I hate the sports of the winter months. Violence and running back and forth. No place for big fat slobs with divinely-gifted arms like David Wells to contribute. Now that the NBA season has mercifully ended, we are left with G-d’s own sport all alone to dominate the sports pages.
Doubt me? How does the Bible start? “In the big inning…”
I can’t wait until here in LA the Lakers news falls completely off the radar (and I wish we’d dump Kobe to get his trial off the radio so I could leave it on with my kids in the house).
When I’m cranky, take me to a ballpark and my blood pressure drops 20 points.
When I’m REALLY cranky, put a bat and $10 in my palm and drop me off at the batting cages. Half an hour later I’ll be in the zone and mentally sharp as a razor. I love playing games with myself at the cages, such as “not one ball hits the backstop” and then doing it.
The beauty of what is called “the hardest job in sports” (ask Michael Jordan about his minor league baseball career) is that you have a split second to swing a bat to solidly hit an object that is coming at you from 60-90 mph and may very well hit you or put your eye out.
What meditation is all about is focusing on a mantra, a phrase, to the exclusion of everything else. My mantra is the sweet thwack of hitting the ball on the sweet spot of my bat. Half an hour of this and I’m good for a fortnight.
And please don’t mention that lame EUnuch sport, soccer. It’s a regression to a time before we had opposable thumbs. Any sport that doesn’t demonstrate our clear superiority over the wild beasts isn’t worth playing.
You might have an argument with lacrosse, though.
And I hope that LA never ever gets an NFL franchise again. Seeing the Raiders stickers on pick-ups, here, are the easiest way to identify felons and their molls on the road. I bet violent crime would drop in LA if there was an RFID on every piece of Raiders memorabilia and the owners were jailed.
I’ve detoxified from my lifelong Yankee fanship (sorry Michele). 18 years in LA and the bliss of Dodger Stadium–the pristine Breyer’s Vanilla Ice Cream (with vanilla bits) of baseball stadiums–have made me a Dodger fan.
While Yankee Stadium deserves its status as a shrine, it’s a shrine that is desecrated by too many idiot fans who became Yankee fans not when they were more famous for wife-swapping than winning, but shallow fans who like to side with a winner and commit assault on anyone who isn’t a Yankee fan. Growing up equidistant to NY and Philly and able to see 3 games a day (Yankees on Channel 11, Mets on Channel 9 and the Phillies on Channel 17), more than a decade before cable made it no big deal, I really had the right to choose any of the 3. I chose Munson because Grote and Boone weren’t intense enough (later I grew to love how Boone handled pitchers).
Going from the Yankess to the Dodgers wasn’t an easy transition. I idolized Thurman Munson as a personal role model for my 5 years as an all star catcher as the epitome of intensity and fair play and clutch performance. And I loved getting Chambliss and Nettles and even Catfish and Reggie (I’d never begrudge any team picking up a key free agent or two), but the last few years, my apostasy has become inevitable. I guess treason was to be forseen in that I was mathematically sane enough to quantify that neither Munson nor “Donnie Baseball” nor, ugh, Phil Rizzuto, belong in the Hall of Fame. Just wearing the pinstripes isn’t enough. From a distance, I can also see the horror of George Steinbrenner clearly now. Yes, the Yankees nearly completely resemble The Onion article: Yankees Ensure 2003 Pennant By Signing Every Player In Baseball
Yankees Ensure 2003 Pennant By Signing Every Player In Baseball
NEW YORK – With a week to go before pitchers and catchers report for spring training, the New York Yankees shored up their pitching, hitting, and defense Monday by signing every player in professional baseball.
Right: Some of the New York Yankees’ newest additions are introduced to the press.
“We’d like to welcome the entire roster of Major League Baseball into the Yankees family,” said team owner George Steinbrenner, watching as the franchise’s 928 newest additions held up their pinstripes at a Yankee Stadium press conference. “With these acquisitions, we are in position to finally nab that elusive 27th World Series title.”
Sports reporters were not surprised by the move.
“This is not entirely unexpected,” New York Times baseball writer Murray Chass said. “When the Yankees followed up their signing of Japanese slugger Hideki ‘Godzilla’ Matsui by annexing Cuba for use as a Triple-A farm club, it was clear that Steinbrenner was willing to do whatever it takes to win.”
By noon, Yankees GM Brian Cashman had signed the entire National League and most of the American League to multi-year contracts. Some 10 hours later, the final opposing player, Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez, had been acquired by the Yankees, who bought out the remainder of his $252 million contract for $300 million.
“It’s an honor to be part of this team,” said catcher Benito Santiago, picked up from the San Francisco Giants as insurance in case catchers Jorge Posada, Ivan Rodriguez, and Mike Piazza all go down with injuries. “It’s a surprise, certainly, but I’d be crazy to turn down the opportunity to play on what is, by default, the greatest team in baseball.”
Yankees manager Joe Torre, whose pitching rotation, prior to the mass signing, lacked a clear seventh ace, now has the luxury of starting each of his hurlers twice a season.
“As they say, you can never have enough pitching in this league,” Torre said. “Especially come playoff time. Now, if we make it to the World Series, we’ll be able to start Pedro Martinez in Game 1 and still have him fresh and ready to go for a Game 287, should it be necessary.”
With so many egos to juggle and so many personnel decisions to make, Torre said his job will actually be harder this season, the lack of opposing players notwithstanding.
“Hey, I don’t care who you’ve got on your team; winning in this league is tough—Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Randy Johnson or no Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Randy Johnson,” Torre said. “And it’s even tougher in New York. This is a baseball town, and some of these fans think the Yankees are the only team in baseball. Now that we truly are, the pressure to win will be that much greater.”
The mass signing, extravagant even by Yankees standards, caused the Bronx Bombers’ payroll to skyrocket from a former league high of $149 million to $5.6 billion. Cashman noted that much of that figure is tied up in bonuses to be paid out to pitcher Tom Glavine, who at 37 will almost certainly not play out the entirety of his 15-year contract.
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig approved the signing, noting that the other 29 major-league teams received ample financial compensation.
“I see no reason why a small-market team like the Twins or Expos can’t continue to remain competitive, just because it lacks players,” Selig said. “The league was due for contraction, anyway.”
Anyway… the Dodgers haven’t been to the postseason since 1988, the year of the Gibson home run. I’ve earned the right to root.
I hate that football pre-season is almost upon us. We need a law:
- MLB - April through mid-October.
- NBA - After World Series through April.
- NHL - November through February. And it should be a felony to play it in states that don’t get snowstorms.
- NFL - The Sunday AFTER the World Series through January.
- Golf - Never. It’s not a sport. It just a frickin huge game of darts for people with a lot of time on their hands. Now if the balls were pitched… or if there was a linebacker rushing the swinger…
- Any event that gets a subjective grade from 0 to 10 instead of a quantifiable measurement isn’t a sport. If you can’t compare a 9.5 from 2004 to one from 1976, what the hell good is the score except as an enticement to bribery and other corruption? No doubt the subjective scoring system was developed in Europe.
More summer. Less winter. More light. Less darkness.
I’m all over the place with these thoughts.
Having baseball alone is enough to make me giddy. It’s like waiting for all the kids to FINALLY go to bed so you can REALLY get busy and enjoy the good stuff.