Scott Sargent

The Morning After: Best “Masters” Columns

It feels like the rest of the entertainment world has been trying for years to express the immediacy of sports, to capture what it is about these games that captures us. What, after all, are reality TV shows except an effort to reproduce the drama and unexpected turns of sports? Cooking shows try to be like sports. Televised poker tries to be like sports. Movies try twist endings to surprise us the way sports can and do. Those questions — Will he won’t he? Can she or can’t she? Victory or defeat? — will startle and thrill and frustrate us forever, I think. This is why I love writing about games. Bubba’s on the straw. He thinks he sees a way to get the ball to the green. He digs deep, using all that he’s learned and practiced and dreamed, and hits the ball.

- Joe Posnanski’s “Bubbas and Goodbyes”

[Watson] knew he had a swing. So they parted the gallery for him. He tried to take measure of where a green was. He couldn’t see it behind the patrons and a television stand. He grabbed his 52-degree gap wedge and from 164 yards to glory he let rip the most perfect Bubba Golf shot ever.

It wound up in the middle of the green, where he would need a simple two-putt to win the Masters. As he ran out trying to follow its flight, fans jumped forward and patted him on the back and ran right along with him.

- Dan Wetzel’s “Family Triumph’s Green Jacket”

The energy in the room faded, like it had been unplugged. The people who know Oosthuizen best in the world waited on him to do his interviews and pack his gear. Do they know why he came up short? Is the man handling this intense pressure on the television in front of them their son and husband, or is he a stranger? Nel-Mare said, finally, “It was a good week.” Everyone slipped away until just the family remained. The temperature dropped outside. The baby got patted by mom and had its mouth wiped by grandma. They made plans for later that night.

- Wright Thompson’s “Success at the Masters”

"I believe Ricky Williams belongs in the Hall of Fame: not because of what he did on the field but because he survived it. He might have been built for football physically, but he wasn’t made for the game in any other way. He talked openly about his anxiety and depression. Every one of those 10,000 yards — 10,009, to be precise — represents a small, singular triumph. When you strip away the myths and lies from Ricky’s story, when you take away all the dumb pot jokes and jockisms, you’ll find someone who fought to remain a man in full in a profession that’s designed to make you less of one."

ESPN The Magazine’s Chris Jones

"Long ago, right when he was beginning his career, Shaquille O’Neal once told me, “Look, I know people are going to make a cartoon out of me. The important thing is to control your own cartoon.” (This marked Shaq as a mind worth watching.) The construction of the Jeremy Lin cartoon continues apace. He’s an example of the Melting Pot, in a country where the situation for most immigrants is bad, and, in many places, getting worse. (For, say, people picking fruit in Alabama, the melting pot is more like a roasting pan.) He’s a Man Of Faith, a Tim Tebow for another sport and another season. (Two major differences: Lin hasn’t yet put his faith in the street by doing television commercials for it, and Lin can, you know, actually play.) He’s the new King Of New York, which has needed a basketball hero, largely because it is New York and it has the impulse control of a toddler, and it wants what it wants when it wants it. He’s an excuse for racist performance art, and he’s the occasion for yet another tiresome debate over “political correctness."

Charles P. Pierce on Jeremy Lin — Grantland

"The personality inequity between football and basketball is parceled out on several fronts, and it’s fair to point out that many of them have to do with the total number of players on the field and the actuality and rules of the respective games. But after watching Tebow turn into America’s favorite meme, I’m now convinced that the differences lie mostly in the cultures of the leagues. There’s a reason why the NBA took off in the celebrity culture of Los Angeles, just as there’s a reason why the NFL’s model of grit and teamwork plays better in the middle of the country. There’s a reason why most NBA fans will just forget about this lockout and go about their lives of retweeting Delonte West and Brandon Jennings."

Grantlandl’s Jay Caspian Kang on the NBA Lockout

"Musicians often speak of the perfect music of their mind, the creative process being a slow, asymptotic approach to this ideal sound. During Take Care’s strongest and most meticulous moments, one gets the sense that this is exactly the sound Drake imagined. In this way, Drake seems more a descendant of Kanye West than his nominal mentor, Lil Wayne. It was Kanye who graduated from hip-hop’s vaunted resourcefulness — its ability to improvise — to aspire toward the heights of virtuosic, proggy perfectionism instead. And just as Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy bulged with all these enchantingly showy, prolonged explorations of technical proficiency — all those four-minute gems with three-minute outros — Take Care feels careful and intentional about its own pacing."

Hua Hsu, via Grantland, on Drake’s latest album Take Care

"The real hypocrites are the morons telling Cleveland to ‘get over it,’ as if the place hasn’t gotten over it, or as if ‘over it’ is best defined by some asshole who likes telling other people how to feel and act."

Scott Raab on hypocrites, schoolmarms and, naturally, LeBron James

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The needle begins to whir again as Machine Gun Kelly takes his turn in the chair, his bare chest exposing what must be hundreds of tattoos all huddled together on a sinewy frame. A spider’s abdomen encircles his right nipple. Pac-Man chases a yellow dot across his collarbone. The name “Casie” — the two-year-old daughter he had with his onetime girlfriend — runs along his rib cage in black ink, the lettering rendered in swooping cursive.

Today, Kelly will add the words “Locals Only” just below his ribs. It will be done up — like almost all of his bodywork — by Alfonso “Cev” Ceven, the owner of Ohio City Tattoo. Like the “216” that runs down his right arm, the latest ink is yet another glimpse into the complicated web that is Machine Gun Kelly’s life and the city he was unceremoniously dropped into — the one he, unlike other icons before him, refuses to leave behind.

Jordan Zirm at Cleveland Scene

On the love of baseball and eating alone.

The Astros fired Rusty Pendergrass this morning. They told him he’d missed on too many players. He’s the scout who signed Hunter Pence, Ben Zobrist and would have signed Drew Stubbs if Drayton McLane hadn’t reneged on the offer. He’s maybe the hardest-working man I’ve known and loved the Astros more than 90 percent of the current employees at Minute Maid Park. […]

Scouts are the lifeblood of a good baseball organization. Yet scouting is where some franchises — the dumb franchises — cut corners. At the end of each season, many scouts have no idea if they’ll be rehired. When attendance dips or big league salaries rise, owners whack the scouting budgets. They think nothing of throwing $2 million at a mediocre pitcher, then cutting a scout making $50,000.

Richard Justice, Houston Chronicle

A sad but excellent feature on journeyman baseball player Reggie Willits, now 30-years old and playing in the minor leagues with kids almost half his age.

For every familiar leading man like Torii Hunter, the Angels’ right fielder who is guaranteed $18 million a season for five years, there are dozens of bit players like [Reggie] Willits whose survival depends on a mastery of nuances such as bunting, pinch running or being a step quicker on defense.

The stars have job security, but the reserves are always looking over their shoulder, agonizing over every mistake and hoping management doesn’t find a younger or cheaper alternative.

Mike DiGiovanna, LA Times

Great stuff on Marshon Brooks and why he maintained such a low level of attention throughout 2010-11

It’s a whirlwind, a deluge of smoke and lights: spinning, twisting, squirming around defenders like a cat, he scores in every way imaginable, stuff of science fiction, his arms more like two ropes attached to his shoulders than a pair of human limbs, giving him a release where it looks as though he’s trying to put the ball down the back of his shirt.

Kevin Lincoln - Good men Project