Joel Hammond thinks today's golfers are too self-centered in their goals, as evidenced by the Tiger Woods / Phil Mickelson pairing for this year's Ryder Cup.
By Joel Hammond
210 west Writer [send email]
Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie has never won one of the Professional Golf Association’s four major championships: The Masters, British Open, U.S. Open and PGA Championship.
Neither has Spaniard Sergio Garcia.
Americans Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, conversely, have nine major titles between them.
But what Montgomerie and Garcia that both Woods and Mickelson lack is the uncanny ability to brush aside previous major championship failures to perform and succeed on just as big a stage: The Ryder Cup.
Montgomerie was again solid at Oakland Hills in Michigan over the weekend, going 3-1 in three days.
Garcia, though, cemented his already blossoming reputation as a clutch golfer by going 4-0-1, including a come-from-behind, stick-a-fork-in-them-they’re-done 3 and 2 victory over Phil Mickelson Sunday afternoon.
The Scot and Spaniard are a combined 29-11-7 in Ryder Cup play.
Woods and Mickelson? 16-18-6, including a pathetic 7-11-2 from Mr. Woods.
Many have pointed to captain Hal Sutton to blame for the debacle.
Last time I checked, the captains don’t play in this format anymore.
The real blame? How about world No. 2 Woods, who prides himself on major championships and is still shooting for Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major titles.
But the very much struggling Woods almost made a point to display his displeasure playing with Mickelson Friday morning, not smiling once, arms tightly folded while watching Mickelson line up his own putts. That was contrasted dramatically by their opponents in that match – the aforementioned Montgomerie and up-and-coming Padraig Harrington – who helped each other every step of the way.
Moreover, Mickelson, who finally shed the best-player-never-to-win-a-major mantra in April after calmly sinking an 18-footer at No. 18 to win at Augusta, quickly managed to attain another unwanted label over the weekend: the first-player-to-change-clubs-the-week-of-The-Ryder-Cup-and-practice-by-himself-because-he-wants-attention tag.
How long will it be until individual accomplishments and attitudes stop reigning supreme in American golf?
For men making it very clear that they are chasing down America’s illustrious golf history, an astronomically high standard set by consummate professionals like Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and before them Ben Hogan and others, failure in the ultimate test in golf – a competition that tests not only your individual prowess around greens, bunkers and rough but also a willingness to succeed as a team – doesn’t bode well for their place in the record books of golf followers.
Simply, the best players in golf history performed not only on the major championship stage, but also at the Ryder Cup.
Just look at the numbers: Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer were a combined 39-16-5 in their Ryder Cup experience, including an absolutely astonishing record of 17-4-0 in foursomes, a format in which a team of two Americans would play just one ball on each hole, alternating shots.
Nicklaus and Palmer, then, either made those around them better or were so good themselves that they overshadowed their partner’s struggles, two subjects completely foreign to the top American players today.
For Woods and the rest of the Americans to seemingly have the attitude that this competition doesn’t matter in the bigger picture is completely ludicrous.
Woods may catch Nicklaus’ record for major wins. He’d have to win 11 more majors, but he has proven in his young career that, when hot, he can win them in bunches.
Mickelson will likely win another major or two before his time is done.
But what good are major championships when the lasting image in the minds of golf experts, fans and history books is continued failure and mediocrity in the biggest team challenge in the sport?
In my opinion: Not much.
Idora Park in Youngstown is gone, but even after 20 years, it lives on in the memories of those who saw it, including Vince Guerrieri
By Vince Guerrieri
210 west Managing Editor [send email]
We glorify the past when the future dries up
--Bono, “God Part II”
Twenty years ago today, people visited Idora Park on the last day it was open.
I was one of them.
The park had already closed to the public after Labor Day, but I was there with the picnic for St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Mom was a nurse there. I had just started second grade at Kirkmere Elementary School.
That spring, I stood on the playground at Kirkmere and watched clouds of black smoke billow up over the treetops.
“What’s that,” I asked the monitor.
“Idora Park’s burning,” she told me.
The fire started in the Lost River, a dark ride dating back to the 1920s, and spread through the office, several concession stands and one end of the Wildcat, one of the park’s two roller coasters.
The amusement park was up for sale and on its last legs anyway. Someone once told me that at the end of its existence, unless there was a company picnic or something, you could shoot a cannon through the midway and not hit anyone.
But 20 years after the fire and closing, the park still holds a spot in the hearts of many current and former Youngstowners. There are probably more former than current Youngstowners. The population is almost half of what it was 50 years ago, and lots of people left town. The mills closed up shop in the late 1970s, as they did in many other cities in Northern Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But while some cities recovered, Youngstown didn’t. Idora Park is remembered fondly now because there’s little to look forward to in Youngstown.
The park was built in 1899 on the South Side at the end of a trolley line. A bridge spanning the Mahoning River at Market Street opened up the entire South Side for development. At that point, it was very common for amusement parks to sprout up at the end of trolley lines.
But as the car became the preferred mode of transportation, trolley lines died out, and so did many trolley parks. The only reason Idora held on was because it had become the preferred location for ethnic, church and company picnics.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, many of the other trolley parks that had hung on were starting to fade away, as their neighborhoods got sketchier. But until the mills closed, Youngstown had one of the highest rates of home ownership in the country.
Then the bottom dropped out on a day they call “Black Monday.” Youngstown Sheet and Tube, one of the largest employers in Mahoning County, announced the closure of one of its largest mills, in Campbell (a town named for a former president of Sheet and Tube). More than 5,000 people lost their jobs, and Idora Park was crippled. The Sheet and Tube picnic was the largest each year for the park.
By then, the park was a relic. It had taken rides from other parks that met their end in the 1960s, such as Euclid Beach in Cleveland and West View Park outside of Pittsburgh. People were starting to appreciate the park’s historic value, as well as its bitchin’ roller coasters.
But for many people, it was a place where they shared the memories that make them wealthy souls. For me, I can still remember as vividly as if it happened yesterday, riding the Lost River with my mother, Jessica Leach and her mother. She was the first girl I ever knew, and moved away shortly after Idora closed. I can recall arguing with my brother over who’d drive on the Hooterville Highway. (I was older…I did.)
Men met their wives, and the families they made went there. Children rode their first roller coasters at Idora Park. Matt Schwartz was one of them, riding the Jack Rabbit, which was the second oldest roller coaster in America when the park closed.
“Youngstowners miss Idora because it holds a special place in their heart,” said Schwartz, who founded a Web site, www.idorapark.org. “Most of us think of our younger years when we think of Idora Park. Many think of time spent with families. Youngstown still holds on to those memories and are proud of them.”
Since the park closed, there has always been a small but vocal movement to reopen the park. The Mt. Calvary Pentecostal Church bought the property, and planned to build a City of God on the site. They lost the church in 1989 after accumulating more than $500,000 in debt. A group of preservationists got Idora Park on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 and put together a bid that year to buy the property and restore it, but at the eleventh hour, the church got the property back for one dollar and other considerations, namely a $300,000 mortgage.
For a time, there was a plan to move the roller coasters to Conneaut Lake Park in Pennsylvania, but that never came to pass. And now, any preservation movement is dead. Someone asked Max Rindin, one of the owners of the park, what would happen to it after it closed.
“In time,” he said. “It’ll all be torched.”
And bit by bit, his prophecy came true. In 1986, a fire burned down the beer garden and fun house. Last year, another fire claimed the ballroom, the park’s heart and soul, home to every act from Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra to K.C. and the Sunshine Band.
But until that fire, there was always a tangible reminder of Idora Park. Very little had been torn down before the ballroom fire, and people could sneak into the park and walk across the midway, by then with weeds poking through the concrete. One of my brother’s friends even snuck into the ballroom and played the piano there. With the park still in sight, it was still in many people’s minds, and two disc jockeys took advantage of that.
On April 1, 1994, WHOT-FM announced the opening of I-2, the second Idora Park. A.C. McCullogh and Kelly Stevens, the morning disc jockeys for HOT 101, said they were broadcasting live from the new amusement park, and you could hear roller coasters in the background. Many people, including at least one television station reporter, turned out at the site of the amusement park, only to find it still padlocked with no signs of the park opening. In the tradition of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds, they had been fooled. But even 10 years after the park’s closing, there was still enough nostalgia to let people hold out hope that the park had reopened.
“Most people in this town would do just about anything to have that park back,” Schwartz said.
Since then, if not before, Youngstown’s fate was sealed. Although other cities had emerged from their post-industrial funk, Youngstown wasn’t that lucky. Today, it’s the eighth biggest city in Ohio, having been overtaken in the last census by Parma.
One by one, many of the mills and factories closed, taking a whole way of life with them. Schools closed. Hospitals closed. Shopping districts disappeared. Neighborhoods struggled to maintain their dignity as people kept moving out.
For Youngstown, with apologies to Carly Simon, these ain’t the good old days. And as long as the good old days are behind them, Idora Park will be remembered fondly until the last person who remembers it is gone. Then, and only then, will it be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Natalie Miller Moore ponders what the institution of marriage would be like if nobody ever had a choice.
By Natalie Miller
210 west Content Editor [send email]
Do you, Bridget take Seamus, to be your husband because your parents said so?
I heard two women in their sixties talking about their children and how they still have no grandchildren. Even though all their children were in their mid-twenties or early thirties, no offspring have been produced. One is divorced, two never-married and one dating a woman who already has a child. For grandparent-hopefuls, the modern lifestyles of their children are stifling their reproductive agenda: namely, to make sure their genes are passed on to another generation.
I read a historical novel last fall called “Sarum” where they followed family lineages for hundreds of years. What if parents still had the option to arrange marriages? How different would the modern social and dating scene be? Would it solve this concern for the parents on the cusp of grandparenthood?
One of the advantages of arranged marriages has been historically that they are long-lasting, but I believe that can more aptly be attributed to the idea that marriage is permanent. This idea is quickly going out of style, although there does seem to be some pro-commitment backlash by children of divorce. Many proponents of arranged marriages have a different relationship from other marriages – one based on partnership and working together rather than on romantic love which is bound to fade.
I went to two weddings over Labor Day weekend. Although the couples seem very much in love, I doubt their parents would have chosen the match. One is moving to Northern Ireland to live now that she’s married, and the other has taken a military spouse, which will no doubt change his contact with his family in Puerto Rico, especially if they get sent overseas. Today, parents have very little say in their children’s choices and I believe that more than a few of them long for the days when they could say someone was “unacceptable” and that would be the end of it. Back when it was socially unacceptable to date people of another race, parents forbid even dating, because “what was the point?” – you cannot marry them. (I concede that this still happens, unfortunately.)
I know that if my father had his way I would be married to a policeman. My dad is a policeman. My mom’s dad is a policeman. My dad’s sister-in-law was a policewoman. My mom’s brother is a policeman. This is how the family history has unfolded. Public service jobs are the backbone of the Miller-Cooper union.
The other guess I would have as to an arranged marriage would be where my dad could get something for free. He used to try to set me up with Paul, the guy who worked at the auto repair shop and gas station. “I’ll trade my daughter for a lifetime of free oil changes, sure,” I can imagine him thinking. Also, he tried to get me to date our tax accountant’s son, probably with the same end in mind.
I wonder how arranged marriages could work in our modern society? Would it have to be at high school graduation or could people be trusted to go to college and screw around but not commit to anyone? Or would arrangements only be for people who hit a certain age with no prospects? In some ways, people who are still single in their thirties must feel like people are always trying to arrange things for them.
One thing that must be hard for modern parents to accept is that prevailing wisdom indicates that you should just let your kids make their own decisions. Some people still can’t deal with this, particularly those who feel successful directly through their children. I see it now as my friends get married and their moms try to meddle and cajole them to do it with their family, local and religious traditions represented. At some point, you reject some of your parent’s decisions. So maybe it would be a bad idea to let them decide your romantic fate.
Parents, on a very basic level, want to see their children succeed in a way that is as old as time: to reproduce successfully. This means not only having children, but being able to support them and ensure that they grow to healthy adulthood so they in turn can reproduce. I read an interesting book that breaks it down to the pure biology of it: “Beyond Choice” by Alexander Sanger, which I recommend if this topic interests you. He talks about how sexual and social choices are made with our own genetic interests in mind. Although parents could arrange your marriage, they still cannot make you have kids. Sure, they can nag and pressure and ask pointed questions, but they can’t make you reproduce.
If parents could still arrange marriages, perhaps they could feel more control and reassurance about their descendant’s prospects. They could pick a girl from a good family, maybe whose dad owns a business that their son could work his way up in. They could pick a smart boy with good prospects in his field. And, they can pick good genes to match with theirs, as determined by what they see as “good.” Usually people marry those with similar characteristics, in stature and coloring, on their own. But this is not always the determination of cultural stock; people with olive skin could be from anywhere. It’s important to some parents still that you marry someone from Puerto Rico, from Sicily or from the Ukraine. I would be married to a fair Irish boy, preferably from County Mayo, if my mother could decide.
When I did decide to get married, it helped that he was familiar stock, even if he wasn’t from the preferred location of Cleveland. He’s an Irish-German Catholic, so that’s close enough. My dad has expressed confusion as to why I did not continue to date the 200-pound football player/chemist, an ideal protector and provider. Because I could choose, I selected a more egalitarian arrangement. The reproductive success of that has yet to be determined.
This crucial key to the continuation of the human race has always been a part of marriage, but things have changed drastically in the past 50 years. Possibly the one-time monogamy of marriage has been weakened by longer lifespans. And the bearing of children has been changed by same sex couples, adoption, mixed families, surrogate mothers, egg-freezing technology and people who are married but just don’t want kids. Could the evolution be arranged marriages for reproduction only: raise the kids (or put them in extended day care to be raised by someone else) and do what you want the rest of the time? Does this violate your definition of marriage or reinforce it? Is this is ultimate in practicality or would it be the ultimate selfish act?
I feel for parents who think their children are making bad decisions but support them. And it can’t be easy for kids whose parents freely express that they think they are screwing up. But, it does work out in most cases. The hippie artist can turn into the responsible mom or dad. The two bookworm academics can move into better fields. The flighty twentysomethings can settle down and starting thinking about the future they want for their kids. So can you always count on parents to choose what’s best in the long run? Many would argue that you cannot, and I’m sure that’s why this system has fallen out of favor.
Parents do still pressure, cajole and manipulate their children to marry someone “suitable.” I think the outright rejection of marrying someone of another race, ethnicity or economic status has faded away. But there will always be the parents waiting for grandkids who pressure their kids to “do the right thing,” like they were pressured. I do believe that there is a deep biological need for people to know their family lineage and heritage will carry on. It does, just not always in the way people expect. And it may mean that they bear children but divorce, which succeeds in one way that parents want and fails in another.
On August 10 Dan Nied turned 25. Now, a month after, he is still filled with confusion and misery over a world that just won't let up.
A month into my 25th year and I still have nothing to do on a Wednesday afternoon. This leaves a lot of time to think. So what does an unemployed man in his mid 20's get to thinking about when the world is still his oyster but it is clamped shut around the pearl with the weight of a thousand pieces of advice and concerned inquiries from nosey family members?
Well, he thinks:
I don’t want to become one of those people who sit around and mope about the things they could have done. It fucking kills me to think that I have become one of those people who care about life, whose fuck-it attitude has been replaced by doubt.
And I don’t want to be a 16-year-old goth kid complaining about the shittiness of the world and doing nothing to change it, sitting alone in my own hatred surrounded by apathy and a stagnant will to do nothing about nothing, to just be what I am and never strive for what I should and could be.
But here I am, hating people for living lives that I should be living, hating editors for giving people jobs that I should be given. With that the colors around me fade. Where they were bright yellow just two years ago, now they are gray and I’ve lost what it takes to get the yellow back.
I am in a complete struggle with myself because, while I was writing about the colors just then, I hated myself because I do not want to be the type of person that writes about colors to describe feelings. I want to write about happy things, I want to write about things that make me smile. I don’t want to listen to sad bastard music. I want to listen to music that makes me happy -- not because it has a catchy tune, but because it relates to my life.
As Adam Duritz would say: "I wanna be a snowball running" and "Oh, baby I surrender to the strawberry ice cream." (What does this mean? I don't know, but I think I have the capacity to understand one day) It isn't that I like those images, but because I want to identify. I want to hear Adam Duritz in a manic song and I want to say “yeah Adam, you said it buddy” and fade away into thoughts that don’t include total confusion over what I will do next.
I wanna be on the radio. I want to entertain. I want to make people feel a little bit better about life by reading or hearing or watching my work. I want to do this. But, it seems that I have picked these objectives that may be the hardest things to attain. Is it worth it? How can I tell? How do you quantify happiness?
Couldn’t I just be a salesman? I am very good with people sometimes:
“Hello sir, Would you like to buy an air purifier? It’s a mighty fine air purifier, you know. And since you don’t have one, that means you’ve been breathing in shit and dust and dead bugs and a man of your stature should not be breathing in shit and dead bugs. What would the neighbors say? No? You don’t want one? Well I appreciate your time.”
See, even in defeat I would be gracious. I would let the man know that he hasn’t ruined my day at all. In fact, just the chance to say hi to such a nice man has MADE my day. But then I would start to hate myself. (Unless of course, I really believed in these air purifiers. But that seems unlikely.) And when I started to hate myself I would wonder what it would be like to be a writer of sports or movies, as I originally planned. I would listen to the radio and wonder how my voice would sound over the airwaves.
And then I come back to the present and I have to ask myself, do you want to be someone who wonders what would have been? Here you are with three dreams, all tangible, all easily fantasized about and somewhat attainable once you pay your dues. These jobs exist and real people do them for a living and your journalism degree makes you a fucking trained scholar in one of them so why not try all three? Why not do whatever it takes to make sure you succeed. Look, if someone less talented than you is doing well, think about how well YOU can do.
But here I am, 25, and hating it. Still young, but an old young. It is a post-college hangover, that’s what I have. Call it a rut. Call it a bad time to be looking for a job. Call it confusion. Call it a horribly wrong turn somewhere over the last seven years. The point is that I am not fucked right now. No, its worse. I am not sure if I am fucked. On one hand I want to worship at the altar of George Costanza and follow the gospel that says “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite must be right.” And, by process of elimination, that would have to work because every single one of my instincts has been wrong for the last several years.
Or not. See that’s the problem.
On the other hand, I don’t KNOW if I am on the right track. I very well might be. But there are millions of mid 20’s college graduates feeling the same way. I don’t want to be lumped into a newspaper statistic. I don’t want my feelings to be summed up by a New York Times poll that says 35 percent of college graduates 22-27 hate their fucking lives. I don't think this grouping is fair to me or anyone else going through the same thing. I want to be alone in this misery. I want this to be unique because that is something I can hold on to. I can laugh at all those people on the right track and embrace my roll as an iconoclastic being. I can yell epithets across my own private imaginary line to those people pulling home regular paychecks. But I am lumped in with a group and I can’t escape that.
But then I look at the reasons why it is this way. Am I too hard to please? Should I be happy with a full time job, a tie rack and a dental plan? Should I wash away my childhood fantasies because that is what people do? Am I too lazy? Do I not write enough for someone who wants to be a writer? Do I masturbate too much? Have I been deluded into thinking that I am on the right track when I never really was and I never really knew what I was doing? Am I creative enough to make certain people think I am creative but not creative enough to convince the masses of my genius? Are my values where they should be? Maybe I should just find a nice girl and settle down and be happy with babies and Sunday barbecues in Dearborn, Mich.
And maybe every bit of advice that I have denied was absolutely true. Should I go into real estate with my mom? Should I work at the fruit market (They’re hiring, you know). Maybe I should start my run at public office, I have a big smile. But it all comes back to this entertaining thing. I want to write. I want to talk. Those are the only things I think I know how to do.
Three years ago someone asked me where I wanted to be in five years. I had it all planned out. Now, three fifths of the way into that plan, things are as jumbled as ever.
Fuck it. Who wants a drink?
By ERIK CASSANO
210West staff writer
On August 31, the Cleveland Indians pulverized the New York Yankees 22-0 at Yankee Stadium. This was a victory for the ages in Cleveland. Sure, it only put the Indians one game over .500, and they gave it right back in the final two games of the series. But this was the worst defeat in Yankee history. Somehow, pasting the Royals by an identical margin wouldn't have the same luster in Tribe country.
Beating the Yankees 22-0 is great because of...
1. Reigning American League Gold Glove Award shortstop Alex Rodriguez having to move to third base because this is "Derek Jeter's team."
2. Jason Giambi having an intestinal parasite/worms/tumors/icky crud, and I don't want to know why.
3. Twenty-six world championships. Yeah, it's pure jealousy.
4. Roger Clemens and his 300-win arm patch last year.
5. The fact that the Yankees can go out, get Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez and bring back El Duque, and still have the media wondering why they don't have enough pitching.
6. George Steinbrenner, who demands the office window curtains be closed during the game so nobody steals his "secrets."
7. Don Zimmer, Joe Torre's pet gerbil who was spent his summers sitting on his butt in the Yankee dugout, was rewarded with four championship rings for his trouble, then left the organization claiming he was mistreated.
8. Paul O'Neill throwing fits after striking out, then being heralded as the epitome of class.
9. Yankee fans who were neither born nor raised nor may ever have visited New York, yet when the Yankees beat your team, they show up at work the next day with their chests puffed out (most of these people are also Cowboy fans, I've noticed. I think these people had their souls damaged from lack of oxygen at birth.)
10. Clemens just about making love to the Babe Ruth plaque in monument park before each start as a tribute to the game, then exemplified much of what is wrong with the game by throwing a melon-ball at some batter once he took the mound.
11. David Wells. Slimming down to 44-waist pants does not necessarily make you "in shape."
12. The smelly Sasquatch in the $69 field box seats who is spewing sexually-charged insults to the right fielder well within earshot of the Yonkers city tee ball champions.
13. The beer guy who is enabling Sasquatch to get even drunker and louder and more graphic with his insults, to the point that by the sixth inning, Tee Ball Dad is figuring that book on how babies are made might be a good investment.
14. Giambi, who, when he played for Oakland, looked like an uncaged animal. Then he went to New York and got all metrosexual, cut his hair and started peddling deodorant. Wonder if his moisturizing techniques contributed to his health problems?
15. Hideki Irabu, the fat slob with the 85-mph fastball who wanted to play only for the Yankees. He might be emptying garbage at Yankee Stadium as I write.
16. Scott Brosius, who had one of the worst batting averages (.203) among everyday players as a member of Oakland in 1997. That winter, he got traded to the Yankees, hit .300, and won the World Series MVP in 1998. Who is making down payments on his soul?
17. YankeeNets and the YES Network.
18. People who think the Yankees in the World Series every year is good for baseball.
19. Radio play-by-play man John Sterling's ear-grating "THEEEEEEEEE Yankees win!" call.
20. They play the Liza Minnelli version of "New York, New York" at the Stadium after a Yankee defeat, and you know everybody wanted to hear Frank belt it.
21. Nothing is better than helping the Yankees run out of gas and lose the division to the Red Sox.
22. Yankee fans, even after a World Series loss, know it probably wont be too long before they get another shot. They can pretty much "bank" on it.