Years of Poems and Spirits

Sean Taylor died this morning. I was awaken by the news on the radio, didn’t know what to make of it the whole day. Then, as I am watching a TiVoed Bears-Broncos’ game, the news suddenly sinks in.

It is now, at this moment, the game ceases to be a game, but something very personal. I will miss the speedy figure, in burgandy and white, roaming in the backfields on Sunday afternoons. It is not because he retired, or is injured. He is dead.

It is strange because I can’t think of anything good to say about Taylor as a person. I don’t know him nor have I heard anything examplary about him. As the Skins struggled year after year, Taylor mostly appeared in highlight reels chasing the offensive player’s tail.

Yet he is the last one I would associate with death. He’s young. He has a thuggish spirit that is violent, mean, intimidating, and above all, adolescent. When he hits, he hit as if he wants to kill but can never be killed. While it was exhilarating to watch, now the image becomes chilling to recall.

He embodied life and peronified vigor when he was alive. Now he is dead, mortality looms larger than usual. I will miss him.

About Tour de France: now Vinokourov and his team were kicked out. La Tour is getting crazier by the year. It is almost a crapshoot today to call someone a top rider since you don’t know what will happen to him next.

I enjoy watching the Tour every year. Not that I like to watch a bunch of sweaty white guys (talking about the whitest sport, cycling beats out golf AND hockey) wildly shaking their skinny asses on the road. But there is this deeper, almost religious sense of self-torture-till-redemption that has a meta-physical appeal to me.

But endurance cycling has changed a lot from the days when riders shared a cigarette on their way to Champs-Élysées. Today, any tour rider appears to me as a human-bot riding on a sleek machine. I could never forget the image of Jan Ullrich sprinting in the first time trial in 2003 when he beat Lance by more than a minute. That guy looked like a Terminator on a mission.

I suspect La Tour, as the way it is, is no longer sustainable (hijacking a popular term). The challenge it poses to the riders and the hype around it is too much for any human to handle. The fact that a diverse group of riders are using drugs year after year tells me this is a systematic problem not a random one.

If the Tour is serious about solving the doping issue, it has to use a systematic solution as well. I’d propose the following: shift the emphasis on team standing instead of individual ones and adopt a more liberal snitching system.

By becoming a team sport, the Tour can reduce the pressure on individuals and making cheating more difficult to carry out or remain secret. The snitch idea is to borrow the prisoner’s delimma in Game Theory, although this is probably not a very “Frenchy” idea.

Heard the rumor that the Skins are trying to get Briggs from the Bears. Hopefully the deal will fall through. Danny boy is like an addict (a very contagious one I might add): you just can’t count on him to stop doing the same stupid thing over and again. I never really paid attention to Brigg’s play but the way he blew off Chicago after being tagged told me something about this person: lack of tack, egocentric and possibly spoiled. He is at his prime, just came of a SB run.: sure, that is all good. Now he has more to dis-prove than to prove. Why would you lock up someone like that with $50 million for 6 years? (he’s got 7.2 for one year so I guess a long term is worth about 6-50)

On the other hand, Danny boy certainly brings a lot excitement into this otherwise absolutely miserable Skins tale. I can’t imagine what a life it would be for a Cardinals’ fun, if there is such a person.

Too bad the whole vortex (Danny’s good and Danny’s bad) sucks down a good man in Joe Gibbs. If he retires today, his second coaching stint looks like a deer caught in the headlight. He has yet to be a leader, a creative force in the game of football like he was before.

Money corrupts and Danny’s money corrupts absolutely.