest haircut, but that’s not what you were there for – nothing some pomade and an encore in four weeks can’t fix.

The Chronicle was principally interested in the shop because of its longtime relationship with Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis, who’s been getting his hair cut by Rocky for 49 years.  The Raiders of the 70s were known for their hard partying, rebellious personae and straight-up intimidation of their opponents.  ”Just win, baby” was their mantra. And of course they were one of the most successful franchises, a regular visitor to the playoffs and winner of three Super Bowls.  Al Davis is one of the founders of the modern NFL, one of the world’s great business growth stories, and a member of its Hall Of Fame.

Davis may not be loved, but the media and Raider Nation remains entranced by the Davis mystique.  They are fascinated by Davis for never changing, a throwback – and for almost 40 years one of the cleverest, most influential men in football.  They also lay his lack of success in the last decade – the Raiders now officially own the worst 7-year run in NFL history – for never changing.  ”He still likes to maintain his look,” Becker told the Chronicle. “You’ve got to maintain what you have. Al’s a big believer in that.”

Change is hard work.   Sometimes it needs to be tough love, other times it’s letting someone or something just go to town on you.  You gotta cut off those old strands flying in the wind and move on.

Hurrah for traditional barber shops!  Thank you for letting me stay the same as long as I could and then making me change when it was the right thing to do.  Long may you wave.

Baseball-dedicated magazines have been around since time immemorial and – like every other magazine segment – they aren’t exactly killing it these days.  Baseball Digest, founded in 1942, recently downshifted to an 8x schedule from monthly, while the baseball-heavy Sporting News showed a 39% decline in ad pages for the first half of 2009.  The biggest players in sports magazines, Sports Illustrated and ESPN: The Magazine, saw ad pages down 28% and 31% respectively in Q1 2009.  (Curiously SI for Kids is one of only 11 magazinesthat showed an ad page increase so far this year.)

MLB Insiders Club would need to bring something different to the table in order to succeed and what it promises is attractive: “Behind The Scenes looks into the clubhouse and front office of MLB teams” and “MLB Insiders Club Fantasy League Tips!”  First off, it’s surprising to hear that a major league would directly support fantasy leagues.  It would be a lucrative opportunity for a major sport league to get involved in fantasy leagues, but it’s also tantamount to supporting gambling – which has a history, especially in baseball, of being the worst crime a player or manager can commit.  One wonders if the MLB Powers That Be is aware that an official licensed product of this tacit endorsement.

As for “Behind The Scenes,” a review on Baseball Reflection reveals that the magazine practically begs for user-generated content.  The official license may get some access, but it certainly doesn’t guarantee more or better; the premiere issue features an interview with Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane, but he’s probably MLB’s most open GM, frequently giving long interviews to blogs like Athletics Nation.  And if UGC is the majority of content, you can be pretty sure the fans mailing it in don’t have any special access.

MLB Insiders Club is published by North American Media Group, a company that specializes in niche media with a few key licenses, including the Professional Golf Association and History Channel.  In addition to magazines, it also pumps out expensive coffee table books.  So for $24/year, you get some indeterminate number of baseball magazines (they don’t say whether its monthly or what) and the opportunity to buy more books (or as the come-on says “Preview Great Books and DVD’s”).  Ouch.

Baseball’s marketing and media sophistication continue to be disappointing and well behind its rivals for attention in the NBA and NFL.  Few of MLB’s teams or players are involved in social networking, while Shaquille O’Neal is the world’s ninth most-followed twitterer (as of this writing) and the NFL has so many tweeters that it had to conjure a “No tweeting during games” policy.  When these other leagues and their team are putting together their communications strategies, they are way past trying to sell magazines to their best customers. With overall attendance down nearly 6% so far this year, MLB needs to do something to make itself more compelling – more necessary – to its fans.  A clever coordinated social networking policy would be an inexpensive, low-risk way to go, especially in light of the vitality of fantasy baseball – one of the original pre-Internet social networks.

More on point: yesterday the Giants E-mailed me an offer for $5 tickets for next week’s Pirates series for my “vote for Pablo.”  Now that’s something I can use.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VqXqWJHHDU

And then things get even tougher when you lose one of the second of your two best players to a broken foot, as Yao Ming did in Game 3.� Although the Lakers lacked the killer instinct to put away the Rockets, even after a horrible 40-point beatdown in Game 5, the theories on offer in the Michael Lewis article did not seem possible to apply after that point.

One of the hottest topics in sports player management over the last decade has been whether the scientific approach to roster-building really creates competitive advantage.� I had hoped this series would bring some light to its relative chances at success in the NBA.� What it ultimately proved – again – is that the playoffs are still a crapshoot with any team having a 45% chance of winning on a given night, especially when emotions and injuries throw one team off its game.

Further reading: Why Don’t The A’s Win in October?� (or “Why Doesn’t Billy Beane’s S*** Work in the Playoffs?”)

As a Golden State Warriors fan – and admittedly a fair-weather one – I could not have found the 2008-09 NBA season much duller or depressing. The play of this uninspired, oft-injured squad and its possibly insane coach drove me well away from following the team despite a raft of discount ticket offers. My inner Assistant General Manager, though, is entirely intrigued by the playoff series opening tomorrow night: the clearly-best-in-the-league Los Angeles Lakers against the Houston Rockets.

Shane Battier defending Kobe Bryant

This story starts back in February when the New York Times Magazine published “The No-Stats All-Star“ by Michael Lewis. One of my favorite writers for his ability to cross great business writing with incisive observation about sports and its hidden-in-plain-sight economy, Lewis had previously written on applying market theory in baseball (Moneyball: The Art of Winning An Unfair Game) and football (The Blind Side: The Evolution Of A Game – excerpt).

The NYT article centered on the Houston Rockets and in particular Shane Battier, who is used as an example of how basketball statistics are enormously deceptive by only depicting production with the ball. As he’d done so well in his previous books, Lewis makes the argument that glamor statistics like points per game, rebounds and so forth don’t necessarily show how much a player actually helps its team earn what really counts: wins. The Rockets have put together a team of statisticians to develop metrics for what truly produces wins. With those metrics in hand, they targeted Battier, a well-regarded player who had some tough seasons with the woeful Memphis Grizzlies, but had a record otherwise of always playing with winners. I’ll leave the statistical discussion to Lewis’s article, which I highly recommend, but suffice it to say that the Rockets’ stats-based defensive theory is to learn where opposing players become the least efficient on the floor.

The story was published in February. Before Los Angeles played Houston on March 11th, master motivator Laker Coach Phil Bradley showed Kobe this passage:

The reason the Rockets insist that Battier guard [Kobe] Bryant is his gift for encouraging him into his zones of lowest efficiency. The effect of doing this is astonishing: Bryant doesn’t merely help his team less when Battier guards him than when someone else does. When Bryant is in the game and Battier is on him, the Lakers’ offense is worse than if the N.B.A.’s best player had taken the night off.  ”The Lakers offense should obviously be better with Kobe in,” [Rockets General Manager] Morey says. “But if Shane is on him, it isn’t.”  A player Morey describes as “a marginal N.B.A. athlete” not only guards one of the greatest – and smartest – offensive threats ever to play the game. He renders him a detriment to his team.

Sure enough, Kobe put up 37 points with 16 in the fourth quarter alone (albeit with Ron Artest guarding him, not Battier)  to lead the Lakers to a 102-96 come-from-behind win.

So now we get a week or two of this matchup. Not to denigrate the Rockets, which fields two other great defenders in Artest and Yao Ming, but this should be an interesting test of schemes versus skills and of statistical gambits versus the NBA’s most successful coach. If this goes the Rockets’ way, expect a sea change in the way NBA franchises run their teams in the very near future.

Personally, I’m rooting for the Rockets. In reading Lewis’s article, it was apparent that my hometown Warriors are definitely not users of any kind of statistical theory in evaluating its talent or running a game. Warriors forward Stephen Jackson was spotlighted for his bizarre tendency: [He] “is statistically better going to his right, but he loves to go to his left – and goes to his left almost twice as often.)”  Instead the Warriors rely on a well-loved ex-player to run its front office – with disastrous contracts thrown at players of ‘good character’ – and a coach who appears to run the team more on feeling, fear and witchcraft than good sense. Please, Warriors, take a note.

Joba Chamberlain opens the second game ever at the new Yankee Stadium. Empty seats outnumber specators in the exclusive areas behind home plate and the dugouts. (Flickr / Fansherpa)

With all the fuss over the empty luxury seats at the new Yankee Stadium, I was mildly surprised to find something similar happening in my own backyard.  At Sunday’s A’s-Rays game at the Oakland Coliseum, all the ingredients for a great day at the ballyard were in place: sunny April weather, last year’s AL champions in town and a Sunday afternoon.  What we found instead was a micro-market in disarray.  As the credit markets teetered last October, the market for sports tickets has apparently fallen apart as well.

The first indication there was a problem was the total lack of online ticketing activity.  There were practically no offers on CraigsList, even from brokers, and none at all on eBay.  At the walk-up ticket booth, we found that we could buy any section in the house, including the Diamond Level.  This should simply never be the case. The Diamond Level is a very limited “VIP” area, maybe 60 seats tops, right behind the plate on the playing field level.  Seats go for $225 and include free food and drink service for the whole game.

Weirdest of all was the scene inside the stadium.  The A’s bifurcate each of the two seating levels – a minimum of two pricing levels in each deck.  In both decks, there was a cluster of people behind the plate, emptiness for several sections as the seating moved along the infield, another cluster in the sections where the new pricing tier begins, again fading to nothing.

The mystery is why shouldn’t the people forced out to the outfield be able to sit in these empty “mezzo-sections.”  The answer could come from a nimble dynamic pricing system at game time.  As airlines like Virgin and JetBlue have discovered with exit rows sold at check-in, why not ask fans as they arrive if they would like to purchase a better seat for an extra few dollars?  It would be an easy thing to equip ushers with Palm-style barcode and credit card machines like those carried by the clerks at The Apple Store.  Everybody gets the opportunity to move closer (or elect not to), getting rid of the weird empty spaces and (I’m assuming) presenting a better, more invigorating environment for the home team.  (I know they’re supposed to ignore the crowd, but ask any actor or musician if they’d rather play to a full orchestra than have the front rows empty and the crowd loosely dispersed.)

Meanwhile across the bay, the Giants are trying out a number of dynamic pricing policies.  First, the team partnered up with a firm to build elastic pricing around its unsold inventory for the least attractive games. Last week, though, came the real reckoning – and a big indication that the team is running scared about its attendance.  Ticket prices were dropped 40% for the Giants series this week against the Dodgers, traditionally the most attractive opponent.  Granted the team is trying to stir up interest for later in the year – it appears they’ll be competitive in a moderately challenging division – but to have to do this so early and against the team’s best natural rivarly is surprising.  One wonders how scared the Giants are about advance sales for the rest of the year.

In the Oakland A’s case, the lack of a fluid ticket market is framed by the fact that the Oakland Coliseum is a horrible dump, getting dumpier every day.  The tarps in the third deck look weathered and depressing, while the bathrooms, parking lot and facilities remain some of the worst for a major league sport.  Nevertheless the empty seat patterns – along with all the unsold display ad inventory throughout the stadium – are clear indications that baseball is not recession-proof.  There are easy ways to make profit from making markets more efficient.  Let’s see if the A’s and their brethren take up the challenge.

As usual, the baseball playoffs took over my life for an unwelcome amount of time in early October. The A’s showed signs of going deep, but lucky for my free time — and for my wallet, since I was sitting on very expensive tickets for the World Series — they reverted to their usual playoff-choking form in the ALCS. With the team all but moved to distant Fremont by 2010, it was time to start disengaging anyway. I’ve got three more years to find a way to remain a  fan before the A’s move a full hour’s drive from my San Francisco abode.

In the meantime, I have these guys to help Bring The Dissent:
[youtube SlTvSUCCqPo]

This is not a matter of simple alma mater loyalty; this is something I’ve done my whole life. Everything I learned about humility I learned from Cal football.

It wasn’t just me; it was the whole fan base. The oft-proferred line about Cal — at least when things were going poorly — was that its alumni would rather be proud (and beat Stanford) than become a so-called major program.

But this year looks different. Very different. Not only is Cal ranked in the Top Ten to start the season and opening its season at a bona fide "football school" (Tennessee), but ESPN analyst Lee Corso predicted Cal to win the national championship! This, dear readers, is crazy stuff. Cal hasn’t even got to the Rose Bowl since 1959, many years before my parents were thinking that sex was something they could do.

A national championship simply does not compute. It does not map to my self-image, to root for a team that can and will win. It used to be that I went to Memorial Stadium each week wondering how we’d find a way to lose. Now I have the neurosis of the winner — "Which game is the one where we slip and fall?" Instead of worrying about whether we’ll beat Stanford, my attention turns instead to "How much do we need to beat Portland State by to keep the East Coast writers from doubting the Bears? If we don’t win by 35 points, will it hurt our standing in the computer rankings?" I’m not certain that this is an improvement, fandom-wise.

There are cultural issues to think of, too. I’ve been very happy with the ramshackle stadium and the relatively low-key games. (Note the picture above; that’s the highly successful 1975 team upsetting USC at home. The stands in the background are pretty much empty.) I don’t want to be Texas with the world’s largest HDTV or the Florida teams with their absurd fan rivalries. Or, god forbid, USC with its traveling squad of weirdly mindless fans led by 5,000 band members playing one song over and over. (Cal fans have found ways to get back at idiot Trojans over the years.)

But unfortunately this is what it takes to be a top program in today’s major collegiate athletics. Today we stare into the abyss, sing our fight songs and hope we don’t lose our selfhood along the way.

UPDATE: So much for that.  Jake Curtis at SFGate still thinks Cal has room for hope.  One friend said that we had to break our "culture of losing" and then in the same breath said that we didn’t really want the national championship, just the Rose Bowl.  Sounds like a contradiction to me, but I guess that’s we’ll have to do to break up this culture one step at a time.

Sunday, June 18^th was a glorious San Francisco summer day with nary a wisp of fog in sight, the perfect opening day for the city’s traditional free Stern Grove concert series. We showed up at 8am to grab prime seats, but the real action that morning was taking place in random bars around town as Brazil took the pitch against Australia. After the match ended, a workmanlike dismantling of the Socceroos, the Brazilian fans — and where did they all come from! who knew SF was so full of Brazilians! — made their way to the Grove to hear opening act Seu Jorge.

Yes, it was kismet. Brazil ruled the day. A glorious victory. A glorious day. Free outdoor Brazilian party music. The stars were aligned with that strange planet thing in the middle of Brazil’s weird flag. The Grove was rockin’, chock-full of sunning dancing Brazilian expats and their newfound empathizers.

But now it was time for the headliner. And Aimee Mann took the stage with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a bass player.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Aimee Mann and she was the reason I was there, but this was a bizarre piece of booking by the Stern Grove folks.

Picture if you will the party that’s come before. And then Aimee took the stage:

Sa-aaaave Me
C’mon and Saaa-ya-ave Meeee

If it was a room, the air would’ve gone right out of it. All of the boisterous Brazilians looked utterly lost and defeated, like the hangover had hit 12 hours earlier than expected. Nobody could believe what they were hearing or seeing. Who was that skinny lady singing morose ballads? What happened to our party?

And from this incident, I surmised that Brazil may not be the unstoppable World Cup force that it’s reputation led us to believe. Just slow the tempo. Add a French model and a PlayStation. Voilà!

[Soundtrack]
Seu Jorge – Life On Mars
A whole lotta Aimee Mann MP3 blog links

Oooooh I’ve been looking forward to this one. Il est temps pour Jacques Dutronc!

Even though he’s inexplicably passed over in Wikipedia’s “Music Of France” entry, Dutronc was one of France’s two or three most popular French-language acts of the 1960s. Married to Francoise Hardy and a collaborator of Serge Gainsbourg, his debut album “Le Cactus” was a million-seller in 1966 and his career took off from there.

He is often likened to Ray Davies for his ironic songs and name-checked as part of the roots of Freakbeat. According to Bardot A Go Go, which also fills in some biographical details and links to lyrics of his witty and sarcastic songs:

What makes Dutronc great for many non-French speakers is the driving psychedelic sound of his rockin’ tunes. The driving buzz saw guitar of Les gens sont fous les temps sont flous strips down The Kinks’ You Really Got Me riff to a bare one note minimum with maxi affect.

RFIMusique nails the allure of Jacques Dutronc:

The singer’s nonchalant stage persona and the ironic, almost insolent way in which he delivered his lyrics proved an instant hit with the French public who adored Dutronc’s openly provocative style. Dutronc’s sartorial elegance also made a great impact. In an age where most pop stars were growing hippy beards and dressing in Afghan coats and bell-bottom jeans, Dutronc’s tailored suits and chic silk ties were guaranteed to make him stand out from the crowd.

Wow, kinda like (the stereotype of) France! Check out a few of his hip-swingin’ tunes:

Jacques Dutronc – Les Gens Sont Fous, Les Temps Sont Flous.mp3
Jacques Dutronc – Les Cactus.mp3
Jacques Dutronc – J’ai Tout Lu, Tout Vu, Tout Bu.mp3

Slipcue has some recommendations for further listening.

Listening to his music, it’s easy to imagine Dutronc ogling mini-skirted young women who in turn flirt with semi-shaven semi-showered strangely-hip Frenchmen. You know, the 60s existential France of Godard and Delon. In fact, I think I can see it right here:

Jacques Dutronc – Mini Mini Mini video at YouTube

Ukraine, we have a personal problem. It’s a damn shame since I myself am of Ukrainian ancestry. But I don’t want to think about you.

Call Me Mickey has a bunch of Ukraine pop MP3s. I can’t be bothered.
A Google search on “Ukraine” brings up Google Ads for Russian brides in the right column. Classy!
Jonathan Safran Foer’s excellent Everything Is Illuminated takes place in the Ukraine. Pogroms and Nazi collaboration are part of the story.

After yesterday’s unfortunate loss to France, it seems appropriate to show a sadder side of one of the Cup’s participants. Carlos Paredes, "The Man With A Thousand Fingers," was the master guitarist of Fado, a traditional Portugese music that has its roots in Moorish times. Alternately playful and mournful, Fado evokes the country’s strong relationship with the sea and its feudal past. Paredes himself was an exemplar of the form. The son of another Fado master, Artur Paredes, Paredes was himself something of a tragic figure: jailed in the 50s and 60s as a Communist sympathizer, and forced to spend the last eleven years of his life unable to play because of a nerve disorder. He passed away in 2004.

The first track is from Paredes’ debut album called, naturally, Guitarra Portuguesa. The second is from his 1990 collaboration with Charlie Haden, recorded shortly before Paredes’ disability ended his playing career.

Carlos Paredes – Divertimento.mp3
Carlos Paredes & Charlie Haden – Danca de Camponeses.mp3

Brazil is a country with two distinct musical sides. First, there’s the elegantly sensual Brazil of samba and Getz/Gilberto. As easy to love as this is, the lazy-day saxophone and breathy vocals of “The Girl From Ipanema” are practically a cliche of an early 1960s space-age bachelor pad; as great as the performance is, you still I can’t help thinking about wood paneling and cocktails from the living room wet bar. My friend Marc Time profiled Astrud Gilberto earlier this year and I will defer to his expertise in this matter.

Neverthless, the artists that have taken up this cause are still among Brazil’s most popular mainstream musicians. One that I’ve glommed on to recently is Marisa Monte. She’s has very few releases in the US, but is undoubtedly one of the country’s top sellers. With a subtle and deceptively straightforward delivery, Monte’s sudden flurries of expressiveness and her tasteful self-production make for some very tasty listening.

After being one of the country’s biggest acts since the early ’90s, Monte went into semi-retirement for the last five years and has now blasted out with two (count ‘em: two!) excellent new albums. The first track below is from the more accessible and fun album, Universo Ao Meu Redor, which counts David Byrne among its guest stars. Infinito Particular is a more quiet and emotive affair, seemingly dedicated to songs about motherhood, the underlying reason behind her recent creative dormancy. I guess this makes her the John Lennon of Brazil.

Marisa Monte – O Bonde Do Dom.mp3
Marisa Monte – Vilarejo.mp3
Several Marisa Monte videos here

…and then there is the funky, dirty, party Brazil. Or a bunch of guys yelling about sex (or sounding like they are) over stripped-down beats and simple sample. Diplo has been the biggest proponent of Favela Booty Beats, pushing out three mixes since 2004. (Yes, two years ago is eons in music blogosphere time. Remember Arular?) When most casual football watchers hear that the Brazilian team “dances” as they play, they’re probably thinking of music like Marisa Monte or Joao Gilberto. The nasty dirty secret of the squad, though, is that this is more like what they have on their mind.

MC Jack E Chocolate – Pavaroty.mp3 — yes, the great Pavarotti!

If you like this, Cokemachineglow hosts Diplo’s original Brazil Booty Beats mix, Favela On Blast. My friend Peter, an accomplished composer who uses notes and time signatures and fancy stuff like that, found himself totally paralyzed by his brush with Favela On Blast. “It’s like a car crash and I can’t turn away.” Yes, but can you dance to a car crash?

After the dominant performance in the Group Round and with “The Hand Of God” as personal cheerleader, I figured Argentina was a sure thing for the Final. But always beware playing the home side!

Astor Piazzolla was the master of 20th century tango and one of its great composers — touring, recording and composing ceaselessly for nearly 50 years before his death in 1992. He was about as close as you can get to a country having a National Musician; thankfully for Argentina and its musical reputation, Piazzolla was more Mozart than Salieri. (Or, to torture a simile, perhaps more Duke Ellington than Nelson Riddle.) Any description of Piazzolla’s music seems to have the phrase “not your Grandfather’s tango” attached, and really I have no idea what that means because I’m not sure I’ve heard much tango that’s not by Piazzolla. I think what’s being referred to was his triumph in getting tango out of the brothels and into concert halls & cafe society. I guess people don’t think much of their grandfather’s reputation.

Here are recordings of Piazzolla playing original compositions in two entirely different settings, the first with his nonet shortly before he passed away and the second a piece he commissioned for Kronos Quartet:

Astor Piazzolla – Milonga Del Angel.mp3
Kronos Quartet & Astor Piazzolla – Anxiety.mp3
Lots more Piazzolla and tango recordings are housed at piazzolla.org

Meanwhile, with Tango now the hoity-toity music of Argentina, Cumbia villera (“shantytown cumbia”) is now the dominant popular music form among the underclass. According to Wikipedia, “Many bands were propelled into fame when emerging football stars from the shantytowns (such as Carlos T?vez) proclaimed their allegiance” so I guess this is what you might have heard if you walked into the Argentine locker room before the game.

Imagine gangsta rap played with Casiotones on the latin rhythm setting just al little too slow setting. You can hear several examples and read about the genre (in Spanish) at this site. And, as always, seek on YouTube and ye shall find.

Ecuador is one of several countries that completely bedeviled me as I’ve assembled the World Cup World Tour over the last few weeks. I’ll just come right out and admit: On Ecuador, I got nothin’. Call Me Mickey has the right idea on this one, though: cop out! Christina Aguilera’s father is from Ecuador. Maybe, just maybe, she has retained dual citizenship for tax purposes. Maybe Xtina — via her tax contribution — is one of the world’s great contributors to preserving the Galapagos. Buy a Christina Aguilera album, save a turtle!

But seriously, Aguilera’s new single is surprisingly kick-ass. One of the best things about the mash-up revolution has been the willingness of producers to again sound like our pop music heritage. "Ain’t No Other Man" is less modern pop than it is a hyperactive re-casting of a traditional Girl Group song. My favorite part is the chorus, which gives a clear picture of three pop-princess Christina-alikes waving their fingers and moving their side-to-side hips in unison like a Motown girl group, flirtaciously beckoning "You’ve got style, you’ve got class…" It’s thrilling and winning. Thank goodness she got away from Linda Perry.

Christina Aguilera – Ain’t No Other Man.mp3

Los Brincos – Baila La Pulga.mp3
Los Salvajes – Las Ovejitas.mp3
These first two tracks are from Beat Espana, a compilation that a friend who used to live in Spain gave me. I’ve searched for information on this album, but come up absolutely nil. There are only three bands on the record– Los Brincos, Los Salvajes and Los Cheyennes — trading off tracks, one after the other. It sounds like 60s Merseybeat with the overriding problem that it’s pretty awful. I don’t mean Gerry-And-The-Pacemakers bad; I’m thinking more like Herman’s-Hermits bad.

No more proof of Beat Espana’s not-so-rightness is needed than this video of Los Brincos making a variety show lip-syncing appearance. The mop-topped band is performing a dull song called “Oh Mama.” Normally you’d think that a song called “Oh Mama” would be about some hot chick. (Think Prince singing “Hot Thing”; you need not actually hear the song to know what it sounds like.) No, “Oh Mama” is really about Mamas — thus, the band members are pushed around the set in baby carriages. By hot chicks. I’m not kidding. If you like a little Freudian conflict with your 60s pop, this is the video for you.

Mus – Al Debalu.mp3
Now this is more like it. Mus is another band about which I could find virtually nil. This track is taken from their second album El Naval. For those of you pining for another Mazzy Star album or the glory days of 4AD, this album is well worth your time to seek out. Understated and mysterious, you can check out more of their stuff at Epitonic.

Another country with music I know way too much about. Plus I work for Brits — – and I’ve got the challenge of trying to avoid rawther obvious use & abuse of Mojo’s recent “50 Best British Songs” list. Hmm, better step carefully here.

OK, how ’bout:

Fairport Convention – Come All Ye.mp3
XTC – Respectable Street.mp3
Peter Sellers – A Hard Day’s Night.mp3

Covered by these three songs: minstrelsy, “England’s green fields,” folk tradition, proto-prog, music hall, classism, comedy, post-war suburbia, Britpop Mark 1, art school, The frickin’ Beatles, guys who want to sound like the frickin’ Beatles, post-punk, post-punk pop, eccentrics that can’t tour because of stage fright.

Things missed: Manchester, Madchester, bedsit, immigration & imperial fallout, Britpop Mark 2, punk, prog proper, Victoria Beckham and her friends, Pop Idol, mods, rockers, The frickin’ Stone Roses.

Well, I tried. I’ll meet you at the Cemetry Gates.

All props to the plucky Socceroos! Italy is leading a charmed life.

Here is something I’ve been wanting to know for a long time. I lived in Los Angeles during the great mid-80s PR push for Australian pop; Australia was the Seattle/Montreal/Omaha of the moment. (Midnight Oil! Men At Work! InXS! Aaaaargh!) One of these new import bands — I believe it was Mental As Anything? — was offered by KROQ as a contest prize to come to your house do your yardwork if you won. I always loved the image of these guys getting off their tour bus at some San Fernando valley tract home and being ordered to cut the lawn and haul the trash by some 14-year old.

Was this real? Did the band actually show up? Were they hung over? Please if you know anything about this, I’m dying to know. Suffice to say, Mental As Anything did not make much of an impact in the US. (…and, wow, what an awful band name. I can only imagine the discussion in the record company board room: “We need a band like Men At Work!” “How about Mental As Anything?” “Never heard ‘em, but sign ‘em!” This did happen back in the day: A-Ha was signed because of the band’s photogenic looks without the record company ever having heard their music.)

The Church – Too Fast For You.mp3
Long before the wonderful but overplayed “Under The Milky Way,” The Church already had their sound and aesthetic down pat. They made several great records and are still putting out moody albums, but if you live in the US, you’d never know it.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (with Kylie Minogue) – Where The Wild Roses Grow.mp3
Extracted from the vaguely insane “Murder Ballads” album, this is easily one of the creepiest records I’ve heard, not least because in listening to it I’m forced to imagine Nick & Kylie’s love life.

The Saints – (I’m) Misunderstood.mp3
“(I’m) Stranded” was the hit — and possibly the finest single out of the first wave of punk, but it’s been profiled by World Cup bloggers elsewhere. At least I go with the “(I’m)” in the title by selecting this tune.

Two very different types of dance music compose my last entry covering a Group Round knockout:

Saban Bajramovic – Hanuma.mp3
Saban is known as the “World of Gypsy Music.” Why? Because Indira Gandhi dubbed him so! Yugoslavia’s leading artist in the 1960s, he has apparently gone missing after the former republic’s turbulent ’90s. “Legend also has it that Gypsies respect and love Tito the most, Saban second and then, after ten empty places, once again Saban.” More on Saban’s incredible story here.
UPDATE: Saban is still out there doing his thing. Here is an account of a performance last month in London: ROMA ROMA: Saban!

dZihan & Kamien – Stiff Jazz.mp3
d & K hail from Sarajevo, but moved to Vienna to study music after the hometown fell into a bit of chaos last decade; you may have heard something about this. Hmmm, that looks suspiciously like K&D. As well it should, as dZhihan & Kamien specialize in the same feckless yet pleasant and popular pseudo-jazz that their Austrian mates Kruder & Dorfmeister specialize in. I’m always torn whether to like this kind of music; it’s easy to enjoy and the playing is strong, but I tire of it as an indicator of Big-Money Cool at boutique hotels and high-end restaurants. I swear the W Hotel hasn’t changed the CD it plays at the bar in seven years, or since I first heard this genre as Business Manager for the ill-fated club-music magazine, Revolution.

Though they are allegedly embarassed by it, the biggest music in Poland these days is Disco Polo, a weird hybrid of vulgarized folk songs (Wikipedia’s definition, not mine) and the very worst in Eurodisco. An MP3 doesn’t quite get it across; you’ve got to see it for the full effect. Thus, I’m forced into posting my first video in the World Cup World Tour, “Jeste? Szalona PV” by Boys, apparently the biggest act in the genre. Yikes.

Boys – Jeste? Szalona PV

More fabulous Disco Polo videos here

Daphne Carr is the US’s biggest authority(!) on Disco Polo, having presented an paper on it at last year’s EMP Live. She wrote recently in The Village Voice about Brooklyn’s burgeoning Polish nightclub scene. If you’re looking for a big Disco Polo dance night, Greenpoint’s the spot.

Paraguay is surprisingly absent from the Internet. Hardly any pictures. No music. Wikipedia’s entry on "Music of Paraguay" mentions more reggaeton artists from Puerto Rico than anything native. The first few pages of a Google Images search on its capitol, Asuncion, returns a large proportion of pictures of a local Mormon temple. I am indebted to Call Me Mickey for finding something, anything.

Agustin Barrios – Los Indios Paraguayos.mp3

Random thoughts on a day of defeat:

Isn’t it appropriate that I have the US entry following the Saudi entry? We’ll follow those guys anywhere. (rimshot) I’ll be here all the week, don’t forget to tip the waitresses.

Rant coming: If people get so upset about American flag-burning, why is it OK to wear Old Glory as a bandana or a T-shirt or facepaint or a bikini top or a towel or…? I am always shocked when I see alleged patriots displaying old faded flags, flags touching the ground, faded flag bumper stickers, flags left out at night, unlit… It’s fundamentally wrong and easy to see & know that it’s wrong. When the military has elaborate routines about how the flag should be hung, folded and destroyed with honor, surely my fellow citizens should easily see that wadding up their faded American flag t-shirt and throwing it on the bedroom floor or drooling ice cream on it is disrespective and certainly not patriotic. Am I wrong in thinking that the people who are most likely to “wear the flag” are closely related or perhaps even the same people who get so upset over flag desecration? Shouldn’t proposed constitutional amendments banning flag-burning also cover bikinis?

Which is all just a way of working to this next thought: When I see people from other nations at the World Cup wearing their national colors, I usually think “Wow, that’s so great that they have such spirit.” On the other hand, if I see a bunch of Americans with stars and stripes painted on their faces or chests or whatever, I’m embarassed. Am I wrong to feel shame? Or would it be worse to be at the stadium and not proudly display the colors?

My colleague Simon over at My Name Is Betty, who has some pretty great World Cup music coverage going himself, heard this same complaint from me and responded “As for the people in national dress, you’re embarrassed? English national dress seems to be a shaved head and a beer gut, maybe a novelty hat. I’m fortunate to live in London though – my street alone has Ghanaian, Trinidadian, English, Australian, Portuguese, Italian and even Jamaican flags out, and it wouldn’t take me too long to gather the rest. It’s good fun, every four years doesn’t come often enough.” It must be nice to live in a place where immigrants are considered pluses.

I worked for a Frenchman for a number of years and he told me several times how amazing he thought it was that there so many flags displayed in America. I plead ignorance until we looked out at the view from North Beach and, sure enough, every building in downtown SF was flying the colors. It was shocking to really see this, and this was long before 9/11. It’s nice to be patriotic, sure, but it looked more neurotic than anything else, like the old saw that nothing is Cool that has to continually tell you it’s Cool.

And now to the task at hand. It’s completely ridiculous to try to sum up my home country’s rich musical tapestry in a couple of songs. Just think of the musical forms that are indigenous and original to the US: rap, jazz, surf, tin pan alley, musical theatre, blues, country… When I think of how my “World Cup World Tour” is trying to put this same straightjacket on 31 other countries, it brings home that I’ve taken on an enormous task with at best well-meaning chutzpah and at worst total arrogance. (And doesn’t that make me so quintessentially American?) But just to be clear, I’m not trying to sum up or size up countries or their musical output with just a couple of songs, but simply trying introduce a taste of the musical life that floats through each nation’s cultural aether. Hey, I can try, right?

So in that spirit, I offer for the United States its greatest living songwriter ruminating on natural disaster & cultural collision and two of its most rockin’ clown princes having a cultural collision and just being silly. Enjoy.

Bob Dylan – High Water (For Charley Patton).mp3
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion with Rufus Thomas – Chicken Dog.mp3

Insult to injury: There was no baseball on the night after the US-Ghana game.

As in Iran, female singers are banned in Saudi Arabia, thus knocking out half the fun. I get the sense that fun isn’t a real high priority over there.

Abdulmajeed Abdulla – Al Gaid.mp3
Mohamed Abdu – Abaa’d.mp3

I think the Mohamed Abdu track kinda rocks — it takes a while to get going, it’s 20 minutes long and it’s not exactly pop — but 20 year-old Rima Mo in Jeddah can’t stand it. Here are Rima’s reasons why she hates Mohamed Abdu:

1/Every Friday we visit my grandmother from my fathers side, and only God knows how she loves mohammed abdu. So we are forced to listen to all his music EVERY FRIDAY!!! :O

2/On our way to visit the same grandmother and on our way back home my Dad plays mohammed abdu’s CD ALL THE WAY and EVERY FRIDAY!!! :O

3/It’s like he has the same Melody but only different words.:S

4/I feel sleepy whenever I hear him singing.

5/He never Smiles.This man is like that All the time.(not happy)

Hoo-wee, at least my father dropped the Jimmy Buffett habit after a while. But if I have to hear Eric Clapton "Unplugged" one more time…

Abdulmajeed Abdulla comes courtesy of Call Me Mickey, which also has excellent World Cup music coverage

BTW I’m superstitiously not doing the United States today because I’m trying to save countries that make the Round of 16 for later. USA! USA!

Look, I know all you indie kids would rather I posted a softie like Jens Lekman or some kind of retro rock like Soundtrack Of Our Lives or The Caesars or The Hives or somesuch. But I’m going to tell you right now: the best Swedish album I ever heard — and maybe one of my Top Twenty ever — is I Centrum by Bo Kaspers Orkester, 1998 winner of the Swedish equivalent of the Grammy for Best Album, whatever that is. I’d command you to get this album, but it runs $150 on Amazon and that just wouldn’t be fair. But you should try.
Bo Kaspers Orkester – Semester.mp3

Like BKO, Esborn Svensson Trio (which mostly works under the acronym EST), is a piano trio, but of a completely different stripe: jazz tinged with electronica and pop. One of Europe’s most popular acts, they haven’t quite made the leap over here yet. Their catalogue is definitely worth checking out if you dig Brad Mehldau, Christopher O’Riley, The Bad Plus and other cats like that.
E.S.T. (Esbjorn Svensson Trio) – Seven Days Of Falling.mp3

Iran’s President Bans Western Music

(AP, December 19, 2005): Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned Western music from Iran’s radio and TV stations, reviving one of the harshest cultural decrees from the early days of 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Songs such as George Michael’s "Careless Whisper," Eric Clapton’s "Rush" and the Eagles’ "Hotel California" have regularly accompanied Iranian broadcasts, as do tunes by saxophonist Kenny G…

Well, heck, who can blame him?

Today’s MP3s come from Googoosh, who was Iran’s biggest female pop singer through the ’60s and early ’70s until the Islamic Revolution put an end to women getting to express themselves in public. The revolution ended not just her ability to give live performances, but also barred her from entering a recording studio or giving interviews.

O-Hum is today’s other featured artist. Certainly you’ve heard of bands that can’t get signed and turn to the Internet to seek its audience. O-Hum have a whole different spin. Iran’s most popular alternative band, its record label was behind them 100%, but The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance "ejected the album a couple of times, describing O-Hum’s music as "Western", "cheap" and contrary to Islamic moral standards. Because of this, the record company broke off its deal with the band and cancelled everything." (Or at least so says O-Hum’s Wikipedia entry.)

O-Hum – Darvish.mp3
Googoosh – Shahrzad-e Qesseh-goo.mp3
Lots more Googoosh here, mostly LP and cassette rips

Susumu Yokota – Uchu Tanjyo.mp3
Puffy Ami Yumi – Track 2 from “Nice”.mp3

See more of the incredible art of Japan: Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fiji

The Bambi Molesters – Theme From Slaying Beauty.mp3
(featuring Pete Buck and Scott McCaughey)

Surf music from Croatia? Sure, why not! Pitchfork gave it a 7.9.

Tunisia was the outskirts of the Roman Empire and its northern coast is dotted with ruins. Color me intrigued. You might know Tunisia best, unfortunately, as Tatooine.

Anouar Brahem – C’est Ailleurs.mp3

NPR : Singing of the World Cup, Off-Key and Off-Kilter
Bonus points for product placement honesty: Iran’s official video invites you to “Check Out All of Our Products Featured
in Arash’s new Video, “Iran Iran”"

Despite the excellent play of Drogba, the best player on the Premier League-winning Chelsea side, La Cote d’Ivorie looks headed for an early exit. Nevertheless, with the home country several years into one of those crazy multi-sided civil wars that plague many African countries, this World Cup appearance is probably one of the best things that’s happened this nation in a long time.

Alpha Blondy – Dictature.mp3

Washington Post: Ivory Coast Soccer Hoping to Spread Peace

Plankton Man vs. Terrestre – Gran Chapparal.mp3
Thalia – Seduccion.mp3

For those of you keeping up, I think Ghana & this one are my favorites so far. I also have to admit that I have become mildly obsessed with the Thalia track, which I first heard on the podcast for Stylus Magazine’s Singles Jukebox.
Subscribe to The Singles Jukebox podcast
Photo by John Fago

After yesterday’s horrible beating of the US side, it’s only fitting to feature the Czech Republic. The former Czechoslovokia had a flourishing psychedelic scene around the time of the 1968 uprising, all of it illegal and deep underground. Surprisingly, quite a bit of material survived.

I should also note that the first thing that confronted me upon my only visit to Prague in 1990 — posted in the train station’s tourist office — was “Phi Zappa Crappa,” the famous poster of Frank Zappa sitting on the toilet. That’s enjoying your freedom!

Said the Gramophone: Arcade Fire’s Will Butler talks about 1960s Czech underground psychedelic bands (with MP3s)
Furious: The incredible story of The Plastic People Of The Universe

Down a man? Never played in the World Cup before? No problem for the folks from the home of calypso!

Lord Invader – No Place Like The West Indies.mp3
Lord Invader – Auf Wiedersehen.mp3
Photo by David Sanger

Benn loxo du taccu bails me out (again) on Angola, another country without a whole lot of recent recorded music. A 27-year civil war will do that for you. I’m also sorry to report that a Google Images search on Angola brings up nary a pleasant image. Give a little karma for this team because making the World Cup has to be the best thing that’s happened to this country in a long time. (Admittedly, I say this in near-total ignorance. Straighten me out, please, in the Comments!)

Benn loxo du taccu: Cogwheels, machetes and football
featuring the music of Kafala Brothers

Tocotronic – Pure Vernunft Darf Niemals Siegen (Superpitcher_Wassermann Single Mix).mp3
Barbara Morgenstern – Die Liebe (R. Lippok_ Schneekristall Mix).mp3

Ih honor of today’s opening game, I had to get in one of today’s opponents. The catch with that, however, is that Costa Rican rock seems to be pretty durn lame. My apologies to my Costa Rican readership, all zero of you. If I’m wrong, tell me where to find the good stuff in the comments.

Tango India – Azul.mp3
Kadeho – Sola.mp3
These came from a Torrent called, succinctly enough, “Rock de Costa Rica.”

There are several countries for which presenting music is going to be a tad difficult. I’ll just come right out and confess that Ecuador and Paraguay have me stumped. I’ve got the rest under control, though.

Luckily, the always excellent Benn Loxo du Taccu, the blogosphere’s clear leader in African music, has Togo covered for me today.

Benn loxo du taccu: The Togo Upset?
featuring the music of Bella Bellow

SeoTaiji And Boys – Hahyoga (Betrayed By You).mp3
extracted from the curiously named Goodbye Best Album

More on SeoTaiji here. "He’s sort of the Korean Michael Jackson as far as level of fame and being not-right-in-the-head goes."
Thanks to Lena for this track.

I suppose the good news is that you wind up with a lifetime OBP of 1.000, but otherwise…

Chicago Tribune: Moonlight Graham sequel? Young ballplayer awaits his fate

The Sweet Talks – Eyi Su Ngaangaa.mp3
Honny & The Bees – Psychedelic Woman.mp3
Photo credit: kirikou.com

Up on the playa, someone asked me to tell her something about me that might surprise her. After thinking for a moment, I came up with the most shocking thing I could think of in that place at that time: I am a diehard, dyed-green Oakland A’s fan. (The shock is the baseball fan bit, not the team affiliation, thanks.) It’s something that I spend enough time and psychic energy on that I find it a bit embarrassing. But I have to admit that there is something uniquely satisfying and orderly about a well-pitched game, a situation you’ve never seen before (and there always seems to be one), the fun of second-guessing where the infield should play, whether the starter should be left in, how will they fill the left-handed set-up man role… so many things that make my brain go Ahhhhhhh. It’s been this way as long as I can remember and it’s always been just this side of obsessive, though I try to mostly keep it to myself and share it with only my family and closest friends.

Normally I try to stay a bit dispassionate about baseball, mainly because it will break your heart if you let it. (Don’t get me started, but let’s just say that the A’s have a checkered playoff record this decade.) Today, though, some news hit that killed. Bill King, the A’s lead play-by-play man since 1981, suffered an embolism on the operating table and passed from this world.

There’s a big part of me that knows that baseball is stupid; it’s an opiate of the masses; it’s just a game; it’s a bunch of big dumb jocks running around a field (and more often just standing around); it’s full of meaningless statistics that ooze over your brain matter and slowly take over, pushing out more meaningful memories. But my “user satisfaction level” tells me otherwise and there are other little signals along the way that make me question my doubt (if that isn’t too abstract).

Bill King plays a huge role in my acceptance of my lot as a baseball fan. This was a guy who was incredibly articulate, had much to say about the cultural world outside of baseball (though he rarely did) and brought an air of erudition and excitement to every game he broadcast. He tacitly made it OK to be an egghead and love baseball.

In the last few years when I listened to him, I often found myself wondering as he made his way through the eighth inning of a crummy game in the middle of the country, knowing that he was stuck in a hotel room with a really unpleasant travel schedule: What does he see? How can he be so passionate about this? I knew – even though he never talked of such things — that he’d had tragedy in his personal life (the passing of his wife during the 2004 season) and that his health was shaky (he’d ceased to join the team on road trips off the West Coast). But still he came to the games and he told stories, incisively dissected strategy, threw out countless off-the-cuff witticisms, spoke truths about the team, its competitors, and its rules-makers (sometimes kind, sometimes not), and always inspired you to feel like a better smarter person even though you were doing something as stupid as listening to a dumb ol’ sporting event on an antique transistor radio.

How could he care so much? Somehow he did, and we cared too, and it was OK.

Another great thing about Bill King was his unique ability to question authority, no small thing to a person with such deep roots in the politically isolated Bay Area. Unlike any other sports broadcaster I’ve ever heard (Daniel Schorr being the closest parallel in ‘real broadcasting’), Bill King had no fear of challenging authority, be it an umpire’s call, interleague play or some bad decision by team management. My first memories of him are his absolutely livid play-calls he would make for the Warriors in the ’70s, where he held absolutely nothing back on the officials (to the apparent delight and approval of my Dad, who always seemed pleasantly astonished by what he was hearing; what a change that must have been from the stodgy New York sportscasters of his youth!). And of course that made him the perfect complement for the many memorable teams he covered: among them, the Rick Barry-era Warriors, the Ken Stabler Raiders, the Billy Ball A’s and the Moneyball A’s. Each of these teams were rebels in their own way, they each made me proud (and quietly relieved) to be their fans, and the voice of Bill King was a huge part of each of those team’s characters.

It’s ironic that here in the age of unbridled self-expression and self-absorption – y’know, people writing blogs and stuff – that I can’t produce an MP3 for you of any of Bill King’s great calls or style. Major League Baseball appears to have done what none of the record companies have been capable of doing: keeping its product from being shared all over the Internet. No, all I have left of Bill King is my Oakland A’s bottle opener, which blares King’s call of the Hatteberg homer that brought the 2003 A’s winning streak to a record 20 games. It’s nice, but it’s not even one of his best calls, though it does have the mandatory “Holy Toledo!”

A bottle opener seems like a really sad, tiny souvenir from someone who made such a mark on my life, whose voice took up so many pleasurable hours, but I guess that’s a life lesson, right? So now I’m going to go to the kitchen and use it to pop open a beer.

Thank you, Bill.

UPDATE: Hey, everybody! Vote for Bill King for the Baseball Hall of Fame!

[Soundtrack]

Hopefully some A’s clips will show up in the next couple of days – if I dare put myself in front of the wrath of Major League Baseball! — but here is a classic from Bill King’s days with the Raiders:

Bill King calls the Holy Roller — Oakland Raiders vs. San Diego Chargers, September 10, 1978
(courtesy of the Bay Area Radio Museum)

Bill King: The Bay Area Radio Digest Interview, 1990

I’ve just discovered that I’m more widely published than I thought I was. McSweeney’s posted one of my letters!

Cal Marching Band – All Hail Blue and Gold.mp3

The ALCS is absolutely punishing. Terrible baseball that just won’t end. Blown saves, un-clutch hitting, pitchers that the managers don’t trust.

First a four-hour game. The next night, a five-hour game. Well, it can’t get any weirder, right?

Tonight: six hours of baseball, 471 pitches, 30 men left on base.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals and Astros are throwing elegant one-hitters at each other and nobody in the country gets to see it.

Gang, this ain’t right. This needs to stop.

As an American League fan (the NL is so very 20th century), I’m forced into checking out the Yankees and Red Sox for the next 10 days. I’m a devout A’s fan, so this particular series drives me nuts for any number of reasons — to the point of alienating my friends.

Dennis is a displaced Red Sox fan, now in California for nearly 10 years. All through the season he’s sent me pro-Red Sox articles describing how great it is to be part of the Red Sox nation. Feh, I say.

From Dennis:

One of my ESPN bosses pulled the “This is the year” routine with me on the phone this morning, then asked what would happen to me (and every Red Sox fan) if we won the World Series. You know, the whole “Wouldn’t you lose your identity?” thing. I’ve gotten this from time to time over the years, and I always thought it was so ludicrous that it didn’t even warrant its own column. But since people keep bringing it up, I’ll explain it to you once and for all:

Red Sox fans don’t define themselves by the fact that the team hasn’t won the World Series since World War I. We’re defined by the fact that the team hasn’t won the World Series since World War I. There’s a
difference. We hate hearing about the (rhymes with “schmurse”), we bristle at every “19*8″ reference … we just want to reach a point where nobody brings this stuff up anymore. It amazes me how many people don’t understand that. All we ever wanted was to be “Just
Another Team That Won the World Series Recently.”

Nine wins to go. And that’s that.

You see, this is just it. I am so darn tired of hearing about it, too. Maybe that’s not Boston fans’ fault, but they aren’t exactly trying to dissuade it. I challenge you to find me a team with more outspoken and neurotic fans of a single franchise in the US. Why do I never hear about Cardinal team traditions, White Sox, Indians, the Giants even? These fans have ‘suffered’ (often self-induced suffering) every bit as much over the last 35-70 years, 2-3 generations worth. At least the Red Sox challenged during a hefty percentage of those years.

It’s not the definition I’m tired of. It’s the defining.

I mean, I just searched on Amazon and came up with well over 50 books about the Red Sox before I gave up looking. A hefty percentage of them have 1975 or 1967 or 1978 in the subtitle. Whose fault is that?

As a resident/native area borne of immigrants from all over the US, I’m all too aware that most times an east coast team comes to town that I will be shouted down in my home arena. I don’t like it, but I’ve learned to live with it. My peeps are Easterners, too, and I know my Dad still gets excited about the Mets. I get it. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And, I gotta say, and my brethren on AthleticsNation loudly agree, Red Sox fans are the absolute worst guests entertained at the Oakland Coliseum.

I hate the way they played out last year’s ALDS. (I hate the way my team played it, too, but for different reasons.) I have NEVER seen anything so rude as what the players pulled in Game 3, and the way the fans played right along. Only USC’s fans even come close in my experience. (That may make me sheltered, but then you’ve never seen 92,000 uber-rich Trojans fans sieg-heiling in unison as their inner-city running backs run up the score.)

Oohhhh, my blood boils. Cal hasn’t been to the Rose Bowl since 1959. I know sports humility.

So I have hard time getting real empathetic. Not this decade.

By the by, the absolute NICEST fans I ever encountered were Nebraska Cornhuskers when they came en masse to Berkeley. A LOT of them coming a LONG way.