Weeks 11 & 12: Thanksgiving/Home

There is plenty for me to give thanks for. There is plenty I want – and that is more interesting for now. I used to love rap. Now I like it fine I guess, I think I just really understand the fellas. I want the money, how I want it. I want the money for cars and for a boat. I want it for a loft with a moat. I want the money in order to finally get over a girl, just so I can give it all back to her. I want to spend recklessly. I want good seats to a thing, could be anything, just good seats for it.

Last night on Thanksgiving when the Ravens beat the 49ers, the Harbaugh brothers faced off. I wish “faced-off” were a known phrase defined as so: “to surgically swap faces with another man (preferably a nemesis) and fuck the wife of that man wearing his face on, while he fucks your wife with your face that is connected with his body, now.”

Anyway, I watched some football last night, a great game truly, ate some food with the family, then my kid brother and I, we faced off – in a more classic definition of the term – in a basketball game. Also he isn’t married yet. What he is though is awesome now, not only because he is the starting point guard on the varsity team, but because he is referee for youth games here in town, so he has keys to various gyms. Last night, he opened a gym for us. We smacked on the lights, took out a leather ball, laced up and played. He is very, very good so there wasn’t much competition. The games ended and before we left he lowered the rims so that we could dunk. Us two bro’s we went nuts in there, all sorts of echoes, pretending to be taller than we are, dunking, hanging, laughing all on those poor orange rims. In the quiet that is a suburban Thanksgiving Thursday night, we insulated ourselves on the hardwood under the lights and had a blast.

Part of the reason writing about sports is so great for now, is because I remember playing (obviously at a much lower level, but inside me, the competition was grand stand nonetheless). I write something each week because it is a release from the nonsensically tight grip I maintain on that subway pole – it is a reminder of the purely physical narrative that constitutes much of my youth – a stark contrast from the sedentary life of an adult man in a city where money gets made on screens. I have plenty to give thanks for. My good brother who is all but my size now, my sweet mother who cooks up like a Churchill speech, and my friends who while scattered across the globe always come back home to give a hug and kiss. I’m thankful for my wants too, and that they don’t include still being good at basketball, because that is not my ticket to a moat boat.

Week 10. Pacquiao and Marquez

It costs more than is fiscally prudent to spend to watch a good HBO Pay Per View event. I watched the Pacquiao fight though, because I'm rich. And like my rich brother Floyd Mayweather, I am also financially irresponsible. He burns money on stages, I keep choosing those $3 candy bars in favor of the M&M's. "M&M's are pedestrian," my mother used to say, "thou shalt be rather without thy health insured than with a brown packet in thy paw." My mother was born in 1778, in Heventon, Birmanshire, Lilinhem, Grass Pasture, Mott, Italy, to five fathers, all of whom owned five companies. Needless to say when it comes to buying a Mexi-Fillipino fight on HBO, I put up. But in this one case, I didn't.

So I saw the fight ... and there seems to have been some controversy surrounding the Pacquiao majority decision. Two judges scored in favor of Pacquiao, one scored Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez as equals. I don't know about all that, but why don't I say a little something about the event before the decision. It was a floppy haired, toned-trapezius, dancing, smiling, crowd rocking affair - then the fight started. And I was mesmerized! There was a moment in the sixth round (I believe), after a particularly violent previous round, where both boxers were so weary of the other's ability to end the fight with one combination, that neither punched. Pacquiao came in close and Marquez waited, then Pacquiao trickled and tippied, got close again, and relented at Marquez's seizing stare. The crowd was taught, the announcers were too engaged, too excited to speak. For a minute and a half of the three minute round, I felt like I was in a still gym, holding the speed bag in my left hand, right arm down at my side, watching, just watching two bad men feel each other out, work each other down. I leaned forward in my comfortable (b/c I'm rich) chair and listened for the patter of their feet... Turns out there's no way to hear that shit. I mean they're not Gods, they're closer to deer. Anyway Pacquiao got close again and hit Marquez, and literally at the same moment, Marquez while being hit, was hitting back. The silence broke instantly, the entropy in their facial structures decreased as the crowd roared and the announcers resuscitated their form. It was a fine metaphor of the night: mutually assured destruction lending to life, not death, for either. I think most who watched agree it was special.

There is crispy soundtrack to the benevolent violence of welterweight boxing. Pacquiao and Marquez are both around 140 pounds, together just a few pounds less than Vitali Klitschko, the present heavyweight champ. If you grew up when I did, last May, then you probably think about boxing in terms of heavyweights: Holyfield, Tyson, Bowe, Lewis. Those guys were all cut, don't get me wrong, but they had muscles built over clay foundations, thick skin, muscle on meat. They could all, and did all, get fat. These welterweights aren't like that. They are the cooled granite just above the surface of their volcanic cores, and when they strike, sparks fly, rocks crumble. I mean there is bone showing on Pacquiao and Marquez. When they start to beat each other up, it looks rough. Given the way the fight went, I'll guess it feels rough too. When a champion like Pacquiao is faced with a counter puncher (a guy who earns his wage, as I said above, landing blows in tandem with blows being landed on him), even a champion knows he can't Win. Pacquiao suffered a victory, and as far as individual sports go, there is nothing more dramatic than that.

[Gosh I write a little thing on football every week, it might have been more fair to talk about Penn State, but I think boxing was the only abuse I could stomach thinking about] Cuyler Ballenger is a staff writer here at Cable Sports.

Week 9. The Runner

Current humans please make sure and watch the movie The Robber. It's about a German bank robber who is also a marathon runner. It is based on actual events, as is Football. Apparently you can do things by just running. I said in early weeks that running is nothing, a quarterback, on the other hand, defines success. Being wrong is like being right, just before... Which is swell because then one has the advantage of being two things. Rightness is one way, monotonous, abstract, simple. Being wrong is enlivening and risky, sexy. I had the privilege of thinking about football incorrectly, a lens offering a game that did not actually exist but was no less captivating (for me). Now after today, a day in which running affirmed itself as a tool for success, I am offered the game anew. Thank you 49ers, Jets, Dolphins and Texans. The man who won the New York Marathon today, Geoffrey Mutai a Kenyan, ran it in just over two hours. Twenty six miles over five boroughs: no bank robberies.

In the NFL, a competent defense is a requisite but unlike basketball, it does not win games. -- I've got to mention about basketball briefly here. The ultimatum the players' union faces that will make or break this 2011 season is shocking. Not shocking because any one party is wrong about what they want, in a way neither are right, but two sides agreeing to sacrifice plenty of money in a depressed economy, coming off the most popular season ever, with nothing else to do is just damn shocking. I will miss Lebron and Kobe and Dirk and Monta, the punks. Good luck, fellas. -- Anyway defense is an ingredient used at choice moments during big games when a team needs to get its offense back out there to score. Defense isn't the meat. Don't listen to your Pop Warner coaches young men, not only because they are part time history teachers and plumbers, but because they're also molesters. Today an example: the Patriots Giants game stuck 0-0 at the half. Seemingly a good defensive battle until four straight 4th quarter scoring drives that gave the Giants a win as much determined by clock management as anything else. Clearer - the defenses shutout Thomas Brady and E. Manning in the first half but ultimately those two quarterbacks drove down the field at will until time ran out on Brady, when the Patriots just happened to be losing - it may as well just have a been 30 minute game.

The teams mentioned above do have good defenses, specifically the Jets and 49ers, but the reason a meal is successful is good meat. And the meat is the ground game by some of the better teams in the NFL. Last week I suspected this to be true but today confirmed it. Some facts: Tim Tebow (you flaming, big nippled, bloody lipped, piece of candy, you) rushed for over 100 yards and barely threw for that. His fellow Bronco, running back Willis McGahee, rushed for 163. The Broncos are a poor team but are getting better since dropping the passing game in favor of the run. The Falcons are supposed to be a good team. They hit a rough patch in the beginning of the season relying on Matt Ryan, then turned to their caboose of a running back, Michael Turner, and are since 3-0 with wins over the Panthers and the Lions (two passing oriented big scoring teams). More, the winless Dolphins came close to victory last week and today achieved it. The reinvigorated Reggie Bush, fresh off his divorce from Kim Kardashian, was the reason for the near win last week and the win today. He is running hard and cutting precisely, as he did at USC. The Texans, a very good team, with a strictly average quarterback rely on Arian Foster. Today he rushed for 124 yards on just 19 carries. Lastly the 49ers, a top three team in the NFL with maybe a bottom three quarterback in Schmalex Smith. Frank Gore chips away at defenses, stiffening the pace, tightening the drag and finally snapping the line with a large run or two in the second half. This has been the pattern of the steaming 49ers, now 7-1, best in the West, great on the ground.

This is boring post, and apparently style = content today. What I find interesting from all this running though is when in a few weeks some of these passing cyclopes will face the running infantries, who will prevail. A 49ers Packers game next week would be excellent. Not happening, but the Patriots are coming down to NYC to mess around with the Jets. That could be something. If not something, it will be two gorgeous quarterbacks in the same place. Tebow will be watching... Next week I will be damn funny. Today I wanted to join the marathon, rob banks and be a German. Everyone says they can write jokes: thank god being cool will never be hip.