Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
For the first time since Sean McVay took over as Rams coach in 2017, it’s not the Rams dominating the Cardinals.
Matt Prater kicked a sand-in-the-face 23-yard field goal to complete a 12-play, 94-yard scoring drive to increase the lead to 24 points.
The Rams were in position to make it a two-score game when Matthew Stafford scrambled several times to move the Rams to the one-yard line early in the fourth quarter.
But Stafford was stopped on a sneak, and a fourth-down pass to tight end Tyler Higbee fell incomplete.
The Cardinals took over on downs, and essentially sealed the victory when running back Chase Edmonds broke free for a 54-yard gain on a third and seven.
Edmonds has rushed for 120 yards in 12 carries. His teammate James Conner had two rushing touchdowns. Ouch.
Kyler Murray has completed 24 of 32 passes for 268 yards. He has rushed for 39 yards in six carries.
Stafford hit Robert Woods on a 14-yard touchdown pass with 1:14 remaining to account for the final score...
I was in Vegas two weekends back and checked out the Raiders vs. Steelers at a sports bar across the way from the Bellagio, where my wife and I were staying.
I'm fired up for the season, heh. (For the Rams too, who are looking like Super Bowl material, for sure.)
Tamyra Mensah-Stock wins the gold for this post-match speech giving her success over to God, and praising the opportunity to represent America! She shares a great message for young women striving for excellence, no matter the field. Congrats, Tamyra! #TeamUSA#TokyoOlympicspic.twitter.com/9xetbtettF
Novak Djokovic was trying to win all four Grand Slam tennis tournaments and the Olympic gold medal in a calendar year. That dream ended with his loss against Germany’s Alexander Zverev. https://t.co/bfd2TNLptg
TOKYO — Novak Djokovic’s dream of a Golden Slam ended in the early hours of another thick night at the Olympics, on one last searing winner off the racket of Germany’s Alexander Zverev.
Zverev stormed back from a set and a service break down to beat Djokovic, the world’s No. 1 ranked men’s player, 1-6, 6-3, 6-1, scoring a stunning upset of an all-time great who had seemed nearly invincible lately and well on his way to pulling off a feat no male tennis player had achieved.
Djokovic was trying to win all four Grand Slam tournaments and the Olympic gold medal in a calendar year. He had won the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon and came to Tokyo looking for the fourth jewel. The United States Open takes place at the end of the summer.
Djokovic appeared to be on cruise control when he broke Zverev’s serve to get to within three games of the match in the second set. Zverev swatted a ball skyward in frustration. He appeared destined to meet with a quick end, like Djokovic’s first four victims in Tokyo.
But with little to lose, Zverev began unleashing his booming serve and setting up a series of crushing forehands to take control, and Djokovic started inexplicably spraying his shots off the court.
“Terrible, just terrible,” Djokovic said, when asked how he was feeling at the end of a night that also included a loss in the mixed doubles semifinal.
Djokovic tried to slow Zverev’s momentum with a long bathroom break between the second and third sets, as he has done in tense moments in the past. But it didn’t work and in the two-of-three-set format he did not have the cushion that the marathon afforded during Grand Slam matches, which require three of five sets to win...
Very interesting.
Apparently Tokyo was an image rehab event for him. Djokvic was even photographed doing the splits with Belgian gymnasts.
TOKYO — These Olympic Games were always walking a tightrope, right from the beginning, teetering on the edge of disaster.
From the first positive coronavirus test, there were fears the COVID-19 pandemic might land scores of athletes in quarantine, maybe wipe out an entire event like the men’s 100-meter final.
From the first explosion of fireworks over an empty stadium during the opening ceremony, there were doubts that Tokyo could generate any real buzz without fans in the seats.
But the Games instead are troubled by a different problem. The mental stress that drove Simone Biles to abruptly withdraw from the women’s gymnastics team competition on Tuesday night underscored a more alarming trend.
These Olympics are losing their star power.
Biles was merely the latest marquee name to suffer misfortune in the last few days. American swimmer Katie Ledecky — another ostensible “Greatest of All Time” — finished second in her initial race and fifth in another, before winning a gold medal in her last race Tuesday. Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka, whose face adorns countless billboards and television commercials in this country, was bounced from the women’s draw in the third round.
“I’m disappointed in every loss,” Osaka said, “but I feel like this one sucks more than the others.”
There have been bright moments in Japan. The host nation got early gold from skateboarder Yuto Horigome — another highly publicized athlete here — and in sports such as judo and table tennis. Victories by 17-year-old Alaskan swimmer Lydia Jacoby and Carissa Moore in the inaugural surfing contest provided the American team with highlights.
“It was crazy,” Jacoby said after the surprising 100-meter breaststroke. “I knew I had it in me, but I wasn’t really expecting a gold medal.”
Still, the list of disappointments has run considerably longer.
Two-time Wimbledon champion Andy Murray of Britain withdrew from singles, deciding to give his body a rest by playing only doubles. Positive coronavirus tests derailed Jon Rahm of Spain, the world’s top-ranked golfer, and Bryson DeChambeau of the U.S., ranked No. 6, before the start of play.
The powerhouse U.S. women’s soccer team has looked shaky, barely escaping pool play with a 0-0 draw against Australia, and the men’s basketball team, stocked with NBA talent, hasn’t played any better.
“I think that’s a little bit of hubris if you think the Americans are supposed to just roll out the ball and win,” Coach Gregg Popovich said...
Japan's population is 98 percent Nihon. For reasons of ethnic chauvinism, fear of the outer world (like the U.S. and Commodore Perry's expeditions to that country in 1853-1855), or outright racism, it's unreasonable to expect much "diversity" to be coming to that nation's shores anytime soon.
Frankly, given the above, I'm not sure what's the purpose of this article. *Shrug.*
TOKYO — With millions around the world watching, Rui Hachimura walked onto the gleaming white floor of Japan’s Olympic Stadium on Friday waving the country’s red-and-white flag.
The 6-foot-8 Washington Wizards forward with a Japanese mother and Beninese father led his nation’s athletes in procession, a beaming smile peeking out of the sides of his face mask. Towering 20 inches over his fellow flag bearer, wrestler Yui Susaki, the 23-year-old’s careful steps signaled a changing face of Japan.
But in an unpopular Games, echoing with protests outside the largely empty Tokyo stadium, the discontent and ire over the influx of foreign visitors in the midst of a pandemic threatened to overshadow the inclusive image Japan had intended with Hachimura.
Even apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, the years and months leading up to the Games have been marked by a series of disappointments over promises to highlight diversity. The planet’s biggest sporting event has been troubled by high-profile resignations following scandals involving sexist and discriminatory remarks. The Olympic moment will come and go with neither a highly anticipated new anti-discrimination law nor immigration policies that reflect Japan’s fast-changing needs and norms.
It has left a conflicted feeling for Japanese like Hachimura or tennis great Naomi Osaka, who lighted the Olympic torch capping Friday’s ceremony, who haven’t always felt accepted. Some Japanese cling to notions of ethnic and cultural homogeneity even as the country needs young people to replace the world’s fastest-aging population. Though cities like Tokyo have become more cosmopolitan over the last half century, only 2% of babies born in Japan have at least one foreign parent.
Athletes like Hachimura are “one of the few people that can bring major changes for us,” said Alonzo Omotegawa, who has a Japanese mother and Bahamian father and has lived in the Tokyo area his entire life. Yet he has been repeatedly told: You are not Japanese.
The 25-year-old English teacher said he questions whether Hachimura’s popularity and symbolism will be enough to stifle the discrimination he faces on a daily basis — change the minds of landlords who refuse to rent to him because of his skin color, children who ask if it will wash off or police who stop and search him without a warrant, saying people with dreadlocks like him “tend to carry drugs.”
“The country is only on our side when it wants to be,” he said.
Organizers devoted a chapter of Friday night’s opening ceremony to a performance featuring children of diverse ethnic backgrounds assembling the Tokyo Olympics emblem. For months, the slogan “Unity in Diversity” had been pasted on posters around the city, projecting at least for the international media that this nation of 126 million was pledging to become more nuanced and accepting.
At the same time, the pandemic, as it has elsewhere, has brought out in Japan suspicion of those who look different, and a fear they may bring danger. That unease has been amplified in recent days as tens of thousands of athletes and others from around the globe have filtered into a nation that had kept its borders heavily restricted, even keeping out many foreign expats who’d long called Japan home.
Gracia Liu-Farrer, a sociologist at Tokyo’s Waseda University who studies migration and inequality in Japan, said of the Olympics: “It’s ironic. It’s not a moment of change but a moment of almost intensification of xenophobia because of this global health crisis.”
Even so, she said, the international attention around the Olympics has led to soul-searching and introspection over discriminatory opinions and remarks that may have previously gone unchallenged. The week before the opening ceremony, a director who’d made a Holocaust joke years ago and a composer who admitted to once bullying disabled classmates stepped down from their roles...
I wonder if this will have an effect on the Atlanta Braves, not to mention all the professional football teams and college and universities with Indian mascots.
Time will tell. I have a sense it's sooner or later.
An interesting story with lots of background on the origins of the change to the Cleveland Guardians.
Poor @naomiosaka blocked me while taking a shot at me (guess she’s only tough on the courts). She is apparently arguing that she shot her many covers b/4 publicly claiming she was too socially anxious to deal w/press. Truth is she just doesn’t like Qs she can’t control. Admit it. pic.twitter.com/izyRzOrUVm
DENVER — They cheered their own, hometown ovations for Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black and shortstop Trevor Story, and a raucous welcome back to former Rockies star Nolan Arenado.
They booed players from the Yankees and Dodgers, jeering even Chris Taylor for his place on an evil big-market team.
For almost every other player introduced at the start of Tuesday’s MLB All-Star game, however, the crowd reception was routine.
For only one other player did the 49,184 inside Coors Field make an exception, roaring to life at the announcement of one more specific name.
“Leading off,” Fox broadcaster Joe Buck announced over the stadium public-address system, “the designated hitter, and starting pitcher: Shohei Ohtani!”
Suddenly, as the Angels’ two-way star flashed across the video board, warming up in the bullpen in preparation for his first All-Star game appearance, a jam-packed ballpark went nuts.
If ever there was a doubt about Ohtani’s place, popularity and impact within the sport, this week’s festivities had delivered one more moment putting them to rest.
Over the first half of this season, Ohtani has become one of the biggest attractions in baseball. And this week, he looked like a natural in the role, calmly and confidently saying and doing all the right things.
He participated in Monday’s home run derby, exhausting himself in an epic first-round defeat to Juan Soto. He walked the “Purple Carpet” before Tuesday’s game and made TV appearance after TV appearance leading up to first pitch.
The first player in MLB history to be selected to an All-Star game as a pitcher and hitter, he did both in the midsummer classic too, grounding out twice as the American League’s starting designated hitter and pitching a perfect first inning as the team’s starting pitcher, hitting 100 mph in a game for the first time in three months.
He called it the “most memorable” moment of his MLB career so far — “obviously I’ve never played in the playoffs yet, or World Series,” he noted, adding “once I do that, that’s probably going to surpass it” — and said he even got nervous being around so many other greats in the sport...
Nervous? Nah. The guy was out there with a big smile on his face, soaking up the adulation and having the time of his life.
Comments made by Nichols that were caught on tape caused tremendous upheaval within ESPN over the past year. Nichols, who is white, suggested that a Black colleague, Maria Taylor, had been selected for a marquee job because of her race.
When a sideline reporter first appeared on ABC’s broadcast of the N.B.A. finals on Tuesday night, it was not Rachel Nichols, an abrupt change announced by ESPN earlier in the day. It was an attempt to stanch a yearlong scandal that has spilled into public view about the company’s handling of conflicts centered around race.
The decision to have Malika Andrews be the sideline reporter instead was made after The New York Times reported that Nichols, who is white, made disparaging comments about a Black colleague, Maria Taylor, last year. Among other things, Nichols said that Taylor was picked to host N.B.A. finals coverage last season because ESPN was “feeling pressure” about diversity.
Nichols’s comments came during a private phone conversation while she was quarantined in a Florida hotel last July before the N.B.A. resumed its season, which had been paused because of the coronavirus pandemic. She was seeking career guidance from Adam Mendelsohn, the adviser and political strategist who works closely with the Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James. The phone call was accidentally captured on camera and uploaded to a server at the company’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., then quickly spread widely among ESPN employees.
“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols told Mendelsohn during the call. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”
There have been wide-ranging discussions about the comments inside and outside of ESPN over the last two days, with former employees and even N.B.A. players weighing in. The Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant tweeted in support of Taylor, while some high-profile former ESPN employees — including Dan Le Batard and Jemele Hill — discussed the matter on Le Batard’s show Tuesday morning.
In a sign of the sprawling complexity of the scandal, commentators weighed in on numerous topics, including ESPN’s discipline and management as well as the friendship and professional relationship between Nichols and Mendelsohn. Some focused on the privacy issues at play with the recorded phone call. Others, in a discussion about white privilege and career advancement, raised that Nichols is related by marriage to the famed broadcast journalist Diane Sawyer and the Academy Award-winning director Mike Nichols.
Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., addressed the situation at length during a news conference before tip-off of Game 1 between the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks.
“It’s disheartening,” Silver said. He said that both Nichols and Taylor are “terrific” at their jobs, and that it was “unfortunate that two women in the industry are pitted against each other.” He said he would have thought that through difficult conversations “ESPN would have found a way to be able to work through it. Obviously not.”
And I was watching the game, which is also astonishing, since not only do I almost never get the chance to watch the Dodgers (as their Sports Net Sports Network isn't even available where I live), I also had more family issues at home that were preventing me from staying focused on the play action.
Maybe you were watching, if you're a sports fan (and maybe a Padres fan, and thus laughing your ass off)?
Final from LA: #Padres 8, #Dodgers 7 (11 innings). Entering tonight, in the last 50 years, teams trailing by six or more runs in the seventh inning or later were 100-13,547, a winning percentage of .007. They are now 101-13,547 after Padres comeback from 7-1 deficit entering 7th.
A postseason game wasn’t played as the sun sparkled, set and vanished, making way for a chilly night at Dodger Stadium on Sunday. It just felt like baseball suited for October.
Game 7 of the 19-game season series between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres produced the energy, oddities and stomach-churning drama that captivated audiences in each of the first six matchups — aptly split evenly between the clubs.
Sunday’s bout included a blown six-run lead, 12 relievers, 422 pitches and two pitchers-turned-pinch-hitters over four hours and 59 minutes. There were hearty boos from the 15,316 in attendance, wasted opportunities and, after 11 innings, an 8-7 comeback win for the Padres in the rivals’ final meeting until June 21.
The Padres (13-11) scored the winning run on Eric Hosmer’s sacrifice fly off Garrett Cleavinger after San Diego executed a double steal to put runners in scoring position.
Cleavinger was the fifth reliever to emerge from the Dodgers’ taxed bullpen, which didn’t have Kenley Jansen, Blake Treinen or Scott Alexander available. David Price, the first reliever used, gave up two runs — one earned — in the seventh inning and didn’t reappear for the eighth because of a hamstring strain.
The shortage handcuffed the Dodgers (15-7) as they dropped the four-game set, three games to one, for their first series loss of the season after taking two of three from the Padres in San Diego last weekend. In all, the clubs have been separated by two or fewer runs in 61 1/2 innings across the seven games.
“I think the net is they outplayed us,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
The Dodgers held a 7-1 lead Sunday upon Dustin May’s exit after six innings and entered the ninth leading 7-5. That margin vanished when Manny Machado, atop Dodger fans’ list of villains in brown and yellow, tied the score with an RBI single off Jimmy Nelson, who surrendered two runs on four singles.
Nelson next walked Hosmer to load the bases but managed to keep the game tied by getting the next two batters out. The right-hander then escaped the 10th inning with runners on second and third unscathed.
“My command overall wasn’t up to my standard,” Nelson said.
The Dodgers, starting with a runner at second base, loaded the bases in the bottom of the frame against Tim Hill after the Padres elected to intentionally walk Max Muncy and Chris Taylor to bring up the pitcher’s spot.
Roberts’ bench was empty so he chose Clayton Kershaw to pinch-hit, and he struck out. DJ Peters, called up to the majors for the first time Friday, then swung at a 3-2 fastball out of the strike zone to squash the chance...
In a Sunday night fiasco that was a perfect combination of thrilling baseball and inexplicable umpiring, two parties emerged primarily victorious: ESPN and the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Phillies, for obvious reasons. Alec Bohm’s “run” in the top of the ninth inning against the Atlanta Braves at Truist Park — you know, the one he scored without touching the white pentagon in between the batter’s boxes — was the Phillies’ seventh of the game. The Braves scored six. That sounds like a victorious happening to me.
And for its part, the ESPN crew, led by USC Annenberg alum Matt Vasgersian and Minnesota Timberwolves soon-to-be-co-owner Alex Rodriguez, got to head the broadcast of a thrilling ballgame that caught the entire baseball world’s attention in a matter of minutes.
Here’s the rundown. A whirlwind of home runs by Ozzie Albies, Rhys Hoskins, Didi Gregorius, Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuña Jr. and the underrated Bryce Harper helped the Phillies and Braves enter the ninth inning tied at six. Gregorius stepped to the plate with one out and Bohm on third and lifted a fly ball to Atlanta outfielder Marcell Ozuna in shallow left. Bohm tagged, was surprisingly sent and, well, see for yourself...
And, yes, watch the video yourself below. These are my thoughts: If you watched the Phillies at Braves game yourself, on ESPN, you might still be in daze (or not, if you don't care) at how those freakin' desk-jockey replay "umpires" at M.L.B. studios on New York City could possible botch an obvious "out" at home plate call, so as just give the stupid game to Philadelphia? My theory is that M.L.B. doesn't like the "tomahawk chop" music playing on the loudspeaker, and they obviously don't like the fans "chopping" along like a bunch of "racist" crackers; and somebody at M.L.B., way up there in the top ranks, has let it be known that the Braves ain't getting any breaks this year, which is, like duh, as those hacks already moved the All-Star game to a literally all-white city in Colorado, leaving Atlanta short of about $100 million in revenues, that could have, you know, maybe helped the majority black folks there, I mean, those folks still recovering from this messed up lockdown, and who've no doubt been put through enough trauma already; well, let's just say M.L.B. hasn't got the "brightest minds" working up there; either that, or most of those folks literally have "no balls," because all of this is not going play well with "middle America," which sooner or later will even abandon "America's pastime" if "cooler" [and more intelligent] heads don't prevail in the executive office of the league.
Atlanta's manager, Brian Snitker, and his reaction, is hilarious, and I appreciate how he kept his cool while arguing with the umps, and was not thrown out, even though, it was practically the end of the game.
Also interesting is Pedro Sandoval, who came in to hit late in the game, and as you may know, he had a couple of phenomenal years with the Giants, and then took his skills to the Red Sox, but seemed to hit a pretty long-lasting slump, and never returned to his most outstanding level of play he displayed in San Francisco?
You gotta love baseball, right? Well, maybe not, as Ace discusses above, as "woke" politics is now infecting the league like the other major national sports, especially football and basketball, and America will indeed lose its "national pastime" if someone, anyone, jeez, doesn't step in to save the sport.
At the video, Tucker Carlson shreds "woke" corporations who have, really, no business getting involved with "racial" politics in Georgia (or for any other state, frankly), and the only bummer about the video is it doesn't include the Turcker's interview with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who sounds like a stand-up guy, and pledged not to back down to our wannabe corporate dictators (and it ain't just Coca Cola and Delta Airlines, to say nothing, sadly, of Major League Baseball).
Companies are finding it increasingly difficult to stay on the sidelines of the nation’s social and political debates after a year of intense protests that led many firms to declare their support for racial justice and opposition to attempts to overturn the presidential election.
On Friday, executives from more than 170 companies -- including Dow, HP and Estee Lauder -- joined the corporate push to protect voting access not only in Georgia but in states across the country, writing in a statement that “our elections are not improved when lawmakers impose barriers that result in longer lines at the polls or that reduce access to secure ballot dropboxes.”
“There are hundreds of bills threatening to make voting more difficult in dozens of states nationwide,” the companies said in the statement, which also included signatures from the CEOs of Target, Salesforce and ViacomCBS. “We call on elected leaders in every state capitol and in Congress to work across the aisle and ensure that every eligible American has the freedom to easily cast their ballot and participate fully in our democracy.”
But as major corporations speaking out about Georgia’s controversial voting law discovered earlier this week, deciding when to step in, how far to go and whether to follow up with actions, can be fraught.
On Fox News Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) compared early-voting rules in Georgia to other states and defended the measure. “They’re not going to get back on board because they’ve been pressured by their board of directors, who have been pressured by these activists. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”
He also said: “They’ll have to answer to their shareholders. There’s a lot of people that work for them and have done business with them who are very upset,” and said that “We are not going to back down when we have a bill that expands the opportunity for people to vote on the weekends in Georgia.”
After initially mild criticism of the measure, which was signed into law last week, companies scrambled to issue more forceful statements. James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, described the bill as “wrong” and “a step backward.” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian offered up an abrupt change in tone, calling the legislation “unacceptable” and contrary to the company’s values.
Those statements won guarded praise from activists — as well as calls for more concrete action. “Delta’s statement finally tells the truth — even if it’s late,” Nsé Ufot, head of the activist group New Georgia Project Action Fund, said in a statement.
But companies have struggled with growing expectations from the public and employees that they take stands on important social issues, forcing corporate leaders into positions on issues they’d probably prefer to avoid, from Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem to the “bathroom bills” that targeted transgender people to President Donald Trump’s statements about voter fraud in the 2020 elections.
Last summer, it was the Black Lives Matter protests, when many companies made clear their support for racial justice.
And now: voting rights.
At a time when public faith in a number of institutions — the presidency, Congress, the electoral process and the media — is faltering, many Americans continue to look at big companies and entrepreneurs with admiration.
“The whole idea of companies getting involved in political issues, it’s all pretty new. They prefer to stay above the fray,” said Bruce Barry, a management professor who teaches business ethics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “But now they are getting religion on these issues, including voting rights.”
For weeks, activists and civil liberties groups had been complaining about the proposed changes to Georgia’s voting laws — long before companies took serious notice. At first, the corporate reaction was mostly muted. The Georgia U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement expressing “concern and opposition.”
But on Wednesday, an open letter from 72 Black executives seemed to open the floodgates. The letter said the new Georgia voting bill would make it “unquestionably” harder for Black voters in particular to vote. The letter also said, “The stakes for our democracy are too high to remain on the sidelines.”
Executives from the companies that made Friday’s statement acknowledged these leaders, saying they “stand in solidarity with voters 一 and with the Black executives and leaders at the helm of this movement.”
“What we have heard from corporations is general statements about their support for voting rights and against voter suppression. But now we’re asking, put those words into action,” Kenneth Chenault, managing director and chairman of venture capital firm General Catalyst and the former CEO of American Express, who helped organize the letter from the Black executives, said in a CNBC interview...
Jeff Grosso’s first skateboard wasn’t much.
It was a hand-me-down miniature-sized banana board he got from his mom’s boss when he was 8 years old. Even for 1977, it was antiquated, with rickety old clay wheels and worn-out bearings. Grosso barely knew how to stand on the thing, struggling to keep his balance without toppling to the ground.
But for a curious boy whose childhood home was next to a steep hill, there was an instant connection. He would sit on his back or lie flat on his stomach and let gravity take over. Every time he bombed down the street, he fell more in love with the feeling.
“Initially, it was the rush of going down a hill, and the wind in your hair,” Grosso once said. “Poetic nonsense.”
The skateboarding world looks much different now than it did then. Its ever-increasing popularity is pulling the fundamentally subversive sport into the mainstream. Formerly relegated to back alleys and sparse concrete parks, it is now set to debut on the Olympic stage during this summer’s Tokyo Games.
But somewhere at its core, the lust for that poetic nonsense remains.
No one understood it quite like Grosso.
“He was the gatekeeper to why skateboarding was cool,” said skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.
Grosso looked an unlikely figure for such a role. He didn’t have a long pro career, flaming out at the end of the 1980s, hardly spanning the decade. He battled drug addiction and suicidal depression. By his late 20s, it seemed like his life had bottomed out.
But then he rebounded, embodying the resiliency that has defined the entire history of his sport.
Grosso became an ambassador, speaking for skateboarding’s soul through his beloved “Loveletters to Skateboarding” YouTube show. He was a guardian and a helping hand to skateboarding’s newest generation.
In many ways, he was like a north star, his effervescent personality and endearing pertinacity emitting a guiding light through the sport’s most transitional times.
And when he died unexpectedly last March of an accidental drug overdose, it left a void the skateboarding world is still trying to fill.
To best understand skateboarding — its counter-culture roots, its rise to the Olympics, its helter-skelter tale of competing styles, clashing customs and self-sabotaging plot twists — it’s best to understand someone like Jeff Grosso.
Complicated. Flawed. But an authentic source of joy to the end.
“It’s a total rush. It’s the feeling that when you go out there with your board, it’s a no-hero type of thing. And you either accomplish something or you don’t.” — Jeff Grosso, to the St. Louis Dispatch in 1986.
The rarest sight in skateboarding might be a frown.
Even after a failed trick or nasty wipeout, most skaters are wired to smile, laugh, shake off the dust, and climb back on their boards.
That carefree disposition is what initially captured Grosso’s interest. A stubborn and expressive freckle-faced kid born in Glendale in 1968, he felt like an outcast from a young age. He liked to draw, read “Lord of the Rings” and listen to punk rock. He picked contrarian arguments during conversations simply to spark a debate. And he moved around a lot as a kid: from the hillside house in Eagle Rock, to Las Vegas for a year with his mom, and then to Arcadia for the start of fifth grade.
Though he was naturally athletic, he found the structured pressure of team sports arbitrary and suffocating.
Only when he was on a skateboard did Grosso truly feel free.
“You have this culture of kids that need that,” said his mother, Rae Williams. “They need to go and do this and be creative and come up with new tricks and try different things.”
The newly opened parks soon faltered under liability issues and financial distress, and the young demographic of riders once fueling the boom grew up and moved on. By the time Grosso discovered the sport at the end of the ‘70s, only a small community of self-willed skaters remained.
“Skateboarders were very rare at that time,” said Grosso’s childhood friend Eric Nash, the only other kid at their Camino Grove Elementary School who matched Grosso’s passion for the sport. “Jeff enjoyed that rebel spirit. I think that’s who he was.”
Grosso and Nash spent almost every weekend at one of the few Southland skate parks that were left. Grosso was a perfectionist — at home he was constantly rearranging the furniture in his bedroom — and practiced for hours to perfect a trick. Skate City in Whittier became their home base, though sometimes they snuck away to more secluded spots — a cement ditch behind a church in Glendale, an empty washway nicknamed the “V bowl” in Irwindale.
One of their friends, future pro skater Lance Mountain, had a ramp in the backyard of his Alhambra home where the group would spend hours together honing their technique and embracing a recalcitrant culture few others could comprehend.
“We were a bunch of nerds, we were weirdos, we were social outcasts,” Grosso said in a 2015 episode of his “Loveletters” series. “We were the people that nobody wanted to be, doing things that nobody wanted to, and that nobody understood. … We were the freaks. That’s how you rolled. That’s how it was. That’s what drew us to skateboarding.”
“The little wooden toy is a kiss and a curse. It’s everything. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me and the worst thing that ever happened to me, all rolled up into one.” — Jeff Grosso, to Juice Magazine in 2006.
Like any good parent, Williams tried to get her son to think about his future as he went through grade school. Skateboarding, she told him, “is fun and can be a pastime, but you can’t make a career out of it.”
Reliving the memory during an interview, Williams stopped herself and laughed.
“Boy, were we wrong.”
Instead, as Grosso went through his teenage years in the mid-1980s, the sport became cool again...
The thing about the "counterculture" aspects of the old skating scene is certainly the punk rock and drugs --- lots of drugs.
Three of my best friends from back in the day are dead, one from a heroin O.D. years ago, and two of my other best buddies died of drug-related illnesses more recently, especially liver disease.
That Grosso overdosed himself is extremely sad, but not surprising at all. His death is loss for the sport, but he leaves a great legacy of commitment to the genre.
I'll leave off here with a photo of myself (below), from around 1980, at the Upland Pipeline skatepark, back when the old "pay to play" parks were the big thing. But because I had won so many amateur contests (like the one at the photo, where that "layback" finale scored well with the judges), I had an "all parks" pass to skate for free, at any SoCal skatepark; and in 1984 I turned pro for just one contest, where I was killing it in the banked slalom, but on my first run I lost control going around the third cone, and tumbled badly, breaking my wrist. I didn't quit the contest, though. I got up and completed my second run, and you only get two runs through the course, so that salvaged my self-esteem, and a few folks came up after to praise me for my hard-charging style.
Nowadays, I still skate once in a while, most recently at the Redlands skatepark a few weeks back, although I mostly putter around the "freestyle" area, like the old man I am.
The NBA's a black league and besides the NFL loser Colin Kaepernick, the NBA's been the biggest bastion of BLM-style cheerleading. And the MSM? You think this might have been news before the season's 13th game? Nah. MSM types hate the patriotic anthem just as much as Antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists.
Naturally, this Sky News video (from Australia!) was the only one that came up on a YouTube search, probably not because YouTube's censoring any outlets --- there just are no American outlets that are interested in reporting the story. For shame.
