When my wife and I went to Italy two years ago we had the good fortune of hooking up with a great driver — Giuseppe Mirossi, a.k.a. “Beppe.” He took us all over Tuscany and, trip of trips, all the way up to Campi, a mountain village in Northern Italy that was the native home of my wife’s great-grandmother.
How that woman ever got off that mountain and down to Genoa to sail to America is the wonder, not the voyage itself. It took us hours to get up there and we were dealing with paved roads. We are forever beholden to Beppe for his driving skills and translation services.
Suffice it to say, I got to know Beppe and his passion for soccer, which occasionally drove him to take both hands off the steering wheel. (You know how Italians are always talking with their hands.)
I keep in touch with Beppe, and the e-mails started flying once the World Cup started and the Americans advanced out of pool play while the hopes of defending champion Italy hung in the balance...
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Ciao, Beppe!
Hey, are you guys going to win a game any time soon?
I will be rooting for Italia today against Slovakia.
That way, your team can join the United States in the next round.
Your favorite American,
Bryant Carpenter
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Hi Bryant!
How is Laura? I guess she does not care of soccer. Does she???
Italian team is not very good this time. Here there are lot of complaints because we have not been able to win a game up to now and we say that our forwarders are tired as they are coming from a very fighting national tournament (we call it "serie a"; a sort of premier league).
Then other players are too old (over than 33 years old).
It will be not very easy to win with Slovakia; the game will start at 16:00 Eu time today.
If we win Italy will play vs Holland in the next round.
Ciao,
Beppe
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Beppe!
Laura and I are sorry Italy lost to Slovakia today.
Laura does watch soccer (she wore blue today) and she has a question: Why did Italy play with no passion until it was too late?
If the Azzurri had played as well as they did in those last 20 minutes throughout the tournament, they would be getting ready to play Holland rather than catching an airplane home.
That one goal should have counted -- not the offside one, but the goal earlier that struck off the defender's knee. His leg was behind the end line.
But no matter: The Azzurri have only themselves to blame. This year's Italy team did not play up to Italian tradition.
The rest of the tournament will not be the same without them.
But look on the bright side. At least Italy wasn't as bad as France.
Your favorite Americans,
Bryant and Baby Laura
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Hi Bryant!
Here it has been almost a tragedy.
The worse team ever played...
Much better to give up and keep going.
A new coach (his name is Cesare Prandelli) will be presented on July 1st. Let's hope better than Marcello Lippi.
Ciao,
Beppe
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Yes, you’re right, Beppe.
It’s time for Marcello Lippi to go.
Maybe you could take him for a very, very long drive somewhere and just leave him there.
You might be considered a national hero.
Ciao,
Bryant
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
To err is human, to review hardly divine
I don’t mean to be flip about a topic that generated so much serious commentary from sports observers across the land, including those in high office, but Jim Joyce’s blown call that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game Wednesday night reminded me of the scene from “Animal House” when Boone, Otter, Pinto and Flounder return from their weekend road trip with the car entrusted to Flounder by his big brother in shambles.
“Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes,” Otter says. “You f***ed up; you trusted us.”
The point being: We all make mistakes; we all occasionally go against our better judgment. The consequences are relative. On one hand, you can bust a pitcher’s perfect game. On another, you can bust an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
The way you respond is also of great import. You can fess right up and make immediate amends, as Joyce did, or you can bumble around British Petroleum-style while millions of gallons of crude pour daily into the ocean.
In the wake of Joyce’s mistake, a predictable cry went up for expanded replay review in baseball and a reverse of the call. Major League Baseball did right in brushing aside the latter pitch. Reversing the call would set bad precedent, plain and simple.
Hopefully, MLB will also resist the urge to expand replay review beyond home run calls. Does replay weed out human error? Of course it does, but it also sucks the life out of human endeavor, which by definition makes it a little less than human.
And that’s what matters most. We could put all our swell technology to use and eliminate all human error from our games, which by definition ultimately means eliminating human presence entirely because there is a little Flounder in all of us. And so, in the end, we would reduce human competition to — what, video games?
A science fiction writer could have a field day. Any worker displaced by machine will say it’s all too real.
The true humanist looks at what happened in the wake of Joyce’s admitted mistake and Galarraga’s graceful acceptance of it and says there is the best solution you can ever hope for.
Joyce will be haunted by his mistake for the rest of his life and he knows it, yet the very next day he was back in the arena. Galarraga, with his empathy, won’t get his perfect game, but is likely to be remembered equally, if not more so, than the 20 pitchers who did.
“Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes,” Otter says. “You f***ed up; you trusted us.”
The point being: We all make mistakes; we all occasionally go against our better judgment. The consequences are relative. On one hand, you can bust a pitcher’s perfect game. On another, you can bust an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
The way you respond is also of great import. You can fess right up and make immediate amends, as Joyce did, or you can bumble around British Petroleum-style while millions of gallons of crude pour daily into the ocean.
In the wake of Joyce’s mistake, a predictable cry went up for expanded replay review in baseball and a reverse of the call. Major League Baseball did right in brushing aside the latter pitch. Reversing the call would set bad precedent, plain and simple.
Hopefully, MLB will also resist the urge to expand replay review beyond home run calls. Does replay weed out human error? Of course it does, but it also sucks the life out of human endeavor, which by definition makes it a little less than human.
And that’s what matters most. We could put all our swell technology to use and eliminate all human error from our games, which by definition ultimately means eliminating human presence entirely because there is a little Flounder in all of us. And so, in the end, we would reduce human competition to — what, video games?
A science fiction writer could have a field day. Any worker displaced by machine will say it’s all too real.
The true humanist looks at what happened in the wake of Joyce’s admitted mistake and Galarraga’s graceful acceptance of it and says there is the best solution you can ever hope for.
Joyce will be haunted by his mistake for the rest of his life and he knows it, yet the very next day he was back in the arena. Galarraga, with his empathy, won’t get his perfect game, but is likely to be remembered equally, if not more so, than the 20 pitchers who did.
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