The Big Apple Beat

The NFL season is about to get underway, and once again I'll be writing weekly game previews for the New York Sun. It'll be my fifth season covering the Jets and Giants for the Sun, and I've really enjoyed that opportunity. Both teams should be competitive in what will be very competitive divisions.

Much of the offseason discussion about both teams has focused on their quarterbacks and head coaches, but I think that the success of each club will depend largely on their new running backs. The Giants have to replace Tiki Barber, who opted to retire to pursue a career in broadcasting. They'll count on third-year player Brandon Jacobs, a tall athletic back whose running style reminds me of Eric Dickerson. I'm not suggesting he'll be the kind of dominating back that Dickerson was, but he runs with the same upright style and has a similar easy gait that masks his speed.

The Jets made the playoffs last year despite their inability to tun the ball consistently. A trio of unimpressive backs just didn't get the job done. To solve that problem, the Jets traded a second round draft pick to the Bears for Thomas Jones. A big powerful back, Jones rushed for 1210 yards last year and helped lead Chicago to the Super Bowl. He doesn't have the kind of explosiveness that will lead to big plays, but he might help the Jets control the clock by pounding the ball up the middle.

My previews will appear in the Sun on Fridays during the season, or on Thursday/Monday when the teams play on those days. You can read them at the New York Sun web site or in the archive section of my own web site.

Back From Alaska

Just returned from a two-week trip to Alaska with the family. We flew into Fairbanks, then made our way gradually south towards Anchorage on the Alaska Railroad. It was an amazing experience. We'd ride for miles without seeing a house or a road or any signs of human life. The word that kept springing to mind was "pristine." The scenery was breathtaking just about everywhere you looked, and most of the geography was undisturbed by man.

I saw and did too much to describe in a single blog posting, but if you're curious, I'd invite you to check out what we have posted at our family web site -- lahman.org. Between myself and the three kids, we took wel over 3500 pictures with our digital cameras. I posted a few each day when I could get internet access, and once we returned I uploaded low res versions of everything else.

Because we were doing so much, I kept a journal of our activities. Otherwise, I knew I'd forget some of the amazing things we got to experience. As time permits, I hope to make that journal available at the family website along with edited versions of the best pictures. My younger daughter Hannah is doing the same thing with her written journal, and Audrey, her older sister, made posts to her blog during the trip.

Kodak's Implosions

I went with my son and daughter to Kodak Park early this morning. The photo giant had announced weeks ago that they were going to demolish two large buildings by imploding them, one yesterday and the other today. We trekked out there both mornings, along with thousands of other people who wanted to see the show. On both occasions, the whole thing lasted about ten seconds, but it was definitely a unique experience. The destruction of an eight story building is probably the biggest sudden release of energy you can witness outside of a war zone. The noise was tremendous, and the force of the falling structure made the ground shake where we were standing, about a thousand feet away. (Hannah took videos of each with her digital camera, first Saturday and again on Sunday. She also took the three pictures that accompany this article.)

Eastman Kodak was once the largest employer in Rochester and Kodak Park, the company's main campus. was like a city unto itself. The 2200-acre facility had its own fire department, dozens of cafeterias, bank branches, shoe stores, and even a bowling alley. George Eastman is buried on the grounds, a sign, I suppose, of the power and influence the company founder held even after his death.

That company has been dying a slow death over the past decade. I left my job at Kodak in 1999, convinced that the company's half-hearted attempts to enter the digital imaging market had misfired, and that their failure to adapt to the changing marketplace would result in a lot of local folks being shown the door. I was definitely right about the latter, with several rounds of layoffs coming in the first few years after I left. Then the company dropped a bombshell, announcing their plans to slash the local workforce from 21,000 to 13,000 by 2007. With fewer employees, of course, they didn't need so much space. The destruction of these two buildings this weekend was part of a massive demolition effort that's been taking place at Kodak Park, with more than half of the facility's 212 buildings being torn down in a span of a few years.


And so this weekend, I couldn't help but be a little puzzled by the celebratory atmosphere the Kodak PR people tried to muster. There were large banners on the doomed buildings trumpeting their new inkjet printers. Apparently those folks weren't troubled by the image of their new product line being blown up and being consumed by smoke and rubble. The Kodak folks wore festive t-shirts, led cheers over a loudspeaker, and released a flock of balloons. I gotta say, the whole thing was just surreal.


Building nine, which came down Saturday, housed Kodak's paper manufacturing facility. The company once held a monopoly on that booming business, but no longer. This wasn't just the destruction of a building but the end of the line for what was once one of Kodak's core businesses. It's one thing to say that this is the beginning of a new era, but there has to be more than optimism to suggest that there is something new and exciting still to come.

The local paper had some great coverage of the events, including this slide show of the crowd gathered to watch. I can't help but make two observations. First, there were an awful lot of former Kodak employees who had come out. Second, nearly everyone had a camera, and very few of them were Kodak cameras.

This weekend was a funeral for a once thriving company that is no more. If a new company emerges, one based on digital technologies, well that's fantastic. But let's not be quite so giddy when saying farewell to George Eastman's empire. The impact of Kodak's fall will reverberate throughout the community long after the debris of these buildings is carried away.

Boxing: Alive But Not So Well

Last night I went with friends to see the fights. The main event featured former two-time Heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman, attempting a comeback after losing his title last August. I'd love to see him succeed, not only because he's a local guy, spending the last few years training here in Rochester. More importantly, he's really the only American fighter who seems capable of getting a fight for the Heavyweight championship. Right now, all three of the heavyweight belts are held by fighters from former Soviet countries: Oleg Maskaev of Russia (WBC), Wladamir Klitschko from the Ukraine (WBA) , and Ruslan Chagev out of Uzbekistan (IBF).

Of course, the alphabet soup is one of the main reasons why boxing's popularity has faded in the United States. Three different sanctioning bodies each anoint their own champions, and they've each added new weight classes so that nearly every bout that takes place is some sort of championship fight. Fifty years ago, their were just eight weight classes, each with their own champion. Now there are nearly sixty champions, and that sort of dilution makes it difficult for fans to follow.

The bigger problem in my mind is that the quality of boxing has declined in the last decade, and that was evident in Rahman's fight last night. He weighed in at 261 pounds -- 25 pounds heavier than when he knocked out Lennox Lewis and more than thirty pounds heavier than when he fought Evander Holyfield. Rahman should have easily outclassed opponent Taurus Sykes, but he was out of shape, and plodded around the ring hoping to win the fight with one big punch. The two fighters spent most of the night clinching and holding, never throwing enough punches to get the crowd engaged. It was like watching two men do a slow dance. Rahman did manage to knock Sykes down in the 11th round and won a unanimous decision. However, his inability to take control of the fight and the fact that he was so out of shape suggest that his comeback attempts might not be a good idea. I'm rooting for the guy, but I didn't see any sign that the 34-year old had anything left.

Despite all of this, there are still boxing fans hungry for action. I've seen them at the bouts scheduled in Rochester and Buffalo. I've seen them clamoring for big pay per view events like the DeLaHoya - Mayweather fight in May. And I saw them at the Boxing Hall of Fame last weekend for the annual induction ceremonies. They all long for the excitement that the sport used to offer. Sadly, there's too little of that excitement left.

The New Football Encyclopedia

Just a quick note about the second edition of the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia. We're wrapping up our work on updates and have added a number of new features. One of those is a new chapter I've written on the evolution of football strategy, looking at how playing styles have changed over the past ninety years. From the single wing offense of the 1920s to the modern day Cover-2, I tried to cover all of the major systems that have been used, what innovations they offered, and how successful they ultimately were. Football isn't like any of the other major sports because the game has changed so much. In order to have a context for understanding the players and the teams of the past, I think you need to understand those changes.

I'll have future updates on other features and changes for the book. ESPN analyst and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski is writing a foreword for this edition, and it looks like Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning will grace our cover. We're still in the final stages of making decisions about the content between the covers, but I'll keep you posted.