Slate Articles

The Dreaded C-Word

Stefan Fatsis — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:33:19 GMT

A person’s head collides with an object. Unprepared for the impact, the head jerks in a violent whiplash motion. The person collapses, rolling on the ground and holding his head, before rising slowly and unsteadily. Eyewitnesses testify that the person was confused or disoriented.

“By definition, that’s a concussion,” says Dr. Daniel P. Perl, a professor of pathology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., the American military’s medical school. “A concussion is a transient loss of neurologic function following a blow to the head. Typically it can be confusion, memory loss or loss of consciousness.”

That’s what happened to soccer star Abby Wambach last month when she was hit in the face by a speeding ball, and it’s what happened Monday when Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper ran face-first at full speed into the outfield wall at Dodger Stadium. “Initially, it was like he was confused,” teammate Denard Span said. “I don’t think he realized he was on the ground.”

Wambach’s and Harper’s brains rattled inside their skulls and they were out of it. The extent of their injuries would be determined during treatment. But they had concussions. And neither they nor their teams—nor the reporters who cover them and their teams—would say it.

Here’s where years of medical studies and media coverage and treatment protocols for head trauma in sports have finally led: a place where saying the word concussion is perceived as worse than the injury itself. Concussion is becoming to sports what it is to Monty Python’s Knights Who Say Ni. Just saying the word makes people cover their ears in pain and horror.

The Harper incident is a neat encapsulation of everything dumb and wrong about how concussions are discussed inside sports. The day after his Wile E. Coyote moment, Harper revealed how poorly educated athletes can be about concussions. “I feel a little carsick, I guess you could say, like the feeling of that,” the 20-year-old told reporters. “I don’t have a concussion or anything like that, which is very pleasant to hear.”

That’s a clown answer, bro.

Harper apparently didn’t understand, or wasn’t told, that nausea is a checklist symptom for a concussion. He might as well have said that his arm was broken but that he was relieved that he didn’t have a broken arm.

For three days, the Washington Post dutifully recorded and uncritically printed the remarks of Harper; his manager, Davey Johnson; his agent, Scott Boras (who was named along with Nationals officials as the source of the news that Harper didn’t have a concussion); and the team’s athletic trainer, Lee Kuntz, none of whom are brain trauma specialists. The paper initially erred on which post-injury neurological test had been administered to Harper, and it failed to tell readers that the tests it cited aren’t always determinative of whether someone has suffered a concussion. On Wednesday, it reported that Harper “felt nauseous all day Tuesday” but didn’t note that nausea is a concussion symptom. The next day it allowed Kuntz, the trainer, to imply that Harper’s nausea was just hunger, and to compare it to a cab ride on a Los Angeles freeway.

Then there was this doozy from the 70-year-old Johnson, which sailed like a Stephen Strasburg fastball past the Post’s reporter and editors: “He got hit on the chin. Nobody gets a concussion from getting hit on the chin. You might get knocked out. You don’t usually get a concussion from that. He’s got a few aches and pains, but he’s young. He’ll probably be alright today.” The ignorance and flippancy in those few sentences is breathtaking. Yes, one can indeed be concussed by a blow to the chin because a blow to the chin can rattle the head, causing the brain to bang inside the skull.

So what’s everyone’s motivation here? A cynic might say that the Nationals’ main concern is to keep Harper in the lineup. He also might say that the main concern of Harper’s agent, Boras, is to make sure that the brash, aggressive, fearless, and gifted Harper isn’t tagged as a concussion risk. Harper’s motivation is to play, regardless of injury and pain. With youthful bravado, he defended the collision. “I will keep playing this game hard for the rest of my life even if it kills me! Ill [sic] never stop!” Harper tweeted. (Post columnist Thomas Boswell, the paper’s only rational voice on the matter, noted that Harper didn’t get concussed because he was playing hard. Rather, he “did everything wrong” on the play that left him bruised and bloodied.)

All of that indicates an apparent fear of having concussion attached to Harper’s name. Even without anyone invoking the word, Harper was required to be evaluated because, per Major League Baseball rules, he was “in a collision with a player, umpire, or fixed object.” The Nationals said that on Monday night and on Tuesday, Harper was given the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 2, or SCAT2, test, a physical and cognitive exam, and that the results indicated that he had not suffered a concussion.

But the SCAT2, like other concussion tests, is imperfect as a diagnostic tool. The test itself warns that “[s]coring data from the SCAT2 ... should not be used as a stand alone method to diagnose concussion, measure recovery, or make decisions about an athlete’s readiness to return to competition after concussion.” A study presented last year at the 4th International Consensus Conference on Concussion in Sport in Zurich, Switzerland, concluded: “Recommending the use of the SCAT2 as a standard of care to diagnose a concussion or to ascertain recovery from one may be premature at this time.”

Part of the problem is that concussion treatment is as much art as science. Protocols like those instituted in baseball and other sports help ensure attention and diagnosis. But they also can offer a false sense of finality. “You have to make a judgment on something,” Dr. Perl says. “But the concept that this is the test, if you pass the test your brain’s OK and there’s no more risk in going back on the playing field, I question the scientific basis for that kind of criteria.”

Giving the Nationals the benefit of the doubt, it’s possible that Harper’s scores on the test were low enough that his injury did not indicate a concussion. Plus, he was examined by Nationals and Dodgers medical staff. An MLB official told me that the sport’s medical director, Gary Green, a professor at UCLA’s medical school, reviewed Harper’s case and that Harper was cleared to return to play. (He pinch hit Wednesday in Los Angeles and hit a mammoth home run Thursday in San Diego.)

In 2011, Major League Baseball adopted a policy that includes a seven-day disabled list for players diagnosed with concussions. But the seven-day DL is not mandatory for players who get whacked in the head and show concussion symptoms—St. Louis Cardinals third baseman David Freese was beaned in 2011 and returned to play five days later.

There’s nothing wrong with that—a disabled list is less a medical ward than an administrative process that gives teams the option of replacing a player temporarily. And it would be unfair to say that baseball has stigmatized the treatment of concussions; its protocol appears logical and its implementation consistent. According to Major League Baseball, 22 players have been placed on the concussion DL since the policy was implemented. Boston Red Sox catcher David Ross was struck in the mask by two foul balls in a game Saturday and was DL’ed the next day. His teammate, shortstop Stephen Drew, who missed most of spring training after he was hit in the head by a pitch, went on the concussion DL and has now returned to everyday play. Other players, such as Justin Morneau and Jason Bay, were treated with great caution after concussions that derailed their careers.

The problem is how the injury is discussed. For every sympathetic story about Morneau or Sidney Crosby in hockey or Pablo Mastroeni in soccer, there are cases like Harper’s. The vast majority of the coverage of his injury has centered on the player’s style: Is he too reckless? Should he be reined in? Will he be the next Pete Reiser? Among major sports media, only Deadspin quickly questioned the handling of Harper’s injury.

The Nationals aren’t alone in running from the C-word. The National Hockey League had one of the weirdest cases of concussion semantics last month when Joffrey Lupul of the Toronto Maple Leafs said he had a concussion after getting plastered into the boards but the team said he didn’t. This went on for more than a week—with Leafs coach Randy Carlyle saying concussion was “a bad word”—before the team finally admitted that its player did have a concussion. Similarly, it took a week and a half for the National Women’s Soccer League to concede that Wambach was concussed.

Admitting to a concussion doesn’t make a player damaged goods (though the accumulation of them might), nor does it mean she will get dementia (though, again, she might). But every time a team dances around the word, it only makes the public perception of the injury worse. “Why they just don’t take this head-on is beyond me,” says Dustin Fink, an athletic trainer in Illinois who writes a blog about sports concussions. “It’s a concussion, a brain injury, and if handled correctly it’s no more trouble than a broken bone or strained ligament for the vast majority of those with the injury.”

So instead of declaring, Oz-like, that Harper was fine, what if the Nationals had said this: “By definition, Bryce Harper sustained a concussion. But his scores on a physical and cognitive test were very encouraging. Team, MLB, and independent medical professionals continue to monitor his condition. Concussions are complicated. It is possible for athletes to become asymptomatic quickly and be cleared medically to return to play. That’s our hope with Bryce.”

Joking and misleading the public about an athlete’s head injury only makes teams and leagues look backward and uninformed. It also sends the wrong message to fans. Staying in a game after being knocked silly, as Wambach did, and running into scoreboards, as Harper did, isn’t about toughness and determination. It’s about physics and physiology. Even the great Bryce Harper’s brain will rattle around inside his skull when he runs straight into a wall.

An Interview with Sir Alex Ferguson

Philippe Auclair — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:03:18 GMT

Earlier this week, Sir Alex Ferguson announced he’s retiring after 27 years as manager of the world’s most-famous club, Manchester United. In March 2012, Ferguson sat for a wide-ranging interview with Philippe Auclair for Issue Four of the Blizzard—the Football Quarterly. That interview is reprinted in full below. Slate recommends investing in a subscription to the Blizzard—a pay-what-you-like hard copy subscription also entitles you to free digital downloads of each issue. You can also pre-order Issue Nine, which will be released on June 3.

“How do you interview Alex Ferguson?” That was the question I’d been asking myself over and over since, more than a year after I’d submitted a hopeful request to the Manchester United press office, I’d been informed that I should present myself at the Carrington training ground on a given Friday—barely after dawn, it seemed. Sir Alex is an early bird, one of those napoleons for whom a six-hour stretch in bed is a lie-in. He’d more or less given up on one-to-ones by then. His weekly press briefings, uttered in a Scottish drawl that was barely audible from the back of the press room, could send occasional visitors into a funk. If to sit down with him was a privilege, of course, to prepare for the occasion was an ordeal. Memo to self: Ask questions that haven’t been put to him a thousand times before. Make sure you remember Aberdeen’s Cup-Winners’ Cup-winning starting XI. Pick a cab driver who won’t take you to City’s training ground instead. When it starts, don’t sit there, gasping like yesterday’s catch on the fishmonger’s slab. Don’t mess it up, for goodness’ sake.

Not one player of Ferguson’s squad had yet parked his car in front of the entrance to the Carrington complex when Manchester United’s then-press officer Diana Law took me to the room where the interview would take place. The coffee I’d been given tasted like an infusion of ashes; mine, probably. Then He walked in, all smiles, fresh from his morning’s work-out in the club gym, bursting with energy and, yes, geniality. Perhaps his eye had caught the bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin 1er cru I’d brought along as a peace offering on the advice of my France Football colleague Marc Beaugé, a United fan who’d made it his Christmas custom to send a bottle of the best to the great man. Or perhaps it was the penchant he didn’t hide towards the Gallic half of the Auld Alliance, the land of Burgundy wine but also of Eric Cantona. Or perhaps Alex Ferguson just loves talking about football. In any case, the man who spoke to me for close to an hour, not checking the face of his watch once, couldn’t have been more amenable, more charming and more willing to provide copy to his questioner.

Your autobiography was entitled Managing My Life—but didn’t quite explain how you did it—how you managed to live with the pressure of being the manager of the most famous club in the world. ... How do you do it?

Possibly, the fact that I’ve been here for [so long] has helped. When I first came, the club was not as big as it is now, so, therefore, I’ve integrated many things over the years. I seem to be able to cope because of everything that’s brought me to this point—to the point it becomes normal.

Do you have to behave like people in a submarine who close ballast after ballast ... [he laughs] ... and compartmentalise their lives, making sure you can switch off from one area to move to the next?

What I do—the reason why I have survived—is that I’m able to get to that state of ... vacuum, where I can dismiss everything. You understand? What people say to me becomes peripheral, because I believe I, and everyone else, need “thinking time,” that escapism which enables you to think. If you don’t have that time to think, the whole day will catch up with you, so ... take today. I was here at five to seven, I spent 45 minutes in the gymnasium, then I started my meetings with my staff with a clear mind, football-wise. Normally, I’d be with my staff right now, but we have a free day today—the players have a day off. So I’ll go through all my non-football meetings this morning, then concentrate on the football. I have always done that— evacuate things, then concentrate on the football. Then comes the football issues. They can be quite diverse: youth football, reserve football, to the first team, and there’s always some issues to take care of, in every department. I have hands-on control over all that. Now, what I’ve found over the years, there is the delegation part, which is vital to me now, because [of my] age, I can’t go careering around doing all things, you know. I have a very, very good staff who get on with their jobs, and all I need to do is be an overseer of that, to make sure it is working properly. But, going back to that “release,” the mental side is so important, because, by thinking, by getting time to think, you’re able to be alone ... sometimes, as a manager, you are alone, and I’m quite happy being alone, by myself, so I have time to think. There are some times I’m in my office in the afternoon, I’ve done all my work, I’m looking out the window—and I’m thinking, and it’s great to think. And no-one goes through that door for an hour, because they think I’m busy! You know what I mean? [laughs] It’s a strange situation sometimes ...

Can you ever live in the present? Can you actually take the time to savour what is happening in front of you on the pitch?

Erm ... [long pause] ... I think it’s more difficult. The media make it more difficult. I don’t think the media are actually that interested in what happens in a game of football. I think they’re more interested in what’s happened after the match, what the coach’s opinion is of this defeat, or this victory, the profile of the stars, rather than the semantics of the football match itself. I find it a wee bit disappointing, because, when you get down and talk about the actual game, sometimes, it’s far more interesting ... the visiting manager will pop in my office and have a drink, and we can talk about the game—what happened in the match—in a rational, controlled way, which is fantastic. You don’t get that a lot, which is a disappointment, because it is far better to discuss what happened during the game than [what happened] after it.

When you were playing with Rangers, did you already know you wanted to be a manager? At what point did you discover your vocation?

The minute I became a full-time professional footballer, I was going to become a manager. I’d served my apprenticeship as a toolmaker in a typewriter factory. When I completed my apprenticeship, at the age of 21, I worked one year as a tradesman, and the opportunity to go for football full-time came then. At 22 years of age, I made up my mind that I was going to go completely for it. That meant that, the year after I became a professional footballer, I went for a B-Licence at coaching, and, at 24, I got my full badge. So, every year thereafter, until I became a manager, I went to coaching seminars—every summer.

Were you already playing like a future manager, picking up tips about tactics and so on when you were playing?

Yes, I was doing a bit of that! When I got older, some former players recalled that I was always up at the blackboard, discussing tactics, you know. And they thought it was very boring of course ... “what a bloody nuisance” and so on [laughs]. ... I did this because I took a deep interest in it, because I knew this was my career now, I wanted to stay in it. I saw things and thought to myself, “I would have done this, I wouldn’t have done that,” and, “I hope I get a chance. In the same situation, would I be making the same mistakes, would I go a certain way in terms of training, preparation ...?” Take an example. People talk about diet. I became a manager at 32, in a small team, East Stirling. There were eight players when I first went—and no goalkeeper. So I took on free transfers, players out of contract to build up a squad of 13-14 players. After a few weeks, we were doing very well, and we were playing a local derby against Falkirk, of which I’d been player-coach before that ... so I went to the board and said, “I want to take the team for lunch this Saturday.” And they said [horrified voice], “Oh no, we can’t afford that.” I said, “I’ll pay for it.” It came to £24; that was in 1974. I went up to the hotel on the Friday morning and told them what I wanted—a lemon sole, toast and honey. And they looked at me as if I’d holes in my head. “What? No potatoes, no soup?” I said, “Nothing. Lemon sole, grilled, no butter, maybe a little bit of oil, honey, toast, tea, and water.” The players arrived, sat down ... what the fuck’s this? [laughs] I said, “Just eat it. You’ve probably had a fried breakfast this morning anyway, so eat it. I did that as a player. That’s all it took. Years later, the players would have porridge oats the day before the run, then pasta came into it, carbohydrates, protein, all these things, but I was thinking about these things way back in 1974. My ideas about preparation of the players were already in place. I did the same at Aberdeen. They used to have fillet steak before the game. A fillet steak takes two hours to digest—I put a stop to that. They didn’t like it, they missed their steak—who doesn’t like a steak? But this is the kind of thought process I had to have. In a sense, I’ve been a manager since I was 24 years old.

Did you already have your ideas in place regarding the way you wanted your future teams to play? Have these ideas changed over the years?

I always believed in possession of the ball, with every team I’ve had. Passing the ball, possession. That’s what we worked on when I was at East Stirling. All the time. They were limited players, to be honest, but they tried really hard. They were only part-time players; I’d only have them three nights a week. We played Tranmere in a preseason friendly. Ron Yeats was the manager. They beat us 2-0. Steve Coppell was their centre-forward at the time—just before he went to Manchester United. And Ron told me after the game, “I’ll give you a tip: You play far too much football.” And I said, “I’m quite happy if that’s a crime.” Playing too much football! But I’ve always believed in possession of the ball. I say to my players: Human nature tells you that when you have something in your possession, the other person wants it. So the patience runs out, they lose control. One of those 10 players is going to try and get that ball, so therefore, you’re playing against nine players. That was my theory, as a young manager. ... I’ve changed a bit since then, of course.

Are these changes related to the need to accommodate exceptional talents like a Cantona, a Giggs, a Ronaldo or a Rooney?

No. Although I’ve always strongly believed in possession, because of my development as a coach, and because I’ve come to a club which can embrace players of that type—which has always had them: Think of Bobby Charlton, think of George Best—then you learn that you’ve got to let people express themselves. That is development [for a coach]. That was the same at Aberdeen, where I had very, very talented players like Peter Weir and Gordon Strachan. A player like Giggs is a godsend for a manager. He got into the first team when he was 16 years of age, and [for 22 years] he’s played for that same team! It takes a lot to do that; it takes an exceptional player to do that. And yes, from time to time, his form has fluctuated, but, when you put it in perspective ... it’s sensational. We’ve always had to encourage that part of expression. There’s no way Eric Cantona would have been a great player if we hadn’t allowed him to express himself, to be Eric Cantona. I think we were a perfect club for him, a club where he was able to stick his chest out and say, “I’m the man here, I’m the king here.” Because he had this aura, this presence, this belief in himself ...

And you like that in a player ...

Well, yes! If you’ve got that great belief—do it! It was the same with Ronaldo. Don’t discourage him at any time to beat men, because he’s the player you’re looking for. When we were building the ’99 team, I wanted Dwight Yorke, because he was the only player in England that I could see who could beat his man in the last third as a centre-forward. He could turn a man and beat him. There’s always a balance of thoughts and a balance of instruction through all teams. To some players, you say: Keep your game simple, because they’re better when they’re uncomplicated. And there are players who can take the game to a different level, a level which I can’t see myself, because I do not have their vision, and they see things that I, as a coach, don’t see. Ronaldo, Scholes, Cantona, Giggs. ... They have that exceptional vision of the game. Giggs has this gift of pure balance ... you know, he never earns penalty kicks! Do you know why? Because he never goes down. He stumbles, and carries on; because when he gets hit, his balance is so good that he stumbles through. Unbelievable! The key is also to create teams who trusted each other, are committed to each other. The best teams are always the ones which have a good bond with each other, and can understand when a player is having a bad time, and will support each other.

Was that the key thing at Aberdeen, a team with which you may have had your greatest achievements, since nobody ever thought you could challenge the Old Firm—and win in Europe?

Well, I would say that most people who know me would say that, yes, that was my greatest achievement. But, of course, the profile of this club, the expectations have elevated me away from Aberdeen, which is unfortunate, maybe, because it was a fantastic period, it was a fantastic group of players. I was very fortunate to be able to build them up together. As you know, when a small club like Aberdeen becomes successful, the players usually fly away, vanish overnight. But I managed to keep them for four to five years, you know? It wasn’t until 1984 that [Gordon] Strachan, [Mark] McGhee and Doug Rougvie left ... I should have done better with them. At the end of the day, it was a tight ship. The club was always in the black. I remember the chairman saying, “This club’s never been in the red, and will never be, as long as I’m alive.” When Mark and Doug wanted more than the other ones, we would have needed to take that big step, into the big time, when you start to pay players unrealistic terms—for Aberdeen, not for other clubs. That’s why they left. Maybe I should have done it; we may just have kept them, we may have got to the final of European Cup the next year ... because we got to the quarter-finals against [IFK] Gothenburg, and we threw it away, lost on an away-goal scored at the last minute. ... And Gothenburg went to Barcelona and were very unlucky; Barcelona played the final against [Steaua] Bucharest. And I think we were good enough to be in the final. The great magician’s trick was to keep that team together as long as we did.

Success can only be built on continuity ...

Yes, yes, absolutely. It’s a great danger to close your eyes to the future. I’ve always tried to make sure that the rebuilding process is an evolution. So we’ve bought young players over the last year. Some of them have done well, some have not asserted themselves—yet.

These players now come from all over the world, whereas the “nucleus” of your earlier teams was British. Is this a reflection of a drop in the level of young English and Scottish players, or is it simply the effect of football’s globalisation?

You can’t have a team composed of players who were all born within half an hour of Old Trafford. I think it’s impossible to build a team successful in Europe with our local boys. Yes, Neville, Butt, Scholes and Giggs all came through together, but that’s exceptional, that happens maybe once in a lifetime. So we had to stretch the net to young European players ... we’ve done that simply because we want to make sure Manchester United still produces young players, brings young players through.

One of your problems is that you’re expected to win everything, every year. Very few people take a long-term view—and say you’re finished if you have a season when you don’t have that level of success. Does that hurt?

I don’t read the papers. If I need to know anything, Di [the press officer] tells me everything, if there’s anything silly ... well, of course, that happens almost every day! ... anything out of the ordinary which I need to know, and need to react to.

It took you time to establish yourself here, but the board stuck by you ...

Absolutely.

Do you think that, in the football of today, a young Alex Ferguson would be able to have the career that you’ve had?

It’s become more difficult. The expectation level is huge now, for everyone ... it’s ... unrealistic. It’s very difficult to think you can win trophies every year. Someone said to me that all the greatest teams ever have a timespan of seven years. And then they can’t do it again. But we keep contesting the title every year. I think that’s phenomenal. I think there’s a lot of credit there. Of course, in a bad season, I’m finished, I’m done, I’m an old man, I’ve had my heart problems, all this, you know. So ... the next year I’ll be a genius! So you have to balance things, find a space in between. Alex Ferguson has to assess himself properly, which I always do, be realistic.

This interview was excerpted from Issue Four of the Blizzard—the Football Quarterly. Slate recommends investing in a subscription to the Blizzard—a pay-what-you-like hard copy subscription also entitles you to free digital downloads of each issue. You can also pre-order Issue Nine, which will be released on June 3.

Fast, Expensive, and Out of Control

Seth Stevenson — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:25:40 GMT

On the America’s Cup website, there is a description of the AC72, the new class of boat that’s being used in this summer’s races. The AC72’s design “challenges the very best sailors in the world, pushing them to their limits … and beyond,” reads the breathless copy. It’s unfortunate phrasing, given the death today of sailor Andrew Simpson. Simpson, who won a sailing gold medal for Britain in the 2008 Olympics, drowned after the AC72 he was training on capsized in San Francisco Bay. The tragedy is sure to raise questions about the catamaran’s design, and whether it’s simply too dangerous for competition.

“These are by far the most extreme America's Cup boats we've ever seen,” says Justin Chisolm, editor of Sail Racing Magazine. I spoke to Chisolm this evening, as details of the incident involving the Artemis team’s boat were still emerging. It’s not clear if there was a structural failure that caused the crash (Chisolm thought he spotted a break in one of the hulls, though that could have occurred after the boat had already flipped) or if the boat simply lost control at high speed. Either way, a disaster like this was not entirely unexpected.

Back in October, the AC72 belonging to Larry Ellison’s Oracle team flipped while training in the same waters.

A Wired story about that incident is titled “The Boat That Could Sink the America’s Cup.” The concern at that point was less about crew safety than about the potential expense and delays involved (both dangers to running a smooth Cup event) if the AC72, a design pushed by the billionaire Ellison, turned out to be irredeemably capsize-prone. One of the sailors quoted in that story was the CEO and tactician of the Swedish Artemis team, who predicted that another crash was all but certain. “It will be a miracle if we get through the summer without it happening to somebody,” he told Wired.

“We’ve always known that these are cutting edge designs,” says Chisolm, “and the teams are still learning how to tame these boats.” The AC72 is a 72-foot long catamaran—two parallel hulls—with a sail that is rigid instead of soft. It demands intense physical exertion, athleticism, and choreography from its crew of 11. When everything’s humming, the boats can zip along at speeds of up to about 45 mph. Some of the America’s Cup teams even purposefully coax the AC72 to hydrofoil, lifting both hulls a few meters out of the water up into the air (though Artemis was not attempting that maneuver today). “I've heard from team New Zealand that they feel they're on a knife's edge every time out,” Chisolm tells me. “The wing sail on the AC72 is bigger than a wing on a jumbo airliner—it generates incredible amounts of power. That needs to be controlled, which is not always easy in San Francisco with its high winds and tough currents.”

Whenever a cat flips—and especially a massive cat like this—there’s the danger that a sailor might be trapped beneath the overturned boat. That appears to be what happened here. Early reports suggested that Simpson was pinned underwater for 10 minutes or so.

“He was a lovely guy,” says Chisolm of the 36-year-old Simpson. “He came out to help Iain Percy [the sailing director of Artemis], his friend who he’d medaled with in the Olympics. Andrew was in the ‘afterguard’—the thinking part of the crew, working on tactics and weather analysis and such.”

Chisolm says sailing websites and social media pages called for the AC72 to be retired from competition after the Oracle crash in the fall. Those calls will no doubt be renewed now. (Some might suggest that the smaller, 45-foot version of the boat would be a less aggressive choice, though an AC45 was crashed by the Oracle team in San Francisco Bay in June 2011.)

I’m not sure the average spectator can tell the difference between a sailboat race in which the two boats are at all times on the edge of catastrophe and one in which they’re both just really fast. The rich people operating these teams may have fetishes for expensive designs, but I simply want to see expert sailors squaring off against each other, using identical equipment, such that skill and not material provides the winning margin. If I ran the Cup, I'd make an announcement tomorrow: Let's ditch the AC72s and go old school—we can race comparatively pokey 12-meter monohulls with soft sails, like the Cup used to use. It's not about the boats, it's about the people in them.

After Dale Earnhardt died while racing in the 2001 Daytona 500, NASCAR made safety changes. After a luge athlete was killed while training in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the course was shortened to slow competitors’ speeds.* But it’s not clear yet how the America’s Cup will respond. “It’s too late,” Chisolm believes. “There’s no time to change it now. The AC72s will be used in the Cup.”

The competition officially begins on July 4.

Correction, May 20, 2014: This article originally misstated the date of the Vancouver Olympics. They were in 2010, not 2012. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

See If I Care!

Josh Levin — Fri, 03 May 2013 21:20:37 GMT

When Jason Collins came out on Monday, a chorus of politicians, journalists, and sports fans praised the NBA player for his courage and celebrated him for making history. It’s been especially heartening to see that tolerance has outstripped bigotry even in straighter-than-thou pro locker rooms. When Miami Dolphins wide receiver Mike Wallace noted his disbelief that “guys wanna mess with other guys,” Kobe Bryant (“don’t suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others”), LeBron James (“I think it’s a strong thing to do”), and Steve Nash (“maximum respect”) drowned out his stupidity. As Lakers forward Metta World Peace told a group of reporters, “You should be free to act and do as you want to do, as long as it’s not violent. I came here in a Cookie Monster shirt because I wanted to.” Very well said, Metta.

The overwhelming support that Collins has received in the NBA and elsewhere reveals that homophobia is on the wane in the United States. In this age of less-overt prejudice, anti-gay bias has taken a peculiar new form. Those who don't like the celebrations of Collins’ bravery have countered with aggressive, prideful lack of interest. They don't say, "I hate this." Rather, they really want us to know how much they really don’t care.

“Folks, I grew up in a family where people's sexual orientation preferences, whatever, weren't even discussed,” said Rush Limbaugh. “Why does it have to be rammed down our throats, figuratively speaking? Why does this have to be thrust at us?” WFAN’s Mike Francesa agreed, telling his radio audience, “It means less than nothing to me that there is a gay player now out in the NBA. … I have the story here and I'm not compelled to run and talk about it or read it. I really don't care.” And sportscaster Tim Brando tweeted, “I really don't care and frankly why should anyone else. The HERO worship is out of bounds. I’m glad he is happy.” Brando continued: “I'm hearing Collins is a HERO because he made history! Ok as a Sports Commentator if I make a SEX tape is that history? The word matters ok.” (As the world awaits a historic Tim Brando sex tape, let’s note that this stickler for appropriate usage recently referred to Hootie & the Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker as a hero.)

In an interview with Fox Sports Radio, Atlanta Falcons cornerback Asante Samuel expanded on this point, explaining that he wasn’t interested in any athlete’s sexual orientation:

“Straight people … are not announcing they’re straight, so why everybody have to announce their sexuality or whatever? You know, what they prefer. So, that’s just how I see it. So, you know, that’s just my opinion on things. … All respect, you know, I have nothing but respect for the … decisions they make and whatever, but you know, you don’t have to … show it and flaunt it like that. You know what I’m saying? We got kids out here, too.”

What Limbaugh, Francesa, Brando, and Samuel are asking for is a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for athletes. Before Jason Collins raised his hand, that was effectively the rule in major pro sports. Now that DADT is history in the U.S. military, the locker room is one of the few places left where the closet door is still dead-bolted shut.

That’s why the “I don’t care” crowd is so foolish, and the “I don’t care” message is so dangerous. Gay athletes have always been stigmatized, forced to live in fear that they’d be ostracized by their teammates or outed on someone else’s terms. As Nathaniel Frank explained in Slate earlier this week, “The closet has harsh consequences to mental well-being and to the cohesion and integrity of a group, both because of the emotional repression it causes LGBT people and the disregard for honesty that it imposes.” The idea that coming out of the closet means “flaunting” your sexuality is, in most circles, a relic of a less tolerant time. But until Collins’ public declaration, the sports world remained trapped in that bigoted past. When someone like Francesa or Samuel says he just doesn’t want to hear it, he’s reinforcing the attitudes that led NBA player John Amaechi to hide his true self until he retired, that had rugby star Gareth Thomas contemplating suicide, and that prevent lots of gay men from trying sports in the first place.

What of Asante Samuel’s assertion that Collins needs to pipe down because straight athletes aren’t announcing that they’re straight? Given that Samuel has played in the NFL since 2003, I assume he’s noticed the hot-panted cheerleaders shaking it on the sidelines every Sunday. Maybe he heard about Brent Musburger ogling Katherine Webb in the stands, and cooing that “quarterbacks get all the good-looking women.” He’s probably noticed the million or so times when a TV camera has focused on a player’s wife—a woman sitting in the stands, showing off her heterosexual relationship with the whole world watching. And I’m also guessing he’s looked up at the stadium Kiss Cam, which encourages straight couples to smooch while wringing gay-panicky yuks out of the possibility that presumably straight football players might lock lips.

If Jason Collins chooses to “flaunt” his sexuality, then, the 12-year NBA veteran won’t exactly turn the sports world gay. What Collins has done is make it a little safer for the next man to come out. His courageous act brings us closer to making Rush Limbaugh’s dream come true: Hopefully, in a generation, gay athletes will be so commonplace that a player’s sexual orientation doesn’t warrant any attention. And in the meantime, as John Aravosis points out, if Asante Samuel wants to practice what he preaches, he shouldn’t flaunt his sexual preference by appearing in magazine spreads alongside his beautiful wife. Come on, Asante—there are children present.

Aw, Nuts

T.D. Thornton — Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Racehorse owners often give their thoroughbreds funny or odd names. In this year’s Kentucky Derby, which will be held Saturday, the competitors include Itsmyluckyday, Charming Kitten, and Palace Malice. But owners can’t name their horses just anything. In 2007, Sports Nut explained the rules against obscene names.

Earlier this year, a man named Andy Hillis decided to christen his racehorse Nutzapper. A Tonight Show guest had used the term when referring, jokingly, to a male contraceptive; since his horse had been gelded, Hillis thought he had a good fit. But naming a Thoroughbred isn't as simple as coming up with a good double-entendre. The Jockey Club, the 103-year-old organization that holds the reins to the Sport of Kings in North America, has to sign off on every moniker. Hillis explained to the registry poobahs that as a young boy in Canada, he loved to zap walnuts in boiling oil and sprinkle them on salads. Satisfied that the name had a tasty, not tasteless, origin, the Jockey Club approved Nutzapper. Hillis, unable to contain his glee, boasted about the name to a Daily Racing Form reporter. "I've never even been to Canada," he said. "I just made the whole thing up on the spot."

Timing is everything when it comes to a good joke, and Hillis picked a bad moment to have a laugh at the expense of racing's powerful ruling body. Three weeks earlier, the Jockey Club had emerged victorious in a long, drawn-out federal court case over freedom of speech rights and racehorse names. After Hillis crowed to the Daily Racing Form, the name was barred within 48 hours. The odds are now stacked mightily against a horse named Nutzapper ever running in the Kentucky Derby.

What is the Jockey Club, and who put it in charge of naming horses? First off, it is neither a club nor comprised of jockeys. In addition to overseeing a myriad of statistical resources and underwriting an impressive amount of equine research, its chief function is as the keeper of the American Stud Book. If you want to race or breed a Thoroughbred, the Jockey Club has the final say, including what you are allowed to call your horse.

Roughly 60,000 Thoroughbred name requests are submitted every year, and registrar Rick Bailey must sign off on each one. Roughly one-third of the requests are rejected, primarily because they match existing names. In an effort to free up more names, the Jockey Club now "recycles" them after 10 years, so it is possible for horses from different eras to share the same name. There is a mind-blowing litany of other rules and regulations, but in general, no horse can have a name longer than 18 characters, a name that breaches a copyright or has obvious commercial significance, or the name of a "notorious" person. Emphatically forbidden are "names that are suggestive or have a vulgar or obscene meaning; names considered in poor taste; or names that may be offensive to religious, political or ethnic groups."

Had Hillis so chosen, he might have challenged the anti-Nutzapper ruling by pointing out numerous examples of lewd names that have slipped through. Despite vigilant efforts—prospective names are screened by a team of censors, matched up against urban slang dictionaries, and run through phonetics software to ensure they don't sound different than they look—the sport's officials sometimes get caught off guard.

Aside from the ill-fated Nutzapper, the Jockey Club's database reveals 131 horses whose names begin with the prefix Nut. Of course, you'd have to be Beavis or Butt-Head to find the vast majority of them titillating. But shouldn't somebody have questioned the precedent-setting Nut Buster way back in 1942? Similarly, Pussy Galore probably should have raised a few eyebrows in 1965. The filly never won a race, but one assumes she was a big hit with the stallions.

You want explicit commands? How about Blow Me (1945), Get It On (both 1971 and 1986), On Your Knees (1977 and 2005), Spank It (1985), or 1963's Go Down, whose sire, of course, was Service. Like 'em young? Embarrassingly enough, Jail Bait (1947 and 1983), Barely Legal (1982 and 1989), and Date More Minors (1998) all made it into the staid registry.

If a clever play on words is your thing, Cunning Stunt (1969) is a decent one. Lagnaf (1978) is a thinly veiled acronym for "let's all get naked and … ." The names Hardawn (1937) and Wrecked Em (1983) have to be said out loud to elicit the desired potty-mouth effect.

The list goes on: Golden Shower (1955), Cherry Pop (1961 and 1978), Cum Rocket (1969), Ménage Á Trois (1974), She's Easy (1978), Adultress (1979), Strip Teaser (1980), Rhythm Method (1982), Bodacious Tatas (1985), Tit'n Your Girdle (1988), Kinky Lingerie (1991), Hard Like a Rock (1995), Sexual Harassment (1997), and X Rated Fantasy (1999). (You can search for risqué racehorse names yourself through the Jockey Club's online database of current names. If you want a true historical perspective, you'll need to shell out $325 for the complete American Produce Records.)

Bailey, the registrar, admits that some questionable names might have slipped through. "There are over 460,000 active Thoroughbred names," he told me. "If you do anything on a scale of 60,000 a year, you'll find a mistake."

The above examples are fine fodder for lampooning an industry that takes itself too seriously. Add a dash of First Amendment tension to the mix, though, and the name game get a bit more interesting.

Two years ago, horse breeder Garrett Redmond sought to name his filly Sally Hemings, after the slave who was the reputed mistress of Thomas Jefferson. Redmond, a history buff, asserted that his choice was intended to honor Hemings. Naming a racehorse as a tribute to a person is routine—Redmond once named a horse after his wife. Besides, the horse's lineage was ideal for such a name: The filly's mother is Jefferson's Secret, who had been fathered by stallion Colonial Affair.

The Jockey Club denied the request and sent a letter stipulating that Hemings' written permission would be required to use the name. Redmond wrote back that it would be a difficult task, since Hemings had been dead for 170 years. He cited other examples of racehorses named after deceased persons and queried if the organization had written permission on file for horses that had been named after King Louis XIV and Buddha.

Officials countered with another letter that said Sally Hemings "may be offensive to persons of African descent and other ethnic groups." But that argument is difficult to reconcile in light of far more racially charged names that have been allowed, such as Tar Baby (1944, 1975, and 1985), Uncle Remus (1944 and 1965), Darkie (1950), Uncle Tom (1950), Jungle Bunny (1953), and Blackface Minstrel (1980). The most disturbing example traces to 1911, when the third-place finisher in the Preakness Stakes was registered as The Nigger (although some linguists contend that word has evolved over time and in the early 20^th century was more slang than slur). Yet even until 1941, the word nigger was still considered acceptable by the Jockey Club for use in several Thoroughbred names. In a more enlightened era, Sally Hemings is not.

When I asked Bailey to explain the discrepancy, he argued that "two wrongs don't make a right"—just because the Jockey Club missed an offensive name in the past doesn't mean they should allow one now.

In May 2005, Redmond sued in U.S. district court, alleging that the Jockey Club was restricting his right to free speech. The lawsuit was dismissed, and the appeal dragged on for two years. On Aug. 2, 2007, the 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Redmond on the grounds that the Jockey Club is a private organization and as such, it may restrict free speech so long as it doesn't discriminate against a specific viewpoint.

Jockey Club officials would not discuss the court ruling on the record, but there is a detectable sense of exasperation that Redmond pushed his Sally Hemings crusade so far. No one at the registry could ever recall a lawsuit over a horse name.

Outsiders might view Redmond as an advocate for free speech, unafraid to challenge the establishment. Thus, the name Guts might have been an appropriate replacement for Sally Hemings. Unfortunately, that name is already taken—it's what Andy Hillis renamed Nutzapper. As he mulls further legal action, Redmond did re-register his filly. Her new name: Awaiting Justice.

Coming to Their Senses

Stefan Fatsis — Thu, 02 May 2013 19:04:59 GMT

When American soccer star Abby Wambach was drilled in the head by a ball on April 20, it was obvious she was at risk for a concussion.* For 11 days, though, Wambach and her team, the Western New York Flash, didn’t so much as say the word.

On Wednesday, the National Women’s Soccer League did the right thing. It admitted that Wambach did sustain a concussion in the final minutes of a road game against the Washington Spirit. It conceded that the referee erred in barring medical personnel from coming onto the field to examine Wambach. It admitted that Wambach should have been removed from the game. And it pledged to use the episode to better inform players, coaches, trainers, and fans about the risks of head injuries.

“This is a situation that wasn’t handled as we should have handled it,” Neil Buethe, a spokesman for the U.S. Soccer Federation, which is helping to run the new women’s league, told me. “We admit that. We’re going to refocus to make sure referees, players, coaches, everyone has a better grasp going forward of how to handle concussions.”

A mea culpa from a sports league is a rare thing. The multibillion-dollar pro leagues are too often concerned about image to risk what elsewhere might be called honesty, and small leagues like the NWSL aren’t generally visible enough for anyone to care. But in its own sphere, this new women’s soccer league, with a preponderance of preteen and teenage girls in the stands, can have an outsize voice on a serious matter. According to multiple studies, girls playing the same sport as boys, especially soccer, suffer concussions at higher rates and recover at slower rates.

Put the two together—sizable girl fan base, serious concussion problem among said fan base—and it’s obvious why a women’s league headlined by athletic celebrities like Wambach and Alex Morgan can have an impact on the lives of girls. Organizations like the Women’s Sports Foundation have long emphasized the role-model potential of women jocks, in particular the handful of female athletes who earn mainstream media attention. Girls simply have fewer stars in the sports pantheon to emulate, and those athletes receive less exposure than their male counterparts, as any issue of Sports Illustrated for Kids demonstrates. (When the magazine arrives in our house, my 10-year-old daughter looks for female athletes and then comments on how few there are.)

That’s one reason I was so hard on the women’s league and Wambach, both in an article after the game and a follow-up earlier this week. The other reason is that, with all of the medical and media focus on concussions, it was appalling to see a referee prevent an athletic trainer from examining an athlete who was on the ground clutching her head. Buethe told me that the ref, World Cup and Olympic veteran Kari Seitz, talked to Wambach after the blow to the head and that Wambach said, as athletes will, that she was fine. “We are going to restate to officials the importance of letting medical staff come and make a determination,” Buethe said, adding that Seitz will not be disciplined. “The big goal here obviously is the safety of the players.”

Amen to that. Buethe also said the league would talk to coaches and trainers about the soccer federation’s head-injury guidelines, which the new league follows. That’s important, too, because while Seitz deserves blame, Flash coach Aaran Lines could himself have subbed Wambach out of the game. But the injury happened in the 90th minute of regulation of a 1-1 tie with three minutes of additional time to come. The coach was thinking about winning. The Flash had a better chance to win with any version of Wambach on the field, Lines likely figured, so he let her play on. (He’s not alone, of course. Recall that Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan left his hobbling rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III in a playoff game in January only to see him blow out a knee. This week, Griffin admitted that he should have taken himself out of the game.)

Buethe said, and the women’s league reiterated in a statement, that an internal review by the federation showed that Wambach’s care was handled correctly once she reached the locker room. He said that the Flash’s athletic trainer and a doctor for the home team, the Spirit, examined Wambach before and after she showered and determined that she had symptoms of a concussion. The doctor cleared her for the seven-hour overnight bus ride to Buffalo, N.Y. The team trainer sat with Wambach on the ride.

Once home, Wambach was monitored daily by medical professionals, Buethe said. She continued to show concussion symptoms until that Wednesday, April 24, when her scores on a baseline concussion test matched those from two years ago, when she was tested by the soccer federation.* After that, Wambach was allowed to begin the federation’s return-to-play protocol, which requires a week of gradual increases in training with no symptoms. On Tuesday she was medically cleared to return to game action. Wambach suited up on Wednesday night, playing every minute and scoring a goal in a 2-1 win over New Jersey’s Sky Blue FC.

As part of its review, U.S. Soccer brought in Ruben Echemendia, a neuropsychologist and concussion researcher who works with the U.S. national teams and has consulted with other sports leagues and clubs. Buethe said that Echemendia concluded that the Flash and league did follow proper post-injury protocols.

But Wambach’s care was botched terribly on the field, and the team, player, and coach compounded that with a series of misleading, illogical, and uninformed statements or nonstatements: refusing to say that Wambach had a concussion; asserting that she was symptom-free when she wasn’t; saying that she was kept out of a game last week as a “precaution” when it fact she hadn’t been cleared medically; and, my personal favorite, appearing to blame the National Football League for the very existence of return-to-play guidelines. (“She’ll tell you right now that she’s fine but there are certain procedures [to follow] … and it’s come of late through what’s happened in the NFL,” the Flash’s coach said.)

But good for the league for doing the right thing in explaining what happened, what didn’t, and what should. “This is for us now a case study,” Buethe said. “We’re going to break it down and explain how it should happen going forward. We’re going to use it as a learning experience.”

Externally, the league can try to emphasize to its fans the importance of recognizing and treating concussions. Michael Sokolove’s 2008 book Warrior Girls argues that, when it comes to staying on the field or returning to play after an injury, female athletes can be tougher than male ones: more willing to play through pain, more worried about letting down their teammates. One way to convey the message that it’s possible to be tough and smart and safe all at once is through athletes like Wambach.

Before Wednesday’s game, U.S. women’s national team coach Tom Sermanni called Wambach “a great ambassador for women’s football.” No one can force her to demonstrate that by becoming a spokeswoman for a cause. But on a day when she returned to the field following a scary injury—one that many other female soccer players have suffered themselves— all the reigning world player of the year had to say on Twitter was that she was “So happy about those 3 points!!”—the three points the Flash received in the standings for winning.

Wambach should be happy about a lot more—that her brain wasn’t injured more severely, that she was able to recover quickly—and she should tell her fans why.

Correction, May 2, 2013: This piece originally misstated the dates of Abby Wambach’s head injury and concussion test. They occurred on April 20 and 24 respectively, not March 20 and 24.

The Oldest Curse in Sports

Edward McClelland — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:24:03 GMT

In that wet spring of 1882, Runnymede was the fastest 3-year-old in America. The Kentucky Derby was only in its eighth year and not yet a substantial draw on the American horse-racing circuit. As such, Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., the mustachioed booster who had conceived the race as an equine Mardi Gras that would make Louisville, Ky., the equal of any river city, had to beg the colt’s owners to ship their prize possession west. Runnymede’s owners, the New York meatpacking millionaires the Dwyer brothers, loved to gamble, so they agreed on the condition that they could also ship in their own Manhattan bookmakers. Clark had imported pari-mutuel betting machines from France, just to keep crooked bookies away from his track. But if Clark had to tolerate bookies to get Runnymede, he would tolerate bookies.

On a rainy Derby day, the bookmakers made Runnymede the 4-5 favorite. He ran like a favorite for most of the race, twice escaping from behind running roadblocks of horses, and making up six lengths in the stretch. With 400 yards to go in the mile-and-a-half race, Runnymede took the lead. But behind him, daredevil African-American jockey Babe Hurd—black riders were actually fairly common in the post-bellum South—was weaving his mount, Apollo, between tiring horses. Two hundred yards from the wire, Apollo drew nose-to-nose with Runnymede, then dug through the mud to win by half a body length.

Accounts of the race have the bookies offering Apollo at anywhere from 10-1 to 82-1. He wasn’t considered a contender because he hadn’t started racing until a few months earlier, winning purses in Little Rock, Ark.; Memphis, Tenn.; and New Orleans. So unexpected was a rookie horse’s victory that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote of Apollo, “He was hardly thought of before the race and was given but very scanty attention by the betting ring.”

Apollo and Runnymede raced again six days after the Derby. This time, Runnymede won by 10 lengths. Six years later, a Pittsburgh gambler named Capt. Sam Brown claimed the race had been fixed to spare bookmakers from making ruinous payouts on the popular Runnymede—exactly what Clark had feared. But whether he did it honestly or not, Apollo achieved a feat that has never been repeated: Since 1882, every horse that has won the Kentucky Derby started its racing career as a 2-year-old. In the past 57 years, 49 horses that debuted as 3-year-olds have tried and failed to win at Churchill Downs. It’s known as the Curse of Apollo, and it’s the oldest curse in American sports, predating the Curse of the Billy Goat—the Chicago Cubs’ pennant drought—by 63 years. (It also predates the Cubs’ World Series drought by 26 years, but who’s counting?)

Late last fall, the curse was on owner Bryan Sullivan’s mind. As a 2-year-old, his promising colt Verrazano had suffered shin problems that delayed his debut at the track. By the first week of December, though, Verrazano was training well, and Sullivan sat down with trainer Todd Pletcher to discuss the horse’s maiden race. At first, they considered a six-furlong sprint, scheduled for Dec. 19. But Pletcher thought Verrazano needed more practice bursting from the starting gate, and since he had only four months to build up to a mile-and-a-quarter—a tight schedule for a Derby horse—Pletcher wanted him to start at seven furlongs (seven-eighths of a mile).

“OK, but there’s no more races until the first week of January,” Sullivan said. “I just want to mention that to you. You know what everybody’s going to say.”

“Is 24 hours really going to make a difference?” Sullivan says Pletcher asked him.

Although thoroughbreds are foaled in late winter and early spring, their birthdays are observed on Jan. 1. As a consequence, when Verrazano stepped into the gate on New Year’s Day at Gulfstream Park, he was a 3-year-old. Verrazano won his maiden race (which turned out to be 6 ½ furlongs). Then he won at a mile, by such a wide margin that the race caller crowed, “He’s gonna win this one from Brooklyn to Staten Island.” Then he won the Tampa Bay Derby. And then Aqueduct Racetrack’s Wood Memorial, whose champions have gone on to win the Kentucky Derby 11 times. The Churchill Downs oddsmaker now lists him at 4-1 on the morning line, meaning he could be the second straight cursed horse to go off as the favorite.

Last year’s favorite, Bodemeister, went out so fast he couldn’t hold off I’ll Have Another in the stretch—a rookie mistake compounded by a rookie's inability to go the distance. Is that confirmation that the curse is real? Would Bodemeister have won the Derby had he not been so green?

You can’t get two handicappers to agree on anything. If you could, there’d be no point to playing the horses—every winner would pay $2.10. Andrew Beyer is the Washington Post columnist who used his Harvard English degree to revolutionize handicapping by inventing the Beyer Speed Figure. Steve Davidowitz, author of Betting Thoroughbreds and editor of GradeOneRacing.com, has been Beyer’s racetrack buddy ever since they met in the paddock at Saratoga in the 1970s. Beyer thinks the Curse of Apollo is real—he believes that horses who don’t start racing until January lack the preparation time of peers who began the previous summer or fall. Davidowitz thinks that’s booshwah.

“I still think it is relevant,” says Beyer, who expects Verrazano to end up as a “tepid” favorite at 4-1 or 5-1. “It is valuable for a horse to have a foundation of experience as a 2-year-old—in the racetrack terminology, it’s called ‘bottom’—as opposed to having to cram all his preparation into a short period of time. Verrazano has had a cram course, having four races since Jan. 1.” Beyer says he won’t bet Verrazano to win but will use him in exactas and trifectas: “I wouldn’t say that the Jan. 1 thing disqualifies him, but it’s a negative.”

Davidowitz, by contrast, says the curse is just one of those windbag railbird aphorisms on the order of never betting a horse who hasn’t raced in the past 15 days. He notes that Fusaichi Pegasus, the 2000 Derby winner, ran his first race in December 1999. It’s hard to imagine the outcome of the Kentucky Derby would’ve been any different if he’d run his maiden race a few days later, after the Curse of Apollo cutoff.

Besides Bodemeister, only two recent cursed horses have finished in the money at the Derby: Strodes Creek, who placed in 1994, and Curlin, who showed in 2007. Curlin, who went on to win the Preakness and the Breeders’ Cup Classic, was the best horse of his generation but did not start racing until February of his 3-year-old year—on Derby day, he was still a race short of running like a champion.

There’s never been a more likely candidate to break the curse than Verrazano. Unlike Bodemeister, he’s got the racing savvy of a cagey veteran: In the Wood, he bided his time behind a slow pacesetter, then held off Vyjack in the stretch, breaking that rival’s will to run. Changes in breeding and training have also made experience less important for Derby contenders. Over 138 runnings, the average winner has started seven times before the big race. But today’s thoroughbred, bred for speed at the expense of stamina, is less durable than his ancestors. Trainers know this and space races more widely. In 2008, Big Brown won off just three career starts. Many of this year’s contenders have run only five races—just one more than Verrazano.*

“I think you’re seeing a lot more horses like the Curlins, Bodemeisters, and horses that are lightly raced come out of nowhere and make more noise during the Classics,” Sullivan told the San Diego Union-Tribune in March. “I think it’s just a matter of time before one of these unraced two-year-olds probably breaks that jinx of Apollo.”

The real Curse of Apollo may be the pressure to rush young Derby prospects to the track. An Australian study found nothing harmful about racing 2-year-old horses, as long as they’re mature enough. But in the United States, Derby qualifying races are run in late winter and early spring, denying juveniles a rejuvenating three-month break between seasons. It’s a fait accompli that the Derby winner will retire young, because he’s more valuable as a stud than a racehorse.

But the Triple Crown doesn’t just burn out champions—it ends the careers of dozens of also-rans before what should be their prime racing years. Union Rags, who won last year’s Belmont Stakes, is already retired with a ligament injury. Hansen, who finished ninth in last year’s Derby, tore a tendon, finishing him as a racehorse. In this century, the only Breeders’ Cup Classic winner to have run in the Kentucky Derby was Curlin. Unless the Derby is moved to summer or opened to older horses—as Slate has suggested—it’s going to shorten careers. Trainer D. Wayne Lukas won four Kentucky Derbies but also inspired this racetrack joke: “Do you know what the characteristics of a D. Wayne Lukas 4-year-old are? Neither does Wayne.”

“There’s no doubt running a 2-year-old gives you invaluable experience,” Sullivan says. “Can it work against you later? Absolutely.”

No matter how fast Verrazano runs on Saturday, he’s not going to break that curse.

Correction, May 6, 2013: This article originally misstated that many of this year’s Kentucky Derby entrants have run only four races. Though several contenders have five career starts, Verrazano is the only horse in the field who’s run just four times. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Not Using Their Heads

Stefan Fatsis — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:07:03 GMT

On the April 29 edition of the Hang Up and Listen podcast, Stefan Fatsis followed up on his April 25 Slate piece on Abby Wambach’s head injury and the National Women’s Soccer League pitiful response. The transcript of Fatsis’ story is below, and you can listen to him read it by clicking on the audio player beneath this paragraph.

Abby Wambach did not play in her team’s opening home game on Saturday in the new women’s pro soccer league, and that’s because she was clocked in the head a week earlier by a ball traveling I’d guess 50 or 60 miles per hour that was struck by a teammate who was standing about 6 yards away. As I wrote in a piece on Slate last week, Wambach collapsed lifelessly and rolled into the fetal position, grabbing her head. She stayed down for 31 seconds. The ref, a World Cup and Olympic veteran named Kari Seitz, raised her right palm to stop a trainer from coming on the field. Wambach stood, took two off-balance steps, and play resumed.

It was the 90^th minute of a tie game. Wambach played the next four minutes and headed the ball on the game’s last play. When the whistle blew, she went to her knees, the trainer rushed on, and Wambach needed help getting off the field. The goalkeeper for the other team said Wambach was mumbling, and that she told her she was out of it. Her coach said she wasn’t doing too well. But she boarded a bus for the long ride home from Washington to Rochester, N.Y.

I was at the game, and it was frightening. Wambach was clearly and dangerously compromised, but everyone around her let her play on. Hey, the Western New York Flash needed her! Crunch time in a big game against the Washington Spirit! If Wambach had taken another similar blow to the head—well, just Google “second-impact syndrome.”

If at this point a professional athlete, coach, trainer, league official, or journalist isn’t taking sports head injuries seriously, they need to wake the hell up. The level of denial and ignorance I’ve witnessed since Wambach went down last week has been profound and stunning. Let’s start with Wambach herself. The day after the game, she tweeted out a photo of herself on her knees at the game’s end with the opposing team’s goalkeeper, Ashlyn Harris, waving for help. “I’m all good here everyone. Thanks for the well wishes,” she wrote.

All good? All bad. Instead of B.S.-ing her nearly 241,000 Twitter followers—many of them preadolescent and teen girl soccer players who idolize her—here’s what Wambach could have said: “I made a mistake everyone. I should have come out of that game. Play it safe. Don’t take risks with head injuries.”

Instead, Wambach and her team, the league, and local media spent the last week treating the episode like an annoying distraction from what really matters—the next game. Last Monday, Wambach told reporters that she had passed concussion tests, was symptom-free, and, referring to her “hard-headedness,” was confident that she would play the following Saturday. But she didn’t practice that day and no one from the team or league publicly discussed her status on Tuesday or Wednesday. The league’s commissioner did talk to me. She said that “everyone who was out there”—on the field—“handled that appropriately.” And she gave me other reasons for why Wambach soldiered on despite a head injury that sent a collective gasp through the crowd.

My story posted on Thursday morning. A local reporter who covers the team mentioned it in a blog post in which he put the words “head injury” between quotation marks and said that he expected Wambach to play on Saturday. On Thursday afternoon, the team announced that Wambach wouldn’t play—because of “precautionary measures.”

Wambach and the Flash’s coach, Aaran Lines, talked to reporters. Lines said that Wambach was “fine” but that there are “certain procedures” to be followed that have “come of late through what’s happened in the NFL.” Wambach finally said—and I’m willing to bet she was asked to say it—that she, the team, and league “take these things seriously.” But her and her coach’s statements left me wondering just how seriously. The most telling quote came from the coach: “She wasn’t quite right Monday. We left it to Tuesday to recover and then late Wednesday the medical staff came in, and you need five days from that point. That was the issue.”

Wait, what? Wasn’t she symptom-free on Monday? And the team “left it” until Tuesday for her to recover, and didn’t call in medical staff or begin the return-to-play concussion protocol until late Wednesday? So why was the team telling the public that Wambach was “fine”? Why was it implying that the only reason she wouldn’t play were these pesky return-to-play guidelines that the league has to follow—which are the fault, by the way, of the National Football League?

On Friday, I emailed the commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League, Cheryl Bailey, and its PR guy, and the PR guy for the Flash. I asked them to explain the timeline in Wambach’s care and treatment as described by the player and her coach. I also told them I’d rewatched the video and it looked like Wambach displayed four and possibly all five of the symptoms of a concussion that are part of the league’s guidelines. [The first four]: slow to get up, unsteady gait, falling to ground grabbing/clutching head, dazed/confused blank or vacant look. And judging by the way she fell, limply, that it was even possible she displayed the fifth sign, losing consciousness.

And, finally, I asked this: “Do you still feel that your policies were correctly followed on the field? Have you discussed what happened with the referee, coaches, trainers, and other players who were present? Do you plan any policy changes going forward or other actions? And do you have any plans for how you might discuss the incident, and head injuries more generally, with league constituents including players, coaches, and fans?”

As I speak, I’ve heard nothing back from the league. No one involved has actually mentioned the word “concussion.” Since sharing that picture of herself in clear distress, Wambach hasn’t tweeted a word about her injury. At halftime of Saturday’s game, she did tell the crowd that she’d be ready to play on Wednesday, though her coach said afterward that she hadn’t been medically cleared. Hmm. [Update, April 30: The team now says that Wambach has been medically cleared and will play on Wednesday.]

I love women’s soccer. I took my daughter to the Women’s World Cup in 2011. I have taken her to many more games since, including the Wambach fiasco. As I wrote in the Slate piece, the sport has played the role-model card to great effect, and with great sincerity, since the 1990s. Controversies have been few, and limited to on-field matters.

But if this new league—the third in the last decade—wants to be taken seriously, it needs to behave seriously. It can’t just be about fun and autographs and encouraging girls to play. In fact, I’d argue that the National Women’s Soccer League has a better chance of not failing if it takes a progressive stand on issues central to the life of female athletes—including injuries, especially now concussions. Be progressive, be honest, do some good—for your own athletes and for the ones watching. Pretending that something didn’t happen doesn’t make it so.

Men in Uniform

Nathaniel Frank — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:35:29 GMT

NBA player Jason Collins’ declaration that he’s gay has been followed, thankfully, by supportive messages from peers like Dwyane Wade, Pau Gasol, and Tony Parker. In the lead up to this highly anticipated moment, though, there have been plenty of negative comments from athletes and pundits about the potential negative consequences of open homosexuality in sports.

Chris Clemons, a defensive end for the Seattle Seahawks, posted on Twitter that it would be “selfish” for an athlete to come out, as it would entail “trying to make themselves bigger than the team” and would “separate a locker room and divide a team.” Louisiana State University football coach Les Miles said recently that if a player on his team came out, he would have to assess “how I saw locker rooms and how I saw travel and how I saw staying in hotel rooms and how I saw those things. If that’s not an issue, I think things could be resolved.” LSU running back Alfred Blue also let loose with stereotypes of gay men as unmanly: “Football is supposed to be this violent sport—this aggressive sport that grown men are supposed to play,” he said. “Ain’t no little boys out here between them lines. So if you gay, we look at you as a sissy. You know? Like, how you going to say you can do what we do and you want a man?” (Blue later apologized.) Even otherwise sympathetic commentators, like Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, suggest that having a teammate come out as gay would “create a major distraction for himself, his teammates, and his entire organization.”

Those arguments should sound familiar—every last one of them was tossed around by those who supported the U.S. military’s ban on openly gay troops. It would undermine group cohesion and hurt the mission, they warned. It would mean putting the individual above the group. It would cause chaos in the showers and locker rooms. It would be a “distraction.”

Yet in the years leading up to the 2011 repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and in the years since its demise, every last empirical argument has been dismantled, leaving only the moral and religious claims of anti-gay advocates in their place. So what are the lessons we can learn from the research and reality of ending DADT as we move into an era of openly gay professional athletes?

First, concerns about privacy in the showers, team cohesion, and mission effectiveness turn out to be unfounded. The data on this are overwhelming. A large body of military, organizational, psychological, and workplace research dating back to World War II shows that it’s not social cohesion but what researchers call “task cohesion” that matters to achieving a group mission. Berkeley psychologist Robert MacCoun, who contributed to a RAND Corp. study that the Pentagon commissioned when it first considered openly gay service in 1993, later published the results of an extensive review of 50 years of research covering nearly 200 publications. MacCoun concluded that “it is task cohesion, not social cohesion or group pride, that drives group performance. This conclusion is consistent with the results of hundreds of studies in the industrial-organizational psychology literature.” In other words, it’s a myth that group members have to share the same values, or even like each other, to work together effectively. The positive correlation between group cohesion and mission performance results not from affection but from group members being mutually committed to the task at hand.

Even if you’re skeptical of this research and believe that social cohesion matters, there’s no evidence that the presence of open gays undermines social cohesion in organizations like the military, the workplace, or sports teams. That’s especially true in today’s society, with acceptance of homosexuality at unprecedented levels. Of course, many group members may not like gay people. But as an empirical question—what is its impact on cohesion and effectiveness?—research shows it’s a nonissue.

All this was known while DADT was still in place and was confirmed by the military itself in the most extensive research ever undertaken on openly gay military service. But since DADT ended, empirical research has further confirmed what many LGBT advocates had been saying for years: that equality in the military would not harm the force. In a study I co-wrote and reported on in Slate, a team of military and academic scholars found in exhaustive research that allowing gays to serve openly in the U.S. military “has had no negative impact on overall military readiness or its component parts: unit cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment or morale.”

A second lesson from the DADT battle is that openly gay group members only become a “distraction” when straight people make a fuss about it. In 2010, Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, warned that the presence of openly gay service members would cause “a distraction” and that “mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines’ lives.” I’ll refrain from making a joke here about why so many Marines seem to worry about finding open gays so distracting. Suffice it to say that, while few serious observers expected that ending the ban would somehow lead to an increase in casualties, not even the Family Research Council has made such a claim in the more than two years since repeal was announced.

I know of just one documented case in which the presence of an openly gay person actually generated a ruckus in the force. In that case, the disturbance was caused by opposition to his reinstatement into the Navy and the media coverage that attended it. In 1992, as the nation was debating Bill Clinton’s campaign promise to allow gay service, Petty Officer Keith Meinhold, a flight systems instructor in the Navy, announced he was gay on ABC News. Meinhold was discharged, successfully sued the Navy, and was reinstated.

As the DADT compromise emerged in Congress, press reports indicated that the chief of naval operations was “deluged with angry questions from sailors and officers about the lifting of the ban.” Navy officials seized on the story to fan the flames of opposition and resentment, citing the sailor’s court-ordered return and the media circus as evidence that gays hurt morale. But of course Meinhold would never have “returned” to the Navy if he hadn’t been kicked out by an anti-gay policy in the first place. And in reality, the disruptions caused by his return were minor and temporary and were largely spurred on by the grandstanding of bitter senior officials.

The Meinhold story contains two lessons. First, responsibility for whatever disruptions may be caused by prejudice lie at the feet of the perpetrators, not the victims. Second is the importance of top leadership in sending clear signals that bias and discrimination won’t be tolerated, a principle that’s become a cliché but is consistently borne out by research on the role of leaders in group organizations.

A final lesson from DADT is a positive one. Research has shown—both before and after DADT was in place—that there are incalculable benefits to being out. The closet has harsh consequences to mental well-being and to the cohesion and integrity of a group, both because of the emotional repression it causes LGBT people and the disregard for honesty that it imposes. My research post-DADT confirmed numerous benefits to ending the policy.

As I’ve explained, the real source of opposition to equal treatment for open gays and lesbians is not the harm that it would cause to American institutions, whether the military, marriage, or professional sports. There isn’t any, unless by “harm” you mean violating the sectarian moral sensibilities of a shrinking minority of people and eroding heterosexual privilege. The real source of resistance to equality is moral and religious. Some athletes and fans may not like having open gays in their midst. But claims that it will harm their favorite teams are, based on the evidence, very unlikely to be true. Let’s not forget that sports are supposed to be fun and games. If the armed forces, where life really does hang in the balance, can accommodate open gays, professional sports surely can, too.

Out of His League?

Josh Levin — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:51:37 GMT

Jason Collins isn’t the first gay athlete. He’s not the first gay man in pro sports. He’s not even the first gay man in the NBA. But despite all the necessary caveats—he is, repeat after me, the first gay man to come out as an active player in the NBA, MLB, the NFL, or the NHL—Collins is no less a pioneer, and this is still a landmark day for sports and for gay rights. When Collins came out in Sports Illustrated, he made it much easier for other male athletes to do the same. Let’s hope that such an announcement doesn’t warrant major headlines a decade from now. If that does come to pass, a backup center out of Stanford will have been largely responsible for changing the culture.

Collins’ announcement is such big news because he’s still wearing an NBA jersey. Other men, among them NBA player John Amaechi and the NFL’s Esera Tuaolo, have come out after their playing careers were over. Soccer player Robbie Rogers, who has played for the U.S. national team, announced he was gay earlier this year and declared simultaneously that he was taking a break from the sport at age 25. But the 34-year-old Collins, who’s coming off his 12th season in the NBA, wants to keep going. “Now I'm a free agent, literally and figuratively,” he told SI’s Franz Lidz. “I've reached that enviable state in life in which I can do pretty much what I want. And what I want is to continue to play basketball. I still love the game, and I still have something to offer.”

As the NBA offseason approaches, the league’s general managers will have to decide if they agree. Will a pro team think Collins still has something to offer? Will he get a chance to suit up as an out player, or will he lose his spot in the league before he gets a chance to make history?

Jason Collins is not Shaquille O’Neal or Dwight Howard or any other player that a casual fan may have heard of. He’s a backup center. He sets screens, rebounds, and defends opposing big men, at least on those rare occasions when his coach deigns to put him in the game. In February, the 7-footer was traded from the Boston Celtics to the Washington Wizards. The headline in the Washington Post: “Washington Wizards trade Jordan Crawford to Celtics, get little in return.”

Collins lived up to that billing in D.C., playing in five of the Wizards’ remaining 29 games and scoring a total of four points. Over the entire season, he averaged 1.1 points per game. He doesn’t just look bad going by traditional numbers: The advanced stat PER ranked him the second-worst player in the league in 2012-2013 among those who played at least 150 minutes. Collins will also turn 35 this December. There were only 23 players that age and older in the NBA this season, and most of them—guys like Grant Hill, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, and Paul Pierce—are a lot more famous than Jason Collins was before he hit the cover of Sports Illustrated.

It would be unfair, then, to suggest that Collins’ future employment status will be a test of the NBA’s tolerance—it’s hard to get too worked up about the lack of roster spots available for old guys who can’t score. Even so, there will probably be a place for Collins in the NBA. Statistically speaking, a gay man isn’t all that unusual. What’s truly anomalous about Collins is that he’s 7 feet tall. In a 2011 SI story, Pablo S. Torre reported that there may be fewer than 70 American 7-footers between the ages 20 and 40. Torre also noted that there’s something like a 17 percent chance that an American who’s 7 feet or taller is an NBA player.

Collins’ height, not his sexual orientation, is what will keep him employed. If the Stanford grad was known for anything prior to today, it was his ability as a “Dwight stopper.” In 23 regular-season matchups, Collins has held Dwight Howard below his career averages in points, rebounds, and field goal percentage. Collins’ defense also keyed the Atlanta Hawks’ victory over Howard’s Orlando Magic in the first round of the 2011 playoffs. When Collins was off the court in that series, the then-Orlando center scored 26.9 points and snared 13 rebounds per 36 minutes. When Collins was on the court, Howard put up a mere 16.1 points and 8.7 rebounds per 36 minutes.

The irony is that Collins is coming out just as big men in the NBA are on their way out. With teams like the Miami Heat making small lineups trendy, a Howard stopper is a luxury that a lot of teams can afford not to have—Dwight Howard actually does a decent job at stopping himself these days. There should be a few franchises, though, that see Collins as the perfect man to fill out their last roster spot. He knows his role, and he won’t complain about a lack of playing time. He’ll also certainly draw in new fans while earning the veteran’s minimum salary.

Collins’ bravery in coming out won’t be diminished if he never plays in the NBA again. But it would be good for the league, and for aspiring players both gay and straight, to see him take the floor, even if it is just to get a few stops while a better player rests. No matter how unimpressive his scoring numbers may be, nobody can doubt now that Collins has courage. Who wouldn’t want a teammate like that?