John Mackey, the Hall of Fame tight end for the old Baltimore Colts and later a National Football League Players Association pioneer, has died at age 69 after battling dementia for more than a decade.
In recent years NFL Player Care enacted a plan to reimburse retirees up to $88,000 a year for acute-care expenses in connection with mental disability claims. The “88 Plan” was named in honor of Mackey, who wore uniform number 88.
Inexcusably, the main obituary on Mackey at The Baltimore Sun does not even make reference to the 88 Plan. The story does note his dementia and that his “off-the-field exploits were as important as his accomplishments on it.” See http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/ravhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifens/bal-john-mackey-dies,0,5908899.story.
Irv Muchnick
Friday, July 8, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Connecticut Governmental and Political Dysfunction a Recipe for Linda McMahonism – And Vice Versa
Look, gentle readers, I don’t believe the Connecticut Labor Department’s audit of World Wrestling Entertainment independent contractor misclassification practices is more urgent than public employee union concessions – which Governor Dan Malloy either did or did not negotiate, and which in turn either are or are not meaningful for the resolution of the state’s current budget mess.
I’m not that stupid.
Still, I can’t help reiterating that Linda McMahon, co-founder and ex-CEO of WWE, was the Republican nominee for one of Connecticut’s U.S. Senate seats last year, and by some accounts she is the presumptive nominee for the other Senate seat next year. And from my critical distance – a commodity obviously in short supply among the Nutmeg State chattering classes – I happen to think that the Government and Politics 101 fumbling of the state WWE investigation is a useful microcosm of general dysfunction.
People in the state that exported the WWE franchise across the globe are showing us, to a fare-thee-well, how WWE values rule that world, as well as theirs. They were shocked, shocked, by the tawdriness of the campaigns waged in 2010, both by McMahon and against her. Then the victors, to whom go the spoils and, with great reluctance, the responsibilities, proceeded to do absolutely nothing of substance about the most meaningful policy issue exposed by the McMahon family’s entry in the electoral arena.
Now all of them – Governor Malloy (former mayor of Stamford, hometown of WWE); Senator Richard Blumenthal (who squashed McMahon by double digits in last year’s election, evidently for the privilege of bringing Google Maps to its knees); Labor Commissioner Glenn Marshall (who supports misclassification crackdowns except when they’re real rather than theoretical); and whomever the Democratic establishment will put up for retiring Senator Joe Lieberman’s seat – are ready to do it all over against Linda McMahon in 2012.
I suspect they like it that way: the easy win on Election Day, the lack of results afterward, and above all the smug sense that the joke about wrestling is on everyone except them.
Irv Muchnick
I’m not that stupid.
Still, I can’t help reiterating that Linda McMahon, co-founder and ex-CEO of WWE, was the Republican nominee for one of Connecticut’s U.S. Senate seats last year, and by some accounts she is the presumptive nominee for the other Senate seat next year. And from my critical distance – a commodity obviously in short supply among the Nutmeg State chattering classes – I happen to think that the Government and Politics 101 fumbling of the state WWE investigation is a useful microcosm of general dysfunction.
People in the state that exported the WWE franchise across the globe are showing us, to a fare-thee-well, how WWE values rule that world, as well as theirs. They were shocked, shocked, by the tawdriness of the campaigns waged in 2010, both by McMahon and against her. Then the victors, to whom go the spoils and, with great reluctance, the responsibilities, proceeded to do absolutely nothing of substance about the most meaningful policy issue exposed by the McMahon family’s entry in the electoral arena.
Now all of them – Governor Malloy (former mayor of Stamford, hometown of WWE); Senator Richard Blumenthal (who squashed McMahon by double digits in last year’s election, evidently for the privilege of bringing Google Maps to its knees); Labor Commissioner Glenn Marshall (who supports misclassification crackdowns except when they’re real rather than theoretical); and whomever the Democratic establishment will put up for retiring Senator Joe Lieberman’s seat – are ready to do it all over against Linda McMahon in 2012.
I suspect they like it that way: the easy win on Election Day, the lack of results afterward, and above all the smug sense that the joke about wrestling is on everyone except them.
Irv Muchnick
Honor Roll: Current NFL Players Brendon Ayanbadejo and Will Witherspoon Support the Carl Eller Retirees’ Lawsuit
In my June 26 post, “View the Dissident NFL Retirees’ Washington Press Conference at Dave Pear’s Blog,” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/view-the-dissident-nfl-retirees%E2%80%99-washington-press-conference-at-dave-pear%E2%80%99s-blog/, I promised a shout-out to the active players who appeared at the Washington Press Club news conference in support of Carl Eller’s class-action lawsuit making the anti-anti-lockout case of abandoned former players.
The list first given to me was hyped. There were eight names on it, but six of them were marginal ex-players, three of whom played as recently as 2006 or 2007 but perhaps still harbor hopes of resuming National Football League careers.
I have immense respect for Brendon Ayanbadejo (linebacker, Baltimore Ravens) and Will Witherspoon (linebacker, Tennessee Titans), who risked their current positions by bucking both the league and its players’ union. Both were at the Washington event, and Ayanbadejo spoke at it.
Irv Muchnick
The list first given to me was hyped. There were eight names on it, but six of them were marginal ex-players, three of whom played as recently as 2006 or 2007 but perhaps still harbor hopes of resuming National Football League careers.
I have immense respect for Brendon Ayanbadejo (linebacker, Baltimore Ravens) and Will Witherspoon (linebacker, Tennessee Titans), who risked their current positions by bucking both the league and its players’ union. Both were at the Washington event, and Ayanbadejo spoke at it.
Irv Muchnick
Slouching Toward Anti-Maroonism: Some More Gentle Criticism of ImPACT Testing
From Dustin Fink’s Concussion Blog:
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
http://theconcussionblog.com/2011/07/05/more-research-for-multi-faceted-approach/
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
http://theconcussionblog.com/2011/07/05/more-research-for-multi-faceted-approach/
Friday, July 1, 2011
San Francisco 49er Eric Heitmann Cracks His Nuts ... And Leg ... And Neck ... And Head?
You don’t have to be an ambulance chaser in order to know which way the sports-head-injury litigation winds are blowing. The San Francisco Chronicle’s football writer, Kevin Lynch, has provided some instructive background on the woes of San Francisco 49ers center Eric Heitmann.
Yesterday Lynch reported that Heitmann, who missed all of last season after injuring his neck and breaking his leg in training camp, will sit out all of 2011, as well, lockout or not, with a ruptured neck disk.
But it was Lynch’s blog post on the Chronicle’s website that told “the rest of the story.” See “Eric Heitmann – victim of the nutcracker,” http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ninerinsider/detail?entry_id=92054:
Heitmann’s injury is another lasting legacy from Mike Singletary’s infamous nutcracker drill. The exercise in which two players clashed into each other and tried to push the other one back, like a pair of mountain rams, resulted in a series of injuries. None more serious than Heitmann’s; he felt a tweak in his neck after a nutcracker encounter in last summer’s training camp.
According to tackle Joe Staley, Heitmann ignored the injury but was slowed by it. The next day in a team drill, Heitmann broke his leg when he wasn’t quick enough to escape a falling teammate. The shattered fibula might have prevented possible paralysis with his vulnerable neck. While recovering from the leg injury, numbness and shooting pain persisted from his neck. When the symptoms refused to abate, Heitmann underwent surgery last month.
Those of you who follow football already know that in his two-plus years as the 49ers’ head coach, Singletary convincingly established that he was one of the 25 or so National Football League field generals who have no idea what they’re doing, rather than one of the seven or so who have a clue. The Heitmann anecdote adds another dimension to the sensitive-assassin shtick that Singletary (a teammate of Dave Duerson on the defense of the Chicago Bears’ 1986 Super Bowl champions) parlayed into a career on the Christian motivational-speaker circuit and then in the NFL coaching ranks.
As for Singletary’s employer and league – it is not exactly reassuring to hear that the much-ballyhooed concussion-awareness culture shift of 2010 did nothing to prevent this men-among-men barbarism, which not only damaged Heitmann’s neck but also, I strongly suspect, resulted in long-term brain trauma, diagnosed or otherwise.
Irv Muchnick
Yesterday Lynch reported that Heitmann, who missed all of last season after injuring his neck and breaking his leg in training camp, will sit out all of 2011, as well, lockout or not, with a ruptured neck disk.
But it was Lynch’s blog post on the Chronicle’s website that told “the rest of the story.” See “Eric Heitmann – victim of the nutcracker,” http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ninerinsider/detail?entry_id=92054:
Heitmann’s injury is another lasting legacy from Mike Singletary’s infamous nutcracker drill. The exercise in which two players clashed into each other and tried to push the other one back, like a pair of mountain rams, resulted in a series of injuries. None more serious than Heitmann’s; he felt a tweak in his neck after a nutcracker encounter in last summer’s training camp.
According to tackle Joe Staley, Heitmann ignored the injury but was slowed by it. The next day in a team drill, Heitmann broke his leg when he wasn’t quick enough to escape a falling teammate. The shattered fibula might have prevented possible paralysis with his vulnerable neck. While recovering from the leg injury, numbness and shooting pain persisted from his neck. When the symptoms refused to abate, Heitmann underwent surgery last month.
Those of you who follow football already know that in his two-plus years as the 49ers’ head coach, Singletary convincingly established that he was one of the 25 or so National Football League field generals who have no idea what they’re doing, rather than one of the seven or so who have a clue. The Heitmann anecdote adds another dimension to the sensitive-assassin shtick that Singletary (a teammate of Dave Duerson on the defense of the Chicago Bears’ 1986 Super Bowl champions) parlayed into a career on the Christian motivational-speaker circuit and then in the NFL coaching ranks.
As for Singletary’s employer and league – it is not exactly reassuring to hear that the much-ballyhooed concussion-awareness culture shift of 2010 did nothing to prevent this men-among-men barbarism, which not only damaged Heitmann’s neck but also, I strongly suspect, resulted in long-term brain trauma, diagnosed or otherwise.
Irv Muchnick
Randy Orton Interview About 2006 Drug Overdose Taken Down From Official Website
[posted 6/30/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.ghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifif
Randy Orton, with or without WWE’s input, has concluded that he took the hype of his upcoming DVD documentary too far by discussing his 2006 drug overdose in an Arizona radio interview two days ago. Either that or the interview tease has already served its purpose.
In any case, you can no longer find the audio at Orton’s official site. I’m told that you can access it at http://podcasting.fia.net/6005/4788152.mp3.
Irv Muchnick
Randy Orton, with or without WWE’s input, has concluded that he took the hype of his upcoming DVD documentary too far by discussing his 2006 drug overdose in an Arizona radio interview two days ago. Either that or the interview tease has already served its purpose.
In any case, you can no longer find the audio at Orton’s official site. I’m told that you can access it at http://podcasting.fia.net/6005/4788152.mp3.
Irv Muchnick
While WWE Star Randy Orton Overdosed on Drugs, Wrestling Media and Fans Underdosed on Reality
[posted 6/30/11 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.ghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifif
Breaking his years-long silence on the subject, Randy Orton has acknowledged in an Arizona radio interview that in 2006 he indeed overdosed on an unspecified drug, was rushed by his then-fiancee to a suburban St. Louis hospital (DePaul Health Center, I can now report), and nearly died.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This verifies the account first published on this blog a year after the incident. The most comprehensive retrospective here – in January 2010 during the U.S. Senate campaign in Connecticut – was “The Suicide Attempt (Part 2 – Randy Orton, Poster Boy for Linda McMahon’s WWE ‘Wellness Policy’),” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/the-suicide-attempt-part-2-randy-orton-poster-boy-for-linda-mcmahon%E2%80%99s-wwe-%E2%80%98wellness-policy%E2%80%99/.
The audio of Orton’s KUPD-Tempe interview is up on his own site at http://randy-orton.com/2011/06/randy-talks-with-98-kupd-arizonas-real-rock/.
Cageside Seats’ S. Bruce was the first wrestling journalist to report Orton’s admission, at http://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/6/29/2250462/outrageous-randy-orton-interview. Bruce notes that this confirms, “in part, Irv Muchnick’s story in 2007 that Orton had overdosed, although Irv initially claimed it was a suicide attempt, which is clearly not the case.”
At the Pro Wrestling Torch site, James Caldwell goes minimalist and cryptic: “Orton talked candidly about past drug abuse issues, including a documented incident five years ago when he ‘stopped breathing’ and his wife called an ambulance to save his life.”
Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer makes the important marketing tie-in to Orton’s disclosure: “He admitted to overdosing, stopped breathing and being rushed to the hospital in 2006 (this story had been reported by Irv Muchnick shortly after it happened) but he also admits to that on a new documentary DVD the company is putting out.”
When I broke the story, Brian Stull of KFNS radio in St. Louis had me on his “Stranglehold” show to talk about it. Beforehand, Stull spoke off the air with Orton’s father, Bob Orton Jr., who denied all. But Cowboy Bob later vaguely confirmed the episode in a KFNS documentary series on local sports heroes.
At the time, I did no favors to my opportunity to focus wrestling fans on the key issues when my early reports included easy-to-nitpick errors about the time frame of Orton’s OD and the background of his “legend killer” gimmick. So, yes, I wish I had rolled out the story more effectively.
I doubt, however, that perfection – as opposed to an overall sound scoop – would have made any difference. Just a few months after the Chris Benoit murder-suicide gripped mainstream media the world over, the news that a bankable WWE star had already gone through a hushed-up near-death experience would have resonated if fans, and the media pandering to them, wanted it that way. But they were eager to crawl back into their shells of denial. Not even the additional information that Randy Orton mysteriously dodged a suspension in the contemporaneous Signature Pharmacy scandal could shake the deniers out of their complacency.
As for the assertion by Bruce of Cageside Seats that there “clearly” was no suicide attempt ... I’m not so sure. The slope of agency in drug overdoses can be slippery, and the bottom line of mortality doesn’t account for intent. (In 2008 Sean Waltman would be vehement that his own OD had been accidental, but later would change his tune.)
Anyway, it would be nice if the moral of this story were more than the parsing of gossipy details or the inevitable speculation that Orton’s new “candid” interview was just a self-congratulating work-shoot-work-shoot ploy to boost the sales of Randy Orton: Evolution of a Predator (of course it was). Orton is also, by his count, a six-concussion survivor – an issue which, like drug abuse, transcends both wrestling and its vastly larger cousin entertainment, pro football. The measurements of the ingredients of the “cocktail of death” are debatable – but not the conclusion that it’s a serious public health problem.
Irv Muchnick
Breaking his years-long silence on the subject, Randy Orton has acknowledged in an Arizona radio interview that in 2006 he indeed overdosed on an unspecified drug, was rushed by his then-fiancee to a suburban St. Louis hospital (DePaul Health Center, I can now report), and nearly died.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This verifies the account first published on this blog a year after the incident. The most comprehensive retrospective here – in January 2010 during the U.S. Senate campaign in Connecticut – was “The Suicide Attempt (Part 2 – Randy Orton, Poster Boy for Linda McMahon’s WWE ‘Wellness Policy’),” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/the-suicide-attempt-part-2-randy-orton-poster-boy-for-linda-mcmahon%E2%80%99s-wwe-%E2%80%98wellness-policy%E2%80%99/.
The audio of Orton’s KUPD-Tempe interview is up on his own site at http://randy-orton.com/2011/06/randy-talks-with-98-kupd-arizonas-real-rock/.
Cageside Seats’ S. Bruce was the first wrestling journalist to report Orton’s admission, at http://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/6/29/2250462/outrageous-randy-orton-interview. Bruce notes that this confirms, “in part, Irv Muchnick’s story in 2007 that Orton had overdosed, although Irv initially claimed it was a suicide attempt, which is clearly not the case.”
At the Pro Wrestling Torch site, James Caldwell goes minimalist and cryptic: “Orton talked candidly about past drug abuse issues, including a documented incident five years ago when he ‘stopped breathing’ and his wife called an ambulance to save his life.”
Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer makes the important marketing tie-in to Orton’s disclosure: “He admitted to overdosing, stopped breathing and being rushed to the hospital in 2006 (this story had been reported by Irv Muchnick shortly after it happened) but he also admits to that on a new documentary DVD the company is putting out.”
When I broke the story, Brian Stull of KFNS radio in St. Louis had me on his “Stranglehold” show to talk about it. Beforehand, Stull spoke off the air with Orton’s father, Bob Orton Jr., who denied all. But Cowboy Bob later vaguely confirmed the episode in a KFNS documentary series on local sports heroes.
At the time, I did no favors to my opportunity to focus wrestling fans on the key issues when my early reports included easy-to-nitpick errors about the time frame of Orton’s OD and the background of his “legend killer” gimmick. So, yes, I wish I had rolled out the story more effectively.
I doubt, however, that perfection – as opposed to an overall sound scoop – would have made any difference. Just a few months after the Chris Benoit murder-suicide gripped mainstream media the world over, the news that a bankable WWE star had already gone through a hushed-up near-death experience would have resonated if fans, and the media pandering to them, wanted it that way. But they were eager to crawl back into their shells of denial. Not even the additional information that Randy Orton mysteriously dodged a suspension in the contemporaneous Signature Pharmacy scandal could shake the deniers out of their complacency.
As for the assertion by Bruce of Cageside Seats that there “clearly” was no suicide attempt ... I’m not so sure. The slope of agency in drug overdoses can be slippery, and the bottom line of mortality doesn’t account for intent. (In 2008 Sean Waltman would be vehement that his own OD had been accidental, but later would change his tune.)
Anyway, it would be nice if the moral of this story were more than the parsing of gossipy details or the inevitable speculation that Orton’s new “candid” interview was just a self-congratulating work-shoot-work-shoot ploy to boost the sales of Randy Orton: Evolution of a Predator (of course it was). Orton is also, by his count, a six-concussion survivor – an issue which, like drug abuse, transcends both wrestling and its vastly larger cousin entertainment, pro football. The measurements of the ingredients of the “cocktail of death” are debatable – but not the conclusion that it’s a serious public health problem.
Irv Muchnick
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