Category Archives: Sports

Old Is Relative Until You Are, Old That Is

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A couple of recent events have made me realize how old I’m getting and how un-hip or un-cool I’ve become.

I’m trying to get back into tennis after a bid of a break over the last couple of years.  I entered a tennis ladder and I’ve now played four guys.  The oldest was 70 and I would have sworn he was 58, tops.  Then he told me that if we got to a third set I’d have to be responsible for the score because he’d be tired and hi memory would go kaploot.  When I realized he wasn’t joking it hit me that he really was 70 and I was feeling a litle whipper-snapperish.  It didn’t last long.

I played the youngest yesterday; his mom had to give him a ride to the court because he’s not old enough to drive.  It hit me that he’s only two years older than my son.  I told him that if we played a third set he might have to keep score and/or carry me off the court, but he didn’t get it.

He was a bit shy so during changeovers I’d try to get him to talk.  I finally succeeded when I asked him if he’d gone to a Green Day concert (he had on a concert T) and he said, "Uh, yeah."  I mentioned that I’d seen a tape of a live show they’d done in a bar and the bass player broke his nose (hit himself with the bass while he was jumping around) and kept on playing.  He asked when it had happened I said some time in their early days and he said, I quote: "Wow, that was like way back in the 80s wasn’t it?"  It occured to me that he wasn’t alive in the 80s.  Sheesh.  And he beat me.  Crap.

So that was one event.  Another was when I started thinking about my cool-quotient in terms of technology.  I always thought of myself as being slightly ahead of the curve…I mean hey, I blog.  But then I realized that I’ve never:

  • Edited video on my computer.
  • Put together a playlist for an MP3 player, much less carried an Ipod.
  • Played a video game online.
  • Played a video game on my kids’ Xbox.
  • Gone to a tech convention.
  • Sat in a navel-gazing seminar on "new" media.

So I’m decidedly un-cutting edge and I’m actually quite comfortable with it.  That must mean I’m getting older.  Other signs include:

  • Bathing suit models are beginning to make me uncomfortable because they aren’t a whole hell of a lot older than my daughter.  The term "dirty old man" permeates my brain.
  • Ear hair.
  • Nose hair.
  • Beginning to not care that when I take off my shirt the term "Austin Powers" pops into everyones head.  My cousin, Jeff, didn’t stop at thinking it.  He blurted out, "Damn, Jon, you’ve got the Austin Powers rug thing going on."  Used to care, now not so much.
  • Beginning not to care that my hairline looks like a satellite image of Brazil’s coastline.
  • I’m making fun of pop culture.  A lot.
  • I hate American Idol with a depth of passion that I used to reserve for sanctimonious a-holes.

You get the idea. The bad news is I’m not even 40 for another four months, which means I need to get a grip, or at least a little perspective.  Anyone know an octogenarian up for some tennis?

Looks Like Elon’s Boys Watched Bull Durham One Too Many Times

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The folks over at badjocks.com have published pictures of Elon’s baseball team hazing their freshmen.  Lots of bras and panties involved which is a tradition I suspect dates back to 1988 when Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) had Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) dress in garters to help correct his pitching form in "Bull Durham".

What is it about baseball and North Carolina that causes people to do crazy things like name their teams after bugs (Greensboro Grasshoppers) and dress in womens clothing?  Could it be proximity to Greensboro?

Well I can’t say anything…in Winston-Salem we named our team after a wild pig (Winston-Salem Warthog). It’s better than naming your team after bait, but not much.

I’m waiting for the Grasshoppers to have a man-bra promo night and then I might make the drive over to see the new stadium.

Importance of Age Cutoff Dates in Sports

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The boys at Freakonomics have come up with another interesting point.  In this one they posit that we’ll probably see a disproportionate number of players born in January and February in this year’s World Cup.  Their reasoning has to do with FIFA’s adopting a January 1 cutoff date for determining eligibility on national youth soccer teams which should have a ripple effect throughout the rest of the players’ careers.

Upon further review they decided that since different countries use different dates for their own "in country" purposes that the World Cup might not be the best example.  So they looked at the NHL and found a very strong relationship between birth months early in the year and participation in the league (hardly any players were born between September and December).

I was one of those kids with a September birthday that could make me either the oldest kid or youngest kid in the class.  My mom was told that if I was held back I’d probably get bored and become a troublemaker so she opted for me to be the youngest, which wasn’t really a problem until 8th and 9th grade.  I was a late bloomer so when I got out of 9th grade I was barely 5 feet tall which didn’t help my athletic or romantic prospects.

For 10th grade I transferred to a small private school (85 students) and by default all the boys played every sport.  That coincided with my first growth spurt so by the time I was through 11th grade I was 5’8 and getting some playing time on the soccer field and basketball court.  My senior year I was 6 feet tall and weighed in at 150 pounds (I couldn’t put weight on no matter how hard I tried) and I averaged 16 points a game on the varsity basketball team.  I often wonder what kind of high school career I would have had if I was held back a year.  I put 20 pounds on my freshman year of college and I can only imagine I would have had a pretty good senior year.

No regrets though;  I might have been good enough to get a scholarship to a small school which would have changed the course of my whole life.  I wouldn’t have gone to GMU, met my wife and as happy as I am now I wouldn’t do anything to change those eventualities.

Back to the original point: in my mind there is absolutely no doubt that the arbitrary cut-off dates that youth sports leagues use has a huge impact on kids’ level of success.

Holy Crap, I’m in First

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Forkballfirstcropped
This is very uncomfortable territory for me:  I’m in first place in Forkball, the fantasy baseball league in which I participate.  I haven’t sniffed anything near first in years so pardon me if I revel in my glory before I plummet to my usual, comfortable little corner in the basement.

As an aside I must say that any activity/hobby that causes me to utter the sentence "Man, with a WHIP like that my staff must really be doing something right" precludes me from ridiculing other peoples’ silly hobbies.  You know, things like birding, being a Civil War reenactor, or Trekie, or heaven forbid, a bottle collector.

Holy Crap, I’m in Third

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Okay we’re not even out of April yet, but I’m in third place in my fantasy baseball league (Forkball).  I intentionally ignore my team much of the time because I just can’t take the constant disappointment that the fantasy league often provides me.  So I was shocked to check the standings and find myself north of the Mendoza line.  I think I’ll ignore the team for a month solid and see what happens.

I’m the LA Clippers of Fantasy Baseball

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I’ve been in a fantasy baseball league (Forkball) for several years now and I’ve been a perennial cellar dweller.  I tried to forget this but since the league is hosted on Yahoo! and Yahoo! has created a player profile that tracks fantasy players’ lifetime performance I can tell you that I plain suck at this.  Here’s my numbers:

  • 2003 – 9th Place
  • 2004 – 8th Place
  • 2005 – 8th Place

Yahoo! also informs me that my overall performance is 37%.  I feel like I just flunked algebra for the third time.

Well, our 2006 stats just went live last night and it looks like I’m teetering between 5th and 6th place.  Last year my pitching was actually among the best in the league but my offense was horrid.  So far this year my offense has been pretty good but my pitching ain’t too great.  It doesn’t help that I had Clemens last year and he retired…well kind of.

Now that I’ve established my baseball expertise I want to share with you my top predictions for the 2006 season:

  • Coco Crisp will lead the league in home runs.
  • Barry Bonds will pull a reverse Babe Ruth and become a starting pitcher and win the Cy Young in both the National and American Leagues after he’s traded to the Yankees for A-Rod.
  • The Red Sox will come out of the closet…all of them.
  • The Devil Rays will move to Omaha in mid-season.
  • The "commissioner" will effectively deal with the whole steroid thing.

Now you know why I’m so good.

Sport As It Should Be

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Last night I went over to Miller Park in Winston-Salem and watched my wife, Celeste, play in her first-ever tennis match.  She was a nervous wreck for days before the match and was really concerned with how she was going to play, whether or not she would be able to remember the rules, how to score, etc.  Well, she and her partner won 6-2 and 6-4 and I’m damn proud of how she played.

The experience was great for more reasons than her play and her winning.  The league she’s in is a USTA 2.0 women’s league which is a pretty rare species.  The USTA ranks players so that, at least in concept, you can play against a bunch of people of similar ability.  Since 2.0 is for raw beginners you don’t find people playing it for more than one season so it’s hard to get enough people together to play.  The ladies that continue playing out of this league will all be in at least a 2.5 league by next year. 

What made this so much fun for me was seeing how much fun these ladies were having.  They laughed at themselves when they made mistakes, they helped each other out with scoring and in general they all seemed to be having a great time.  That’s a stark difference from many of the 4.0 level leagues I’ve played in.  In fact some of the biggest ass-wipes I’ve ever encountered have been on tennis courts.  So seeing these ladies have so much fun reminded why I liked tennis in the first place.

Line of the night from one of Celeste’s opponents when she was slow to call a ball out: "Well I just feel so BAD when the ball goes out I don’t want to call it."

Oh, and seeing how much Celeste has improved in just a few weeks of practice was a real eye-opener.  I’m going to have to watch my back.  Note to my buddy Ted: She already hits harder than me which means she hits a crap-load harder than you:)

Mixed-doubles anyone?

Fight, Fight, Fight!

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Although I was sad to see my boys at Mason go down to Florida, I’m still tickled pink that they made it to the Final Four.  It certainly put my alma mater on the map and although Mason isn’t a small school, it is a young school at just 35 years old as a university.  So it came as no surprise to me or any of my fellow alums that I’ve talked to that we didn’t have a fight song.  I thought maybe I had just forgotten the thing, having spent my 4+ years at Mason in a beer-induced fog, but it ends up that there wasn’t one to begin with.  Here’s the story:

Administrators Scramble to Compose Lyrics For GMU Fight Song
Mar 31st – 10:01am

INDIANAPOLIS — When George Mason University Band Director Anthony Maiello
composed the school’s Fight Song a few years ago, he never got down to
writing lyrics. Instead he just used "Fight — Fight — Fight" for each
note.

But after the basketball team advanced to the Final Four of the men’s
championship tournament, the NCAA called asking for the words.

That sent several administrators scrambling this week to come up with real
words to accompany the music.
Associate Athletic Director Sue Collins wound up borrowing the opening
lyrics from the Washington Redskins and also included a phrase from nearby
Fairfax High School’s fight song.

The lyrics are as follows:

Hail to George Mason Patriot green and gold We are George Mason, home of the
brave and bold Hail to George Mason Proud for all to see Catch our spirit
feel our pride Onward to victory

Well, at least we have one now, but I think I’m going to request a re-write.  If we’re going to build tradition then we can at least do it with an un-lame fight song.