Coverage of Sosa cork incident misguided

By Ben Adams / June 5, 2003

Any self-respecting sportswriter must be aware that there are certain limitations to his field. Sports is a diversion, something people turn to when they’ve had too much of politics or mathematics or biomedical engineering. Sports only raises itself in importance occasionally, and even then it’s a symbolic importance. Baseball might be the most symbolic sport,...

Purist fans nostalgic for old-time baseball need look no further

By Ben Adams / May 22, 2003

Is it fading? By the time you get to reading this, the first Red Sox-Yankees games of the season will have been played. They are neck-and-neck, tied for first in the American League East, and by the time you get to reading this one team will have drawn first blood, made the first fresh pinprick...

Why I still love Mo Vaughn

By Ben Adams / May 5, 2003

This happens to sports heroes from time to time. The sun only shines so long, and then one fine morning you wake up and you’re forgotten. What happened to Carlos Baerga? Joe Carter? Jack McDowell? One fine morning, you wake up and it’s over. On Saturday the Mets put first baseman Mo Vaughn on the...

Cincinnati’s big red machine needs repairs

By Ben Adams / April 14, 2003

At least they have Bernie the Brewer in Milwaukee. Those people are used to losing and loving it. They bring bratwursts and beer mugs and kitschy cheese-related tchotchkes. They host the All-Star game and talk about Bud Selig. In Cincinnati, they just made a new arts center. I think crime might also be down. When...

More grime than glitter makes The Good Thief fall flat

By Ben Adams / April 4, 2003

It’s been almost 50 years since Jean-Pierre Melville wrote, directed, and put out his defining heist movie, Bob Le Flambeur. In its era, Bob was dashing and even fairly influential; Lewis Milestone’s rat-pack edition of Ocean’s Eleven was not so much the original to Steven Soderbergh’s remake as it was an echo of Melville’s initial...

Irreversible: A torturous drama of gratuitous violence

By Ben Adams / March 11, 2003

A fat, naked man–an ex-convict–is sitting in a sweaty apartment, staring blankly at a dark-haired friend, clothed, but, like his companion, washed-up and inert. The fat man breathes out the words in a husky, seasoned voice. Le temps detruit tout. Time destroys everything. They hear the sounds of sirens and car doors slamming, shouts in...

Maroon Sports 2003 National League Preview

By Ben Adams / March 4, 2003

NL EAST Montreal/San Juan Expos Current weather patterns dictate that we say “Poor Expos” and move on to another happier team. But that’s not what Maroon Sports is about. We’re about making some easy jokes about how the Expos suck despite having talented players and then moving on to the Marlins. Woo doggy, the Expos...

I hate Vince Carter

By Ben Adams / February 14, 2003

If Vince Carter were a boyfriend, he’d be the kind who comes over late at night and wants to have sex and says he loves you and then leaves again at five o’clock in the morning to do something boyfriends shouldn’t do. Like go out drinking with his buddies, or sell your car to finance...

25th Hour: New York’s rising and a hard man’s fall

By Ben Adams / January 17, 2003

Everyone involved with 25th Hour–Spike Lee, the cast, the writers, even some critics–seems to be downplaying its connection with the events of September 11. It would appear that the party line goes something like this: “We knew New York City was an element of this film, and we wanted to portray it the way it...

Patriots, Browns, and Giants go down swinging

By Ben Adams / January 10, 2003

We’re lagging behind in the NFL Playoff business. The Maroon has become a bit backdated, on account of a month or so of court-ordered hibernation. But this problem is more than a little appropriate, because we have come here today to tell you some things about the way it should have gone, but didn’t, in...

Extremely irresponsible Ops

By Ben Adams / December 3, 2002

Extreme Ops Directed by Christian Duguay Paramount Pictures, 90 Minutes You have to go in expecting movies like this to be nonsense-filled and silly; they’re built that way on purpose by people who want to impress an audience that appreciates it. The PG-13 rating gives that much away. I’m still tempted to write a review...

Women finish third with win over Whittier

By Ben Adams / November 26, 2002

There is a rule that guides recruiters, scouts, coaches, and everyone else involved with analyzing the sport of basketball at every level: you can’t teach size. The Maroons learned this lesson the hard way, losing the first game of their season at the Midway Classic against UW-River Falls. Chicago rebounded to win the consolation game...

I haaate…. various Stanford athletic alumni and by association the Stanford Cardinal

By Ben Adams / November 22, 2002

The team is called the Cardinal. That’s a color, a big red “S” with a tree in front of it. Now, if there is some kind of tree called “The Cardinal” and we are not aware of it, we understand. Just the same, we’d appreciate it if someone explained the connection between trees, the letter...

Nolty Says

By Ben Adams / November 19, 2002

Well, where are we? You, you have been staying the same, because you are always the same: reading, keeping up your silent end of the bargain. I am assuming Nick Nolte’s identity. A bit about why I am doing that, because I failed to explain this last time: this picture, it’s pretty evocative. It gives...

Volleyball finishes season at UAA conference

By Ben Adams / November 15, 2002

Any coach will tell you that the most important players on a team show balance, consistency, and dedication; individual accolades come with practice and teamwork. That’s why Rebecca Schutte’s nomination to the all-conference second team was only a consolation prize for a team that struggled this weekend at the UAA Championships in Cleveland. The Maroons...

Nolty Says: Celtics open their season on a sour note; is Vin Baker to blame?

By Ben Adams / November 5, 2002

There was a period there for a while during which it actually looked like the Boston Celtics had completely lost every last vestige of greatness. The years between the beginning of Bill Russell’s career and the end of Larry Bird’s will always be a time of remarkable dominance, but there was this period where they...

My review of Slippage, or, How I Learned to be Indie

By Ben Adams / October 29, 2002

Slobberbone Slippage New West Records The honest truth is that I brought Slobberbone’s Slippage home because no one in the office was going to give it a listen, because Slobberbone is, in the scheme of things, an unfortunately amusing name for a band, and because, in my own mind at least, lead singer Brent Best...

Crew finishes strong season with a flourish

By Ben Adams / October 29, 2002

The University of Chicago men’s and women’s crew teams wound up their fall seasons on Sunday with a regatta in Elkhart, Indiana; the men’s four-person boat finished third and the women’s eighth out of a field of over 20. These performances made for a strong end to a season in which both teams overcame significant...

Blame it on Fox Television

By Ben Adams / October 29, 2002

Call me disenchanted. Maybe it’s the fact that the Angels won the World Series in spite of me, or the fact that they beat Reggie Sanders on the back with “Thunder Sticks” while he was trying to play baseball. Maybe I’m being unfairly mean just because I liked the Giants. But I have this nagging...

Johnny Knoxville tells the world how he made a movie

By Ben Adams / October 24, 2002

The whole thing got started with an article Johnny Knoxville pitched to Big Brother Magazine. He was going to wound himself with a tazer, a stun gun, and pepper spray in order to determine which was the most effective weapon. Knoxville’s contact at the magazine, editor Jeff Tremaine, convinced him to film what he was...

Profile of a Major League closer

By Ben Adams / October 21, 2002

Troy Percival is six feet, three inches tall and weighs, according to an often-politic listing, 235 pounds. Troy Percival is big. He’s big, and he throws fastballs that routinely cross the plate at 97 miles per hour, which have also been clocked as high as 100 miles per hour. Throughout seven seasons in the major...

Reflections on the Bayou

By Ben Adams / October 21, 2002

Profile: Infinite Reflections Infinite Reflections, the University of Chicago’s first definitive album about movies, is making its return. Devin Sandoz and Liam Singer, the songsters who brought us “It Could Happen to You,” “Dennis the Menace,” and, unforgettably, “Shine,” are up to their old tricks in a new location. The U of C’s half of...

Angels refuse to disappear

By Ben Adams / October 14, 2002

Here they are. These are your titans casting a long shadow over the silver World Series trophy. These are your odds-on favorites, your smart-money Vegas option. These are your Anaheim Angels. It’s true that, as of last week, I was writing you about a catalogue of Cinderella stories and a playoffs—at long last—that had no...

MLB shortstops: You say “Go Nomar!” and I say “Tejada!”

By Ben Adams / August 15, 2002

Before I do this, let me make two apologies. First, I don’t like the kind of journalism where you sit there looking at statistics for long enough to ruin your appreciation of the actual sport. Second, I try to be impartial for the most part, and not flagrantly root for the Red Sox. In spite...

Fall prospects rest on August run

By Ben Adams / August 8, 2002

Don’t feel sorry for Milwaukee or Tampa Bay fans; as terrible as those teams are, their groupies do not have the worst of it. The fans who really suffer, the ones who get the angriest and throw things and yell at their girlfriends for changing the channel, the ones who wonder, at times, why the...

Nyet! Nyet! It is da Vidowmaker!

By Ben Adams / August 1, 2002

K19: The Widowmaker Directed by Katherine Bigelove Rated PG-13 Running time 138 minutes Let me be completely fair and honest. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, qualified to gauge the historical accuracy of any movie. Certain movies, like Amistad, for instance, might be 100% or 0% accurate and I would not know...

Williams fiasco may be final act to freeze out fans

By Ben Adams / August 1, 2002

Well, I thought I had missed my opportunity to write about Ted Williams’s passing on. He would have made an excellent topic, and was a well-known and respected baseball player—some say he was the best hitter ever—but before I knew it, the nation’s attention had moved on to sundry lesser shenanigans; the 11-inning All-Star tie,...

Making lemonade out of MLB labor lemons

By Ben Adams / July 18, 2002

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about the Major League Baseball players’ strike, and I really don’t think this has been properly explained. A lot has been said, by both factions, which might not be true. In the face of all this, I offer a story from my childhood,...

Milwaukee or bust? Baseball’s 2002 All-Star Game is a flop

By Ben Adams / July 7, 2002

I spent all afternoon poring over statistics and team rosters and on-the-field permutations of players from each league in the hopes of making a sterling case for some overlooked All-Star snub. I looked at the season of Baltimore’s Rodrigo Lopez, who has been a bright spot in an otherwise pedestrian starting rotation, who ranks fifth...

Baseball and nation shocked by tragic loss of Darryl Kile

By Ben Adams / June 27, 2002

The mood at Wrigley Field, generally speaking, is festive and easy-going. Though many are loyal, involved sorts, most of the fans actually in attendance at the average Cubs game frolic in their own ignorance of the team’s on-the-diamond woes. They are the types that get on the Red Line to Addison in search of a...

Foul Tips

By Ben Adams / May 6, 2002

Mike Cameron, who has absolutely no business whatsoever hitting four home runs in one game, in particular against the Chicago White Sox, now knows as well as anyone that Major League Baseball is among the most discontinuous, surprising, and unpredictable sports you can find. Any self-respecting pundit will admit that even the best-educated predictions are...

Foul Tips

By Ben Adams / April 22, 2002

Roughly a week ago, the Indians’ new General Manager Mark Shapiro stood to address a host of local fans. “It’s sure nice not having to stand behind chicken wire up here,” he quipped. Shapiro’s medium-grade sense of humor (not low-grade; I award him points for conjuring images of that scene in The Blues Brothers where...

Bad Opening Day Omens Bode Ill

By Ben Adams / April 2, 2002

It was still snowing outside when I started watching the White Sox start their season in Seattle, and it did not let up until the seventh inning or so. Needless to say, that kind of behavior is objectionable, but I thought the world of sports was serving my interests fairly effectively all the same. Mark...

Tradition-rich Twins should not be axed

By Ben Adams / November 9, 2001

Every person who could fairly say they knew me would swear that I am a baseball fanatic, married to no shortage of irrelevant and miscellaneous traditions that would choke most people with absurdity. I grew up in a town where “Yankees Suck!” bumper stickers were sold on street corners for two dollars apiece, and matching...

Four reasons why the M’s fell to the Yankees

By Ben Adams / October 25, 2001

I’m taking this week off from anti-Yankee rants, although I will continue to root ardently for whomever plays them. To satisfy anyone keeping track, I’m picking the Yankees in six. Curt Schilling gets tired and loses game four; Randy Johnson does the same in game five. So the Yankees get two freebies and go home...

It’s time for baseball’s end of year awards

By Ben Adams / October 11, 2001

All right: the season has finally come to a close, with what looks to be a bang. National League theatrics have concluded without giving Barry Bonds a chance to disprove the critics who say he folds in the postseason, but he’ll get his recognition all the same, when the season’s awards are given out. Without...

Cross country hopeful to make nationals

By Ben Adams / October 8, 2001

With much attention being paid to the impressive starts of the U of C’s soccer and football teams, respectively, another sport may have escaped notice. This season, the men’s and women’s cross country teams both threaten to set new high-water marks for the school. Each ranked 21st nationally within their respective halves of Division III;...