Sports Curmudgeon

Well, I finally have my electricity back after Hurricane Isabel; it was out for 123.5 hours – but who's counting… And do I ever have a lot of news to catch up on! Without access to ESPN or the Internet, I was limited in my sports view to the Washington Post and the local Washington DC area sports radio station. They were a lot better than nothing, but still left me feeling as if I missed a whole lot. So I'll be playing catch-up for a while.

One thing I did not miss from ESPN was their nonsensical promo about baseball called “The Hunt for October.”

Memo to the ESPN Geniuses:

I've also broken my reading glasses permanently and irreparably making reading and writing far more difficult tasks than normal. Naturally, the doctor will not be able to see me for a while and that means I will not be able to see nearly what I need to be able to see in order to read and write these things. This has not been a good month. So I am expecting a major run of good luck next month – when I head for Las Vegas for my annual autumnal pilgrimage.

Last week, I noted that Oscar De La Hoya was contemplating a lawsuit regarding his loss to Shane Moseley and I asked the lawyers who read these rants for how a judge might tell Oscar to take his lawsuit and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. According to a solicitor (that's Canadian for “lawyer”) in Ontario, such a case there would be dismissed as being “frivolous and vexatious”. That sounds very learned. I was hoping that the judge somewhere might say that he wished that the lawsuit was an umbrella because he was planning to stick it up the plaintiff's butt and wanted to open it up real wide before extracting it. I guess that does not sound very “judicial” now that I look at it in print…

I spent last Sunday accompanying my long-suffering wife and The NASCAR Babe and The Babe's Special Friend to Dover Delaware for the Dover 400. We were there with approximately 150,000 of our closest friends crammed into a town whose roads would be taxed with an event that drew 25,000 people. The NASCAR drivers were doing over 150 mph on the one-mile track; the drivers getting out of the parking lot were averaging less than 2 mph!

Just before the starting of the engines, the crowd did the wave all the way around the stands several times. There needs to be a special ring of Hell devoted to the genius who invented the wave and the people who will not just let it die. It was annoying the second time I saw it; now it is like running a cheese grater up and down my spinal cord. But I do have to give the race fans this tribute. Not one time was I subjected to choruses of:

"Hoot, There It Is"

I enjoyed the race. My long-suffering wife suffered yet another day of being with me. A NASCAR race is indeed noisy but that does not affect most of the fans because watching a NASCAR race is not like watching a chess match; there is not a lot of analytical processing that has to go on in your head.

The crowd at Dover was different from most other sporting events I've attended. I saw a new bumper sticker that I had not seen before. In red white and blue it said:

With that as a common sentiment displayed on the cars in the parking lot, there were a smattering of boos when it was announced that the pilots in the jet aircraft doing the flyover at the start of the race had just returned from Operation Iraqi Freedom. Let's just leave it at this:

That was not the prevailing political view in the stands. If the booing folks had automatic weapons and the rest of the fans had nothing but toothpicks as weapons, the people doing the booing would have been dead meat in about 90 seconds. At one point in the race under a caution flag I noticed that the Viagra car was third in line for the restart and I asked how that had happened since it had not been anywhere near the lead the last time I had looked. I was told that the Viagra car was a lap down. Now that is something that the sponsor never wants to hear; Viagra does not want to be associated with being a "lap down".

The winner of the race holds a Bachelors Degree in Vehicle Structural Engineering from Purdue. That was unexpected information. Let's just say that engineering degrees were not prevalent in the area of the stands where we were sitting. In fact, let's say that high school diplomas and/or GED certificates were not universal in the area of the stands where we were sitting. The local MENSA chapter was not recruiting actively…

In other areas of sports, I see where the Chicago Bulls have selected their male "cheerleading squad" and it is composed of gravitationally enhanced gentlemen. They will be called the Matadors (the ladies are the Luvabulls) but already there is a movement afoot to call them the Fatadors. I don't know that this is going to work for very long.

I was glad to see Marshall beat Kansas State last weekend. K-State always tries to load up its out of conference schedule with patsies so that it really only has two or three tough games a year to worry about (Kansas and/or Baylor do not count as tough competitors inside the conference!). This year, they lost in one of their "set-up games" and if the NCAA would like to "encourage" K-State to make their schedule a bit more interesting, then they should be consigned to the Music City Bowl with the note that they'll be going there again next year absent a schedule upgrade. Oh yeah, and Marshall should be given a berth in one of the big payout bowls just for this win.

Those "soccer people" who cannot let go of the WUSA folding and who hoped that the Women's World Cup would jump start interest in women's soccer once more and put the league back in business, got bad news from ABC over the weekend. The opening game with the US team got a rating of 1.4. That is worse than the XFL at its nadir.

When the WNBA started, they promoted the league during the NBA playoffs with the players saying, "We got next!" Well, they may have "next" with regard to the WUSA collapse because the final game of their championship series got a rating of 0.8. Just for clarification purposes, that is about what pro bass fishing draws…

Last week, I told you about the new pro paintball league. Now if the game is tied at the end of regulation and then is tied at the end of overtime, will they settle the game with a shootout? Or is that what the game is about in the first place? Enquiring minds…

Having mentioned Kansas State earlier in this rant, I noticed that they have a player on the squad named Alax Carrier. That name could have arisen from a typo on his birth certificate; his parents may have wanted to name him something else, but was it Alex or Ajax? I guess we'll never know… It couldn't have been Ex-Lax, could it?

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

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		Sports Curmudgeon: 9/24/03

		Well, I finally have my electricity back after Hurricane Isabel; it was out for 123.5 hours – but who's counting… And do I ever have a lot of news to catch up on! Without access to ESPN or the Internet, I was limited in my sports view to the Washington Post and the local Washington DC area sports radio station. They were a lot better than nothing, but still left me feeling as if I missed a whole lot. So I'll be playing catch-up for a while. One thing I did not miss from ESPN was their nonsensical promo about baseball called “The Hunt for October.” Memo to the ESPN Geniuses: Find the calendar page for September. Then turn it over and you'll find October. It's not that damned hard. There is no hunting involved. I've also broken my reading glasses permanently and irreparably making reading and writing far more difficult tasks than normal. Naturally, the doctor will not be able to see me for a while and that means I will not be able to see nearly what I need to be able to see in order to read and write these things. This has not been a good month. So I am expecting a major run of good luck next month – when I head for Las Vegas for my annual autumnal pilgrimage. Last week, I noted that Oscar De La Hoya was contemplating a lawsuit regarding his loss to Shane Moseley and I asked the lawyers who read these rants for how a judge might tell Oscar to take his lawsuit and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. According to a solicitor (that's Canadian for “lawyer”) in Ontario, such a case there would be dismissed as being “frivolous and vexatious”. That sounds very learned. I was hoping that the judge somewhere might say that he wished that the lawsuit was an umbrella because he was planning to stick it up the plaintiff's butt and wanted to open it up real wide before extracting it. I guess that does not sound very “judicial” now that I look at it in print… I spent last Sunday accompanying my long-suffering wife and The NASCAR Babe and The Babe's Special Friend to Dover Delaware for the Dover 400. We were there with approximately 150,000 of our closest friends crammed into a town whose roads would be taxed with an event that drew 25,000 people. The NASCAR drivers were doing over 150 mph on the one-mile track; the drivers getting out of the parking lot were averaging less than 2 mph! Just before the starting of the engines, the crowd did the wave all the way around the stands several times. There needs to be a special ring of Hell devoted to the genius who invented the wave and the people who will not just let it die. It was annoying the second time I saw it; now it is like running a cheese grater up and down my spinal cord. But I do have to give the race fans this tribute. Not one time was I subjected to choruses of: "Who Let the Dogs Out" or "Hoot, There It Is" I enjoyed the race. My long-suffering wife suffered yet another day of being with me. A NASCAR race is indeed noisy but that does not affect most of the fans because watching a NASCAR race is not like watching a chess match; there is not a lot of analytical processing that has to go on in your head. The crowd at Dover was different from most other sporting events I've attended. I saw a new bumper sticker that I had not seen before. In red white and blue it said: Nuke Their Ass Then Take Their Gas With that as a common sentiment displayed on the cars in the parking lot, there were a smattering of boos when it was announced that the pilots in the jet aircraft doing the flyover at the start of the race had just returned from Operation Iraqi Freedom. Let's just leave it at this: That was not the prevailing political view in the stands. If the booing folks had automatic weapons and the rest of the fans had nothing but toothpicks as weapons, the people doing the booing would have been dead meat in about 90 seconds. At one point in the race under a caution flag I noticed that the Viagra car was third in line for the restart and I asked how that had happened since it had not been anywhere near the lead the last time I had looked. I was told that the Viagra car was a lap down. Now that is something that the sponsor never wants to hear; Viagra does not want to be associated with being a "lap down". The winner of the race holds a Bachelors Degree in Vehicle Structural Engineering from Purdue. That was unexpected information. Let's just say that engineering degrees were not prevalent in the area of the stands where we were sitting. In fact, let's say that high school diplomas and/or GED certificates were not universal in the area of the stands where we were sitting. The local MENSA chapter was not recruiting actively… In other areas of sports, I see where the Chicago Bulls have selected their male "cheerleading squad" and it is composed of gravitationally enhanced gentlemen. They will be called the Matadors (the ladies are the Luvabulls) but already there is a movement afoot to call them the Fatadors. I don't know that this is going to work for very long. I was glad to see Marshall beat Kansas State last weekend. K-State always tries to load up its out of conference schedule with patsies so that it really only has two or three tough games a year to worry about (Kansas and/or Baylor do not count as tough competitors inside the conference!). This year, they lost in one of their "set-up games" and if the NCAA would like to "encourage" K-State to make their schedule a bit more interesting, then they should be consigned to the Music City Bowl with the note that they'll be going there again next year absent a schedule upgrade. Oh yeah, and Marshall should be given a berth in one of the big payout bowls just for this win. Those "soccer people" who cannot let go of the WUSA folding and who hoped that the Women's World Cup would jump start interest in women's soccer once more and put the league back in business, got bad news from ABC over the weekend. The opening game with the US team got a rating of 1.4. That is worse than the XFL at its nadir. When the WNBA started, they promoted the league during the NBA playoffs with the players saying, "We got next!" Well, they may have "next" with regard to the WUSA collapse because the final game of their championship series got a rating of 0.8. Just for clarification purposes, that is about what pro bass fishing draws… Last week, I told you about the new pro paintball league. Now if the game is tied at the end of regulation and then is tied at the end of overtime, will they settle the game with a shootout? Or is that what the game is about in the first place? Enquiring minds… Having mentioned Kansas State earlier in this rant, I noticed that they have a player on the squad named Alax Carrier. That name could have arisen from a typo on his birth certificate; his parents may have wanted to name him something else, but was it Alex or Ajax? I guess we'll never know… It couldn't have been Ex-Lax, could it? But don't get me wrong, I love sports... << Back to the September Archives = Home = Recent = Topical = Wagers = = Archives = Pros = Scores = Contact =