Sporting an opinion

Nothing newsworthy here – just Tony being Tony – other than ESPN's reaction.

I was actually watching the NASCAR practice past midnight on Friday night, but somehow missed the best part (it was a taped rerun, so I probably shouldn't be surprised). Apparently, Tony Stewart told a cameraman to "get the f--- away from me" during practice for the Kansas race. It was heard on-camera, ESPN apologized immediately, he'll get punished, yada yada yada, life goes on, right?

Well, let's stop to appreciate this priceless reaction from ESPN, courtesy of George McNeilly, senior director of corporate and consumer communications. "I think what occurred speaks for itself," he told the Sporting News. What occurred was Tony Stewart and, yes, Tony Stewart always speaks for himself, usually without regard to whoever might be on the receiving end. While offending millions of virgin ears, it simultaneously keeps things interesting in an otherwise stolid sport off the track.

But Mr. McNeilly would never say that, now would he?

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 4:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As explained by one Jeffrey Michael Gordon.

I've talked to inspectors about the pros and cons of NASCAR's "Car of Tomorrow." I've discussed it with John Darby, the Nextel Cup Series president, the Grand High Chief of all supervisors. But never have I read, or heard, or had explained to me, a more thoughtful pro/con argument than what Jeff Gordon said earlier today.

He poses a great question: What if the points race stays this tight, with more than one driver in the running for the Nextel Cup Championship, right on down to the final week of the season at Miami? And what if the championship is taken from a driver when his car fails its post-race inspection? It could happen. Very easily, Gordon says. Stick with his train of thought 'til the end (taken from a GM press release), and you'll be rewarded:

"My opinion is that in some ways by creating these templates that go over this car and all these different heights. Too high and too low. Every thing that NASCAR does to make the cars more equal and make the competition tighter, it also puts NASCAR into a tighter box to have cars not meeting those requirements when the race is over because you're in a much narrower window for everything to be right. If you talk to these crew chiefs, they'll tell you. It's almost nearly impossible to know exactly what a spring is going to do and be exact every single time and the shock, there are variances in there that we can't live up to. We're actually having to redo every side of the Car of Tomorrow every single race because just the flex of going through the race makes the sides buckle just enough where it won't meet their templates. And so while we're trying to save money and not have all these magician body men, we're having to redo t he sides every single race because their tolerances are so tight. To me, what's happening is the tighter the tolerances, the more the chances are of us not meeting those tolerances, especially after a race. But even before the race, going though inspection is going to be tougher. So yes, there has to be judgments on what's plainly deliberate and trying to figure that out, but at the same time, if you don't meet the inspection, there's got to be some kind of penalty. I have issues not making the five-minute clock for qualifying. To me, we've been seeing guys be 10 to 15-minutes, I think Kenseth changed gears somewhere, went into the garage area and changed rear-end gears, came back out and qualified at like Michigan. There was no penalty at all. He came out, made his two laps, and qualified. So to me, everybody needs to be held accountable. If they're going to make those rules, you have to be within them. If you don't meet them, then there's got to be a judgment as to why you didn't meet it. If they can determine that it's deliberate that you didn't meet it, and they've got to go through a lot of different things. There are all kinds of rumors going through the garage area right now that No. 99 (Edwards) lowered their car throughout the race and expected the shocks to hold them up. I don't believe all that stuff because it's just that these things happen all the time. I think NASCAR has to try to determine what those penalties should be. I don't think they should be the same all the time. But I think the reason they were so harsh on us was not that what we did was so severe in enhancing the performance of the car, it's that they said don't do this and we did it and they wanted to set a precedent for this car; send a message not only to us, but to everyone out there, as to what they mean on these tolerances. To me, it doesn't matter if you're high or low or what it is, I think there is going to be a penalty coming. I just wonder if NASCAR really wants that to happen. Do we want to get to Miami-Homestead and the winner of the championship comes through inspection and he's an eighth of an inch low and is that 25 points? What is that? Does that win the championship or not? It's great what they're trying to do with this car. It's safer. It's definitely more competitive than I've ever seen it among cars in the difference in the speeds. But that's also putting us all into a box that's going to make things very challenging and difficult for them to make those judgment calls."

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Or, "I was right ... and I WAS RIGHT!!"

Unless you've been living in a cave, or in blissfully ignorant McCovey Cove, you know by now that Barry Bonds' 756th home run ball will enter the Hall of Fame with an asterisk. I was mildly dismayed to see that Barry Bonds didn't agree with my praise of Mark Ecko for his democracy stunt, calling him an "idiot."

But I was pleased to see that voters agreed with my recommendation to brand the ball with an asterisk before sending it to the Hall. My position hasn't wavered in the last couple weeks that Bonds' record is legitimate -- it's the game that was illegitimate -- and thus should go in the books without an asterisk. So it's nice to see the public's mixed sentiment make its way into the Hall, along with the ball that stirred such dissension.

The cynic in me would like to point out that precious little voting of consequence is done over the Internet, since it's so impossible to monitor. I'd love to see the books opened on this one, 2000-Presidential-Election-in-Florida style, if I thought there were, in fact, any books. Ecko claims more than 10 million votes were cast. But by whom? Raise your hand please, and don't lower your hand until I've pointed at you!

Whatever. In this case, I think the end justifies the means.

As fun as it is being in the plurality on the Bonds-ball vote, it's even more fun knowing I was 100 percent right in calling out 49ers wide receiver Darrell Jackson for wearing his helmet incorrectly in their season opener, thus costing them a touchdown.

From sfgate.com's John Crumpacker:

His most notable noncatch came in the opener against Arizona, on the last, frantic drive for a touchdown. Smith's perfect pass slipped through Jackson's hands in the end zone.

One of the problems, Jackson said, might have been his off-kilter helmet.

"I couldn't see the ball. My helmet sat too high on my head," he said, citing his Afro as the culprit. His hair is now trimmed.

An Afro? That's the reason? How, then, does one explain the prolific efforts of Mike McKenzie? Or even O.J. Simpson? (note: I spent about an hour looking for a still from "Naked Gun 33 1/3" with O.J.'s monster-fro from the 1970's disco scene; I came up dry. Thanks, Google images).

And thanks for shaving, Darrell. Way to put the team ahead of your hair.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm researching a piece on San Bernardino native Dave Stockton, currently a golfer on the Champions Tour and a Ryder Cup captain. He's more famous these days for appearing at corporate functions and instructional videos on putting.

Like these.

Check it out: For $1.99, you can hear Dave talk for 47 seconds about bunker play! Or for 51 seconds about positive thinking!! Or for a full 2:47 about "Try"!!!

If you'd rather just pay $22 for a full Stockton DVD, you can do that, too. If not, don't worry. His year-to-date earnings on the Champions Tour are in excess of $86,000 -- not bad for a 66-year-old professional athlete.

He should be a fun interview; I can only hope he doesn't charge.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 7:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You'd think that making the Chase for the Nextel Cup, and winning his first career race last week, would earn Clint Bowyer some measure of fame. The type of fame that means your name isn't misspelled, ever.

And yet, here's what the Chase standings looked like on SI.com late Sunday:

Chase Standings
1. Jeff Gordon 5,340
2. Tony Stewart 5,338
3. Carl Edwards 5,337
4. Jimmie Johnson 5,336
5. Kyle Busch 5,330
6. Curt Bowyer 5,322
7. Martin Truex Jr. 5,294
8. Jeff Burton 5,265
9. Kyle Harvick 5,225
10. Matt Kenseth 5,224
11. Kurt Busch 5,189
12. Denny Hamlin 5,182

Sorry, Curt. Guess you'll have to get into a fight on the track with Tony Stewart before you become "Clint."

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The song that plays as you wait to be connected to Big Bear High School football coach Dave Griffiths' cell phone is a familiar one.

I fell in to a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
and the flames went higher.
And it burns, burns, burns
the ring of fire
the ring of fire.

The mountains around Big Bear, of course, were recently engulfed in flames. It's nice to see that at least one local resident was able to keep his sense of humor throughout the ordeal, which has closed off Highway 18 – the only sane, paved approach to Big Bear Middle School from the lowlands.

To get to Big Bear's game Saturday with Citrus Hill, you had to take an insane, 2 1/2-hour detour around the back of the San Bernardino Mountains, following something called Highway 38. Good thing, too. The Bears lost on a last-second field goal, their first loss since November of 2005. And nobody needed to see that.

Now the city of Big Bear Lake needs something to take its mind off the fire and the local prep football team.

Snowboarding, anyone?

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There were three chairs on the dais at Barry Bonds' farewell press conference today, one for San Francisco Giants general manager Brian Sabean, one for owner Peter Magowan and one, presumably, for Bonds. Guess which seat was empty?

How fitting is that? Barry Bonds, He Who Shows Up When He Pleases (Which Is More Often Than Not, And For That We Should Be Grateful), didn't feel like showing up on Friday. So he didn't. Farewell!

Guess he was miffed by the fact the Giants didn't tell him any earlier that they wouldn't bring him back in 2008. By not showing up, Bonds' gesture shows me that he is completely in control of his 'roid rage: He knows not to publicly place himself in a position conducive to rage.

Magowan made sure to mention that, during the first 11 of Bonds' 15 years on the team, the Giants had the third-best winning percentage in baseball. It's not too hard to read between those lines: The Giants should have ditched Bonds after losing the 2002 World Series to the Angels.

As someone who covered the Giants from 2003-06, I'm not as curious to see where Bonds ends up playing in '08 as I am to see how much he gets paid. If it's less than $8M per year -- a VERY real possibilty -- and especially if it's only guaranteed for one year, the Giants got SCREWED. At that price, for one year, $8M is plenty worth it to get the extra butts in the Bayside seats, and for Bonds to retire in a Giants uniform. A team can rebuild around that much contract space.

So the Bonds watch is on. You know, when he decides to show up.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Note the playful tone? That means it's not really war.

Nonetheless, I came across this tidbit commenting on the Daily Bulletin's Top 10 prep football rankings in an L.A. Times blog. I thought I'd take this time and space to offer a little more insight into said rankings, and why I wasn't beating myself over the head after Chino Hills lost to Diamond Ranch in Week 1.

For starters, five reporters vote, not just Comrade Fowler. My vote that week had Norco, Chino Hills and Diamond Ranch 1-2-3, in that order, so I wasn't shocked to see the Rancheros beat the Hill People. The 42-28 final score, however, took me aback somewhat.

Still, I'm ready to defend the other four voters with the type of logic that circulates in our headspace ...

Chino Hills had quite a few key components left over from last year's playoff team, which had the misfortune of playing Norco, an eventual CIF-SS champion, in the first round. The Huskies also hadn't played an actual game yet. But we guessed they wouldn't lose to the Panthers, a team coming off a Week 1 loss and a sub-.500 season in an arguably less prestigious league.

On a completely unrelated note, I feel like posting a photo of an anonymous reporter leaning (!) on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s new car. I think NASCAR needs to dock that guy 100 points.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 12:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I need to rectify something: The Chase for the Nextel Cup started without a whisper here, and while the New Hampshire race last Sunday was, by all accounts, a boring piece of crap, something amazing happened for the first time in modern NASCAR history. Something so simple you (and ESPN) probably didn't notice it.

All 43 cars finished the race.

Yeah, think about it: Since the beginning of 43-car Winston Cup races back in '98, at least one car didn't make it to the end every time until Sunday. There's a how-can-you-consider-NASCAR-a-sport comment hidden in there, but I'll leave it to you to find it, if you want. So I give props to Ward Burton, David Stremme and Brian Vickers, the bottom three finishers at New Hampshire, for giving "bringing up the rear" a whole new level of prestige.

As expected, Kasey Kahne is going to drive the Budweiser car next year. I suppose there is a certain prestige to driving the Budweiser car (again, only in NASCAR), seeing as how Dale Earnhardt Jr. was its last occupant. It's only appropriate that Kahne inherit the King of Beers' throne; he's second only to Earnhardt in the category of drivers whose fame outproportions their talent.

Said Kahne, whose clean-cut, boy-next-door image doesn't quite go hand in hand with Budweiser: "You probably don't know me too well if you don't know that I'ma beer guy."

Finally, it's been tough riding out this Busch Series 2008 title-sponsor story in the dark. Subway is still in the running. According to one report, so is Coors. But neither side is showing its hand. Some have speculated this week that the series won't have a sponsor at all next year (but then what would they call it?) Early reports said that Allstate and Dunkin' Donuts were also in the running, and hot damn would I want to watch the Dunkin' Donuts Series! If NASCAR hasn't budged in its asking price from a couple weeks back, all they have to do is sell 29 donuts at $1 million each, and they can afford it.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a Web site that had no reason to exist before August, 2007, yet has become one of the best examples of modern democracy, and best uses for the Internet, ever.

Maybe I'm overstating its importance, and maybe there's no possible way to accurately vote for anything online, but www.vote756.com indisputably represents a stroke of genius. If you caught it, what would you have done with Barry Bonds' 756th home run ball? Looks like you've got three choices (send it to Cooperstown, send it to Cooperstown with an asterisk, blast it into space). That's three more choices than Joe Fan has ever been afforded with a piece of sports history. A least, that vast portion of sports collectibles that belongs to our soul, and not our legal possession.

There will be ballot-stuffing, word-of-e-mail campaigns, and various other rumors that will render the poll results controversial, but still, I dare you not to vote.

Such a thing wouldn't be possible without inspiration striking someone with deep pockets and a creative mind, and Marc Ecko appears to have both. He founded the Ecko shoe/clothing company, and while he looks too young in his photo to have that kind of money, I've never bought a piece of Ecko merchandise so I really have no opinion on Marc Ecko either way. Until now. In the spirit of this online campaign, in the spirit of baseball fans everywhere, I will drink one beer in his honor. Then vote.

(My recommendation? Throw an asterisk on the ball, then send it to Cooperstown. For a number of reasons I find it impractical, if not impossible, to attach an asterisk to any baseball statistics recorded over the last decade. Yet to leave Bonds unquestioned at the top of the all-time home run list is to ignore America's collective reaction to the record -- which is just as significant as the record itself. Both are important to baseball history, so I'd hate to see the ball blasted into space. And the ball's come too far just to head back to Cooperstown, unmarked. Booooor-ing. But an asterisked ball in the Hall? That I like.)

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, turns out they even play games on Saturday and Sunday, when my tube was transfixed on college football and the NFL, respectively. Who knew?

Just kidding. I love baseball. Love it more than football and love it even more when photos like these, of the A's Nick Swisher and the Rangers' Vicente Padilla, turn up:

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 7:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My years at UCLA came plop in the middle of its seven-year football losing streak to USC and, up until last year, that was no rivalry. Trust me.

And yet, it was our "rivalry game" each year. Against our watch-us-thump-your-ass, hope-you-can-score, try-not-to-get-hurt rivals. Yeah. Some rivalry. From 1999 to 2005, the scores looked like this: 7-17, 35-38, 0-27, 21-52, 22-47, 24-29, 19-66. That last one was particularly hard to swallow.

I thought a seven-year losing streak was tough, until I stepped in to the "rivalry" that is Don Lugo vs. Chino. Check out these fantastic scores from the last 15 years:

1992: Chino, 18-0
1993: Chino, 35-16
1994: Chino, 23-21
1995: Chino, 33-6
1996: Chino, 45-0
1997: Chino, 56-14
1998: Chino, 31-7
1999: Chino, 31-7
2000: Chino, 31-7
2001: Chino, 49-7
2002: Chino, 51-7
2003: Chino, 32-3
2004: Chino, 45-7
2005: Chino 33-0
2006: Chino, 35-0
Friday night: Chino, 27-0

I hear that '94 game was a barnburner. Too bad the seniors on this year's Don Lugo squad were all 4 or 5 years old when it happened. Who in attendance during the Conquistadores' 1991 win, wearing their parachute pants and listening to New Kids on the Block (on their portable cassette player) could have foreseen a winless streak that would span two milennia?

Part of me felt sorry for Don Lugo quarterback Charlie Hinojosa when he shrugged off the loss by saying, "it happens."

Dude, it happens every year.

Nobody seems to mind, though. As I wrote in my story for Saturday's paper, it's less a football game than an event for the throngs of Chino residents who wait in a line that wraps around the tennis courts on the corner of Park Place and Benson Ave. All 4,400 of them by Friday's tally.

Most of the Don Lugo patrons stayed until the bitter end, too. To you, Conquistador fans and to you, Charlie, I say "more power to you." After all, there's always next year.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AP: Belichick gets $500k fine, Patriots lose $250k, and a first-round draft pick if they make the playoffs. I am curious.

To me, the main story isn't the penalty. This penalty was harsh, but closer to the mean than the supposed extremes. One on end, some were calling for a multi-game suspension for Belichick and multiple draft picks in 2008 for the team (regardless of whether the Pats made the playoffs or not); on the other, a small fine for the team and/or its coach. A half-million is not a small fine, even to an NFL head coach; $250k is relatively affordable to an NFL franchise which, for purposes of comparison, spends closer to $100 million in players' salaries each year. Losing a first-round draft pick is unprecedented, but hardly unexpected.

The real question is, how much will this change whatever culture of cheating exists in the league? If the Pats were lone renegades in this level of trickery - using the team's cameras to steal signals off an opponent's bench during a game - maybe not much will change around the league. But if the Pats weren't the only team doing this, and some have suggested they aren't, this could have widespread implications. Will any team be willing to pay so steep a price just to get some video on their opponent's signals?

Probably not. Mission accomplished, Goodell.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 5:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone seems to be cheating these days. Even I feel like I'm cheating my boss somewhat when I surf the Internet for blog material in the middle of a lazy Thursday.

Last night, I caught a political roundtable on "MSNBC live with Dan Abrams" featuring Log Cabin Repblican Dan Sammon, Salon.com editor Joan Walsh, and my father's best friend, Patrick Buchanan. They were talking about Republican congressmen cheating on their wives. Seems to be happening a lot lately.

Then I read this sprawling report in the San Francisco Chronicle about how cheating in schools is no longer eminent domain of the Spicolis of the world. It's for the world's especially competitve nerds, those in the 4.0-plus-GPA category, and jocks.

But alas, the jocks do not stop cheating once they've matriculated from college. You know by now that the New England Patriots got caught "cheating" in their Week 1 game against the Jets. (More on this later). Then today the punishment came down on McLaren for cheating in Formula 1: 100 million dollars (sounds best in a Dr. Evil voice) and a bunch of points in the manufacturer's standings.

The McLaren case is funny. If you're not familiar with Formula 1, McLaren and Ferrari are to akin to Coke and Pepsi in the world of European auto racing. Anyway, McLaren admitted to a judge that it came into possession of a large document containing technical specs for the Ferrari car, but denied using the information to their advantage. The biggest discredit to their argument: The document was provided by a Ferrari employee (who was subsequently fired), not stolen by one of McLaren's own. So what is the greater sin: Paying someone to rip off your competitor's secrets, or using said trade tricks to your advantage? The former is what any dirty cheat would do, the latter what a logical person/company would do. Sounds like the judge agreed. Not only does McLaren lose whatever technical secrets it supposedly didn't gain, they've lost $100 million and whatever they paid the nark from Ferrari. So what if McLaren's two superstar drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, escape unpunished? The punishment isn't light, and it fits the crime.

Determining an appropriate punishment for the Pats is the challenge facing NFL commish Roger Goodell, and it's a sticky one. Goodell has to untangle, among other things:

a) Did the Patriots do anything that violates any of the NFL's written code of conduct?
b) If so, who is directly and indirectly responsible for said violation?
c) How much of a competitive advantage was gained by these actions?

Like the McLaren-Ferrari dispute, it's possible (if not probable) that the Pats broke every cheating rule in the book and didn't gain a thing. Seems to me it's pretty easy to videotape signals being thrown from an NFL bench. Any team with a cameraman can do it. It's much harder to decipher the signals, and use them to your advantage, within the same 3-hour game. The NFL goes to great lengths to level the playing field before every game, literally down to the height of each player's socks. Can the league effectively monitor if and how each team uses its game-filming equipment? If I'm Goodell, I'm taking my time on this one. Investigate how much game film each team is taking, and where those cameras are pointed. It could be that most teams are doing what the Pats did to the Jets last Sunday on a week-to-week basis.

I'd like to see Bill Belichick and whomever was holding the camera suspended for a couple games, only because I don't like the Patriots. Seriously, though, Goodell should wait until all the facts emerge, then levy a nice, harsh punishment, one that rattles Republican Congressmen, high school AP Physics students, and NFL coaches alike.

Now, to get back to work...

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The cool thing about motor sports, when compared to other professional sports, is that most of us drive a motorized vehicle. We might not get to face a 90-mph fastball every day, put on a helmet and pads and tackle someone, or check some poor sap into a plexiglass wall, but we can regularly get behind the wheel of a car, truck or motorcycle.

We can drag race in a one-on-one duel at a stopped intersection. We can set out on a high-speed quest to outmaneuver traffic on a crowded freeway. None of this is legal, of course, but we can do it. It's empowering on some level.

Check that - it's empowering on every level.

The adrenaline factor is quadrupled when you're riding a motorcycle. Out of this supreme rush of energy is born this report, released yeseterday, that shows you just how empowering a speed rush can be. Before you try to absorb the statistics, just think about it: How often do you get passed on the freeway by a performance-driven motorcycle? Not one of those ball-crunching, headache-inducing, status-screaming hogs, but one of those lithe shiny bikes that zips past you through its own jetstream, dilithium crystals burning somewhere beneath its seat? Once a week? Once a month?

Turns out those sleek little Japanese balls of fury account for 25 percent of all motorcycle fatalities, despite comprising less than 10 percent of all bikes on the road. They're built on a racing platform, then adjusted to street-legal specs before leaving the factory. Unlike the "stock cars" in NASCAR that resemble their street-legal counterparts in name only, these bikes have all the outer workings of their AMA Superbike counterparts. It's the inner workings that differ greatly, but no one has to know that when you're gliding past a family van at 100 mph.

I can't help but think of Diego Corrales, the boxer who was killed when his 2007 Suzuki GSX-R1000 crashed near Las Vegas in May. Dude could box. Now he's just a statistic.

I'd caution y'all to slow down, but that would ruin the whole experience, now wouldn't it?

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Notice anything a little off about 49ers wide receiver Darrell Jackson in this photo?

Take another look at his helmet. Then look at the helmet of Eric Green, the Cardinals' defensive back who is credited with breaking up this potential touchdown pass at the end of the Niners' 20-17 win on Monday night.

Is it just me, or is Jackson's face mask impeding his line of sight? Green's helmet is situated right where every helmet should be: View-hole for the eyes, plastic face-mask protection for the mouth. Jackson's helmet, meanwhile, has a nice, wide view-hole for his forehead, absolutely no protection for his mouth, and a jumble of plastic sitting smack between his eyes and the football -- which fell between his hands, onto the ground, incomplete.

In fact, Jackson's helmet looked like this throughout the fourth quarter. Maybe the whole game. I didn't notice it until he dropped this graceful-yet-explosive spiral by Alex Smith that, if caught, would have won the game. The 49ers eventually prevailed, but what of Jackson's helmet? Is it too small? Or is his head just too long? Maybe a bit of both?

I think Eric Cartman had a better chance catching a pass than Jackson did last night.

Thanks to Lance Iverson of the San Francisco Chronicle for capturing that moment. I was worried I'd have to draw it by hand and scan it to my computer, as if the pass had been dropped during closed-courtroom proceedings. Then you might not believe me. Anyway, thanks Lance, until you or your superiors complain about unauthorized usage. Please just ask me to take the photo down before serving court documents -- I'll be happy to comply.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't like parking my hybrid in dirt parking lots, but I do enjoy a damn good motorcycle race. Could some kind of compromise have been reached before I was dispatched to Glen Helen Raceway this weekend?

Glen Helen Raceway is geographically bound by suburban Fontana to the south, I-15 to the east, I-215 to the north and Muscoy to the west, all somewhat visible from the hilly, dirt, off-road course. Yet somehow it's still in the middle of nowhere.

For the record, I think holding a motorcycle race in the middle of somewhere would intrude upon its outlaw culture. Nowhere leaves infinite room for tattoos, alcoholic revelry, two-story energy-drink haulers, hot biker chicks and of course, the bikes themselves. The middle of somewhere, more commonly known as civilization, does not. It's why AMA motocross will never visit west of San Bernardino, and on the East Coast sticks to places called Mechanicsville, Maryland, and New Berlin, New York.

Despite being in the middle of somewhere from a technical standpoint, Glen Helen does its best to approximate nothingness. A series of 2000-ft elevation mountainellas shield your eyes from the 15; a dirty, smoggy haze shields your eyes from everything else. The ridiculously exuberant PA guys consistently refer to the track as the "High Desert", ignoring the local usage but not the dictionary definition. And when I pulled my hybrid onto a dirt shoulder to park, the tightly-packed dirt took a couple chunks out of the underside of my front bumper. Mission accomplished. Welcome to nowhere, Guero.

I can't emphasize enough the tattoos, two-story energy-drink haulers and hot biker chicks. They're everywhere, and they're impressive. Each in their own way. Most sports have more history than motocross (and its indoor dirt-course cousin, supercross), but few have more culture. Being a social observer, I feel less compelled to decide whether I love or hate this culture than to respect its authenticity. NASCAR seems suit-and-tie corporate by comparison.

Just about everyone says that Glen Helen Raceway is the most difficult course on the 12-date AMA motocross circuit. Those three 2,000-plus-foot hills are integrated into the course and emerge from a 1,800-foot baseline. Talking to veteran rider Andrew Short, he posed rhetorically, "It's like, do we really have to go all the way up?" Yeah, they really go all the way up, and it's honestly one of the most death-defying things I've ever witnessed covering sports. You just know that in NASCAR, NHRA, IRL and Champ Car those cars are built nearly safe enough to be childproof. And there's walls around the track. Here there are no walls, and only a helmet and jumpsuit to protect the rider upon impact. Imagine losing it at the top of a 2,000-foot cliff, with a near-vertical 200-foot drop to the ground below. Now imagine 80 motorcycle riders teetering on the edge of losing it over three different cliffs, during two separate 14-lap races, in the same afternoon.

That is motocross at Glen Helen Raceway. In the racing vernacular, it's gnarly. My university education didn't properly train me to edit vernacular, so I'm going to leave it at that: This weekend was gnarly.

So is the underside of my front bumper.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"This is my first blog entry."

Scary words, huh? Talk about a drop in an overflowing bucket. Here's a few that might be worse ...

"From the creators of 'Survivor' comes a groundbreaking new reality show..."
"Universal Pictures presents Adam Sandler in ..."
"Our lead story tonight: Paris Hilton..."

In short, I don't believe The World needs another sports blog. But I hear MTV was ready to call it quits after "The Real World 3", too.

Shows how far conventional wisdom will get you these days.

Anyway, here I am, ready to cloud the blogosphere with opinions, facts and forays into the pseudo-gonzo journalism that is ... well ... the blogosphere. So expect the occasional bias here; I'm not supposed to inject any into my reporting in the San Bernardino County Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (and, on occasion, the Los Angeles Daily News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News, Whittier Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram and Torrance Daily Breeze).

This is my first year as a full-time motorsports writer. Even though I'm paid to write about the topic, I'd prefer to listen to others talk about it. So if I refer to "Motocross" as "Supercross", or to Bobby Labonte as Terry Labonte, please call me on it in an expletive-laced comment.

Some other trivia:
• I was born in Wisconsin.
• I used to play the keyboards in this band.
• I captained an IM basketball team at UCLA. But I couldn't play worth crap.

I'm also more excited about the U.S. Open than the start of college football season.

Discuss.

Posted by J.P. Hoornstra at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)