The following is a letter I wrote to Commentary magazine, in response to an essay on Iran in last month’s issue.
http://tinyurl.com/2nlnt5
To the Editor:
The problem with Norman Podhoretz’s essay “Stopping Iran: Why the Case for Military Action Still Stands” (February 2008) is that it is too timid.
In the debate over gun control in this nation, some Americans who uphold the Second Amendment properly point out that guns don’t kill people, people do. And that also holds true for nuclear weapons — it’s not the weapons per se that are the danger, but the people who possess them. Podhoretz’s essay is premised on the false alternative of whether or not the United States should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is a false option because even if the administration or another did bomb those targets, the “people” -- that is, the American-hating Islamic fanatics that rule Iran -- would nevertheless live another day to rebuild those facilities, or import nuclear capabilities from other dictatorial regimes that threaten us and other free people.
The case for bombing Iran is unquestionable, given the war its regime has waged on America for nearly 30 years (including in Iraq and Afghanistan today). The only question to rationally debate is to what extent our so-called leaders need to bomb the ruling mullahs and ayatollahs, their nuclear facilities and their mosques and schools that preach “death to America.” Only when we use devastating force against them will their threat to America be eliminated.
Joseph Kellard
East Meadow, New York
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Abstaining from Voting
By Joseph Kellard
As circumstances currently stand, I do not plan to vote for either McCain or Hillary in November, if they are indeed the last two candidates standing. I know little about Obama; I haven't paid much attention to the primaries -- but what I do know leads me to believe he has many more flaws than virtues. (If I recall correctly, at his coming-out party at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, he completely turned the essence of the Declaration of Independence on its head to appear as if it supported his collectivist politics.)
Depending on who I think will win as the November election nears, I will probably vote for a Republican Congress if Hillary is the favorite, and I will do the opposite if McCain is likely to win. I always root for gridlock and bickering between the two parties -- with the hope that increasingly more Americans will get disgusted with both sides and seek an alternative: Objectivism. (Unfortunately, however, I think the danger here is that many Americans, being the un-philosophical lot that they are, will turn to Libertarianism instead.)
As I see it, McCain is the poster boy for all that is wrong with conservatism, and considering his uber-pragmatism, a la George W. Bush, I’m not buying his words that he’ll he “tough” on Islamic terrorists. And I simply will not vote for Hillary -- a transparent power-luster who will undoubtedly seek to socialize medical care once again, especially if given a leftist Congress -- as way of opposing McCain and sticking it to the Republicans.
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
As circumstances currently stand, I do not plan to vote for either McCain or Hillary in November, if they are indeed the last two candidates standing. I know little about Obama; I haven't paid much attention to the primaries -- but what I do know leads me to believe he has many more flaws than virtues. (If I recall correctly, at his coming-out party at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, he completely turned the essence of the Declaration of Independence on its head to appear as if it supported his collectivist politics.)
Depending on who I think will win as the November election nears, I will probably vote for a Republican Congress if Hillary is the favorite, and I will do the opposite if McCain is likely to win. I always root for gridlock and bickering between the two parties -- with the hope that increasingly more Americans will get disgusted with both sides and seek an alternative: Objectivism. (Unfortunately, however, I think the danger here is that many Americans, being the un-philosophical lot that they are, will turn to Libertarianism instead.)
As I see it, McCain is the poster boy for all that is wrong with conservatism, and considering his uber-pragmatism, a la George W. Bush, I’m not buying his words that he’ll he “tough” on Islamic terrorists. And I simply will not vote for Hillary -- a transparent power-luster who will undoubtedly seek to socialize medical care once again, especially if given a leftist Congress -- as way of opposing McCain and sticking it to the Republicans.
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Seasons of Perfection
Athletes, coaches reflect on undefeated Oceanside H.S. teams
By Joseph Kellard
Statistically speaking, the 1973 Oceanside High School boys’ soccer team was more dominant than the New England Patriots, who head into Super Bowl XLII on Sunday with a perfect record. That’s the opinion of Ron Atanasio, the star player on that OHS squad, which posted an 18-0 record and outscored its opponents 100 goals to 4.
“That was, and to this day is, the best high school team that was ever fielded,” said Atanasio, who was a junior in ’73. “We would have beaten a lot of college teams with that high school team — that’s how good we were.”
Consider also that the squad’s stats could have been even better. Atanasio, who shattered all of the school’s scoring records and went on to play profession soccer with Pelé and the New York Cosmos in the late 1970s, recalled that in games in which the Sailors took a 5-, 6- or 7-goal lead by halftime, his coach, the late Artie Wright, would yank him from the lineup.
“Wright used to take me out and never let me play the second half because I used to score the goals, and he didn’t want to win 15-0 and rub it anyone’s face,” Atanasio recalled. In the playoffs that year, Oceanside downed Calhoun 6-0, Lynbrook 7-0, Mepham 4-1 and, in the county championships, Farmingdale 7-0.
The ’73 soccer team was one of just six OHS teams in the school’s history that have posted undefeated seasons. The 1938 football team finished 7-0, the 1955 football team was 8-0, the 1958 boys’ soccer team went 15-0, the 1969 boys’ soccer team was 17-0-1 and, for the decade between 1965 and 1975, the boys’ track team was in another category entirely, winning 82 consecutive meets.
The soccer program is arguably the school’s most successful. Wright, who started the program in 1953 and coached the team until he retired in 1978, compiled a 315-80-40 record and led his squads to 19 championships, including nine county and four Long Island titles.
“It was something very special,” said Warren Cadiz, who was Wright’s assistant coach from 1968 to 1973. “With the 1973 team, Artie just pulled all the right strings. He seemed to know when to make the right moves.”
For Atanasio, the question was never whether the team would manage to go undefeated, but rather how badly the Sailors would defeat their opponents. “There really wasn’t any pressure, because we were so much better,” said Atanasio, 51, who retired to Hampton Bays after co-owning a Manhattan-based woman’s handbag company. “You know how the Patriots almost lost a couple of close games this year? We weren’t even close to that. Our average scores were like a football team winning 42 to nothing all the time.”
The coaches’ biggest fear, Cadiz said, was that the players’ confidence, which grew as the season went on, might work against them. And the unthinkable almost happened in the team’s final game of the year, the Long Island Championship, in which the Sailors defeated West Islip 1-0.
“I think everybody might have been uptight in that game,” Cadiz remembered, noting that West Islip played a defensive game and managed only a few fast breaks. “But our defense was so dominant, we always seemed to clear the ball, and even the goaltenders, when they had to make a play, they would,” Cadiz said.
Wright’s players attribute the success of his program to the youth soccer leagues that he started at Oceanside schools when the sport was still alien to most Americans. Paul Fardy, a midfielder on the 15-0 team in 1958, said Wright got kids interest in soccer when they were still in elementary school.
“Mr. Wright had a wonderful and very captivating personality,” said Fardy, 66, who became a cardiologist and now lives in Point Lookout, “and so he got a lot of kids who were good athletes to play soccer that might just as well have played football. He introduced them to this new game.
Fardy played in what he believes was the first-ever night game on Long Island at OHS, before a couple of thousand spectators, when the ’58 Sailors defeated South Side 2-0. “The place was packed,” Fardy recounted. “It was standing room only and was really quite something. It was very exciting.”
In the county championship, the Sailors blanked Garden City 2-0, and they played South Side again in the South Shore Championship at Adelphi, winning 4-1.
A track record of winning
In 1965, in a meet against Uniondale, coach Roy Chernock’s boys’ track team was the last Oceanside squad to lose a meet until April 28, 1975, 82 meets later, when the Sailors fell to Uniondale again.
From the time he took over the track team in 1957 to the day he passed the coaching baton to Ken Hendler in 1967, Chernock’s teams posted a 105-3 record, capturing the Eastern State championship in 1963 and indoor state titles in 1961 and 1964. Hendler, who continues to coach the high school track and cross-country teams, recalled that there was a lot of pressure to win when following such a successful coach. “Roy Chernock passed the tradition to me,” Hendler said, “and you knew what was expected and what those goals were, and we tried to continue those goals.” Hendler continued Chernock’s notoriously difficult workouts, all the while reminding his athletes of the stars of teams past and the undefeated streak.
Brian Batzer, who ran the 440 and the 880 in 1972, called Hendler an excellent motivator who always worked the athletes into peak condition for the biggest meets. While he never let them forget the streak, Batzer said that he and his teammates felt no extra pressure.
“We just expected to win,” said Batzer, an assistant principal at Holy Cross High in Flushing who lives in West Hempstead. “It wasn’t conceit or anything like that. There were just great athletes on that team.”
Batzer remembered meets against schools that the Sailors were almost sure to beat, when Hendler would enter his athletes in events that weren’t their specialties. “And we’d still beat those teams by a lot,” Batzer said, recalling one event in which his coach made him run the two-mile, and then immediately follow it up with the 200-yard sprint.
The loss to Uniondale in 1975, as Hendler remembers it, was a thrilling meet that could have gone either way, and came down to the final relay. In the three seasons that followed, Hendler’s team again never lost a meet. The Sailors lost once in 1979 — again, to Uniondale — before going undefeated again in 1980.
Gridiron greatness: from worst to first
Oceanside’s football team had lost all eight of its games in 1954, the year before Joe Scannella took over the program and earned Coach of the Year in 1955, when the Sailors finished 8-0.
Scannella later coached at Cornell, Baldwin High School and C.W. Post before he became a special teams coach for the Oakland Raiders team that won the Super Bowl in 1977. In 1984, he became offensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns.
His four-year OHS career couldn’t have started on a better note, when the Sailors returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown in an 18-0 victory over LaSalle Military Academy. The Sailors shut out their next two opponents — Levittown, 26-0, and Garden City, 6-0 — and blanked Wantagh 26-0 in the sixth game of the season.
John Maxwell, a tight end and defensive end, said that there were no outstanding players on that team — although they had a good quarterback and running back in Frank Santoli and Bobby Renner, respectively — and that their success was due, in part, to the fact that they played together for a number of years. “We were lucky in that everyone seemed to come together at that time,” said Maxwell, 69, a retired New York City Police Department sergeant, from his home in Florida.
The big difference, Maxwell said, was coach Scannella, who simplified the playbook. “The blocking scheme really just came down to four different blocks,” Maxwell recalled. While there was no football playoff system in those years, the eighth and final game of Oceanside’s season was against its longtime rival, South Side, and the Sailors prevailed 21-7.
Before there was a Scannella or a Maxwell, there were Charles Mosback and Steve Poleshuk, the coach and caption of OHS’s first perfect team, the 1938 football squad. Mosback, who became the principal at Oceanside High School (then on Merle Avenue), and Poleshuk, who became an All-American at Colgate and returned to coach the OHS team, lead the Sailors to a 7-0 season.
In those pre-playoff days, the team was awarded the Rutgers Cup, recognizing the most outstanding football team in the county, and defeated Valley Stream Central in its final game. “In a driving rain, before 10,000 people in bleachers that were installed around the field at Merle Avenue,” said Frank Januszewski, a basketball coach who built the Hall of Fame at OHS in 1960, “Oceanside beat Valley Stream 6-0.”
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
By Joseph Kellard
Statistically speaking, the 1973 Oceanside High School boys’ soccer team was more dominant than the New England Patriots, who head into Super Bowl XLII on Sunday with a perfect record. That’s the opinion of Ron Atanasio, the star player on that OHS squad, which posted an 18-0 record and outscored its opponents 100 goals to 4.
“That was, and to this day is, the best high school team that was ever fielded,” said Atanasio, who was a junior in ’73. “We would have beaten a lot of college teams with that high school team — that’s how good we were.”
Consider also that the squad’s stats could have been even better. Atanasio, who shattered all of the school’s scoring records and went on to play profession soccer with Pelé and the New York Cosmos in the late 1970s, recalled that in games in which the Sailors took a 5-, 6- or 7-goal lead by halftime, his coach, the late Artie Wright, would yank him from the lineup.
“Wright used to take me out and never let me play the second half because I used to score the goals, and he didn’t want to win 15-0 and rub it anyone’s face,” Atanasio recalled. In the playoffs that year, Oceanside downed Calhoun 6-0, Lynbrook 7-0, Mepham 4-1 and, in the county championships, Farmingdale 7-0.
The ’73 soccer team was one of just six OHS teams in the school’s history that have posted undefeated seasons. The 1938 football team finished 7-0, the 1955 football team was 8-0, the 1958 boys’ soccer team went 15-0, the 1969 boys’ soccer team was 17-0-1 and, for the decade between 1965 and 1975, the boys’ track team was in another category entirely, winning 82 consecutive meets.
The soccer program is arguably the school’s most successful. Wright, who started the program in 1953 and coached the team until he retired in 1978, compiled a 315-80-40 record and led his squads to 19 championships, including nine county and four Long Island titles.
“It was something very special,” said Warren Cadiz, who was Wright’s assistant coach from 1968 to 1973. “With the 1973 team, Artie just pulled all the right strings. He seemed to know when to make the right moves.”
For Atanasio, the question was never whether the team would manage to go undefeated, but rather how badly the Sailors would defeat their opponents. “There really wasn’t any pressure, because we were so much better,” said Atanasio, 51, who retired to Hampton Bays after co-owning a Manhattan-based woman’s handbag company. “You know how the Patriots almost lost a couple of close games this year? We weren’t even close to that. Our average scores were like a football team winning 42 to nothing all the time.”
The coaches’ biggest fear, Cadiz said, was that the players’ confidence, which grew as the season went on, might work against them. And the unthinkable almost happened in the team’s final game of the year, the Long Island Championship, in which the Sailors defeated West Islip 1-0.
“I think everybody might have been uptight in that game,” Cadiz remembered, noting that West Islip played a defensive game and managed only a few fast breaks. “But our defense was so dominant, we always seemed to clear the ball, and even the goaltenders, when they had to make a play, they would,” Cadiz said.
Wright’s players attribute the success of his program to the youth soccer leagues that he started at Oceanside schools when the sport was still alien to most Americans. Paul Fardy, a midfielder on the 15-0 team in 1958, said Wright got kids interest in soccer when they were still in elementary school.
“Mr. Wright had a wonderful and very captivating personality,” said Fardy, 66, who became a cardiologist and now lives in Point Lookout, “and so he got a lot of kids who were good athletes to play soccer that might just as well have played football. He introduced them to this new game.
Fardy played in what he believes was the first-ever night game on Long Island at OHS, before a couple of thousand spectators, when the ’58 Sailors defeated South Side 2-0. “The place was packed,” Fardy recounted. “It was standing room only and was really quite something. It was very exciting.”
In the county championship, the Sailors blanked Garden City 2-0, and they played South Side again in the South Shore Championship at Adelphi, winning 4-1.
A track record of winning
In 1965, in a meet against Uniondale, coach Roy Chernock’s boys’ track team was the last Oceanside squad to lose a meet until April 28, 1975, 82 meets later, when the Sailors fell to Uniondale again.
From the time he took over the track team in 1957 to the day he passed the coaching baton to Ken Hendler in 1967, Chernock’s teams posted a 105-3 record, capturing the Eastern State championship in 1963 and indoor state titles in 1961 and 1964. Hendler, who continues to coach the high school track and cross-country teams, recalled that there was a lot of pressure to win when following such a successful coach. “Roy Chernock passed the tradition to me,” Hendler said, “and you knew what was expected and what those goals were, and we tried to continue those goals.” Hendler continued Chernock’s notoriously difficult workouts, all the while reminding his athletes of the stars of teams past and the undefeated streak.
Brian Batzer, who ran the 440 and the 880 in 1972, called Hendler an excellent motivator who always worked the athletes into peak condition for the biggest meets. While he never let them forget the streak, Batzer said that he and his teammates felt no extra pressure.
“We just expected to win,” said Batzer, an assistant principal at Holy Cross High in Flushing who lives in West Hempstead. “It wasn’t conceit or anything like that. There were just great athletes on that team.”
Batzer remembered meets against schools that the Sailors were almost sure to beat, when Hendler would enter his athletes in events that weren’t their specialties. “And we’d still beat those teams by a lot,” Batzer said, recalling one event in which his coach made him run the two-mile, and then immediately follow it up with the 200-yard sprint.
The loss to Uniondale in 1975, as Hendler remembers it, was a thrilling meet that could have gone either way, and came down to the final relay. In the three seasons that followed, Hendler’s team again never lost a meet. The Sailors lost once in 1979 — again, to Uniondale — before going undefeated again in 1980.
Gridiron greatness: from worst to first
Oceanside’s football team had lost all eight of its games in 1954, the year before Joe Scannella took over the program and earned Coach of the Year in 1955, when the Sailors finished 8-0.
Scannella later coached at Cornell, Baldwin High School and C.W. Post before he became a special teams coach for the Oakland Raiders team that won the Super Bowl in 1977. In 1984, he became offensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns.
His four-year OHS career couldn’t have started on a better note, when the Sailors returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown in an 18-0 victory over LaSalle Military Academy. The Sailors shut out their next two opponents — Levittown, 26-0, and Garden City, 6-0 — and blanked Wantagh 26-0 in the sixth game of the season.
John Maxwell, a tight end and defensive end, said that there were no outstanding players on that team — although they had a good quarterback and running back in Frank Santoli and Bobby Renner, respectively — and that their success was due, in part, to the fact that they played together for a number of years. “We were lucky in that everyone seemed to come together at that time,” said Maxwell, 69, a retired New York City Police Department sergeant, from his home in Florida.
The big difference, Maxwell said, was coach Scannella, who simplified the playbook. “The blocking scheme really just came down to four different blocks,” Maxwell recalled. While there was no football playoff system in those years, the eighth and final game of Oceanside’s season was against its longtime rival, South Side, and the Sailors prevailed 21-7.
Before there was a Scannella or a Maxwell, there were Charles Mosback and Steve Poleshuk, the coach and caption of OHS’s first perfect team, the 1938 football squad. Mosback, who became the principal at Oceanside High School (then on Merle Avenue), and Poleshuk, who became an All-American at Colgate and returned to coach the OHS team, lead the Sailors to a 7-0 season.
In those pre-playoff days, the team was awarded the Rutgers Cup, recognizing the most outstanding football team in the county, and defeated Valley Stream Central in its final game. “In a driving rain, before 10,000 people in bleachers that were installed around the field at Merle Avenue,” said Frank Januszewski, a basketball coach who built the Hall of Fame at OHS in 1960, “Oceanside beat Valley Stream 6-0.”
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Detoxing from Defeat-Worship
By Joseph Kellard
I’ve got a confession to make: I root for sports teams to lose. Sure, this is legitimate if it means one team’s loss benefits my favorite team. But when I actively root against perfection, that’s something else altogether.
I’ve been a Miami Dolphins fan since the team’s glory days in the 1970s. The ’72 Dolphins are the only NFL team ever to win all of its regular and post-season games. A few teams have since come close to joining the ranks of the undefeated, and when they each lost their first game, I was gleeful that my favorite team’s record would still stand.
And what Dolphins fan can forget that Monday Night Football game in 1985, when the then 12-0 Chicago Bears, who won the Super Bowl that year, marched into Miami and fell to Dan Marino and the Dolphins, as members of the ’72 team cheered from the sideline? Yet, while I rooted for Miami to win like I did every week, I was still also rooting for the Bears to lose.
Fast forward to Dec. 29, 2007, the day the New York Giants almost upset the still perfect New England Patriots in their regular season finale. Even as I rooted for the Pats to fall, and even as I anticipate I’ll do the same come Super Bowl Sunday when both teams meet again, I knew then that I can’t go on like this — I can’t keep rooting for perfect teams to lose. It contradicts what I enjoy most about watching sports.
People watch sports for different reasons. Some simply enjoy the competition, others love seeing the Davids slay the Goliaths, while still others like to bet. But I believe most sports fans, to some degree, share my primary motivation: to find the spectacle of human achievement. I eagerly root for athletes to jump higher, run faster, lift heavier weights, swim further, hit more home runs, score more points and, yes, win more games than their record-setting predecessors.
Let’s go back to the 1990s, when I never watched basketball but then caught a glimpse of Michael Jordan. I soon found I was cheering him and his Chicago Bulls on as they broke records and won successive championships. I rooted for them, not because I was a Bulls fan, but because I always hunger to find an extraordinary, inspiring athlete like Jordan, who was the best basketball player I’d ever seen.
Today, as I continue to watch basketball, I hear analysts describe each great, up-and-coming talent as “the next Jordan.” But I don’t watch Kobe Bryant and LeBron James because I want to see Jordan’s equal. I want to be witness to a player greater and more innovative than His Airness.
For a Dolphins fan nothing was better than watching Dan Marino play for my favorite team as he set quarterback records for most touchdown passes in a season and a career. And once he hung up his helmet, I wanted his records to stand forever. But why? Just because he’s my all-time favorite quarterback who played on my favorite team? Well, that would mean I’d ultimately be rooting for the status quo — for non-achievement. But if I primarily watch sports to see athletes and teams reach ever-greater heights, then I’d want to see others break the records held even by my favorite athletes and teams.
So now I’ll try to stop rooting for perfect teams to lose. But, so far, I’m finding that old premises die hard.
My early attempts to detox from my defeat-worship have lead me to realize that Miami’s 17-0 record is one that actually can’t be broken — it can only be improved upon. If the Patriots win Sunday’s Super Bowl, they will have achieved a higher mark, a 19-0 season. And that would further validate two ideas I hold dear: that perfection is possible, and that you can improve on perfection.
Besides, with each new football season, I’m still going to continue to root, first and foremost, for the Dolphins to win. I would do so even if, instead of the Giants, Miami were 10-6 and playing the perfect Pats in Sunday’s Super Bowl. I may root for perfection, but not at the expense of my Dolphins, who success comes above all else.
Since I actually always root for the Dolphins to win all of their games, that means I’m actually always rooting for each new Miami team to go 19-0 and thereby top the ’72 Dolphins’ record anyway.
What could be more perfect than that?
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
I’ve got a confession to make: I root for sports teams to lose. Sure, this is legitimate if it means one team’s loss benefits my favorite team. But when I actively root against perfection, that’s something else altogether.
I’ve been a Miami Dolphins fan since the team’s glory days in the 1970s. The ’72 Dolphins are the only NFL team ever to win all of its regular and post-season games. A few teams have since come close to joining the ranks of the undefeated, and when they each lost their first game, I was gleeful that my favorite team’s record would still stand.
And what Dolphins fan can forget that Monday Night Football game in 1985, when the then 12-0 Chicago Bears, who won the Super Bowl that year, marched into Miami and fell to Dan Marino and the Dolphins, as members of the ’72 team cheered from the sideline? Yet, while I rooted for Miami to win like I did every week, I was still also rooting for the Bears to lose.
Fast forward to Dec. 29, 2007, the day the New York Giants almost upset the still perfect New England Patriots in their regular season finale. Even as I rooted for the Pats to fall, and even as I anticipate I’ll do the same come Super Bowl Sunday when both teams meet again, I knew then that I can’t go on like this — I can’t keep rooting for perfect teams to lose. It contradicts what I enjoy most about watching sports.
People watch sports for different reasons. Some simply enjoy the competition, others love seeing the Davids slay the Goliaths, while still others like to bet. But I believe most sports fans, to some degree, share my primary motivation: to find the spectacle of human achievement. I eagerly root for athletes to jump higher, run faster, lift heavier weights, swim further, hit more home runs, score more points and, yes, win more games than their record-setting predecessors.
Let’s go back to the 1990s, when I never watched basketball but then caught a glimpse of Michael Jordan. I soon found I was cheering him and his Chicago Bulls on as they broke records and won successive championships. I rooted for them, not because I was a Bulls fan, but because I always hunger to find an extraordinary, inspiring athlete like Jordan, who was the best basketball player I’d ever seen.
Today, as I continue to watch basketball, I hear analysts describe each great, up-and-coming talent as “the next Jordan.” But I don’t watch Kobe Bryant and LeBron James because I want to see Jordan’s equal. I want to be witness to a player greater and more innovative than His Airness.
For a Dolphins fan nothing was better than watching Dan Marino play for my favorite team as he set quarterback records for most touchdown passes in a season and a career. And once he hung up his helmet, I wanted his records to stand forever. But why? Just because he’s my all-time favorite quarterback who played on my favorite team? Well, that would mean I’d ultimately be rooting for the status quo — for non-achievement. But if I primarily watch sports to see athletes and teams reach ever-greater heights, then I’d want to see others break the records held even by my favorite athletes and teams.
So now I’ll try to stop rooting for perfect teams to lose. But, so far, I’m finding that old premises die hard.
My early attempts to detox from my defeat-worship have lead me to realize that Miami’s 17-0 record is one that actually can’t be broken — it can only be improved upon. If the Patriots win Sunday’s Super Bowl, they will have achieved a higher mark, a 19-0 season. And that would further validate two ideas I hold dear: that perfection is possible, and that you can improve on perfection.
Besides, with each new football season, I’m still going to continue to root, first and foremost, for the Dolphins to win. I would do so even if, instead of the Giants, Miami were 10-6 and playing the perfect Pats in Sunday’s Super Bowl. I may root for perfection, but not at the expense of my Dolphins, who success comes above all else.
Since I actually always root for the Dolphins to win all of their games, that means I’m actually always rooting for each new Miami team to go 19-0 and thereby top the ’72 Dolphins’ record anyway.
What could be more perfect than that?
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Big Blue Faces the Undefeated
Long Island Giants fans gear up for Super Bowl vs. Patriots
By Joseph Kellard
The Giants flag that John and Kathy Thilman raised outside their Harbor Isle home in September still waves in the late-January wind.
The last time Big Blue played this deep into the season, in 2001, the couple hosted some 30 friends at a tailgate Super Bowl party in their driveway, complete with barbecue and TVs, but their team was pummeled by the Baltimore Ravens.
While the Thilmans are planning a similar party for Super Bowl XLII on Sunday, when the Giants line up against the New England Patriots, they’re hoping for a different outcome.
The Las Vegas oddsmakers have made the Giants a 12-point underdog, and most football analysts say they must play a virtually perfect game in order to upset the so-far perfect Patriots — but the Thilmans have other ideas.
Kathy said that New England’s undefeated season puts all the pressure on them to win, while the Giants have all the momentum to pull an upset, especially since they’ve won 10 consecutive road games, including playoff triumphs at Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay.
“I love being the underdog and being the road warriors,” Kathy said about Sunday’s game in Arizona, “and the Super Bowl is on the road.”
John believes the game will center on the quarterbacks, the Patriots’ Tom Brady and Eli Manning of the Giants. “They’ll have to get pressure on Brady, and Manning is going to have to throw a lot of quick, short passes,” said Thilman, who predicts a 28-21 Giants victory.
Despite becoming a Giants fan during the Bill Parcells era, when the team won Super Bowls after 14-2 and 13-3 seasons in 1986 and 1990, respectively, Kathy regards New York’s dramatic overtime win in frigid Green Bay two Sundays ago as the team’s most exciting and best win.
“The Super Bowl wins under Bill were a little more expected,” she said, “because they had great seasons going into those games. They didn’t have the problems this year’s team had, and this year they just kept getting better and better. And I happen to like the Packers because I like Brett Favre, but what a game! Talk about a nail-bitter. It was awesome.”
Fellow Giants fan Rich Giannetta, 28, an Oceanside native who watched the NFC championship game before heading to work for the Long Island Rail Road that night, also believes the win in Green Bay gives the Giants a big boost as they march into Phoenix.
“To go on the road in Green Bay in negative temperatures, to go beat them on their own field for a chance to go to the Super Bowl,” Giannetta said, “was something special.”
The game that sparked the Giants’ successful playoff run — and a potential Super Bowl upset — was the regular-season finale against the Pats, Giannetta said. Even though they lost, Big Blue kept the game close, 38-35. And although he initially questioned coach Tom Coughlin’s playing his starters when the Giants had a playoff game the following week, Giannetta believes the intensity they showed in that game was pivotal.
“I really think it made a difference in how they approached the playoffs,” he said. “It gave them a lot of confidence to go into Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay.“It’s gonna be a tough one,” Giannetta said of the Super Bowl, “but the Giants have been playing well, and if they get lucky they can get a win out of it.”
Joe Rugolo, whose father, Frank, turned him into a Giants fan when he grew up in Oceanside, sees New York’s relative health and young stars as big pluses against New England. Rookies such as cornerback Aaron Ross and running back Ahmad Bradshaw gave the Giants a shot in the arm during their roller coaster regular season, and, Rugolo believes, a legitimate shot to stage an upset this weekend.
“I think they could have beaten New England in the last game of the regular season,” Rugolo said. “It’s gonna sound like sour grapes, but I think the officiating was horrendous in that game, and a lot of calls were questionable.”
Perhaps the biggest question for Giants fans is how Manning, their fourth-year starting quarterback, will play. Fans and media alike have criticized him for his inconsistent play since the Giants made him their first overall pick in the 2004 draft. A low point for the Giants this season was their 41-7 drubbing at the hands of the Minnesota Vikings in November, when Manning threw four interceptions, three of which were returned for touchdowns. “When you throw four interceptions, it’s never a good day,” Manning said afterward.
Yet in the team’s last four games, starting with their loss to the Pats four days after Christmas, Manning has tossed eight touchdowns and just one interception. The question remains, however: Will his inconsistency rear its head in the biggest game of his life?
John Portalatin, a New York City police sergeant and an Oceanside native, said the game will come down to Manning “playing smart” and not turning the ball over. “That’s what he did the last four games,” Portalatin said. “He took what the defense gave him.”
Another key for the Giants will be ball control, he continued. “Tom Brady and his offense will score on anybody,” Portalatin said. “They proved it all season. But if the Giants have ball control, they’ll have a big chance to pull an upset.”
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
By Joseph Kellard
The Giants flag that John and Kathy Thilman raised outside their Harbor Isle home in September still waves in the late-January wind.
The last time Big Blue played this deep into the season, in 2001, the couple hosted some 30 friends at a tailgate Super Bowl party in their driveway, complete with barbecue and TVs, but their team was pummeled by the Baltimore Ravens.
While the Thilmans are planning a similar party for Super Bowl XLII on Sunday, when the Giants line up against the New England Patriots, they’re hoping for a different outcome.
The Las Vegas oddsmakers have made the Giants a 12-point underdog, and most football analysts say they must play a virtually perfect game in order to upset the so-far perfect Patriots — but the Thilmans have other ideas.
Kathy said that New England’s undefeated season puts all the pressure on them to win, while the Giants have all the momentum to pull an upset, especially since they’ve won 10 consecutive road games, including playoff triumphs at Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay.
“I love being the underdog and being the road warriors,” Kathy said about Sunday’s game in Arizona, “and the Super Bowl is on the road.”
John believes the game will center on the quarterbacks, the Patriots’ Tom Brady and Eli Manning of the Giants. “They’ll have to get pressure on Brady, and Manning is going to have to throw a lot of quick, short passes,” said Thilman, who predicts a 28-21 Giants victory.
Despite becoming a Giants fan during the Bill Parcells era, when the team won Super Bowls after 14-2 and 13-3 seasons in 1986 and 1990, respectively, Kathy regards New York’s dramatic overtime win in frigid Green Bay two Sundays ago as the team’s most exciting and best win.
“The Super Bowl wins under Bill were a little more expected,” she said, “because they had great seasons going into those games. They didn’t have the problems this year’s team had, and this year they just kept getting better and better. And I happen to like the Packers because I like Brett Favre, but what a game! Talk about a nail-bitter. It was awesome.”
Fellow Giants fan Rich Giannetta, 28, an Oceanside native who watched the NFC championship game before heading to work for the Long Island Rail Road that night, also believes the win in Green Bay gives the Giants a big boost as they march into Phoenix.
“To go on the road in Green Bay in negative temperatures, to go beat them on their own field for a chance to go to the Super Bowl,” Giannetta said, “was something special.”
The game that sparked the Giants’ successful playoff run — and a potential Super Bowl upset — was the regular-season finale against the Pats, Giannetta said. Even though they lost, Big Blue kept the game close, 38-35. And although he initially questioned coach Tom Coughlin’s playing his starters when the Giants had a playoff game the following week, Giannetta believes the intensity they showed in that game was pivotal.
“I really think it made a difference in how they approached the playoffs,” he said. “It gave them a lot of confidence to go into Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay.“It’s gonna be a tough one,” Giannetta said of the Super Bowl, “but the Giants have been playing well, and if they get lucky they can get a win out of it.”
Joe Rugolo, whose father, Frank, turned him into a Giants fan when he grew up in Oceanside, sees New York’s relative health and young stars as big pluses against New England. Rookies such as cornerback Aaron Ross and running back Ahmad Bradshaw gave the Giants a shot in the arm during their roller coaster regular season, and, Rugolo believes, a legitimate shot to stage an upset this weekend.
“I think they could have beaten New England in the last game of the regular season,” Rugolo said. “It’s gonna sound like sour grapes, but I think the officiating was horrendous in that game, and a lot of calls were questionable.”
Perhaps the biggest question for Giants fans is how Manning, their fourth-year starting quarterback, will play. Fans and media alike have criticized him for his inconsistent play since the Giants made him their first overall pick in the 2004 draft. A low point for the Giants this season was their 41-7 drubbing at the hands of the Minnesota Vikings in November, when Manning threw four interceptions, three of which were returned for touchdowns. “When you throw four interceptions, it’s never a good day,” Manning said afterward.
Yet in the team’s last four games, starting with their loss to the Pats four days after Christmas, Manning has tossed eight touchdowns and just one interception. The question remains, however: Will his inconsistency rear its head in the biggest game of his life?
John Portalatin, a New York City police sergeant and an Oceanside native, said the game will come down to Manning “playing smart” and not turning the ball over. “That’s what he did the last four games,” Portalatin said. “He took what the defense gave him.”
Another key for the Giants will be ball control, he continued. “Tom Brady and his offense will score on anybody,” Portalatin said. “They proved it all season. But if the Giants have ball control, they’ll have a big chance to pull an upset.”
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Lobbying Before Re-subscribing
The following is an email I sent to Craig Biddle, editor of The Objective Standard.
Hello Craig Biddle,
I received your renewal notice for The Objective Standard, and I plan to re-subscribe next month. But before I send my check, I want to lobby for the essays I would most like to read in this year’s issues, based on the list of “essays in progress” in the Fall 2007 edition.
First, I’d like to read B. John Bayer’s “New Atheists’ critique of religion.” I’ve read about the “new atheists” in mainstream publications and in Objectivist circles, including the Harry Binswanger List, and I’m eager to read a more thorough analysis of their ideas. With the rise of religion as a cultural and political force and our battle against it, Americans need to understand the fundamental distinctions between the new atheists (i.e., Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris) and other non-believers such as Ayn Rand and Objectivists. I expect Mr. Bayer’s essay would explore these important distinctions, as well as the new atheists’ recognition, or lack thereof, of Miss Rand and Objectivism.
I’d also like to see Alan Germani’s review of Bradley Thompson’s book “Anti-Slavery Political Writings” printed in TOS sometime soon. I was motivated to pick up this book because I have learned little about the American abolitionists, and I’m interested in discovering who they were and what fundamentally inspired their pro-freedom cause. (While reading Thompson’s introduction, I was surprise by the depth of statism exhibited by the pro-slavery side prior to the Civil War.) I particularly enjoy book reviews, and especially those on books I’m reading at the time, so Mr. Germani’s review is of particular interest to me.
Next, I’d like to read Lisa VanDamme’s essay on literature. I learned a lot from her previous contributions on education in TOS, and I’ve read some of the children’s novels she had referenced. In recent years, I’ve returned to reading more fiction, particularly classic novels, so I’m anticipating her essay devoted exclusively to literature—and hope to come away with another list of novels to read, along with a better knowledge of how to get the most out of them.
Lastly, I’m intrigued by Gena Gorlin’s look at the psychology of a genius such as Isaac Newton. As a fan of a philosophical genius, Ayn Rand, I’ve been fascinated reading about how a highly intelligent individual functions, both morally and psychologically, in the particular times they inhabit. I already know Miss Rand’s story, so I’d like to read more about how another genius, Newton, functioned in his field during an earlier era.
I hope you will consider my preferences for essays when you decide on the submissions you will publish in TOS in 2008.
Thank you,
Joseph Kellard
TOS Subscriber
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
Hello Craig Biddle,
I received your renewal notice for The Objective Standard, and I plan to re-subscribe next month. But before I send my check, I want to lobby for the essays I would most like to read in this year’s issues, based on the list of “essays in progress” in the Fall 2007 edition.
First, I’d like to read B. John Bayer’s “New Atheists’ critique of religion.” I’ve read about the “new atheists” in mainstream publications and in Objectivist circles, including the Harry Binswanger List, and I’m eager to read a more thorough analysis of their ideas. With the rise of religion as a cultural and political force and our battle against it, Americans need to understand the fundamental distinctions between the new atheists (i.e., Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris) and other non-believers such as Ayn Rand and Objectivists. I expect Mr. Bayer’s essay would explore these important distinctions, as well as the new atheists’ recognition, or lack thereof, of Miss Rand and Objectivism.
I’d also like to see Alan Germani’s review of Bradley Thompson’s book “Anti-Slavery Political Writings” printed in TOS sometime soon. I was motivated to pick up this book because I have learned little about the American abolitionists, and I’m interested in discovering who they were and what fundamentally inspired their pro-freedom cause. (While reading Thompson’s introduction, I was surprise by the depth of statism exhibited by the pro-slavery side prior to the Civil War.) I particularly enjoy book reviews, and especially those on books I’m reading at the time, so Mr. Germani’s review is of particular interest to me.
Next, I’d like to read Lisa VanDamme’s essay on literature. I learned a lot from her previous contributions on education in TOS, and I’ve read some of the children’s novels she had referenced. In recent years, I’ve returned to reading more fiction, particularly classic novels, so I’m anticipating her essay devoted exclusively to literature—and hope to come away with another list of novels to read, along with a better knowledge of how to get the most out of them.
Lastly, I’m intrigued by Gena Gorlin’s look at the psychology of a genius such as Isaac Newton. As a fan of a philosophical genius, Ayn Rand, I’ve been fascinated reading about how a highly intelligent individual functions, both morally and psychologically, in the particular times they inhabit. I already know Miss Rand’s story, so I’d like to read more about how another genius, Newton, functioned in his field during an earlier era.
I hope you will consider my preferences for essays when you decide on the submissions you will publish in TOS in 2008.
Thank you,
Joseph Kellard
TOS Subscriber
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Hillary Has Faith in Her Candidacy
By Joseph Kellard
If you haven't yet seen Hillary Clinton proclaim the inevitability of her candidacy for the Democratic Party in her interview with Katie Couric, you must watch it. It's classic Hillary, and, given that the interview came before her defeat in yesterday's election, it’s all the more enjoyable to watch.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm0c6Mx-GT8
Scroll ahead to about 55 seconds, when the interview begins.
If you haven't yet seen Hillary Clinton proclaim the inevitability of her candidacy for the Democratic Party in her interview with Katie Couric, you must watch it. It's classic Hillary, and, given that the interview came before her defeat in yesterday's election, it’s all the more enjoyable to watch.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm0c6Mx-GT8
Scroll ahead to about 55 seconds, when the interview begins.
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