Juniorbird.com

I sit at work in the evenings these days, watching pitch counts online. It’s no TV, but I’m rapt as I wait for the pitch speed and placement to show in the little 3×2 box, to see the dots that represent the batters move around the diamond. I’ll admit I didn’t used to care; but now the hats on one of the teams are black with a little bird, or with a big orange O, or, best, a black brim and white front with a smiling orange cartoon bird on it. My Orioles are back in the playoffs!

They haven’t been there since I was in college. I don’t know their names, and I feel a little guilty for this, but is there a powerful Brady Anderson among them; a Cal Ripken, symbol of the city and the community; a reliable Mike Flanagan; an underrated, under-the-radar Mike Mussina; a meteor who shines bright and burns out like Gregg Olson; a stolid Eddie Murray; a manly, powerful Jim Palmer; or even a lovable bust like gentle Ben Johnson? I’m not sure I can remember who they are yet. I’m not sure that, after all these years, I want to remember who they are yet.

But I do remember my Orioles. I remember dinner in front of the TV, in my parents’ bedroom in 1983. We sat on their blue bedspread and watched Jim Palmer pitch to some doomed Phillie.

I remember going to see the Orioles play the Jays in ’84, the visitors in that era’s awful powder blue aways. I walked down towards the field, away from the nosebleeds, to get a better view of the game, heedless until I heard my name over the PA, searching for a lost child.

Then 1988 came along, and I watched the O’s lose 21 in a row – and rooted for the last 10, and would have rooted for 22 through 32 as well, since if you’re going to lose you might as well be the very worst.

And then there were the ’90s, and somehow we never could get past the Blue Jays or the Mariners. Oh, how Randy Johnson vexed me. But at least that carpetbagger Eli Jacobs sold the team to local boy Peter Angelos, removing the risk of the ball club moving to DC.

Oops.

So I don’t know anybody’s name. And we lost in the 12th. But this is the best year of baseball I can remember since Jeffery Maier became an unrepentant jackass, and even if their run ends later this week I’ll be a shocked and happy fan.

May we somehow do this again next year, and the year after, and then try a little winning streak on for size for a change. Then someday it can maybe be Buck Showalter’s photo in my basement for my kids’ friends to ask about, just like I always asked my friends’ parents to tell me about the photos of Earl Weaver that graced their dens and beer taps and paneled cellar walls.

Baseball. That’d be something!

Usually, 2 hours at “Krav Maga”:http://www.kravmaga.com/ gets me nice and calm. (Granted, I don’t usually need help being calm. But bear with me here.) An hour of self-defense plus an hour of cardio/weights/bag work will take the edge off… But last night I left class raring for some excitement. ‘Cause last class I was reminded of how much I like ground work.
I discovered ground fighting my senior year of “college”:http://pomona.edu, when they offered an intramural jiu-jitsu class. Half credit for rolling around on the ground with sweaty people? Well, I knew I needed some exercise, so I was in.[1] They put down some mats on the floor of the ballroom, handed out the heavy double-stitched “jiu”:http://www.kiintl.com/1/product.php?productid=16216&cat=250&page=1 “jitsu”:https://www.piranhagear.com/p-761-judo-jiu-jitsu-double-weave-gi-700g.aspx gis, and gave an hour of instruction, twice a week. I loved it, and went all the time. My girlfriend even commented that she could see me getting muscles — not an easy thing, since I tend to build long muscles good for running, not the compact, well-shaped ones that are good for grappling, the gym, and fashion in general. And, heck, I was good at it!
When I graduated, I tried a good Brazilian jiu jitsu school in West LA, but didn’t think the instruction was as good as what I got in college. I think the school was used to the athletically-gifted students that would’ve been common at the time — it was years before MMA became popular — and didn’t know how to deal with l’il old uncoordinated me. Even among white belts with the same experience level as in college, I just wasn’t good at it anymore. And, frankly, I didn’t enjoy it. So I quit.
So I forgot how much I had enjoyed ground fighting in college, until DJ L’il Bit and I started up at Krav a year and a half ago. I don’t know what makes grappling so fun for me — I’m not that strong, not that coordinated, and not that good at it — but I have a great time. And last night was an hour of almost all ground.[2]
First we learned how to get up from the guard. The guard is the position when you’re on the ground and your opponent is above you but between your legs.[3] You can control your opponent with your legs to some degree, but, unless you’re better than them on the ground, you want to get up. Krav is primarily a stand-up style, so it emphasizes getting back on your feet, not practicing grappling. You shift your knee between you and your opponent, to create space, push off with your foot, kick your opponent in the face (again to create space) and then stand up. It’s basically this without the choke escape:

Of course, you’re doing well if you’ve got your opponent in your guard — that’s a strong position. Now, if your opponent is on top of you, or, in the term of the art, mounted on you, then you’re in trouble. There are different escapes from the mount, depending on where your opponent’s weight is. If their weight is forward — likely if they’re hitting you, or just don’t know what they’re doing — then the “buck and roll”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTmgGNWFxwQ is a good way out. But, if their weight’s back, then that technique doesn’t work. So, instead, we learned the knee-to-elbow escape. It’s basically like this, except, instead of trying to end up in half guard, you up-kick the guy in the chest and the head to create space and stand up:

As you can guess from the way I’m talking about it, I had a ton of fun, and left class all amped up. Next was an hour of kettlebell and bag work, and somehow that didn’t take it out of me, despite the instructor’s cruel determination to end the class with 7 Turkish get-ups on each side:

No, instead I got home full of energy, and was thrilled to get out and walk the dog and… well, that part’s a topic for another entry another day.
fn1. I loved it so much that I wrote an article on it for the “student paper”:http://tsl.pomona.edu.[4] Frustratingly, although the article was put online at the time, the archives only go back to last year, and they’re in PDF, rather than the HTML we used at the time!
fn2. Practicing takedowns, then ground, specifically.
fn3. Yes, it’s the missionary position.
fn4. Granted, that wasn’t so odd; I wrote about an article a week for the paper for 4 years. But, you know, I could’ve written the article on something else!

Call me bloodthirsty. Some years ago — back in junior high and high school — I took Tae Kwon Do, and sparred regularly. It was a way of driving off the introvert shyness, and learning action and control. When I started taking “Krav Maga”:http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=krav+maga; and, for that matter, when I see the UFC or something on TV — that makes me miss fighting. When the “Krav studio I go to”:http://kravmaga.com/ announced that, henceforth, graduates of the Fight class would fight in front of an audience, well, I sure wanted to be part of that audience, as did the AIG. So, towards Santa Monica with us!
There were six fights, each matching two people of about the same size and experience level, except for the one that matched a 6’2″ guy against a 5’6″ one. (The big guy didn’t like getting hit so the little guy was able to work his way in and do damage and come out with the win.) Surprisingly for a bunch of amateurs in their first fights, every scrap was great! There was tons of action:
Big punches — including a couple of TKOs:
“!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/469613748_J3Tg8-M.jpg!”:http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/gallery/7302447_yoSNo/1/#469613748_J3Tg8-A-LB
Kicks, their impact echoing through the venue:
“!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/469610566_BT7sF-M.jpg!”:http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/gallery/7302447_yoSNo/1/#469610566_BT7sF-A-LB
Ground work, with everything from scrambles to mounted ground-and-pound:
“!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/469613011_mqZha-M.jpg!”:http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/gallery/7302447_yoSNo/1/#469613011_mqZha-A-LB
A moderate amount of blood:
“!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/469613352_2RFaC-M.jpg!”:http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/gallery/7302447_yoSNo/1/#469613352_2RFaC-A-LB
An exhibition featuring “World Champion Kickboxer Roxy Balboa”:http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=99278 and pro fighter “Markus Kowal”:http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=24986982 (hint to the viewer: stay away from Muay Thai knees!):
“!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/469616572_awdvb-M.jpg!”:http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/469616572_awdvb-M.jpg
They even had ring girls!
“!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/469611859_a5k4b-M.jpg!”:http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/469611859_a5k4b-M.jpg
So, if I know you personally, expect an invite to the next Fight Night. And expect that, sometime in the next year or so, you’ll get an invite to *my* fight at Fight Night.

Well, I feel like I was run over by a truck or two. But, after six hours of being pounded on during a sunny Sunday afternoon, I now have my “Krav Maga”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krav_Maga yellow belt! The AIG and I have been taking Krav classes since October — first once a week, and now three mornings a week — and let me say we’re hooked. It’s great exercise, great fun, and a great chance to clobber some poor unsuspecting person.
(Of course, last Sunday, I was the one who got clobbered.)
So, now that I went and passed my test, first of all, let me recommend to all you readers that you give Krav a try. Second of all, once you do, let me recommend the following ways to ensure you pass your yellow belt test:
# *Show up.* I don’t mean in the minimal sense; I mean, bring everything you can. Don’t have part of your head someplace else. As you probably figured out from classes, exhaustion and hitting hard are both big parts of the test. Show up prepared to give 100% on both.
# *Know the curriculum.* It’s tough to see something the first time during the test; don’t put yourself in that position. We were aggressive about asking our instructors to teach techniques we hadn’t seen, and that paid off. Read through your book and make sure every technique is checked off.
# *Practice learning how to learn.* The flip side is that you’ll see at least slightly new things during your test. For instance, one of my usual instructors really likes us to deliver roundhouse kicks with the part of your foot you make a soccer kick with; the test instructor really wanted us to deliver that kick with the shin. Practice getting things the first time in class, understand what you don’t tend to “grok”:http://www.answers.com/grok?cat=technology&gwp=13 and what questions you need to ask to get it. The faster you can catch on, the more of a favor you’ll do yourself.
# *Learn how to get hit.* Maybe I’m just saying this because I paired up with a broad-shouldered 6’3″ Aryan warrior-looking guy who made me feel like my ribs were gonna crack every time he punched me, but taking a hit is a key skill in a test. You’ll be matched with someone you do all of your practice and all of your testing with, and, for half the time, that person will be hitting you. Learn to hold solid, so that they look good. Learn to take the impact, so that you survive to hit back. There’s just no way around it.
# *Pick your partner.* If I’d’ve been smarter, I would’ve matched myself with a guy my size who I’d met a few minutes before the test. The AIG was very smart and matched herself with a similar-sized classmate who she often trained with in the mornings. It’s really best not to get badly beaten-up all test long.
# *Watch for the instructors.* While you’re hitting, or defending in a self-defense move, keep aware of your surroundings so that you know when you’re being watched. When you’re holding, or attacking, it’s also your job to keep your eyes open and let your partner know when they’re being watched.
# *Give 110 percent… or 50.* If you can spot the instructors, then you can take it down a big notch when they’re not watching. Make sure you keep your form — you never want to get off-track there — but don’t wipe yourself out. In contrast, bring everything when being watched. Keep in mind, you’ll need to go for hours of practice and for at least a couple of exhaustion drills (I’d say ours were about the first and last thirds of the actual test).
# *Always finish.* When doing a self-defense move, add in an extra elbow, an extra knee to the head, and move to the attacker’s dead side to show you really know what you’re doing.
# *Plan your hydration and nutrition.* Between us, the AIG and I drank _2 gallons_ of fluid during the test, most during the practice period. I peed once and came home thirsty. Know what you’re likely to need to drink and bring that and some extra. I personally don’t like drinking tons of water — we brought a 25% apple juice – 75% water mix, which worked great and which I recommend. Food is also important; I had two bananas and the AIG had a banana and a half, and those were lifesavers for us. I brought protein bars but never felt like I could wait long enough for the protein to be metabolized; I needed faster sugars. Breakfast beforehand was eggs, toast, and fruit. You can adjust to your own preferences, but the people who seemed to have the hardest times were the ones who didn’t prepare at all.
# *Leave plenty of time.* The test was advertised to be 4 hours; ours lasted more than 6. Good thing we didn’t have any plans afterwards! Of course, given how we felt when we were done (and today, the day after), all plans would’ve been off anyway. Don’t make yourself feel rushed, and try not to get too out-of-sorts when the test goes long; it assuredly will. The good part is that the actual test seems quick, compared to the hours and hours of practice; the hour-long test was done practically before I realized. At one moment I was exhausted and shocked the test was so long and so I said “that’s it, I quit! No more Krav for me!” Of course, then I realized it was just the test I hated, so I promised myself “no more tests!” Now that I’ve passed the test, I’m ready for my orange belt test now, can we do it straight away?
There you go — follow these ten simple rules, and you’ll be as badass as we are!
!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/266691343_LVDy2-M.jpg!
!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/266692387_R8vTc-M.jpg!
Oh, and some (but not all) of the techniques we were tested on:










There you go! Badass, or something. (For those of you who do other martial arts, yes, this is a lot of techniques for a white belt test.)

The 0-13 Dolphins are now 1-13 — they beat my hapless Ravens. And my Broncos, “the most inconsistent team in the NFL”:http://www.footballoutsiders.com/2007/12/12/ramblings/dvoa-ratings/5872/ (see Variance) got whomped again, this time by the heretofore-hapless Texans. Gah. Good thing, I guess, I rarely get Baltimore or Denver games here in LA! But the Dolphins? The Dolphins? That’s just embarrassing. Possibly good news that Troy Smith seems to have some level of competence at the Quarterback position, at least.

It’s fall, and that means that long weeks stretch from Monday evening to Saturday morning. No, it’s not work, it’s football, and there are four long days without it every week during the winter. With early evenings, darkness, and the cool autumn air, that leaves a profound longing. The answer is simple: Thursday night football.
The NFL already has Thursday night games towards the end of the season, so this isn’t anything new; I just want these games year-round. The usual complaint is that the short week gives the competitors too little time to prepare, but I think that there’s a way around that.
That way is to _have all interconference games on Thursday nights_. This will put games with real national interest on the TV; interleague games by definition draw from multiple fan bases and provide new, intriguing, and rare matchups for viewers to watch. These marquee matchups should be appointment TV and garner good ratings. Ratings will also rise, overall, for football, because the NFL can televise a game that otherwise wouldn’t get wide national distribution.
In addition, viewers will want to see the play each team is known for, minimizing the viewer appeal of a highly-prepared team — which is good, because the short week will make it hard to prepare. Both teams will be relatively uninformed about their opponents (compared to within-conference and, especially, within-division games), making it a balanced game that both teams will try to play by being as aggressive as they can about doing what they’re good at.
This should make for fun TV. Best of all, it will make for mid-week football. Which I need badly, because, let’s face it, House ain’t exactly about hard hitting.

I suppose it’s no secret that I haven’t followed the Orioles closely in years. And it’s no secret why — they don’t make it to Anaheim often, and Chavez Ravine even less; they’re almost never on TV over here; and, of course too many losses, too little in the way of positive changes. But the O’s[1] are my team, and I love them. I love them even though they lost their last game 30-3, becoming the first team to give up 30 runs in 110 years. Actually, I think I love them even more now.
There’s something wonderful about being a fan of a team that is the worst. I remember, back in 1988, when the O’s lost the first 21 games of the season, to set the MLB record for most losses to begin a season. After 8 or 12 losses, we were all rooting for them to keep losing, to be the worst ever. Hey, worst ever is _something_, right? Second-worst is not only bad, but also forgotten, and if you’re going to be that bad why not be not forgotten?[2] Sadly, my Birds didn’t get the all-sports top-division honors, which I think required losing 26 games,[3] but 21 was darned good and looks to stay in the record books.[4]
And of course I remember the 1983 World Series, where we plastered the overmatched Phillies. I remember the young Cal Ripken, and the chants of Eddie-Eddie! and Jim Palmer’s steely stare, all coming from our small Zenith color TV. And, in the ’90s, when we were a powerhouse, vying yearly with the powerful Blue Jays or Mariners for the AL Championship. There was nothing like the pitching duo of the massively underrated Mike Mussina[5] and Gentle Ben Johnson, who towered over even Randy Johnson; later, Gregg Olson was a shut-down closer.
I wasn’t alone — as I’ve said before, “Baltimore went Orioles-wild after the Colts left”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/003087.html. When I was in second grade, one of my classmates was the son of NBA Hall of Famer and former Washington Bullet Wes Unseld. His dad was kind enough to take the whole class to a Bullets practice one day, but all the kids were disappointed. I mean, they weren’t the O’s.[6] Then, in 7th grade, my completely overwhelmed English teacher decided that the midterm should be to list the Orioles starting lineup. Even dorky ‘ol me got enough to pass — heck, everyone knew who started for the home team!
In high school, one of my classmates got jeered at regularly for wearing a Red Sox cap. At least it wasn’t a Yankees cap, he would’ve gotten beaten up for that. We had our priorities straight, and one was definitely kicking that team when it was down — you see, the Yankees were originally the Baltimore Orioles, until, in a conspiracy, the New York Giants basically forced the Orioles to leave town and move to Manhattan.[7]
“Jeffery Maier”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAHQiDCY6jg basically ruined my Junior year of college. The first time in years I get an Orioles game on local TV, and he blows it for my team. I’m not forgetting that, you little punk!
And then years of mediocrity. Seriously, years. Culminating in the Expos moving to DC and stealing half of our territory, thus making us that much less capable of competing with Boston and the Yankees, financially. No, it’s not been a good time to be an Orioles fan.
!/images/darnedos.jpg!
But that’s it. I’m a fan. And I’m mad![8] I’m mad at Peter Angelos for not fielding a good team in a decade. And I’m mad at me for caring. It’s the Internet age, there must be some way for me to listen to the O’s on the radio for free online. Umm, does anyone know what that is? ‘Cause I’d love to find it. I’m coming home, baby!
fn1. O-apostrophe-s is the official style, which would make more sense if the grammatically-correct Os was a word, which it’s not, unlike, say, As.
fn2. Our current Presidential administration may also believe this, although Nixon sets a high standard!
fn3. Don’t you wish you knew who held that record?
fn4. To put things in perspective, the previous record was, I think, somewhere in the early teens.
fn5. A pity he was a Yankee when, in the year that Mark McGwire broke the home run record, Moose — supposedly a finesse pitcher — got Big Mac out on three straight fastballs in the All-Star Game.
fn6. Wes Unseld was super-nice to all of us then and a couple of other times I saw him. I wish I’d been able to appreciate it!
fn7. I swear, it’s true!
fn8. So mad that I’m out-of-focus!

Darn. Well, the Colts won. Evil has triumphed in the world, not least because good appears to have been incompetent. What else is new? Thanks to the magic of gin and barbecue, I was able to make it through all three-and-some hours of depressing football, interspersed with remarkably mediocre ads[1]. It’ll be ok. Actually, the whole Super Bowl experience kind of showed me where I need to set my expectations and plans in life.
Really, I knew the Colts would win. It was kind of like that last second before a car accident, when the other car has already pulled out in front of you but there’s no time to stop, so all you can see is that other car getting bigger and bigger and brace yourself for the crash and maybe you already smell that acrid “ouch I got hit!” smell in your nose, prepratory to the actual pain. I think I smelled that for the last two weeks. Good fuel for a smile of resignation, it was.
And then the game was just sad. With the opening kickoff return for a TD and the early interceptions, I actually got hope. That, I will say, was just not fair. Then the Bears got both outcoached and outplayed. “Bad Rex”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101817.html, “Tony Eason”:http://espn.go.com/page2/s/list/superbowl/worst.html. Tony Eason, Bad Rex. Here’s a few bucks, have a burger on me, boys.
So, as I said, this game showed me what I need to do in life. Those of you who know me well know that I’ve been planning to make enough to get my revenge on some who deserve it.[2] Well, that list has now been lengthened. I now know what my goal needs to be: I need to make enough money to buy the Colts, send the uniforms and records back to Baltimore, and move the team to the “Coliseum”:http://www.lacoliseum.com/. It’s good to have goals, and even better to have a little bile to drive you to them.
fn1. Was Salesgenie actually serious about “that ad”:http://sb.salesgenie.com/LandingAdSB.aspx?bas_vendor=68331? I mean, really? No, seriously? Um, wow.
fn2. If you don’t know who, I’m not telling you on this blog, sorry.

Well, today’s the big day. We have the “forces of evil”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/003087.html against the forces of… Chicago. We all know what side I come down on! I’ll be rooting hard the whole game, and I believe that Da Bears! can win. I do! They’ve got the tough defense, and Manning crumbled against Baltimore’s D. They’ve also got the tough running attack, with a good up-the-middle runner and a competent edge runner too, which Baltimore didn’t have. It’ll be a tough game, but the Bears will win in the end. We all need to get on the bandwagon and root for good over evil, and I know just the thing to get you there: