The Mets broadcasting triumvirate of Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling are the talk of the town.
New York Observer writes cool articles. Not sure the Mets is cool or winning. But the three add excitement and flavors to the Mets. John Koblin is right that their style of commentating only work in New York. The comedian Dennis Miller should have become the Mets announcers rather than with NFL.
Keys is a now-14-year-old American from Illinois who trains full time at Evert Academy in Boca Raton, Florida since 2005 when she was only 9 years old.
Keys said in 2008 that
I’m not the person who wants to stay on the baseline and rally crosscourt for 50 balls. You get into the net and you put it away.
“When I was about three years old I walked through [the living room] when they were watching the Wimbledon final and I think it was Venus,” Keys says. “It was Venus playing, and I saw her outfit and I loved it. I asked my dad, ‘Can I have one of those outfits?’ and he said ‘Only if you play tennis.’ And I said ‘OK!’ and I started playing after that. So I didn’t start for the tennis part, I started for the outfits, then I just loved it. And the outfits came as the extra-bonus part.”
You go girl. I couldn’t wait for the next American player to rise to the #1. She volleys, NO LESS.
This past Wimbledon, after Serena held up her singles plate, she went to play with her sister Venus and won the women’s doubles title. The American men are less triumph: Andy took Roger to the 5th set but lost. The Bryan brothers lost in final too.
I mused over the sight that Venus sent the current #1 player home almost on a bicycle, 6:0 and 6:1. How embarrassing. We got a new cyclist. The ranking system needs to reconsider.
Are you a Mets fan?
Whether the Mets are winning or losing, there is one constant that makes a television broadcast enjoyable – the announcing of Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling. Nationally televised Mets games are usually dreadful because viewers are subjected to announcers not nearly as knowledgeable, insightful, and entertaining as GKR. As a tribute to our announcing trio, I present the Gary, Keith, and Ron Drinking Game. The Mets are causing fans to drink right now, so why not have some fun during broadcasts?
Standard drinking game rules apply, as you should take the appropriate number of sips from your beverage when something on the list happens.
Here is the JamesK’s Gary, Keith n Ron Drinking Game. Keith hasn’t changed much from his playing days with the Mets but Ron gained a lot of weight.
One sip:
Two sips:
Three sips:
Chug your beverage:
Drink a White Russian:
King’s been playing badminton with me lately. Our first win as a team came last month against Sunny with his daughter.
That didn’t count as much as the win we got last night, against
Paul and Paul.
The 6 footer hubby and the other half of the twins.
They both are better players.
I played with my left hand, trying to preserve my right arm for tennis – 烧包.
It’s our second time as a team. We played without talking.
On the court as in life, many times the winner was the one who makes less mistakes.
And many people refuse to acknowledge it.
We made less mistakes, were relaxed.
They thought they’d won, easily. …. then got tight when they were down from the get go.
Sounds familiar in life?
… …
We lost badly in the second set against two girls. By that time, King was ready to go. He didn’t want to come at all. I forced him.
Thoughtfully, he told me that he’s done more sport at the music camp, and enjoyed the friendly soccer played out at the backyard daily.
“We played every day … once a guy pushed me down on purpose because his team was losing.” It’s all good nature and King felt to the ground, as requested.
“I thought all the piano geeks are timid gentle little people who don’t know how to get physical.” I joked.
He laughed out loud.
My kids are well trained to make me feel better.
This June article on Rafael Nadal
At tournaments, teenage girls scream when they see Nadal walk onto a tennis court, literally shriek and leap to their feet and clutch each other; women older than his mother shiver and elbow their friends; men raise their cameras aloft;
What Cynthia Gorney is talking about? We, the older women gone crazy over Nadal? Am I the third sex or what? I’ve never seen it. I remembered seeing rows upon rows of lesbians (most of them wear short bob haircuts) came out in force when Martina Navratilova played. The ladies didn’t scream but they sure did elbow their friends (when Martina his a winner) and raise their cameras a lot.
However, I do gradually develop the liking of Nadal as a person, a humble small town boy. On court, I choose Roger and Pete any given day. Nadal doesn’t play ugly – Winning Ugly, coined by Brad Gilbert, but there isn’t prettiness about Nadal’s style of play. I prefer finesse over brute, which is the way tennis suppose to be played. Yap, brute is the word associate with Nadal in my mind.
Gorney did get the G string part right …
Nike, which pays Nadal more than $3 million a year to wear its clothes, has never designed a pair of shorts that kept Nadal from loosening the seat just before he serves the ball.
When Nadal serves, after loosening his G string, his face twisted and followed by a grunt, releasing the lethal weapon – the little yellowish ball that travels at the speed about 130 miles an hour.
There are many handsome players with a pretty and sassy playing style: Boris Becker, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Patrick Rafter, etc. I would consider Amélie Mauresmo. Too many to name, but Pete is definitely the best-looking man around.
Michael Chang and Ivan Lendl are the same: they lack the apparent innate talent and they relied on their only talent that is working hard. I don’t like to watch that, the counterpunchers. It’s too cruel, too harsh and too brutal. Like watching Patrick Ewing. Not pretty.
There are many players that I enjoy playing with, and there are few I do not. Among the few, not they aren’t good players, but they aren’t. Some little things tend to bother me. Like they play sissy. I can not stand a man being sissy, like pacing the baseline, stocking time to regroup – that’s cheating. There is limited time in between point, 10 seconds or 30?
Well, I couldn’t say my dislike is due to my weak mental toughness or just plain disdain of the sissys. Many times, I just lost my patience, wondering how could a man act so dishonorably?
The main street is always slower than Wall Street. When something hit the main street, it is either the game is over or too late.
Duh.
Everyone on WS knows this. Why did it take Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone and the like this long to write for the main streeters?
The Wall Street Bubble Mafia. How Goldman Sachs took over Washington? By engineering every major market manipulation since the Great Depression. If someone believes that the president of the United States runs Washington, then he or she hasn’t lived long enough.
At midnight one evening earlier this month, I slipped out of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, heading north in a white Toyota minibus on a journey to find the second tallest mountain on earth, K2.
My purpose was to write a book about the mountaineers who dared challenge its deadly slopes — to get a taste, if not a full draught, of the danger myself. In the end, I got more than I bargained for, and not from Nature alone.
…
At Askole, a village of basic wooden homes where children played shoeless in the dirt, we hired eager Balti porters who jostled for our business and streamed by on the hot, dusty paths beside waters churning down from the glacier. The porters bent under our rucksacks and tents, heavy blue food barrels, paraffin stoves, kitchen chairs and tables, as they ushered chickens, goats, yaks and donkeys onto the trail.In contrast to the porters’ cast-off clothes and sandals, these mountaineers wore expensive high-tech walking gear. A 39-year-old engineer from Germany, Dirk Grunert, obsessively drank liters of boiled water daily to cope with the altitude. A fit couple from Portugal maintained via satellite phone a Web site of their adventures. There were also three Polish mountaineers, including a loud man named Jacek Teler, on his sixth trip in the Karakoram, who conferred with the porters in broken Urdu, performed kung-fu exercises in the mess tent, and was clearly seeking a chance to live a role distant from reality as most of us know it.
…
I wondered if Jon Krakauer would be writing this book. Guess not. Graham Bowley is.
I always wondered does the magazine or newspaper share any type of profit/royalty with a reporter/journalist when they publish a book?
The celebratory dinner was at
Pine Court Chinese Bistro
249-32 Horace Harding Expy
Little Neck, NY 11362
(718) 279-1999
Lou is the food connoisseur if not the epicurean. Dishes at Pine Court are mostly decent. Service was slow that night (wasn’t crowded), and the lamb chop was too salty. The fish soup was great.
We almost had the Ocean Six reunion at the tennis tourney: Lou and Simon were there; Larry came to be DQ’s groupie; only missing Clay.
The big babe tennis 🙂 They’re all much taller than I’m, 5’6″ or 5’8″. When we take pictures, they tend to bend their knees so not to bury me. We had three tables about 30 people, mostly players and few spouses/friends/groupies.
I’m a Home Depot groupie.
Oh, talking about groupies, I had to share this.
First time I attended the tennis year end party, sitting at a single table because a widowed g/f wanted to meet someone.
As soon as I sat down, a middle aged man to my right introduced himself.
“I’m a podiatrist and single.”
No wonder he’s still single.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that many single women came because they perceived tennis players are loaded sugar daddies.
Sight.
I could only shake my head.
It turned out, the Dr. Single and I had a mutual friend: Art Gudeon, a little famed podiatrist I used to play tennis with. Art has an office in Rego Park and used to be on the medical staff at USTA during the Open. He’s a huge tennis bum, would camp out at the stadium two weeks straight every year.
Dr. Single joked,
“Is he still alive?”
Geee… seriously I don’t know. We haven’t been playing for few years.
Art is really fun to have around.
The war is playing out at Center Court in Wimbledon at the moment between 19 years old Sabine Lisicki, a German and choking artist and Number 1 Dinara Safina, 23 years old.
The German was serving for the set at 5:3.
But was unable, due to melt down.
Then she had the set point and missed an easy put away.
But no worry.
The Number One returned the favor instantly by double faulting.
Now they’re trading double faults and breaks, the play is just below the standard (it felt a high schooler could go out there and win) .. .. and … then there is Safina’s belly.
Man, that isn’t a pretty picture.
Aside from the pork belly hanging out, there is screaming, head banging, frustration in plain sight .. .. all from the current #1 ranked player who never wins a slam. Cool.
John McEnroe has bad temper on court, but that’s entertaining. The pork belly isn’t. It’s painful to watch, to a point of pity. Desperation produces lousy games.
im not trying to be an ass, but she’s not pregnant is she? Damn, in her last match at the australian open, her belly was bulged out way passed her chest. just wondering. I mean, i now she cant be cause she wouldn’t be playing right?
Another fan added: “I know I should concentrate on the tennis and not the fashion, but why doesn’t Dinara Safina find a top that fits her? The top rides up practically every point. Will somebody get Adidas to suggest she might like a dress rather than separates for the next event?”
Mary Joe Fernandez was one of the commentators, and she said in a firm tone that Safina’s
“outfit has to go.”
Another fan, a male, said:
“I am watching right now the game between Safina and Mauresmo on Centre Court. In my opinion I am really surprised to see that the Wimbledon committee is allowing Safina to be dressed up like this on the probably most important court of the world. Look at her, she is probably wearing the shortest possible top and her belly is looking out of it very often. How is this possible according to the rules?”
Update: Venus sent the world number 1 home on [almost] a bicycle: 6:0 and 6:1 during their semi match. Don’t we get a new biker? Venue didn’t even break a sweat. The ranking system really need an update.
