Category: sports

Think: Useless and Trivial

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@) If we could talk to the animals, my guess is that we’d find that, among others things, we’re the only being that finds flatulence and bowel movements funny.

“Why do you find them funny?” Dabbi the deer might ask.

“Because we find them disgusting,” we’d answer.

“What?”

“It’s complicated, but it’s further complicated by the fact that you don’t have a sense of humor.”

“I don’t have a sense of humor?” she asked. “I don’t? I’ll have you know that I share the same sense of humor with the rest of the human population. Our sense of humor generates ratings, box office sales, and album sales. You’re the freak of nature.”

&) We never call out dystopian productions from their all-too-near future predictions for being wrong. Young up-and-coming lyricists are forever in search of meaningful and important lyrics. They can’t write about Lord of the Rings anymore. Led Zeppelin been there done that. Silly Love Songs were Paul McCartney’s domain, and we can no longer write ‘baby’ lyrics, because the 70’s and 80’s bands drained that vestibule. The only avenue left is war, anti-war, and anti-military, but there hasn’t been a real war by first world countries in about 50 years. So, while all of the lyrics written in the interim are meaningful and important lyric, they’ve also been false, so far. “True, but they weren’t talking about today, they were talking the all-too-near future.” So, when do we say they’re wrong. “You don’t!”

$) So, how do young, inexperienced artists craft “meaningful and important” lyrics and dialogue when they know nothing about the real world? Is it more important to be meaningful and idealistic or knowledgeable and realistic?

#) If you’ve ever met a truly tough guy, you know they’ve already done it. They wear a “nothing left to prove” garb for the rest of their lives. We know how tough they are, when we meet the other guys, those who talk tough to show it.

*) If we ever catch up to Alien technology, will medical professionals finally learn that the key to physical and mental health lies in the anus?

^) Too much sports knowledge is trivial and useless. Watching sports on TV is supposed to be fun, but some of us get so tied up in good guys vs. bad guys that we forget this is basically a reality show. It’s the best one we’ve ever invented, but it’s still just a show. The next time we meet that guy who knows so much about sports that we’re slightly intimidated by his fact-based opinions, we should liberate him by saying, “Who cares?”

!) You’ll know you’re one of these guys if a lighthearted disagreement over useless and trivial information boils over into you deciding that you’re never speak to the other ever again. At that point, someone needs to step in and say, “Clark, no one cares. You think you’re right, and she thinks you’re wrong, but no one here really cares. We just want to go back to eating our turkey, watching football, and talking about Mary’s Jell-O. That’s all we want to do today.

?) What if she says that your favorite sports star is actually a pretty awful human being? We defend him, because we’re nerds who sit in an audience of millions, and he’s the good-looking, athlete who wouldn’t talk to us in high school. If we pick the right one (he who wins) we want everyone to know our vicarious association. “I’ve followed that guy since he was a five-star recruit. I know his high school stats and college stats by heart.”

“No one cares, Clark!”

%) To counter those who say, “Today’s music ain’t got the same soul,” I would like to introduce you to the noise coming out of Britain. black midi (lower case for whatever reason), Black Country, New Road (one band), Squid, and a band named Famous. These bands are genuinely creative and innovative souls coming out with music that might be as brilliant as the music of past decades, and my guess is they’re only going to get better. Other bands that are also making great noise are Thee Oh Osees (or Osees), and just about everything Ty Segall puts his name on. As with all innovative music, we shouldn’t expect the noise to grab in one blow, and we shouldn’t expect one song to deliver the knockout blow either. Although I think the music from black midi’s Welcome to Hell (not the 23-year-old’s definition of meaningful and important lyrics) might change your interiority by about the tenth listen.

Pitchfork has a few nuggets from black midi’s lead singer Gordie Greep to dispel the notion we have that he wants us to view him as deep, meaningful, and important.

“It’s just fun man,” Greep said. “We’re doing this this stupid thing and somehow making the semblance of a living.” This might be false modesty, as we can be sure he hopes we take his stupid stuff seriously.

Greep also drops a fascinating description of his writing style. “When you want to do something original…use something as a model or inspiration that you know you definitely can’t do,” Greep has said. “Your failure will be interesting.” He talks about Clint Eastwood’s failure to act like Marilyn Monroe, and Tom Waits attempt at the blues. He says they both failed by relative measures, but he says we found their attempts interesting. I found a similar attempt to write like James Joyce interesting.

So, he writes what he doesn’t know, just to see what falls out? What an interesting and perplexing method of writing. My guess, and I have a pretty decent track record in this regard, is that Gordie Greep (whether with black midi or not) is a craftsman who has a relatively bright future.

() I got off on Queen when I was younger. Queen almost single-handedly introduced me to the concept that different can be so beautiful in the right hands, and then I discovered David Bowie. Once I got passed Bowie’s pop songs, I thought he was the most experimental artist in the mainstream, until I discovered Mike Patton. Mike Patton did things I never heard before, and I thought he was the most adventurous artist I ever heard, and I still think that in many ways, but Omar Rodríguez-López (ORL) is just as adventurous in different ways.

Omar Rodríguez-López (ORL) is one of the most gifted artists and musicians on the scene today, and he has played some role, most often leading it in some creative manner, in over fifty albums. I purchased an At the Drive-In album, and I purchased a couple of Mars Volta albums, but for some reason they never appealed to me. If it hadn’t been for Ipecac Records releasing his solo recordings, I never would’ve discovered the genius (and I do not use that term lightly) behind the music of those previously mentioned bands.

AllMusic.com tries to succinctly capture this genius writing, “His multivalent body of work derives inspiration from punk rock, prog, metal, funk, traditional Latin music, blues, jazz, film music, and avant-garde composition.”

As with any mercurial genius, much of ORL’s solo albums will not appeal to most palettes, but the true music fan will probably go nuts over about twenty-four of the fifty albums. When I approached Omar Rodríguez-López music, I had no idea what to expect, but he violated those expectations in the most obscene manner possible. Such violations are not immediate, as they rarely are. My first love was Roman Lips. Anytime a friend invites me to listen to complicated, difficult music, I suggest he do so by starting their most accessible album. Roman Lips is probably the most accessible ORL album, followed by Blind Worms, Pious Swine. Beyond that, the ORL solo albums are impossible to categorize, list, or breakdown by category. Suffice it to say that I was wary that the genius behind At the Drive-In and Mars Volta would appeal to me. I was also wary of the Ipecac Recordings, as they release a lot of material that major recording studios won’t, and a number of their albums don’t appeal to me, but ORL.

As with all of the artists listed above, it’s difficult to believe that these individual artists, and Queen, are capable of such wide-ranging music. I love some of the more major, mainstream pop acts, but there is a comfortable thread that runs through most of them. Their fifth album might sound more advanced than their first in production value and matured writing, but we all know what kind of music they prefer. Listening to the albums put out by Bowie, Patton, and Omar Rodríguez-López, it’s hard to believe the same artist created all these incredible albums. ORL is definitely the most prolific of the three, and he’s not even fifty-years-old at the time of this article.

The Simplicity of the Difficult Game of Baseball

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Baseball is an embarrassingly simple game … on paper. Pitcher throws ball, hitter tries to hit it where they ain’t, and fielders try to catch it. If we introduced the concept of the game to aliens from another planet, they wouldn’t understand how such a simple game found its way into the fabric of our world. “You mean to tell me that your national past time, and the game that is one of the most popular games in your world, involves one human being throwing a ball and another hitting it?” this alien might ask. “And humans find it so entertaining that you not only watch it, play it, and read about it, but some of you devote your lives to it? That’s pretty much all we need to know to go ahead with our plans to take over this planet.”

Anyone who has played the game of baseball, or tried to coach it, knows it’s anything but simple. A player doesn’t have to be 6’6” 250 lbs. to play it. Hall of Fame inductee Wee Willie Keeler was 5’4”. He proved that anyone and everyone can do it, but most can’t with regular success. As hard as it is to consistently throw a ball accurately, it’s harder to hit it where they ain’t. Even relatively young hitters learn that they can be heroes one day and zeroes the next. The simple complexity of hitting a ball consistently can prove maddening, demoralizing, and even a little humiliating to a young kid, because it seems so simple. They cannot figure it out for themselves, however, they need coaching, guidance, and as much support as we can offer.

These three ingredients to improved play, and the resultant character development that follows, are essential, but the three most mandatory ingredients to accomplishing anything in life, are time, patience, and repetition. The latter might be the hardest for a child to grasp, as the typical nine-year-old complaint to mind-numbing repetition centers around, “I can hit, catch, and pitch now. Why do we have to keep practicing them so often?” As I’ve written elsewhere, there is little-to-no room for creativity in sports. There are quick-fixes, they’re out there, but my guess is their efficiency numbers pale in comparison to kinesthetic learning, or the knowledge gain by doing it so often that we know what to do when there is no time to think.

Time, patience, and mind-numbing repetition turned an eight-year-old named Isaac into a decent fielder, so the coach put him at shortstop in year one, but he struggled with hitting so much that the coach put him at the bottom of the batting order. He had the typical problems an eight-year-old experiences of looping under the ball. He had so many strikeouts in year one, and he reacted so emotionally to each one, we began to think that baseball probably wasn’t for him.

“Why does he get so upset?” one of his teammates asked. “He shouldn’t get that upset. It’s just baseball. It’s supposed to be fun. No one else gets as upset as he does.”

We wanted Isaac to lighten up and enjoy himself. Baseball is a game, and when we play a game, we’re supposed to have fun. We’re out there with our friends, and we’re supposed to enjoy playing with them. “Don’t get mad, learn,” was a line repeated so often in our backyard that we both got sick of hearing it.

The answer I would now give Isaac’s teammate is that Isaac wanted it more than his teammates. Some might find this a character flaw in need of correction, but in order for Isaac to have fun doing something, he has to be good at it, and he thought he would be good at baseball before he stepped on the field. His first year was supposed to be nothing more than a display of his athletic talent. When that didn’t happen Isaac did not want to do the elementary things he needed to accomplish his goals. What eight-year-old does?

Why can’t I hit the ball? 

Nothing came easy for an eight-year-old Isaac. The core problem for Isaac was that he had a counterproductive image of himself as a good hitter. He thought he should be there before he even picked up a bat, and the evidence he saw to the contrary (in his first full year playing baseball) was demoralizing. Every failure, to him, was an epic denunciation of his ability and his character. The eight-year-old world is dramatic, traumatic, and fatalistic.

Our motto entering year two was keep it simple and overcome adversity. Things happen in baseball. A batter can hit a ball square and a fielder can catch it. A hitter can strike out three times in a game. What happens next defines that batter. How does the batter respond in their next at-bat? “The best batters in the world go 1-3,” I told Isaac, and “baseball is the second hardest game in the world behind golf. What happens after we commit an error in the field?” I asked him, adding, “I’ve committed every error in the field that you have, and I’ve done some that were far worse. I’ve committed errors in front of other people that still keeps me up at night, twenty years later.”

Most of the coaching, consolation, and support I offered Isaac went in one ear and out the other, so I’m not sure if anything I said worked. I think time and repetition had more to do with it. Isaac and I spent time doing an exercise I called 40-40-40. Forty ground balls, forty flyballs, and forty reps doing whatever he wanted, usually forty at bats or forty pitches. We also went to batting cages.

Whatever it was we did clicked. His turnaround, from year one to year two was so 180 that the coach eventually put Isaac in the coveted three hole in his batting lineup. Isaac started the second season in his customary position at the bottom of the order, and he gradually worked his way up to the two hole. This is a summation, as the progression proved painfully gradual, but he was in the two hole by game eight. Before the start of game eleven, Isaac believed he was the best hitter on the team, but instead of putting Isaac in the leadoff spot, the coach put him in the three hole.

“I’m getting on base coach,” Isaac said. “Why are you putting me in the three hole? Why am I not in the leadoff spot?”

“We need your power in the three hole,” the coach said.

I’m going to try to be objective here and say that in year two, the nine-year-old Isaac was one of the three best players on his team throughout the 15-game regular season. He might have had one bad game all year.

Isaac was one of the primary reasons that his team won their divisional playoff game. He went two for two, drove in two runs and scored two, in a 5-2 victory. He also, and more importantly, pitched the final two innings, and he only gave up one run.

He didn’t do too well in the final playoffs, but the rest of the team carried them to victory.

In the championship game, however, Isaac went absolutely nuts. He went 3-3, with 5 RBIs, and one run scored, in a 9-8 game. Isaac accounted for six of his team’s nine runs. He was cracking these hits into the outfield, whereas most of his hits, and his teammates hits, barely clear the infield.

Isaac’s best at bat occurred in what could’ve been his final at bat, and possibly the team’s final at-bat of the season. Before the inning even started, I began counting the batters before him, worrying that Isaac might be the final at-bat. My worst fears came to light as two batters walked and two batters struck out. Isaac stepped up to the plate, down two runs, with two runners on base, and two outs. The score at the time was 6-8, and the opposing pitcher was throwing a surprisingly lively fastball for a nine-year-old.

For two innings, Isaac’s teammates couldn’t come anywhere close to hitting this pitcher. The pitcher was the other team’s ace, brought in to close the game out and secure their championship. Isaac and the pitcher battled to a 3 balls 2 strike full count. Isaac fouled a couple of hits off that told me he might be overmatched. Then, he uncorked at unbelievable hit that ended up tying the game and forcing the opposition to bat in the bottom of the inning.

Isaac pitched the final inning and gave up one unearned run to lose the game.

Earlier in the season, Isaac pitched an almost perfect two innings, striking out 5 of 6. I told him that he would probably never come that close to perfection again. I said that to try to take the pressure off him in his attempts to duplicate that performance. Guess what, he topped it. That final at-bat was so clutch.

We all went nuts on a catch Isaac made in the outfield, earlier in the game, but I told the other parents that that catch was nothing compared to delivering a tying hit in the bottom of the last inning. Isaac’s nickname around the household is either three for three, or Mr. Clutch.

As Isaac walked out of the dugout, his coach stopped him: “I just want to say how enjoyable it’s been watching your development these last two years.”

How does a nine-year-old develop the skills necessary for some sort of progression in athletics? They have to want it, first and foremost. No matter how much comfort, coaching, and support we offer, if they don’t want it, they’re not going to get it. The next ingredient, as I spelled out earlier, is time and repetition, or as one famous basketball player once said, “Practice!” The more time we spend doing anything, the better we will be at doing it. As Malcolm Gladwell suggests, we can master just about anything with 10,000 hours of concentrated practice.

Keep it simple. No tricks. Don’t worry about velocity or location, and don’t think about the future. Someone suggested that Isaac might, one day, play in the majors, and others whispered other, sweet nothings in our ear. If a three-year-old plays with a rocket, we’ll probably hear someone in the room say he might become a rocket scientist. People do this to be nice, and because they probably can’t think of anything else to say. Smile, say that’s nice of you to say, and walk away, then return to the mind-numbing repetition of playing catch, fielding ground balls, and throwing the ball around. They’ll be proud of their progress, and they’ll want to quit when they regress. They’ll learn, and they’ll make tiny adjustments, until some sort of muscle memory develops over time. That might sound simple, but think about all of the mechanics involved in muscle memory. A young baseball player can be coached, taught, advised, and tweaked, but until a kid does it so often that they know it, they’ll never learn it. These principles, and this whole article, are devoted to baseball, but we can just as easily apply the principles discussed here to just about anything in life.

To Like or Dislike, That is the Question

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I might be old-school, but I don’t care if someone “dislikes” what I write in a text. I don’t care if they “like” it either. It means nothing to me. If they dislike my point, tell me why? I write an opinion, and their obligation should be to either write an opinion that is contrary to mine or tell me why I’m wrong. Within that chain, someone will eventually write, “Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one,” and we’ll move onto discuss whatever trivialities make us friends. How is it that all we have to do now is “dislike” a point? I don’t find “dislike” a quality refutation, but I concede that that I might be old-school. 

If I tried to “dislike” my 8th grade teacher, she’d stop the class and drop the 25th alphabet on me: “Why?” 

“What?”

“Why do you dislike my point?” she would ask. “Why do you disagree with it? Saying that you dislike something someone says, or them for saying it, is not enough. You have to refute their opinion.”  

I understand that some think they’re saving time and space by texting back, “Dislike,” but if I’m going to invest my time and resources into providing a detailed, well-thought-out opinion, the least they could do is invest some time and effort into refuting what I write. 

The modern “dislike” is so narcissistic that it’s almost the imperial equivalent of a king saying, “I am not pleased.” Who gives a crud if you’re not happy with what I wrote? Am I right or wrong? Disprove me. 

“So, you’re telling me that you don’t want to hear my opinion?” they ask if we tell them to drop the dislikes.

“Have you ever told me your opinion?” we ask. “If not, bring it brother. If you need an instrument to help me help you trumpet an opinion, let me know. Right now, all I’m getting is a “dislike” button.”

“Have I offended you?” 

“I’d have to check my log book, but I think the last time someone offended me was about 37 years ago.”

“What did they say?”

“I have a rule,” I said. “Never tell anyone what offends you most, because they will be fixated on that, until they accidentally bring it up. It’s the “don’t think pink” principle. If I tell you to avoid thinking pink, pink will be the only thing on your mind.”

“Well, if I want to avoid offending you, shouldn’t I know what to avoid?”

“Again, I’d have to check my log book, but I think it involved the great Almond Joy/Mounds debate. Some fool stepped up on me telling me that sometimes he feels like a nut and sometimes he don’t. I’ll spare you the profanity that flowed from my mouth, but I will say that I was so out of control that I couldn’t control the spittle that followed it.”

“Really?”

“Like I said, I’m not going to tell you what offends me the most.”

Sports Romance

I love sports, but I no longer I’m no longer in love with sports. We’ve agreed to maintain an amicable relationship for the children, but the unconditional love we once had is gone. 

I can’t remember being so passionate about my team that I dropped all rational thinking, but I’m pretty sure I did, way way back to a time I can’t remember.

A friend of mine remains trapped in the irrational throes of love. “[That player, who committed the infraction,] should be suspended for this season, the next one, and beyond. He basically committed a felony on the ice. That play should be banned from hockey, sports, and life in general.”

“Would your feelings on such a hit be just as intense if one of the players from your favorite franchise committed it?” I asked him. “10 years ago, a cross-check was a cross-check. Everyone was real sad when a player got hurt, but they said, “Unfortunately, it’s part of the game. You’ve gotta keep your head on a swivel.”

“And don’t listen to modern analysts and announcers,” I added. “They’re comparing the cross checker to John Wilkes Booth, as one of the worst villains in human history for a reason. They’re corporate shills following the corporate policy on hits in hockey and football. 

“And I know you’re going to “dislike” my opinion. Save it. I don’t care, unless you want to offer me solid refutation to my point save it.”

The Sports Marriage

At some point in our courtship, we develop unconditional love with our team, its players, and the sport in general. We vow to have and to hold, from this day forward, until death do us part. After we certify that union, we want to know everything we can about our players, and our team. Our passion is no longer limited to plays, stats, and wins and losses. We now want to know if they’re getting along with their wife, and if not, we want to know why? We want to know if he loved his mother, how he played with friends on the playground, in grade school, and what his teammates think of him. I may be old school, but I don’t care about any of the plotlines of the soap opera brought to us by every sports channel on the web, and on TV. I don’t care if his mom cheers him on in the stands, and I don’t care if his parents never attend a game. I don’t care if the cornerback on the other team is a bad guy, or if the long snapper on my team is one hell of a good feller. I understand that the leagues, as good corporate stewards, want to promote and punish their own, for goodwill, but I don’t understand why we the fans care so much about the personal lives of these people. Perhaps we don’t. Perhaps it’s all about filling three hours of pregame shows that I haven’t watched for over a decade now. 

“The NFL analysts are saying that your left guard is so talented he might go in the first round of the NFL draft,” I told a friend of mine, regarding a player on her favorite college football team.

“He’s made over thirty visits to our local Children’s Hospital in just the last year,” she said. 

Now, there aren’t many stats for a left guard in football, so I understand how a pseudo fan would know nothing about them. The left guard never touches the ball, and obviously doesn’t score. His best games are those in which no one ever hears his name (no penalties), when a quarterback is allowed time to pass the ball, and when a running back gets extra yards. When the QB and RB look good, he looks good, but very few fans will ever know his name. Those in the know track how many pressures, hurries, and sacks they allow, and they keep track of how many pancake blocks an offensive lineman makes. They also track how successful a team is running to one side versus the other. She didn’t know any of that. She only knew he was a good fella. 

My prescription for anyone who cares too much about sports, to the point that it affects their relationship with their family, their dogs, and their sanity is to try cheering on a losing franchise for the next forty years. The one great thing about cheering on a team that doesn’t seem to care if they win or lose is that they teach you that unconditional love for a sports’ franchise is pointless and it will inevitably lead to pain. It might take forty years, but everyone has a threshold. Cheering on a losing franchise your whole life can also teach you to invest emotions in the other things life has to offer. You can treat your favorite franchise right by buying up any memorabilia you can find, then wearing it; you watch every game they play in, and scream at the TV; and you can defend their honor when some gob of goo at the end of bar forsakes them with a “dislike”, and it won’t do one damned thing to effect the outcome of their season. If you treat your wife right, however, play with your dog, and spend as much time as you can with the kid, it can pay such huge dividends that it might help offset the unending pain your favorite franchise inflicts on you just about every Sunday in your life.