Gary Seymour, sports@wolfrivermedia.com
Next summer’s waiting-for-football sports entertainment will be brought to us by World Cup soccer.
Provided the world manages to not blow itself up by then, the international tournament will be held at several venues throughout Russia. The 2018 World Cup may not bring the U.S. its first men’s championship but should make for some fertile tweeting ground.
Last year’s waiting-for-football moments in sports included Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte and his night of life-threatening peril. Lochte regaled the world with tales of the great bravery he showed while being robbed at gunpoint, and other cool stuff that didn’t happen.
This summer’s waiting-for-football sports entertainment was provided by the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers, regarded in the preseason as one of the biggest long shots in the league to win the World Series, surprised everyone by leading the National League Central for most of the first half of the season.
But after opening up a 5 1/2-game lead at the All-Star break, they lost 11 of their first 16 in the second half, and they’ve fallen 2 1/2 games behind the streaking Cubs.
This is not to stick a fork in their season. They’re only 2 1/2 back and they’re still battling, as they did in Tuesday’s win over St. Louis. Nothing would spruce up late September like the Brewers still playing meaningful games. But regardless of whether their slow second-half start is the fade that everyone expected, or if they still have another run in them, kudos to the organization for the strides they’ve made over the past year.
One peripheral story that almost made it to the sports front page this summer – but didn’t, thankfully – was another installment in the nonsensical battle of the sexes.
While hawking the book he wrote, former tennis great John McEnroe became the center of a controversy after an interview with an NPR reporter, who questioned McEnroe’s terminology in describing Serena Williams.
In his book McEnroe referred to Williams as the best female tennis player of all time. The interviewer asked McEnroe why he had to qualify the statement, why he couldn’t have just referred to her as the greatest player ever, period.
Because, McEnroe explained, such a title would ignore all of the men’s players whom she could not beat, or could not have beaten. McEnroe estimated that Williams would be ranked somewhere around No. 700 if she competed on today’s men’s circuit.
Among the predictable hue and cry that followed were charges of misogyny and the demand for McEnroe to retract his blaspheme, or at least rephrase it. McEnroe refused to apologize or take it back.
Inevitably, there came references to the famous match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. In a nationally televised spectacle held at the Houston Astrodome in 1973, the 29-year-old King defeated the 55-year-old Riggs by a score of 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, embarrassing the outspoken, gambling debt-riddled former pro and striking a blow for feminism everywhere.
King wasn’t sold on where McEnroe ranked Williams, but agreed with him that the best female players don’t have the physical attributes to compete with the best male players.
“I think she’d be better than 700,” King said, ” … but (McEnroe) has been trying to get a match with Serena. He’s been trying for the past 15 years.”
McEnroe was the world’s No. 1 player in the mid-1980s. It’s possible that he’s missed the limelight that a crazy match against Williams would have brought back to him. Or maybe he was just trying to create some buzz to move a few books.
One thing is sure. Where there’s a willing athlete past his playing days, there will be someone promoting a sideshow. Exhibit A is former track gold medalist Jesse Owens as he looked for ways to scrape up a few bucks after the Olympics, and Exhibit B is the horse he raced against.