he's got the brain to go with the brawn

the Boston Herald reported the other day that former crimson captain and current panthers defenseman noah welch agreed to donate his brain to medical science.

okay, okay, get all those jokes out of your system about dumb jocks. hardy har har.

but welch's move is actually very important. in a sport like ice hockey, players can sustain quite serious head injuries due to the physical nature of the sport. by studying the long-term impact of big hits on the brain, scientists, doctors, and engineers can do more to protect athletes - especially younger ones - from doing too much damage to themselves.

it certainly isn't easy to actually commit your organs to posterity - who hasn't had a brief nightmare of having their organs harvested while being still alive? - so welch should should be commended for his move, especially as he is the first hockey player who has agreed to pledge his brain to science. here's hoping that he'll able to convince his teammates and peers to sign on for the research as well.

INTERVIEW: star-ledger's lisa kennelly

who's a 5'0 harvard-educated female who writes about male nudity?

if you've never met lisa kennelly, you're in for a treat. just two years out of college, she has become an all-rounder of sorts for The Star-Ledger, taking a break from covering the yankees and occasionally the (football) giants to check out golf and tennis. (if you're interested in all things u.s. open - either one - she's your gal.)

what makes lisa tick? and why do the yankees suck? poop on boozer investigated.

POB: Just so we can get this up front, what are your feelings on Carlos Boozer?

Basketball is one of those sports that when I have to cover it, I fake it. So umm... he's from Alaska, right? Everyone from Alaska is a little weird. Sarah Palin is only the latest example.

POB: When baby Lisa threw her first baseball, did she ever imagine that she would one day be writing about the New York Yankees for a major paper?

The Yankees, no. I grew up in Seattle as a huge Mariners fan though, and I read every word of The Seattle Times Mariners coverage daily. I didn't have TV growing up, so newspapers were my main source of sports info. So if I ever envisioned writing, it was about the Mariners... but I never ever imagined I'd be covering the Yankees less than a month after I graduated from college. Actually, now I'm back to doing general assignment, so still a healthy dose of Yankees, but I just finished covering the Barclays and the tennis U.S. Open.

POB: So, what's up with the Yankees, anyway?

They're missing the playoffs, and I'm delighted - as a baseball fan, because the Yankees are evil, but as a sportswriter, because covering the playoffs are insane. Fun at times, but mostly insane. As for why? Well, that's obvious: they committed to relying on youth to carry them through a season that was a rebuilding year in everything but name, and it was about as successful as you might expect. Yeah, they had a lot of injuries, but so did the Sox and Rays and they were able to get through it.

POB: Would you let Brian Cashman keep his job?

Yes, because Hank Steinbrenner says so. Oh wait, Hank has no real power... Seriously though, I think he will. I don't believe the Steinbrenners particularly want him gone. And can you think of someone out there, off the top of your head, who would do a better job - both dealing with the ownership and dealing with all that comes with being GM of the Yankees?

POB: And speaking of teams in fourth place... what can be done about your hometown Mariners?

Fire every person in a management position and hire competent people.

POB: What has been the most fulfilling story you have worked on in the past two years?

A search of my paper's online archives turns up 635 stories with my byline over the last 2 odd years... wow. How did THAT happen? Here's a couple, though.

In Yankees spring training in '07, the lead Yankees writer gave me a tip that Cory Lidle's twin brother, Kevin, lived about 45 minutes from Tampa, where the Yankees train. Cory had died just a few months earlier when his private plane crashed into a Manhattan skyscraper - I was actually sent out to interview witnesses to the Upper East Side crash back in October of '06. Anyway, I went out to interview Kevin. When I showed up at his baseball academy, Kevin was wearing his brother's jersey. They're twins, so it might as well have been Cory himself standing there. Eerie, you bet.

Reporting for the story took a lighter touch than some of the more straightforward baseball daily duties, of course. But Kevin was gracious and open about his brother, and the story pretty much wrote itself.

Another one I did was in spring training this season. I was based out of Port St. Lucie, Fla., where the Mets train, which is not too far from Vero Beach, where the Dodgers trained up until this spring. So I went up to talk to Don Mattingly about his whirlwind year of almost getting picked as manager of the Yankees, then having some family issues take precedent. Mattingly knew me somewhat from 2007 when he was the Yankees bench coach and I used to talk to him for various stories. But obviously this was a topic he really didn't want to talk about (his wife was arrested for public drunkenness - it was a messy situation). So first when he saw me he was very pleasant and asked how I was doing, but when I brought up my story he immediately started to rant - not in a mean way, just sort of venting - about how he was worried about how this would affect his son who was still in high school and why couldn't reporters just let it go.

Anyway, the reason this story sticks with me is it was a situation where I was able to use my relationship with Mattingly and the familiarity - and, I guess, trust - he had in me from previous interviews to coax him to talk about it and get him to open up about his divorce and his family problems. This is also a situation where being a 5-foot tall, young, female helps, though not in a sketchy way. I just look pretty nonthreatening, and I suspect he wouldn't have spoken so emotionally to an older, male sportswriter. Maybe, but I don't think so.

POB: We think we might already know about your most embarrassing athlete moment. What about the most awesome one?

I think being referred to as "that bitch from the Star-Ledger" by Carl Pavano's agent was a highlight. This story was the reason why. I haven't had a chance to talk to Pavano since this article, but I expect he won't be too friendly. Not that he ever is.

I also tend to get randomly hugged by athletes (Shelley Duncan, Mickey Rivers, etc.). I don't know why.

POB: Finally, if you had to poop on someone or some team today, who would that be?

I would be worried this would get me fired, but given the state of newspapers, I might not have a job much longer, anyway. Umm... the Mariners? I love them, but they're just awful.

INTERVIEW: sports illustrated's pablo torre

for every 1,000 kids that want to be superstar athletes when they grow up, there's one child who says, "mommy! daddy! i want to be a sportswriter!"

okay, okay, maybe that's an exaggeration - even if rick reilly and bill simmons might want it to be true. but for those of us who fail to translate high school minutes into college and professional-level goals and buckets, there's always sportswriting to fall back on.

well, pablo s. torre is like the michael phelps of harvard sportswriters. just a year out of college, he has covered everything from the coney island hot dog eating contest to the NBA playoffs. and as the summer ramped up, and with the olympics right around the bend, pablo made the jump to TV as well, appearing on everything from CNN Money to EXTRA.

even though he will always be modest, this 22-year-old sets the bar for (former) sportswriters like us here at poop on boozer. read on to find out what the half-journalist, half-entertainer had to say.

POB: Just so we can get this up front, what are your feelings on Carlos Boozer?

I mean, he actually robbed a benevolent blind man. Let's just say that I no longer feel bad about Jason Richardson bouncing the ball off his dome and then draining a three in his face, one of the great in-game punkings of all time. Also one of the great follow-up quotes, from Richardson: "It's not a no-class act. It was streetball, and he should know that. But maybe he doesn't since he's from Alaska." It's funny because it might be true.

POB: You're just one year out of college, but you are writing for Sports Illustrated and are talking sports with some of the biggest names in television. Is this what ESPN was trying to sell when it aired Dream Job?

Cross-branding aside...yes? Believe me, I fully appreciate that I'm doing any of this as my first job right out of college. Then again, this question just prompted me to look up Mike Hall in Wikipedia, which doesn't bode well for my side of this allusion.

But make no mistake: I'm still the youngest staff member at SI and surely the lowest, uh, totem (Native American spirit animal?) on the totem pole. And I love an occupation that pays me to do the things I genuinely enjoy (e.g. write) while forcing me to travel the country, watch television at work/be on television and play mini-ping pong in my office. For what it's worth, my friends also enjoy having reason to call me pretending to be William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

POB: What has been the most fulfilling and/or entertaining story you have covered in the past 12 months?

Hmm. So many great and absurd experiences, from spring training to the NCAA Tournament, but I'd say four things really quickly, if I may.

First: the essay I wrote for the magazine about Division I-AA/FCS football off of the I-AA title game last December in Chattanooga, Tenn., two months after starting at SI. Not even so much the writing, but the reporting, which somehow involved me meeting a girl from Appalachian State on the plane from Atlanta who then invited me to their tailgate, which then led to me drinking moonshine from a generic glass jar in a parking lot.

Second: the week I spent in Las Vegas leading up to the Manny Pacquiao-David Diaz title fight in June. Besides the fact that this was apparently "work," boxers afford you a level of access otherwise unseen in pro sports. When I say that I was in the bathroom with Pacquiao when he took his drug test, that's actually not an exaggeration. (Plus, the Boston Celtics were hanging out in his locker room.)

Third: an SI.com "bonus" I wrote about a high school wrestler and his father. So very much the opposite of any story about fantastically successful and wealthy athletes. It took forever to get it out, and it's certainly not one of those national stories that'll drive web traffic, but it is one of those things where you feel an authentic connection with the subject.

Fourth: working on Gary Smith's forthcoming anthology for SI Books. I was commissioned to write the epilogues for half of the stories in it, which meant tracking down a lot of obscure people that were only known to any of us through those SI articles. Just trading e-mails with Gary and retracing his footsteps was an unbelievable seminar in reporting. Talking to Richie Parker on the phone and dialing number after number to find people who might know Jonathan Takes Enemy, for example, was basically like stepping into a movie. As good as Gary is as a writer--and he's the best, I would say--the due diligence he does is almost unfathomable.

POB: Talk to us about your first time on television. What was that like?

I didn't think about TV at all when I started at SI. It just didn't know it was on the radar of possibility. In July, though, I was asked to be on the Fox Business Network for about a five-minute segment for a "Money in Sports" package we ran that I contributed to. It was live TV--so there's always that fear of totally humiliating yourself in front of, I guess, America/the world--and I had never done TV before (even my little brother was on a public service channel commercial once). So I wound up "studying" in earnest for the first time since graduating from college and calling upon, as humiliating as this is in and of itself, four years of high school debate, which did sort of help.

Since then, our PR department and these news programs have apparently liked me enough to keep sending me out there on an at-times unsettlingly regular basis, especially for the Olympics. It helps that our offices are across the street, literally, from NBC and Fox's studios, and only blocks away from CNN. I like all of it, and the TV and radio producers I've worked with so far haven't yet been totally repelled by my tendency to make awful puns. (Thanks, NPR!)

POB: Who is the coolest celebrity you have met thus far?

For whatever reason, I don't think I really get starstruck. Though I did send in a Gawker Stalker tip about Josh Hartnett once after we watched "There Will Be Blood" in the same movie theater. But I digress.

Does Brian Scalabrine count as a celebrity? I interviewed him after a game during this year's Eastern Conference Finals as he ate pasta from the post-game spread and he was as gracious an athlete as they come. In my adventures on TV--and purely on the This-Is-a-Good-Story scale--I'd say it's a tie between Bill O'Reilly and Russell Simmons, who wound up in the green room with me at one point. Also, Anderson Cooper basically ignored me in an elevator at the CNN building, but I probably would have ignored myself.

Wait, scratch all of that. I randomly met Dikembe Mutombo walking through the cafeteria of our building when I was an intern. "Star-struck" (star-roundhouse-kicked?) does not do that experience justice.

POB: What tips do you have for young journalists trying to follow in your footsteps?

First, it's completely disingenuous for me to give advice to anyone. I am 22 years old and started working at SI 11 months ago, to the point where answering "I'm a journalist" while meeting people at bars only stopped being kind of hilarious a few weeks ago. Last month I was in the kitchen of our office, toasting a bagel, and a person on our copy desk graciously asked if I was still an intern. And for this TV stuff, it's the stuff that's written that really garners attention at our office.

But if I can say one thing, it's that I got into this by way of writing and luck. I'd sent clips from The Crimson to SI when I applied to be an intern in the summer of '06, and after it was done they invited me back, with a sobering warning that is sure to unsettle parents of dutiful Harvard sportswriters everywhere: "I don't care what your grades are, or where you went to school, just whether you can write." (To paraphrase Conan O'Brien's incredible Class Day address: While interviewing Carlos Zambrano, let's just say that my senior thesis on statistical and theoretical approaches to child homicide doesn't come up much.)

I just consume the genre I work in and--by the natural order of things--the folks I work for, which I've read for sheer literary value for years and years. It's just that the job now can also be increasingly multimedia-based, with right-place/right-time opportunities in stuff like TV and radio. Needless to say, upon arrival here I did not foresee fill-in host Laura Ingraham insinuating that I was un-American on The O'Reilly Factor.

POB: Finally, if you had to poop on someone or some team today, who would that be?

As we're still in Olympics mode, I was going to say the Chinese women's gymnastics team. But that's just a terrible idea in every conceivable way.

INTERVIEW: olympic silver medalist emily cross

she's been a cadet world champion, a junior world champion (twice), and an ncaa champion (both individually and as a member of the 2005-06 harvard squad). and now, foilist emily cross is an olympic silver medalist. poop on boozer caught up with the blinged-out fencer as she celebrated a successful saturday in beijing.

POB: You've won at all levels, from Cadet to Junior to NCAA. What does it mean to win silver at the Olympics?

I think I can honestly say that there is no feeling like winning silver at the Olympics (except probably for winning gold), and being able to do it with my team was an incredible feeling.

POB: USA was seeded seventh but shocked the field and become the first American women's foil team to medal. What was the secret to your success?

I think the reason we were able to upset Poland and then Hungary was mostly how close we are as a team. A lot of what goes into a team event is trusting your teammates. Hanna, Erinn, and Doris are some of my closest friends, and I think that because we know and like each other so well we can work together very effectively.

POB: You personally had a great run against Hungary in the semifinal. Could you walk us through your rotations?

Against Hungary, we got a small lead in the first rotation, and were able to turn that into a big lead in the second two rotations because the Hungarians were forced to attack us, which gave us a tactical advantage. I personally had a good bout with Edina Knapek in the last rotation; we usually have pretty intense matches but this time I was able to have the right distance and timing and managed to score a bunch of touches on her, leaving a 14 touch lead for Erinn going into the final bout with Aida Mohamed.

POB: And what was it like watching the Hungarians come back?

It was incredibly nerve wracking watching Erinn's last bout. They instituted a rule where we couldn't tell advice as we usually do in team events, so we all felt so helpless. We ended up telling Erinn's brother Keeth things to shout from the stands since spectators can't get in trouble. Through it all, I had confidence that Erinn would pull it out in the end. Aida is a great closer in team, but there is a limit to how many unanswered touches someone can score. In addition Erinn has a lot of experience fencing Hungarians so I knew she would eventually find the right timing and score a few touches to end the bout.

POB: When you fenced Russia in the final, was there any impact stemming from the current political tensions?

I think fencing is pretty removed from political issues; it's such a small sport that you don't really think of a team as just a country because you know all the individuals on the team very well. Mostly what influenced that bout was the Russians being tall and strong and experienced - they have won countless world cups and world championships as a team, whereas this was our first ever team medal.

POB: Who is the coolest celebrity you have met in Beijing?

I met James Blake at opening ceremonies, which I think was pretty cool, especially since he was a fellow Harvard attendee.

POB: After this experience, is it going to be surreal to go back to Harvard?

I can't imagine what it'll be like going back to Harvard after this. For sure it'll be hard to get back into the swing of things - I'm just hoping I'll still be able to write a halfway decent paper.

cross-training, harvard style

i always walk by that section of shoes in a sports store and wonder, hmm, what exactly does cross-training mean? all sexual and gender innuendos aside - and oh yes, there are many - i'm not sure how often i hear about reggie bush grabbing a badminton racket or jason giambi hitting the hurdles.

but amidst another nasty cambridge summer, harvard's no. 1 men's racket chris clayton is hitting the field for some football drills with the "summer dogs," donning cleats to condition himself into a frenzy. the workout packed with "dominators" certainly sounds intense... 13-second drills with only 24-second breaks? i'd love to see lindsay davenport put herself through that. if anyone can use the workout, though, it's clayton, who seems to have a penchant for marathon three-setters.

really, though, i want to see crimson basketballer evan harris out there breaking a sweat. if he puts in the work now - and learns how to go right when he's posting up - maybe he'll actually have the ability to score against guys half his size. and if not, well, he better get his exercise for the season in now, because tommy amaker will have him riding more wood than jenna jameson.

either way, the kid's nba prospects aren't looking any better.