Sports Section

Go ahead and hate me. It’s the truth.

2006-12-08T15:37:00.000-06:00

Go ahead and hate me. It’s the truth.

I’m not sure how to write this in a way that isn’t going to be demeaning toward people with this condition, so I am just going to write it, but know that I have nothing against them, I am just stating a fact.

Fact: People with lazy eyes are almost impossible to look in eye.

I’m usually a fan of anything lazy, but I don’t know if I can get on board with this. It’s tough. I know it’s not their fault and they would rather not have a lazy eye, but they sure do make it tough on the listener. I like to look people in the eye when I am listening for two reasons: 1.) Because it is courteous and it sends a signal to them that I am really listening and 2.) It helps me actually listen.

I can’t look people with lazy eyes in the eye for two reasons: 1.) I kept trying to follow their lazy eye and it becomes tiresome and 2.) I don’t listen because I am trying to figure out how they lost control of that eye.

Now I realize that it is possible that one of my loyal readers (whom I reward with frequent posts) could know somebody with a lazy eye that they really like, or even worse, have one themselves. Let it be known that most of the people with lazy eyes I’ve met, I have really liked. In fact, I met the inspiration of this post just this week, and he was a super nice guy and fun to be around.

The other lazy eye that comes right to mind is an electrician I worked with for two summers in high school named Montana. He was the first lazy eye I had ever had consistent contact with, and let me tell you, it didn’t get any easier as the summer went on. I’m actually not even sure he had a lazy eye. I just always pictures his eyes attached to his brain and his brain just shaking around in his head because that dude was crazy, but those stories are for a different day (maybe my next post in February).

So in conclusion, I’m kind of a jerk for putting this in writing, but I felt a need to speak to my peeps, and I am sure now that my child will have a lazy eye………and I’ll have to give him away……..not really……….I’ll just get him a patch.

A fouloween tale

2006-10-27T09:30:00.000-05:00

It was the most foul smell I have ever encountered.

I had a pretty good day at work on Wednesday, and I was even able to take off about half an hour early. I went home and picked up a couple things before going to Amy’s to hang out before we went for a marriage counseling thing 6 p.m.

I am about a two minutes from her place when my phone rings. I find this to be peculiar because as far as she knows, I am still at work, and she tries to avoid calling me while I’m at work.

The next thirty seconds are kind of hazy and I have tried to strike them from my memory (as I eventually did with the hour following the phone call), but it had something to do with Flush being sick and Amy deciding to “sit on the porch and wait for me to get there.”

She lives on the third floor, so it takes me a while to make my way up the stairs. As I ascended upon the third flight of stairs toward her apartment, I was met with a smell that would have made Mike Rowe heave over the rail.

Apparently, Flush had been sick in his cage all day and had been crapping, mostly wet, all over his cage and some of it has sloshed over the side and found its way deep into the carpet. Also - I imagine from the smell but maybe from being sick - he had thrown up numerous times, including once all over the wall beside his cage. For all we know, this could have happened at 8 a.m. and been sitting there all day, but I do know that it smelt like it happened eight weeks ago inside a room with no ventilation. So things are bad right away…then they get worse.

As I walk in the door (I hadn’t even made it to the front door before surmising most of the above details), Amy hands me a pair of her pajama pants and one of her shirts and instructs me to put them on. Why you ask? Well because Flush’s feet are covered in the nasty mix that is stewing at the bottom of his cage and she is afraid he is going to jump on me. And I can’t get my clothes nasty because I have to wear them to our meeting with the pastor in a little under an hour.

So I put on these clothes and…I just…I looked about how you would imagine I would look in a set of Amy’s clothes: like a complete goof. The pants barely fit around my butt and they were about 10 inches too short and about 10 sizes too tight. The shirt is hugging me like someone with hypothermia would hug a warm blanket, and I am wearing a pair of my old beat up shoes. I looked like a little homeless boy in a 35 year old man’s body. Anyway, Amy and I both lose it in laughter because there was a lot of emotion to be had at that moment, and I was certainly worth laughing at. I take my new outfit to the cage, the smell getting nastier as I went, pick up the 80 pound dog – my hands around his belly with his legs sticking our in front me – and run for the porch.

I throw him out on the porch and Amy informs me that I need to take him down in case he still “has to go” (she doesn’t use any words like poop or dump - ever). So I head out into the public, who are coming home in droves from their 5-o-clock jobs, to take this dog down. Oh, and did I mention that it was pouring down rain? It was, and I was prancing around in it scantily clad with a crap covered dog by my side. After he went swimming in the river to clean off, I took him up and tried to help Amy clean up the mess. 40 minutes, about 20 gags and a headache later, we had the mess cleaned up, but of course the smell remained.

I still feel like it is all over me, and her apartment will still knock you off your feet if you step in the wrong area. It might take weeks for me to forgive that dog for what he put me through, but I can be guaranteed that the moment I forgive him he will make me regret it with something new.

I don’t mind humbling moments (not that I need them, I am so humble already), but I really could have done without a smell that threatened to singe the remaining eight hairs off of the top of my head.

My ray of sunshine

2006-10-17T10:25:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while, you stumble upon something great. You may not be expecting it, but it always seems to come at the right time.

I had the worst morning this morning.

Rewind: Last night Amy and I went to the Arkansas fair. We walked around, saw a pig race, had a funnel cake, rode a ride and I won her a big stuffed penguin. And we spent less than $20 on everything, so I was feeling good. So good, that as we were leaving I said, “Wow, we really got the fair. We got out there pretty cheap with a big penguin.”

Keep rewinding : Instead of taking two cars to the fair, I had Amy come pick me up, and we were going to pick up my car on the way home.

Fast forward: I am walking down from her apartment to get my car and go home at around midnight when I realize, we forgot to get my car from work.

Okay, so no big deal right? I will sleep on her couch and she can take me to get my car in the morning and I will go home and get ready for work. My plan: stay as asleep as long as possible the whole morning, that way I might be able to get another 15 or 30 minutes after I get back to my apartment.

So, I tell Amy not to wake me up until the last possible second. At 7:05 a.m., Amy wakes me up and tells me it’s time to go as soon as she gets done taking Flush down to the bathroom. So I get ready as she takes the dog down, trying to keep my state of fatigue in full force. After we remember/forget about 10 things (which is frustrating me because I’m trying to stay asleep), we head down to the car.

I have succeeded at this point, and my eyes are still half shut. Then came the sentence that would later result in post on my blog.

“Oh gosh, I have a flat.”

I was rushed with a number of emotions and thoughts at that point, some of them better than others. Here are a few samples:

- No, #@$**%# way
- Maybe I’m still asleep
- Can we drive on that
- If I just walked up and went back to sleep, what could she do?
- Is this the right car?
- &*$##@* fair and those &*$##@* carneys
- Is there any option here that includes me trying to stay asleep?

And no, there was no option. It became clear to me at that point that I was going to have to wake up. To help me handle the news, I asked Amy to unlock the doors so I could sit down for a moment. I sat down for a couple seconds but as I watched her try and drag the dog cage out of the trunk by herself, I knew it was time for action.

The thought process: Okay. It is time for me to figure out what I am dealing with here. What does Amy know about changing tires?

Then came her question that provided my answer.

“What are we going to do?”

Once I finally realize the truth of it, I get to work: It’s early, I’m tired and I’m on my own in changing her tire, but it’s the only thing that’s going to make the situation right.

So, I change the tire (a screw in the tire undoubtedly from the fair that we had screwed over the night before) in about 20 minutes (not too bad, but remember it was early), and she takes me to work. I’ll admit that I was a little grumpy and a lot cranky as I went home and changed. I got to work on time and plopped in front of my computer.

Now comes the part about stumbling onto to great things at just the right moments. I checked my fantasy football first thing, as usual, and I find this post by my good friend Brad. It put a smile on my face and made me laugh in the toughest of circumstances. It has been edited for the PG-13 audience.

The post:

Gotta Love GROSSman
by: Probably Sleeping (oldagedmale) Oct 16 11:34pm

Ya know,
I'm not really mad that Grossman only went 14/37 for a 148 yards. I'm not upset that he could only manage to Find Mushin Muhammad for a grand total of 2 yards. It doesn't bother me that he loses two fumbles that were practically hand-offs to fat linemen wearing red jerseys. It doesn't even concern me that he somehow managed to complete more passes (4) to cardinal defensive backs than he did to his own receivers.

No, none of that bothers me. What bothers me is that now I have to hear Kyle and Malachi run their mouths about being the high scorer of the week and the only person in the league with 1 loss, all because Grossman decides to kneel the ball 3 times at the end of the game losing a grand total of 7 f-----g yards, dropping my score by 7/10ths of a point. It's as if the whopping NEGATIVE, did you all read that, Negative -7.07 points he had leading up to the last 45 seconds of the game wasn't bad enough, No Grossman says "Brad... I'm gonna take my pants off and s--t in your mouth", and he precedes to lose 7 more yards.

So in a week of anomalies, Kyle scoring 168 billion points and the first sighting of Krutchtar a newly discovered moon orbiting Jesse's head, I lose a thriller 91.73 to 92.23. (end of post)

Bravo Brad. Maybe there is a deeper issue at hand because your pissed off frustration made me happy, but for the moment, I am smiling.

Rants

2006-10-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

I officially hate them
My hatred for officials and rules grows with every passing day. It’s funny because the rest of my competitiveness has started to taper off, but my disdain for the striped morons is holding steady. I still go from calm to crazy in matter of seconds on their behalf.

Think of all the college games this year that have had ridiculous things happen right in front of the referees’ eyes. Not just Oklahoma, but all the time. I was surprised that people got so worked up over the Oklahoma incident. I mean honestly, it’s rarely a case of the referee not being able to see a call. It is simply a case of pure stupidity. What makes the public think that after looking at the play on video, the refs would get the call any more correct?

I can just imagine what they talk about under that tent.

Booth referee: “I looked it up in our rule book here and apparently the ball has to go 10 yards before it can be touched by the kicking team. Now, I haven’t found this one out for sure, but I think the yards are marked off by the white lines of paint all over the field.”

Field referee looking at the replay: “Yeah, I think that’s right, I heard a fan yell something like that earlier. I’ll tell you what, it looks here like it only went nine yards, assuming those are yards, but that’s not what I saw on the field. I am just going to go with my gut on this one.”

It’s like this everywhere. My favorite part of a football game is when the officials huddle up and start talking about a play because they aren’t sure about the call.

“Alright Hank, you push players back so they won’t know we have no idea what just happened.”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay, guys did anybody see anything?” - a lot of looking around and silence – “That’s okay. Does anybody have a call that we might be able make here?”

The line judge breaks the silence, “Well, we could call pass interference against the Cowboys.” … “It was a running play”… “Illegal contact then?” All the referees nod in approval. “Yeah, yeah, good call, good thinking.”

I will say this though, and this makes me happy. I have heard more referee bashing from the announcers this year than I have in the rest of my life combined. I guess I’m no the only one getting fed up.

Vanderjagt Sucks

He causes problems in the locker room and he can’t kick field goals. He acts like nothing bothers him and keeps pointing to his career average. Well someone should help him point toward the uprights because apparently he has no idea where they’re at.

If I have to watch him smile and shake his head after missing another 25-yard field goal, as if to say “man that never happens,” I will jump in my car and I will not stop until I have taken his life. He’s like the sucky basketball player who keeps shooting in a pickup game and can’t believe he’s missing. But worse than that, Vanderjagt would keep calling timeouts (Bill Carter style) and demanding the ball. “Come on man, I shot 55% in high school.”

Why is it that kickers go to die in Dallas, Texas?

I’m done

And I feel much better.

Took too long expla...

2006-09-12T17:02:00.000-05:00

My bosses are gone and I have ten minutes to jot this down and get it posted, which means I have 5 minutes to write because it takes me forever to figure out how to post and even long to make sure I don’t have too many errors. But now I have to factor in all of the explaining that I just did, and since I type at close to zero words per minute, I have only a few seconds to get my point across. Long funny stories and clever anecdotes be damned. Here is the point:

DOGS ARE COOL, but mine is making me really mad these days.

My favorite sport ... I think

2006-09-06T16:13:00.000-05:00

I can’t believe football season is finally here. Just the thought of it adds a little pep to my step. (I erased the phrase “pep to my step“ because it sounded very non-football, but then I decided to leave it because, and unfortunately so, it was my first thought.)

So, now that I am apparently skipping through a garden of flowers, wearing a dress and singing, let me get to the point. There is no greater sport in this world than NFL football. I would rather watch a game between the Vikings and the 49ers than the seventh game of the World Series. (But then again, I would rather watch the Bassmasters Legends -- which aired on ESPN from 10-11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 2, and re-airs Sept. 10 from 4-5 a.m. -- than watch baseball.)

Football is a beautiful thing: It makes Sunday afternoons so enjoyable. There is something to watch on TV all day long. (Amy loves that.) Trash-talk in the Fantasy World. (She actually does love that.) But now, with my face lit up in jubilation, I look to history and become saddened.

Unfortunately, along with happiness, history tells me the football season will also bring much anger and frustration. Even though I think the Cowboys are going to be great this year (or maybe because I think the Cowboys are going to be great this year), I know there will be times during this season when I will throw a chair across the room. I know there will be times when I will kick the wall, cuss, shake, yell, throw something off of Amy’s balcony, yell and hit my dog, blame him for our misfortune, try to pick up and then throw something that is too heavy for me, flip off the TV, throw my arm out while swinging it in disgust, condemn a ref to hell, piss and whine about Madden, hate people for calling me when the Boys are losing, call for Romo, and talk about piling up all the referees in the world and lighting them on fire. “I’d do it. I’d light the match,” I’ll say … and I’ll mean it.

Those are just a few of the hateful things I will do, and I will do it all out of love for America’s Team: The greatest NFL franchise in the world, The Dallas Cowboys.

A Shameful Topic

2006-08-29T17:14:00.000-05:00

There are some things I just dont like to talk about.

Poop, noses and the war in Iraq come to mind. Then theres the fact that I have more hair on my forearm than the top of my head. Another item in my top ten is anything medical.

My doctor brother has made me queasy too many times with his casual stories about a surgery, or his haphazard use of words that describe certain female body parts.

But today I am going to branch out and broach upon two topics that I dont much care for: baseball and steroids.

Now, if I were reading this, I would have shut down the second I saw the word steroids. If you are an ESPN watcher like myself, you understand what I am talking about. But this is something that I dont think has been addressed because this is part of the issue no one wants to talk about.

Let me first lay down the motive for some actions that I will get to later in the column.

If you havent noticed, BASEBALL IS DYING. It is not a youth sport. Its like the name Shirley or Albert; It was popular in the 1940s, but most of its fans are on their way out. I say this as I work in a sports department with a bunch of guys who love baseball. A bunch of guys, I should mention, that are in their 40s. I will save all of my opinions on that issue for another day, but I write this column under the assumption that baseball in rapidly losing fans.

As it has been well documented, there was a big fallout in the mid 90s because of a players strike. Shortly thereafter was the homerun race between Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, which revitalized the sport in America. It was only later at a Congressional hearing that fans found out the whole race was steroid induced.

Then came the big debate: did baseball know and look the other way to save the game? Maybe they did, maybe they didnt, but what they have said is that nothing like this is going to happen again. If they made a mistake, they are going to clean it up.

Thats old news. Heres some new news:

I THINK DAVID ORTIZ AND RYAN HOWARD ARE ON STEROIDS.

Its the second verse, same as the first. Baseball only acts like they care, but it is a business and steroids, a.k.a. homeruns, are good for the game. I used to try and think the best about people on this issue. I was even on Barry Bonds side for a little while.

Why? Because I want to watch and not have to worry about whether someone is cheating. I have enough reasons not to watch baseball without the issue of steroids. Before I get any deeper into this, here are some quick stats to make my case.

Career stats for David Ortiz:

Year HR

1997 1

1998 9

1999 0

2000 10

2001 18

2002 20

2003 31

2004 41

2005 47

So far this year: 41

Career stats for Ryan Howard:

2004 2

2005 22

So far this year: 41

Sammy Sosa (a little perspective)

From 89-2005; 3,1,15,10,8,33,25,36, the juice is lose and 66,63,50,64,49,40,35, oops I got caught, 14.

Look, I dont know how many homeruns Ortiz and Howard are going to end up with this season, but I imagine it is going to be in the mid-50s or maybe even hit 60. That fact puts two things in my favor. No. 1: players dont see jumps in stats like these. I know Howard played a limited number of games in his first two seasons, but the proportional games played per homerun numbers dont add up. Its the same deal with Ortiz. No. 2: mid 50s homerun hitters dont come around this often. They require names like names like Babe Ruth or Ken Griffey Jr. In fact, in 12 healthy seasons with the Mariners, Griffey only hit the mid 50s in homeruns twice: he hit 56 in both 1997 and 1998.

This should raise some concern considering Griffey is considered to have one of the sweetest homerun swings baseball has ever seen.

One more thing, and I am done with the steroid issue forever (except for an I told you so).

I was covering a strong man competition for the Tulsa World last summer, and I was talking to one of the guys who had competed in the Worlds Strongest Man competition before becoming a large quantity dealer of steroids (he was clean by the time I was talking to him). We talked for a while about steroids in sports, and I asked him how big of a role he thought it had taken on. He looked me in the eye and said, "I can tell you this from dealing and knowing steroids when I see them. Think of your favorite player right now in any sport. I would bet you $1000 hes on steroids, and believe me, Id be playing the odds."

Too bad for him I was thinking of Yi Yong Fan, the top-ranked ping pong player in the world.

Archives - This is a column I wrote for the JBU paper that never ran

2006-08-29T17:11:00.000-05:00

The Olympics are over and my heart is filled with sadness because it will be four years until I get to once again enjoy my new favorite sport: curling.

Thats right, I referred to curling as a sport.

Maybe because its the only sport I still have a shot of playing in the Olympics or maybe its because it gave me something to watch during daytime television, but, whatever the reason, I love curling.

For those of you who are not familiar with the edgy sport, it has nothing to do with barbells and large muscles, but it has everything to do with strategy and precision.

Although professional curlers would probably kill me for describing the sport this way, it is a lot like shuffle board on ice.

The finely tuned athletes slide a fifty-pound rock down a 96 foot sheet of ice towards a colored target. The idea is to have your rocks closest to the center of the target, called the button, when a round is finished.

But as I learned in this years Olympics, it is much more complicated than that.

Here are a few tips for when you are curling with your friends in the back yard.

First, it is important to have control of the hammer. The hammer is the last rock thrown.
It gives last say as to how to the rocks will finish, and should give you a chance to maximize your points.

Second, you need to have a good team of sweepers. Sweepers run in front of the thrown rock and prepare the ice for the sliding beauty, and they are almost as important as the thrower of the rock.
If you want the rock to stay on a straight path, have you sweepers sweep the ice hard. If you want it to curl or turn, just let the rock go.
The best throws usually have a combination of hard sweeping and smooth curling. A throw like that warms the heart.

My third tip is something I did not see in the Olympics, but I wouldnt be surprised if it was going on behind the scenes.
When you release the rock, say things like, That shots so hot it might melt the ice.
You could also force your teammates to call you Bob Vila because you are so good with the hammer.

Or you could go with a more personal attack.

After releasing a perfect shot you could say, Oh, unlike your wife, that shot has the perfect weight.

I would avoid, however, the catchy phrase, You curl like a girl, because they are pretty darn good at it.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of curling ice close to here, which is a problem because, as the saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes and curling.

The X-Games are too X-Citing

2006-08-29T17:09:00.000-05:00

t only took me one day to get tired of the X-games.

It's not that I can't respect the fact that the participants are doing something special and hard, but I just can't get into it. Now, before all you Skate or Die freaks start throwing your helmets at me while talking about "taking back the streets," give me a second to explain (side note: you never had the streets).

Its not the athletes that make the X-games hard to watch, it's the whole process.
The Olympics set a standard that said if you're going to give out gold silver and bronze medals, you can't have the competition every year. The event loses its status and prestige because every time I you turn around, it's time for another competition. They need to spread out the events (winter and summer X-games) to every other year and hold them on separate years, leaving the eager viewing public with one competition a year.

The next thing that has to go is the constant need for excitement. Maybe it's because the announcers feel like they need to act like things are exciting to draw the general public, but everyone needs to settle down a little bit. Maybe take it easy with the excessive use of "awesome" and "sick."

Yelling and excitement are typically reserved for exciting things. These announcers are constantly yelling, no matter what is happening, so when something actually exciting happens, there is no way of telling.

When I am sitting through a run, and the announcers are constantly yelling, and getting more excited with every move, and the guy ends up scoring an 80 (out of 100), I feel like I've been tricked.

It's okay, no sport is exciting all the time, so the X-games don't have to be either. You don't hear John Madden getting excited about a one-yard run into the middle of the line, or over analyzing a useless play...okay, bad example, but you get the point.

I'm also tired of hearing about how every rider is so incredibly good. I was watching the skate vert ramp Thursday night, and the announcers referred to three different riders as the top athlete in the sport. "Oh, if anybody is going to make a run at 1st, it's Bucky Lasik." Next rider: "Shawn White has got to be the guy everyone is worried about taking over first." And it's on and on with every rider. Every rider is the best.

If a rider sucks, or he's struggling, or he's too young or too old, I want to know. Sports in America has a simple formula that breaks athletes down into two categories: favorites and underdogs. People then make their choice, root for the favorite (Tiger Woods) or the underdog (Ben Curtis - look it up).

We love to see Buster Douglas knock out Mike Tyson, it keeps things fresh. There is none of that in the X-games. Everyone is incredible and everyone is the favorite. I could drop into the vert ramp (I couldn't obviously, but stick with me) and suddenly I'd be "Boy Wonder" - the hairy bald guy with a shot at the title. Except for that would be too mean for those announcers, it would be more like Boy Wonder - the thick coated, thinning hair guy who is quickly becoming the most feared competitor in the skateboarding world.

I honestly do like watching these guys do their thing, whether it is on skateboards, BMX, or motocross, but it is too hard to watch because of all the other crap.

If you don't agree, next time I am trying a double backflip on the BMX street course with the announcers full support, you can spoke me.

My First Blog

2006-08-29T17:07:00.000-05:00

I am getting out of the sports writing business for a little while, so Amy has convinced me to post my sports opinions on a blog here. I guess I am not technically getting out of the business, but I am taking a job where I will be writing stories about hunting and fishing. I will try to avoid having any my sports-opinion posts hit the subject of outdoor sports, but I guess we'll see. I figure my first opinion will be coming fairly soon.

Who Am I?

2006-08-28T11:54:00.000-05:00

For those of you who read the subject and were hoping for deep, self reflecting piece...sorry.
For those of you who opened this up looking for another ridiculous sports point of view with fallacies aplenty, sorry.
No, as much as I would like to dress it up and dance around the issue, I should just call this what it is: a shameless piece of self promotion.
The truth is that Im excited and Im tired, which, for me, apparently results in self promotion.
HERES THE POINT
I got a new job that I started Tuesday, and it is working for an outdoors companyESPN Outdoors to be more exact. The last two days I have been up at 5 a.m. and home at 8 p.m., rubbing shoulders with Kevin VanDam, Mike Iaconelli (who? Yeah I know, I feel the same way) and other big BASS names. The problem is that I dont appreciate who I am talking to because I have never been bass fishing. That what the subject was about. What am I doing? I know nothing about and actually have a disdain for the outdoors. Anyway, enough background, HERE IS WHY I AM EXCITEDI wrote a story for ESPN.com (oh yeah, thats why I am doing this) and there are many more to come. I didnt realize exactly when I took this job that my stuff would be on espn.go.com, but it turns out that it is. You can go to the home page for ESPN and search my name and my article will show up (along with a lot of articles about a little leaguer named Kyle Carter who is tearing it up in the LLWS). So, thats it, I am in the midst of my second straight 15 hour day (the second of 10 straight days that will be like this, and thats not an exaggeration), I am working for probably $5 an hour after its all said and done, and I needed something to be excited about. And this, to me, is exciting.