Goodbye ... to "Only A Game."

In the early years of home ownership, we used to awaken on Saturday mornings to the clock radio emitting the dulcet tones of Charles P. Pierce as he commented about the week in sports on "Only A Game" at public radio. We'd stay in bed and listen to the show before making coffee. That's loyalty.

At some point the habit waned. It happens; I started following Charlie Pierce at Esquire, when he graduated (?) to writing about politics. The show kept going, and as this farewell essay notes, it was Bill Littlefield's retirement in 2018 that suggested the end was near.

But I look back on it fondly.

After 27 years, WBUR’s ‘Only A Game’ — a show about stories you never wanted to end — is coming to an end, by Chad Finn (Boston Globe)

For 27 years, “Only A Game,” the sole sports program on National Public Radio and WBUR, told the kind of compelling, satisfying stories that a listener never quite wanted to end.

Somewhere along the way, it became one of those stories itself.

So it is with a sense of distinct accomplishment, but one of some melancholy too, that the people behind the program prepare to sign off for the final time, the show a casualty of budget cuts at WBUR in the economic maelstrom of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Only A Game” is one more lovely story ending.

The final original hourlong program will air Saturday at 7 a.m. on WBUR and on more than 250 NPR stations nationwide.

Naomi Kresge and Arne Delfs

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Flat12 becomes Rad, and I become confused.

Is Rad a power move, or more like the dulcet tones of a shark being jumped?

Only time will tell.

My first reaction: "But wait, it isn't April 1 yet."

There have been many recent changes at Flat12 Bierwerks, and I don't know any of the people involved these days, which makes it easier to be fair and balanced.

My primary interest is how the maneuverings in Indianapolis translate to the mostly detached Flat12-themed outpost in Jeffersonville.

Back in January, I tried to unravel an increasingly opaque situation.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Why is the non-brewing Flat12 in Jeffersonville considered a "brewery" by LEO Weekly but Gordon Biersch isn't? That's dumb, don't you think?

It should be noted that eventually LEO acceded to my impeccable reasoning, but now there's a new complication, courtesy of Indiana on Tap.

Flat12 Bierwerks Relaunches as Rad Brewing Co. to Support Youth Athletics

Indianapolis, IN – Flat12 Bierwerks is excited to announce it will be relaunching as Rad Brewing Co with the mission to support and promote alternative ways of getting active with a portion of the profits going to youth sports in Indianapolis.

Every purchase at Rad will directly impact the local community through a donation of sports equipment to local youth organizations. The launch party is scheduled for November 29th at 414 Dorman Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46202. Changes to the branding and brewpub will begin starting today, Monday, November 4th, and will include a new kitchen concept, “Rad Burger.” Both brewpub guests and online shoppers looking to support Rad’s mission can expect expanded options of merchandise including apparel for dogs as well as outdoor gear and athletic accessories.

I understand rebranding, and if I try really hard, the notion of sports as a beneficiary makes a degree of sense owing to the word "youth" and the corollary of encouraging activity among young people.

However, the big question for SoIn: Whither the Flat12 Bierwerks in Jeffersonville?

Lately this establishment seems to have been drifting more toward operating as a multi-tap (beers from all breweries featured) as opposed to a brewery tap.

Is there any benefit to remaining "Flat12" when it no longer exists, or to becoming Rad when there's little symmetry between north and south?

Each beer will be themed after a sport or athletic activity and each label will highlight on a rotating basis different local, national, and international businesses, teams, and individual athletes. The initial line-up will include, among others:

Beer Name (Style) – Initial Label Feature – Location

Gaelic (Dry Irish Stout) – Indianapolis Gaelic Athletic Association – Indianapolis, IN
Power Jam (Sweet Red Ale) – Chloe Bouffard (Roller Skating) -Ottawa, Ontario
Freestyle (Rad IPA) – Aguska Mnich (Freestyle Soccer World Champion) – London, England
Naptown Fit (Light Cream Ale) – Naptown Fitness – Indianapolis, IN
Endurance (Session IPA) – The Road Sodas (Running Group) – Indianapolis, IN
Breakin’ (Electric Pale Ale) – 31svn Street Dance Academy – Fishers, IN
Belay (Honey Brown Ale) – Climb Time (Rock Climbing Gym) – Indianapolis, IN

Flat12 favorites such as Half Cycle IPA, Pogue’s Run Porter, Tinker Brown, and Cucumber Kolsch will be kept under Rad as the “Indiana Classics Series.” Many other recipes will remain but will be relaunched with new names. Relationships with drivers Jarett Andretti and James Hinchcliffe will continue under the Rad moniker with their products Jarett Andretti 18 (Orange Wheat Ale) and Hinchtown Hammerdown (Pilsner).

Just my opinion: It all sounds like a conceptual muddle to me, and yet what happens next should be interesting.

Couldn't we just snap our fingers and transform the current riverside Flat12 location in Jeffersonville into an Upland or Sun King outlet?

"Breakfast with Kent" (Sterling) is an entertaining daily way to keep up with Indiana's sporting news.

I've gotten in the habit of listening to Kent Sterling's daily (Mon. - Fri.) video "Breakfast with Kent," and while my conceding to this might seem a wee bit atypical for me, I don't think it should be considered unusual.

I've written previously that I enjoy keeping track of sports in the broader sense of retaining a bluffer's knowledge of the news and scores. It's too much of a commitment of time to watch actual games, but I regularly read about sports -- or in the case of Kent's videos, I listen.

The 1980 New Albany High School graduate's breakfast chat covers Indiana sports at all levels as well as the Chicago Cubs, because they're Kent's own rooting interest, and Indy doesn't have a major league baseball team. His main topics include the Pacers, Colts and Indiana University, with plenty more each day.

Kent is passionate, fun and impeccably informed. The videos usually run 10 - 12 minutes in length, and can be found a number of places:

Kent's web site
His Facebook page
His YouTube channel

You're welcome.

By the way, I chose the video from last week embedded above because Kent has some interesting and enlightened things to say about SB 206, the California law allowing college athletes to profit from endorsements. 

Boyd: "It’s time to celebrate Louisville’s student academic stars the way we worship athletes."

At Insider Louisville, Terry Boyd spots probes the American cultural sore spot wherein sports is everything and academic achievement a voluntary coin toss. My, my ... we are a shallow and self-defeating people, ain't we?

 ... What you’ll never hear is a WHAS Radio call-in show dedicated to listeners trading rumors that the next Stephen Hawking or Steven Jobs might be at this very moment acing a calculus test at Collegiate.

The funny thing is, I find the school systems are reluctant to indulge their intellectuals in the way they’re so fast to tout their athletes.

When I tried to pry the names of top students out of administrators, the silence was deafening.

“Well, we don’t really single out individual students.”

Zirin at The Nation: "Steubenville and Challenging Rape Culture in Sports."

The more miles we travel, the more it seems that what needs to be challenged is sports culture in general. It's a tail that wags the dog. Dave Zirin shows again why he's one of the few sports writers currently worth reading.

Steubenville and Challenging Rape Culture in Sports, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

... Earlier this year, it was seeing Notre Dame players who had been implicated in two sexual assaults, take the field without uproar in their national championship game, led by a coach who thought the accusations were cause for humor. This week the trial opens in Steubenville, Ohio, where two members of the storied high school football team are facing youth prison until the age of 21 for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. The defense has described the young woman as “a drunk out-of-town football groupie.”

The fact is that rape culture—conversation, jokes and actions that normalize rape—are a part of sports. Far too many athletes feel far too empowered to see women as the spoils of jock culture. The young woman in Steubenville was carried like a piece of meat, with the brutality documented like it was spring break in Daytona Beach. It was so normalized that dozens of people saw what was happening and did nothing.

Zirin: "Oscar Pistorius and the Global System of Deadly Misogyny."

The Nation's Dave Zirin rapidly is becoming the only writer about sports (I refrain from the more conventional moniker) who I can can stand reading. That's because he insists on refusing to view sports apart from a broader societal context. In Zirin's coverage, the dog is considered, not merely the tail. The hypocrisies are considered absent the worshipful delusions. Twitterers, you can follow Zirin at @EdgeofSports.

Oscar Pistorius and the Global System of Deadly Misogyny

... Just as with Belcher and Perkins, we will learn more than we ever wanted or needed to know in the weeks to come about the nature of Pistorius and Steenkamp’s relationship. We will learn about the “allegations of a domestic nature” that had brought police to his home in the past. We will learn about Pistorius’s previous allegedly violent relationships with women. We will learn about the variety of guns he kept at close hand. We will surely discuss male athletes and violence against women: the sort of all-too-common story that can create commonality between a football player from Long Island and a sprinter from Johannesburg. We might even ponder the way these gated communities, one of which was also the site of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin’s murder a year ago, become throbbing pods of paranoia and parabellums. We will learn about everything except what actually matters: there is a global epidemic of violence against women, and South Africa is at its epicenter.