Cleaning out the inbox

Cleaning out the inbox starts with a great news item for me with the NBC Sports Network televising the occasional Canadian Football League game.
I wish that the network would show more of the early season games before the NFL season starts,but any US exposure is a great thing!
The best part of all is that the network will be putting all of the leagues playoff games on the air and that is great news for a league that has such a great game,but sometimes struggles in getting people to know what a terrific league they have in Canada....

ESPN has an interesting article on the concussion issue and compares the rate for concussions between the NFL and the CFL.
One idea for why the lower rate for the CFL that is listed in the article is the one yard between the defensive line and the line of scrimmage.
That makes some sense to me,but I would counter against that as players could get more of a running start from the linebackers.
Another thought is that the three downs of the Canadian game compared to the four down American style makes the running game more of an accessory than something that can a bulwark of the offense.
The more physical ground game could be more physically demanding than the air attack.
One of my all time favorites in football period,let alone the CFL is a focal point in the article as well.
Matt Dunigan played for several CFL teams and suffers from concussion symptoms from damage during his career.
Matt also discusses why he pulled his son Dolan from the gridiron and moved him to the diamond.
His reasons makes one think just how football could eventually be affected by the growing concerns about head injuries...

Grantland looks at the lost generation of Pittsburgh Pirates fans as well how things got as bad as they did for Pittsburgh baseball fans.
Although,with the way the Pirates have been playing over the last month,what appeared to be a foregone conclusion with the snapping of the losing streak record,the article appears to be written before it was a finished product.
After tonight's loss to the Reds,the Bucs have fallen to just 72-70 along with fading from the wild card race.
As this writing,Pittsburgh has exactly 20 games to go and the Pirates would need to go 9-11 to break the skein and play .500 baseball at 10-10 to finish with a winning record.
What once appeared to be destined is no longer a guarantee.....

ESPN has a long and detailed article on the late former Pirate Dock Ellis,who's claim to to have tossed his 1970 no-hitter is discused as well as the post-baseball career of Ellis,who worked extensively with drug and alcohol addicts after getting himself cleaned up from similar addictions.
Dock Ellis was always a special player to me as I detailed in this post from the past....

Over the last week,ESPN Classic has been showing some footage from the 1972 Munich Olympics,which along with the 1976 Montreal games are the two that I followed closely.
I have lost some interest in the Olympics through the years,but athletes that competed in those two games are still memorable to me and if I can find some sort of card of many of them,are athletes that I try to add to my autograph collection.
Watching the Munich marathon win by Frank Shorter made me think of Shorter's silver medal run against East Germany's Waldemar Cierpinski,who would repeat his win in the American boycotted 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
The article from five years ago discusses Cierpinski's being named as one of many of the drug enhanced athletes from the now defunct East German team.
I am planning on a post soon on the 1972 controversy between the Americans and Soviet Union basketball final since I have taped the game to watch in its entirety.