@hehateme-blog - Tumblr Blog

Zach Sullivan is a rare example of an active player in men's pro hockey who came out. He says watching the "gay hockey show" was difficult.

direct link to zach’s instagram post

#heated rivalry #zach sullivan

Another article on the NHL and Heated Rivalry, from The Athletic/NYT

This time featuring interviews with Harrison Browne, Brock McGillis, and Luke Prokop.

#hockey #nhl #homophobia #sexuality #heated rivalry #article #Harrison Browne #Brock McGillis #Luke Prokop

Obsessed with this comment on a Google Talk about sabermetrics.

Text below the cut.

I proclaim a deep hatred to these analytics. I declare a deep distaste for these techno-industrial stats! I will tell you a story of baseball - it takes place in my country (Russia). Many do not know that in Russia during the communist era we have baseball team. My uncle was selected to be baseball player (he was an athlete and we hastily put together a team in the 1980s to compete in the Olympics) because he was an athlete and the national team was starting from scratch. None of the players on the Soviet team could play baseball, and many had not heard of it until then! My uncle, like many, became enthralled by this game. To him, it was a pastoralist game - and what else can speak to the soul of a man born outside Yekaterinburg? Of course, my uncle, just as my family, has a deep agricultural tradition - it is in our blood. Baseball has become mythologized as a sport of the soil in America and this myth of baseball was brought to Russia through the Soviet team's study of American baseball history. Abner Doubleday is the legendary founder of the sport. Not only did he codify baseball, which he showed to men in the American Civil War, he did so in the rural village Cooperstown. Yes, this is a myth and in reality baseball was founded in urban New York City in the mid 1800s. But what moves the hearts of men? What beckons man forward so that he may give every last ounce of his being to a cause? It is the romanticized and the mythic past of all that exists! While baseball was developed in the cities it has a rural and pastoral soul simply because we have created such a myth for it. And now, that myth is in our hearts and we must defend that myth! And how false is this myth? Proto-baseball games has been popular in western new york villages since the 1820s! Regardless, baseball has a mythology of the pastoral and the rural! It has been one piece of the formula of American identity. To me, it has been a family affair where in our dacha my uncle taught the game to me. And when I went to visit family in Tyumen and beyond I brought the game to them and we played it on a football pitch. Why does baseball speak to me and us? Because of the ruralism within this game! What is the risk of the analytic movement? THE TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF THE IRRATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE GAME! The human aspect of simple men - human men who act so called "irrationally" (this is simply a slur by the "enlightenment" thinkers to defame men who think outside the zeitgeist of our decadent era of civilization).

And, this is just yet another way the vast techno-industrial system has stripped humanity bear and turned us into standing reserve. May I refer you to the works of Heidegger on his essay "The Question Concerning Technology"? What does he say in this essay, my friends? Well he decries that the Greek notion of what is technology (techne) has been replaced by our modern form (gestell). Techne, the work of craftsmen for a human purpose but also to fulfill the craftsman's life purpose (Ie: a bridge across a river) does not enframe humans or nature as standing reserve. Gestell, however, does. Humans are now nothing more than standing reserve in this wretched techno-industrial system. Where there was beauty and spirits to be experienced now we see nature only in terms of it's resources, and we see ourselves only in terms of how we can be used as resources for the techno-industrial system (gestell --> human resources). What do we risk in baseball then? That the players are no longer craftsmen of the game, we see them less in the form of techne and more as gestell, or standing reserve. The result? The depersonalization of the game, the destruction of the beautiful myth that is pastoral baseball, the abolition of the spiritual aspects of the game in order to serve the insatiable appetite of the "machine" (by this I mean modern man's unquenchable drive to push forward innovation even if it turns man into a cog in a soulless machine. This drive is the Faustian nature of modern man wherein our large strides for perpetual motion, to outdo nature, lead to our undoing via genetic replacement through somatic gene editing or AI merging not to mention the dehumanization of us all through an increasingly impersonal and meaningless world where our only purpose is to buy into and support "progress" for the sake of a few Fausts who want to push the limits and who have the power to force us to do so. Mass PR firms do the rest by convincing us this is in our best interests.). MY POINT: Sabermetrics makes sense only from the business standpoint, of course. But as lovers of this game we must recognize this is the start of the total destruction of the human element of the game. Notice how the Dodgers played in the world series due to sabermetrics, their manager could have been replaced by a machine. Where is the irrational elements, the elements we as humans naturally love because we can relate? What will become of the pastoral myth of baseball when it has become technologised and rationalized to the point where events can be so simply predicted? WE MUST DEMAND THE TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF THE TECHNO-INDUSTRAL SYSTEM. ANALYTICS IS ONLY ONE SIGN OF THE PROBLEMS BROUGHT UPON THE WORLD BY THE FOOLISH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION!!!! WE MUST PRESERVE BASEBALL, THE GAME WE LOVE!

#baseball #mlb #russia #sabermetrics #analytics

The NHL’s response to Heated Rivalry, via the Hollywood Reporter - link

#hockey #heated rivalry #nhl #We don’t do pride nights anymore but do come and spend your money.

More on Heated Rivalry / LGBT men in hockey

Reddit link

I think some people simply don’t understand how deeply traumatic it is to live a secret so big and hide it for so long.

That fundamentally, even the people closest to you don’t know you. The understanding that the trust that exists in those relationships is based on lies because you were never being yourself. The fear of not only rejection from those people but also retaliation.

You’re already lonely so there’s no fear of being more lonely, but Heated Rivalry dangles a fantasy life in front of you that you could never, ever experience for yourself. You’ll never be that happy, it says. No one will ever know all parts of you and love them. You live with the paranoia of your secret every day. It’s an isolating experience. But don’t listen to me. Listen to the voices of actual gay men who have played hockey.

#heated rivalry #hockey #gay #lgbt #sexuality

Brock McGillis on Heated Rivalry

“Episode one gave me a panic attack,” he says, seeing himself in Hollander and Scott Hunter (François Arnaud). “I was scared. I dated a guy for three years, not a soul in my life knowing. We had an alias for [me in his phone] in case [his friends] ever saw.”

When it comes to capturing a sense of hockey culture, McGillis says the series could show more of the normalised homophobia he says exists in the sport.

“The language, behaviours, and attitudes that you get in locker rooms are sometimes homophobic – that starts at a very young age and progresses through your whole life. You’re programmed to feel that everyone will hate you and you’ll lose your career,” he says.

McGillis adds: “Sometimes I don’t think people recognise what they’re saying or the impact it has. But if you’re hearing that daily, it’s death by 1,000 paper cuts.”

Applauding the show’s sex scenes McGillis continues: “Nobody’s like, ‘Oh, yeah. This came out and now I’m ready [to come out].’ It’s not happening.”

He then says: “It’s probably more likely to have an adverse effect on a player coming out. And I hate to be negative because I really enjoy the show. But I also don’t believe that many hockey bros are going to watch it. And I don’t think, if they are watching it, they’re talking about it positively.”

Selected excerpts from: Hockey’s first out gay pro says Heated Rivalry won’t help players come out (PinkNews)

#brock mcgillis #hockey #heated rivalry #gay #lgbt #sexuality

It’s really interesting to see which of my quote compilations from We Breed Lions get notes, and which don’t. It saddens me to see hockey Tumblr users put hockey players in the perpetual victim box, rather that seeing the more nuanced portrait that the book paints, which is that it is a cycle that in large part spurred by hockey players themselves.

#hockey #personal

Ohio State Buckeyes wide receiver Jeremiah Smith on his Twitter - link

#college football #american football #jeremiah smith #ohio state buckeyes

Travis Kelce on Toradol use

From his 2018 interview with Desus & Mero

Transcript:

What was your 1st welcome to the NFL moment? My 1st welcome to the NFL moment... You guys remember a guy named Bernard Pollard? You need safety of size... Okay, but is like 10 times stronger. He actually was in the weight room doing crazy stuff, but he came downhill on a slant route. I called a slant route before I could even turn up field. He put it down right my chest. 1st game. Yeah. And I just remember getting up as fast as I can and like friendly like, I didn't have a ball and I was just like, Oh man, did I just fumble it? Was it the cats? Not cats? h. Oh. I wasn't on the cuss. thank God. because I remember everything. It just happened so fast. I was like, wow, man, these dudes are real deal. We always ask football players. Okay, you get hit on Sunday. When do you feel it? Do you feel it right away outside or do you feel like Tuesday, Wednesday? When is it really? I cheat. I take a Toradol, which is like an anti-flammatory before the game through the team. I mean, this isn’t illegal stuff. No, I'm not doing illegal, you know? But no, it's a, it helps with the, with like the little stuff. So like the hits that I take, um, like sometimes your your arms go or it got bad shoulders. knees, the ankles, you might roll an ankle all of a sudden. you don't want that to like linger. So this kind of like masks some of it. So, like, even after the game, maybe Monday, you'll start to feel some, but Tuesday. You'd be like, man, I took in a 3rd quarter.. I'm like, dude, yep. What's the hardest hit you taking? Um, I mean, I guess the hardest hit I've actually taken was the one I got knocked out in the last uh, last playoff and it was a shot to the side of my head. That's literally the only, I mean, a big hit's a big hit. I've been getting I mean, it's football. You got to embrace those collisions if you're going to play a game. Right. You play tiny, but you move out there, like you will win the city, man. That's not that's not you not to work out not motherfuckers like that. You know what I'm saying? Jumping over motherfuckers. I'm just like, like what can this dude not do?

#travis kelce #american football #drug use #painkillers #football #nfl