Nothing But Iron: Venus Envy September 3, 2008 by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. [Publishers apology: The NBI staff regrets that this posting was not posted in a more timely manner. To make this issue seem a little less outdated, the next two issues will be devoted to exclusive coverage of the Ali-Frazier fight.] A month ago a shortage of compelling sports drama–at least my assessment thereof –forced me to borrow from the realm of amateur agriculture to publish a full column. I acknowledge that common gardening is not a sport (though it does give golf a run for its money) and I applaud you for accepting that necessity without complaint. A month later my catchers mitt runneth over with sportswriting substrate, so forgive me if I succumb to the temptation of run-on opinionism. You may be expecting Brett Favre the Jet, Michael Phelps the Torpedo, CC Sabathia the Rocket Launcher, or The Golden Boys of Team USA Basketball to be headline candidates, but top billing goes to Madison’s own Venus Envy, this year’s USTA 4.0 Midwest Sectional Champion. Envy, whose humorous moniker is a product of NBI Creative Laboratories, Inc., earned the opportunity, along with 17 other sectional winners, to play for the National Championship in Tucson by beating the champions of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois in mid August. That is big news because: 1) Wife Kelly, who now smiles all the time, is the team captain. 2) According to existing records, no Madison team in the 7000-year history of organized tennis has ever advanced to Nationals. 3) Members of the team worked long and hard for many years to realize this goal. 4) Kelly had shoulder surgery in February and was not sure if or when she might return to competition. She returned to the court in July and a month later played (and won) three tourney matches in three days. Notes and quotes: 1) The USTA ranks players from 2.5 (bewildered, but eager to learn) to 7.0 (living the dream), meaning that one must work one’s ass off to achieve a 4.0. You might not watch a 4.0 player and blurt out, while salivating on yourself, "OMG, that’s insane!" but you would think, "I wish I were that good." To a mere 3.5er like me, 4.0's are like goddesses (Venus was a goddess, by the way). 2) I play league tennis too. One year our team almost advanced to the second level of a parking ramp. 3) Steve to Kelly Quote: "Good luck in your (state, sectional) match. I am off to play meaningless ineffective tennis with Dan." 5) The youngest Envy player is 20, the oldest 60. Average age is 40.7 years. 6) Sectional winners cannot play together the following year at the same level, so the team will have to disband or move up to 4.5, even if individual player ratings remain at 4.0.  The editorial staff at NBI wishes the Envy ladies well at Nationals. Win and it’s probably on to the World Championships in Madagascar or Papua New Guinea or some exotic place like that. I hear that Turkmenistan and Senegal are the international favorites this year, but they cheat.  After that, the Interplanetary Playoffs on Neptune.  When I wasn’t cheering for Venus Envy I kept an eye on the equally popular Olympic Games. I don’t have much to say much about swimming, since gold mine Michael Phelps and his swimming muscles defy verbal description. Great drama in his run to 8. I could describe it to you, but you already saw it. If not, you can watch just about everything on NBC’s web site. That’s how I watched much of the Olympics. I was quickly captivated by the Redeem Team, even though Redeem Team is a dumb nickname. Just plain Team would have been sufficient for the novelty of the concept to USA mens basketball. What a masterful job of managing, coaching, developing and playing. It completely renews my faith in multi-millionaire nature. What a monumental challenge it must have been to get the likes of Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Carmello Anthony and Lebron James to become true teammates. I could not believe the passing. I could not believe the defense. It was great basketball, and I think it is now clear that it takes great basketball, not just great players of basketball, to win the gold medal. All of that is well worn news. The only unique spin I can offer is this: Mike Krzyzewski should seek major public office. Not only could he get elected, but he would do a good job. Any leader of this caliber (and I often wonder if we have anyone like him in Washington) gets my vote. My well-cultivated reputation as a hater of baseball keeps popping up in e-mails: "I know you hate baseball," comes across my desk every week or so. Confession: I hate baseball less and less these days. Maybe it’s the Brewers, who are 23 (!) games above .500. Maybe my middle-aged mental faculties no longer allow me to process fast sports and I sense the need for something more deliberate, predictable (as in, bet another foul ball is coming) and methodical. I have yet to watch a full inning of 2008 MLB (it’s early), but I often read about it after the fact, occasionally check scores and standings on the web and I no longer switch from sports radio to my favorite hip hop station when baseball comes up. Did you hear about CC Sabathia’s damn-near no hitter? A lot of people think it’s a total no hitter. An amusing controversy sprang forth, including a suggestion that instant replay be expanded to settle score keeping disputes. The Brewers are seeking a reversal of the official score keeper’s decision that the lone hit was a hit. In other words, they want Sabathia to be charged with an error, thereby giving him credit for a no hitter, even though it would be his own error allowed the runner on base. Sources close to NBI confirmed that baseball errors are still considered mistakes, hence the name. As for the application of instant replay here, I have this idea: NO. Hit vs. error is not the same as foul vs. fair. The former is a judgement call which has no impact on the outcome of the game. Either way, the Brewers won. Prediction: MLB will review the video, reverse the decision, Sabathia will get a new sports page article telling us how great he is (as if we didn’t know), a no-hitter medal or whatever trinket they give for that accomplishment, and the Brewers will still be 4 ½ games behind the Cubs. Or maybe by then the Brewers will be tied with the Cubs. In case you haven’t noticed the Flubs are trying to their best to open the door with a late-season L streak. By the way, I greatly respect Sabathia’s comment: "I am just happy we got the win." It is more than encouraging that he said we. Did I mention that I once had a hole in one in miniature golf (hippo hole), but they disallowed it because I took two shots to make it, even though the first shot was my fault? I lost the appeal. A diversion: Whole grain Pop Tarts are now available. In fact, whole grain Pop Tarts are so available, you can have our box. In a moment of weakness I tasted one and threw it away because it tasted like cardboard frosted with dry wall dust slurry. I do agree with that whole grain Pop Tarts are more healthy than regular Pop Tarts, which taste good but probably have the nutritional value of old battery acid, since you are so much less likely to actually eat a whole grain Pop Tart, and, like that gut-busting creature in the movie Alien, it can’t hurt you if it can’t get into your body. Who exactly are we kidding here? Short of replacing all of its ingredients with fresh lettuce, you cannot make a Pop Tart healthy. You can find whole grain Pop Tarts in your grocer’s Conflict of Interest aisle, next to the non-stick duct tape, vitamin-fortified hash browns and solar powered-gasoline pumps. The Packers will win 15 games, but I don’t know if the wins will all come in this season. In other words, I don’t know the future just as well as you and Tom Oates don’t know it. Some will guess right and say see I told you the Packers would be 10-6 or some other numbers. Other’s will lie about it. I remember last year I was unable to see how Green Bay would score any points, yet Green Bay somehow managed an NFC title game, thrilling us the entire way. Speaking of points, Favre is gone. He’s not coming back, and he will probably retire again this spring, so unless you are willing to move to New York, let it go. Do I have concerns that the value of my season tickets has gone the way of the lending industry? Only when I write the check, and only when I study the face value on the ticket and wonder if I am possibly the most irresponsible consumer on the planet. That said, Ted Thompson has done nothing to make me mistrust him, so my prediction is that he knows the business of football and is paying attention to his team. Our team. The Badgers were ranked No. 10 by whogivesacrap.com and picked to finish second in the Big 10 by Sports Illustrated. That was based on the return of several good players and the long term success of the program. Keep in mind, however, that a team is not defined by its running backs and tight ends, but by it’s weakest components, and I think we may have some weak components. Allan Evridge, despite his much touted college playing experience a football lifetime ago (read: Toto, I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore), is untested. He may be adequate or even excellent, but he’s not yet. There are gaps in the defensive secondary that could turn glaring against top Big Ten opponents. There’s a new defensive coordinator. Hopefully Dave Doeren has more authority over injuries than fired Mike Hankwitz, who now presides over the Northwestern defense. UW doesn’t play the Wildcats this year, so Hankwitz will have a year to prepare his revenge. Special teams have turned over, but I have yet to hear any major concerns here. Tenth best team in the country? Hmmm. With limited observation (see below), I am cautiously optimistic that the Badgers will have a winning conference record. The first and only non-conference test comes at Fresno State in two weeks. After that it’s mostly up hill in the rain until the post-season bye week in November. Sadly, the off season has done nothing to improve college football’s post season. It could be that Wisconsin will make a highly improbable run of the table, knocking off Cal Poly to go perfect and earn a meeting with whatever SEC team is destined to win the mythical national championship. More likely we will speculate on the relative merits of our team, based on the fortunes of our opponents and those of our opponents’ opponents. In other words, if our team turns out to be good, we will never know how good. I will say it again next year and the year after and the year after, at least if I still have a shred of remaining enthusiasm to cover college football: the BCS is a toxin. And while I am ranting about asinine systems, I plan to dump DISH Network like a bad load of compost. I may even buy out the final year of my contract to switch back to Charter Cable, which finally carries the Big Ten Network. More importantly I will reactivate my TiVo. I have grown to hate my satellite system for its aggravating quirks and deficiencies. Worst of all is DISH’s cumbersome DVR, which purportedly won both JD Powers and a Bruce Likes My Remote Awards, at least according to the agent who fielded my e-mail complaint. For the record, JD Powers is stupid and Bruce is, um, well, he tries really hard and he was once a really fast runner. The snot on the icing of the salmonella-infested cake was my inability to watch Wisconsin’s home opener. It simply wasn’t there, or if it was it was well camouflaged in a myriad of pointless channels that I would watch only if I suddenly found I had no significant life. Not that OSU-Youngstown State wasn’t abso-frickn-lutely riveting, but I got DISH so I could watch the Badgers. I must admit it is a comical irony that this happened on the day that Charter aired it’s first Badgers event on BTN. This just in: the DISH customer service agent writes that the Badger game aired on channel 5440, which, of course explains why nothing came up when I entered sports/football/wisconsin in DISH search engine. Did I mention I tried to call customer service but lost the connection after being on hold for 21minutes? ____________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column available free of charge to readers with imagination enough to take themselves back to a time when the information presented in the most recently-available issue was current and relevant. All others will be charged $200. Next issue: We Aren’t Marshall. Watch for it in December. ©2008 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved. Not sure for what, but they are definitely reserved.