Dead people’s jerseys

/

A couple years ago, my friend’s daughter, Katie, played on a softball team that was sponsored by Bailey Funeral Home. I think this is fabulous. Kids running the bases while advertising a funeral home on their backs. Do the proprietors of the funeral home think that this type of advertising is effective?

“Hey, I heard that your aunt died. Have you checked out Bailey Funeral Home? They seem very community oriented. Good with men in scoring position, too.”

But at least Katie’s team knew who was footing the bill for their season. When I was twelve, my Little League team, sponsored by Joe Wojick and Son’s, won the league championship.

Thanks to Joe and Sons, my team sported bright orange uniforms. The ugliest uniform I’ve ever seen. Even worse than the old Houston Astros uniforms.

And I still own mine.

But I never had any idea what kind of business Joe Wojick and Son’s did.  And I still don’t. Apparently Joe Wojick and Son’s is now a wholesale fruit and vegetable company, but this business was incorporated in 1986.

My Little League team won our championship in 1983.

So there’s no way of telling what the company was doing back then. In my mind, it had been some kind of construction company, but perhaps not.

Hard to imagine transitioning from construction to fruits and veggies.

There’s a phone number listed on the webpage, so perhaps I’ll call and find out.

Either way, it would’ve been a hell of a lot more interesting had Joe Wojick and Son’s been a funeral home.  The jokes and one-liners would have been endless.

Katie was so lucky.

Quarterbacks are jerks

/

Imagine that you are an offensive lineman, 360-pounds, crouched down into a three-point stance, ready to explode on the snap count. Your knees are sore from years in the trenches and your elbow is aching from the hit you took from the defensive lineman ten minutes ago. Even if you were fully healthy, it ain’t easy crouching into a three-point stance when you are nearly 400-pounds. You’ve been in your crouch for eight seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds, and then you see the play clock run out.

You stand up and look behind you, only to see the quarterback, the face of the franchise, the team’s highest paid player, the 220-pound pretty-boy who only has to stand upright and bark out orders prior to the play. He’s thirty yards up field, heading towards the sideline, having called a timeout about twelve seconds ago but never bothering to tell you.

I see this every week in the NFL, including last week’s preseason games. The quarterback calls a timeout and walks away from the five or six guys who are charged with saving him from a weekly dose of bone-rattling concussions, leaving them crouched on the ground, bent over, facing down a drooling, mouth-breathing defensive lineman.

If I were the center or one of those beefy guards, I’d walk over to the sidelines and kick the quarterback’s ass. Have the decency to let your team know that a timeout has been called, damn it.

No girls allowed

/

In 1952, women were banned from minor league baseball, essentially locking them out of the possibility of ever playing professional baseball.

This ban remains in effect today.

What the hell?

Out of all the sports, women are more likely to break into professional baseball before the other more physical sports of football, basketball, and hockey (though we’ve had female hockey players in the past). Yet Major League Baseball has chosen to exclude the possibility of women ever playing the game.

In fact, women have already demonstrated an ability to play alongside men. In the early 20th century, barnstorming teams known as “Bloomer Girls” were formed in various parts of the United States and took on amateur and semiprofessional teams that included both men and women. Jackie Mitchell became the first female professional baseball player when she signed a contract with the minor league Chattanooga Lookouts in 1931. Mitchell pitched in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees and struck out their two star players, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

This is a sport that enjoys an anti-trust exemption from the US Congress. How is it permitted to blatantly discriminate based upon sex?

Ladies, are you as outraged as I am?

And more importantly, what are you going to do about it?  I’ve already got the Girl Scouts on my plate, so you need to take on this fight yourselves.

Caps? Bolding? Air quotes? And freakin' Comic Sans?

/

Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert’s scathing open letter to the fans is frankly too over-the-top and hubris-laden for my taste. I prefer my NBA owners to be a little less emotional and considerably less reactionary. And Gilbert’s obsessive use of air-quotes is just stupid. Note:

“This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his "decision" unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.”

“But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called "curse" on Cleveland, Ohio. The self-declared former "King" will be taking the "curse" with him down south. And until he does "right" by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma.”

See what I mean? Emotional, reactionary, and a terrible use of punctuation.

I also don’t like it when owners make on-the-court promises despite the fact that they never shoot the ball or score any points. Note:

"I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE"

A foolish and ultimately meaningless guarantee from a guy in a suit, not to mention the use of all-caps and bolding in his personal guarantee.

I personally guarantee that if one of my students attempted the all-caps-plus-bolding technique on an essay, regardless of how strongly they felt about an issue, they would be hearing from me.

But the poor punctuation, the unmitigated vitriol, the lack of stylization and the amateur use of capitals and bolding all pale in comparison to the worst part of the entire letter:

The use of the Comic Sans font.

C’mon, Dan. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that this is the worst font ever created?

Human targets

/

For the past month of so, I’ve been working on improving my golf game by hitting whiffle balls in the front yard.  The goal has been to hit the ball as close as possible to my daughter without actually smacking her in the head or torso.

A raising of the stakes, if you will.  Since golf tends to be a game of pressure-packed shots from difficult positions, I thought I’d create a little pressure of my own. 

And so far, I’ve done very well, bouncing very few balls off her body and none off her head. 

This morning a friend brought her two sons over to play in the backyard, and I quickly transformed the “try not to hit the baby” game into the “try my best to nail a boy with the ball” game.

While hitting a moving target is not a required skill on the golf course, it sure was fun, and I actually think it helped my short game a lot.  Rather than simply lofting balls around Clara, I had to hit low line drives, high, over the deck bombs, and everything in between in order to have any chance at hitting those boys.  

Being four-year old twins, they still made for small targets.

The boys have gone home and I’m supposed to revising my manuscript, but I find myself hoping that they come over again soon.  Golf has always been fun, but today it was especially so.

Spoiled

/

I know it’s not even July, but football season is nearly upon us and I couldn’t be happier.  In just a couple short months, my beloved Patriots will begin playing again, and for the first time in nearly twenty years, I will have season tickets to the games.

I can’t tell you how much I love attending Patriots’ games.  The two-hour drive, the impossible traffic, the tailgating, the food, the bitter cold weather, the screaming fans… I love every part of it. 

Two years ago, during the Patriots’ undefeated regular season, I took my friend, Kelly, to her first game.  We watched the Patriots defeat the Washington Redskins, 52-7, in one of the most lopsided victories that I have ever seen.

My favorite moments from the game included:

  • When Randy Moss was installed on defense at the end of the half to defend against a possible Hail Mary. The Pats got a turnover instead and threw Moss a touchdown a minute later.
  • When the 3,000 or so fans left in the stadium at the end of the game began rooting for Washington with mocking cheers.
  • When Kelly promised not to pee on my leg despite the excitement that she felt over her very first Patriot game

I was actually a little worried about Kelly.  A 52-7 drubbing of the opponent in the midst of an undefeated regular season might have set her future expectations a little high.

I’ve seen this happen before.

In 1998, I took my former step-daughter, Nicole, to her first Yankee game at Yankee Stadium. It turned out to be the day that David Wells pitched a perfect game. The Stadium was buzzing like never before, and at the end of the game, strangers were hugging one another and crying in jubilation.

It forever tarnished Nicole in terms of her appreciation for the game.

The next day, I was watching the game on television when she walked into the living room and said, “The Twins already have 6 hits. That’s terrible.”

It was the 7th inning.

Less than a year later, I would take Nicole to her second game at Yankees Stadium.  This time David Cone pitched a perfect game.  It was Yogi Berra Day at the Stadium and Don Larsen, who threw the only perfect game in World Series history as a member of the Yankees, threw out the first pitch. 

That’s right.  Out of the twenty perfect games in the history of baseball, I have been in attendance at two of them, and Nicole’s first two Major League baseball games ever seen live were perfect games. 

It’s spoiled her on baseball forever. 

So I found myself hoping that Kelly wouldn’t doesn’t expect her golden boy, Tom Brady, to throw three touchdowns and run for two more every time she made it back to Gillette Stadium.  The Patriots played as near a perfect game that day as is possible, but I knew that before long, they would find a way to break my heart.

Little did I know that they would wait for the Super Bowl that year to do so.

Golf with an added bonus

/

After saying goodbye to my students this afternoon, I spent the rest of the afternoon playing golf with a good friend named Phil. I managed to beat him (again), but this time only by a single stroke, and only after having to call a PGA professional at another golf course in order to get a ruling on “casual water.” When there is unintended standing water on a golf course, the player is permitted a free drop. My ball plugged in a wet, muddy rut on the fairway, the result of an over-exuberant lawn mower and a recent rain storm, and I was therefore permitted to excavate the ball from the mud and drop it without penalty.

The ruling saved me the winning stroke, but a win is a win.

Phil finished the rest of the round attempting to invoke casual tree, casual rock and casual squirrel rulings, but I was having none of it.

A rule is a rule.

It was a great afternoon, but it was made even better by the fact that Phil and I were the only one of our usual gang of golfers available to play today.  As we waited to tee off on the sixth hole, I admitted to Phil that part of the enjoyment of the day came from the knowledge that while we were playing, one of our friends was trapped at an after-work company function, another was taking care of his two children while his wife went out for the evening, and a third was too injured to play.

“Knowing how much fun we’re having and how much they are suffering somehow makes the day even better,” I said. “Is this wrong?”

I suspect that most people would say yes and be slightly disgusted at my comment, but Phil immediately sided with me, asserting that personal happiness is often enhanced by the comparison between your own position in life and the positions of others.

Sad but probably true.

Either way, I love having Phil around. I can often express the meanest, basest, most self-absorbed ideas in his presence and only receive agreement and accolades in return.

Everyone needs a friend like this.

I’m Popeye the Sailor Man. Or a dinosaur.

/

Playing golf on Thursday, my friends noted that my persistently awful tee shot probably has something to do with my arms.

“You have Popeye arms,” one of them said.

“What the hell are Popeye arms?” I asked, stepping away from the ball. 

“Look at your forearms,” the other one said.  “They’re bigger than your biceps.  Actually, the last time we played, Phil said you had the arms of a T-Rex.  All short and stumpy.”

Nice friends.  Huh?

So after I managed to shank my tee shot short and left, I texted my wife. 

Do I have Popeye arms?

She responded with a series of three text messages:

Of course you do!

if that’s good.

If not, you don’t.

This did not make me feel any better.

The next day I texted Phil about his T-Rex comment.

So you think I have arms like a T-Rex.  Huh?

His response:

You just can’t make fun of anyone behind their backs anymore.  You only have T-Rex arms when you golf. 

This did not make me feel better either.

Never play halfway

/

I was on the elliptical machine last night, watching the Red Sox-Rangers game. During my forty minute workout, the Sox look pitiful. The Rangers had already stolen nine bases on knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, who had surrendered a 6-2 lead in the fifth inning. I’m a Yankees fan, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admire certain Red Sox players, and one of those players is Tim Wakefield, who last night passed the great Cy Young for the team’s all-time lead in innings pitched.

Tim Wakefield and I go way back. Back in 1995, I was playing my second season of fantasy baseball.  It was a different game in ‘95 (and perhaps a better game), when the Internet still did not contain the vast stores of information that it does today and many people did not even have access to the network. Back then, if you wanted to be a great fantasy baseball player, you had to hunt for information from every source imaginable. I would buy two or three newspapers a day, watch every iteration of SportCenter, and even catch sports on the local news in the evenings, hoping to find tidbits of information on injuries, changes in starting rotations, and blossoming rookies in the minor leagues. I would keep track of player’s statistics through box scores and spread sheets, negotiate dozens of trades with other owners over the phone, and spend hour upon hour on the game. I am a person who does nothing halfway, and when it gets competitive, I focus all of my energy and attention on the task at hand. For two years, I lived and breathed fantasy baseball, which is why I no longer play.

I simply do not have the time to play the game properly.

But 1995 was a different story.

In the midst of the ‘95 campaign, Red Sox ace Roger Clemens was injured and the team had called up the relatively unknown Tim Wakefield from the minor leagues to take his place in the rotation. Wakefield was originally an outfielder for the Pirates who had converted himself to a knuckleballer in an attempt to remain in the major leagues, and it had worked. Wakefield went on to post 16-8 record in 1995 with a 2.95 ERA.

Outstanding fantasy baseball numbers.

A couple weeks after he had joined the team, it became apparent that Wakefield was going to be a star, so I called my fantasy league commissioner, Mike Lavin, to pick the player up for my team.

“My brother, Bob, already tried,” Lavin said. “But league rules state that the player has to be in the team’s minor league system at the beginning of the year. Wakefield wasn’t.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I’m a Sox fan. Of course I’m sure.”

It’s remarkable to think how Wikipedia or a website like ESPN's would one day render conversations like these mute, but at the time, I could not rely on the Internet for my answers. Not trusting Mike’s assertion, I did what every serious fantasy baseball owner would do:

I called the Pawtucket Red Sox, fought with secretaries and team spokesmen until I was finally put in contact with the assistant general manager, who confirmed that Wakefield was in the minor league system at the beginning of the year (while also confirming that I was the only fantasy baseball owner to ever call the front office). Then I convinced the assistant general manager to call Mike and confirm Wakefield’s presence on the team in April.

When Bob found out what I had done, he protested, stating that since he had put in a claim on Wakefield first, he should get the player, regardless of my efforts. Mike, however, sided with me, saying that I was the one who went the extra mile in confirming Wakefield’s place on the team and therefore I should get the player.

I think Mike was just jazzed by the fact that the assistant general manager of the Red Sox AAA squad had called him at work.

Thanks in part to Wakefield, I went on to win the league that season, and I promptly retired from all fantasy sports (I was also playing fantasy football, basketball and even hockey at the time).  Being the way I am, I was unable to play the game without the intensity of a major league pitcher, and having just started college the year before, I knew that my priorities lay elsewhere.

Fifteen years later, Wakefield is still pitching for the Sox, and despite giving up the lead and allowing nine men to steal bases last night (along with two wild pitches and a balk), the Sox somehow came back to win the game 7-6.

I was happy for Wakefield. He didn’t get the win, but he kept his team in the game and gave the offense a chance to come back.

I owe him a little loyalty for all that he did in 1995.

Of course, the Sox are in 5-9 and the Yankees are in first place with a 10-3 record, so rooting for Wakefield wasn’t so hard. Had the Yankees and Red Sox been tied for first place last night, my loyalties for the knuckleballer who helped to make me a fantasy league champion might have gone right out the door in favor of my beloved New York Yankees.

Timing is everything

/

Just as the Miami Dolphins tied the score, sending their game against Tennessee into overtime (annoying me immensely), my Google Alert pointed me to this delightful post on The Official Gordon Korman Web Site. It read:

I quite accidentally stumbled across this writer, and I’m glad I did. Matthew Dicks is the first author in a long time that held my interest the same way GK does. I finished the book in 2-3 days, and GK’s the only other author who’s books I finish that fast.

This is Mathew’s first novel and I look forward to his next one. Something Missing is about an obsessive-compulsive thief who ends up trying to help out his ‘clients’, as he calls them. Well worth picking up. You would definitely be ‘missing something’ if you didn’t.”

It’s always great to hear that someone enjoyed my book, but it seems as if the universe constantly conspires to send me these snippets of goodwill at just the right moment.

And just as I finished reading the post, the Titans kicked a game winning field goal, making it a nearly perfect football Sunday.

Nearly perfect because I was supposed to be in Buffalo with a couple friends today, watching my Patriots crush the Bills on their own turf, but confusion on the calendar left me stuck in Connecticut, spinning tunes at a wedding.

It didn’t make up for the missed trip, but the literary and football Gods seemed to be in perfect alignment this weekend, which helped.

Can I put my hand on your butt without offending?

/

This morning I played pick-up basketball with a woman, a former college player who was shooting around at the gym. Playing one-on-one with a girl who you don’t know is always a little complicated, especially in the beginning. This girl was a solid player with a decent outside jumper and she was capable of driving to the basket with both her left and right hand. In order to play defense, especially in a one-on-one game, I was going to have to make a certain amount of physical contact with her.

A hand on the hip.

Body-to-body blocking out.

The inadvertent hand on the butt when reaching for the hip or contact with a breast when reaching in for a steal.

Most female players understand this, but as a man, I must gauge the level of contact that my opponent will find acceptable and be careful to not be perceived as stepping over any unspoken line. It’s complicated, and it can be a little stressful until we reach a silent agreement as to what is permitted and what is not.

What I’d like to do is simply state the following prior to the game:

“Look. You know and I know that basketball is physical, especially when played one-on-one. It’s likely that at some point during this game, I will be placing my hand on your hip, and inevitably, that means an occasional hand on your butt. It’s also likely that my hands will come into contact with your breasts, inadvertently of course, but things happen. I’m very happily married and have a beautiful baby girl at home and have no interest in anything more than a competitive game of hoops. Is that cool with you?”

Instead, I must wait. Gauge my opponent’s level of physicality. Eventually take a chance and see how she reacts. A hand to the hip or a aggressive move to box her out from a rebound. Quite often this stilted play can lead to a loss in the first game, as my defense is inevitably porous and weak.

Today I took an elbow to the chin almost immediately, followed by a barely-audible apology and a layup while I was still doubled over. It hurt, but it was worth it. Right from the start, I knew that being physical would not be a problem.

A Thanksgiving offering

/

I honor of Thanksgiving, I offer a gift for all of you who look forward to football just as much as you do the turkey, and probably more.

If you are a serious football fan, this is a must-read essay by the sometimes annoying but more often brilliant Chuck Klosterman.  It comes from his new book, EATING THE DINOSAUR, which I just finished and loved. 

It’s the kind of essay that football fans will bookmark and refer back to for years to come, and it is guaranteed to increase your grid-iron credibility amongst your pig-skin loving pals.  

Tackle football one more time. Please?

/

The previous week has been quite interesting in terms of my athletic accomplishments. Last Sunday, I played nine holes of golf and beat my friend, Jeff, for the first time. Granted, he played poorly and I played well, but down two shots going into the final hole, I made par after hitting a wedge 90 yards and sticking it within five feet of the cup. I made the shots when it counted, and it felt damn fine.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to beat either of my two most frequent golfing companions, and with a victory last Sunday, another resolution is done.

Earlier that same day, I played basketball with a different friend, one whose wife reminded me is about twelve years older than me.  We played a total of five games.  I lost 11-3, 11-1, 11-0 and 12-10.  In my only victory, I won 11-0.

Don’t ask me how that lone win happened. I wasn’t sure myself.

Six days later, on Saturday, I played flag football with a bunch of friends.  Even though we were playing with flags, we chose to honor the rule that allows defenders to hit receivers within five yards of the scrimmage line (an odd decision considering the use of flags, but one that I championed by hitting my buddy on the first snap). The result was three hours of smashing and hitting one another, followed by dead sprints down field and the occasional, accidental collision. In fact, the game ended on a collision, though I don’t remember exactly what happened. I recall running across the field, looking up for the ball, and then ending up on the ground with a blinding headache. My friend, Gary, came up limping beside me, clutching his shin.  Two other guys lay strewn around us. I’m told that in diving for the ball, my head collided with Gary’s leg, resulting in an audible smack and bringing the other two down along with me.

Considering that I’m prone to concussions and I spent the next day in a fog, I’m pretty sure I had at least a mild concussion. But I popped right back up, ready to play. Unfortunately, we were nearly out of time and Gary was having difficulty walking off the hit.

It’s 36 hours later and I can barely walk. Though my body is sore from the hitting, it was the dozens, and maybe hundred, of sprints that did me in. My hip flexors and quads are barely functioning this morning due to overuse.

Though I love to play flag football, my passion is for tackle, a game I didn’t get to play in high school as my school did not have a football team (one of my three greatest regrets in life). As a result, I played a lot of backyard tackle football as a kid, but without the benefit of helmets and pads and referees. Since those childhood days, I’ve played tackle on only a couple of occasions, as adults have little interest in spending a Sunday clutching and grabbing and hitting one another.

And this is my concern. I worry that I may have played my last tackle football game of my life. I’m 38-years old, and if I don’t play soon, I may never play tackle football again.

Sure I have a lot of basketball left in me and many, many more rounds of golf, but my football days may be winding down, and not for want of ability or desire, but for a lack of competition. Tackle football is hard and painful and even dangerous at times, but I love it, yet I may have played my last game without even realizing it.

This is one of the insidious aspects of growing up. You play your last tackle football game or lift your daughter into your arms for one final time before she is too big or speak to your mother for the last time before she dies without ever knowing it.

I was a pole vaulter in high school, and my last vault came at the state championships during my junior year. I thought I had another season of vaulting ahead of me, many more vaults left, but a car accident wiped that opportunity out and I missed my senior year of track and field.

You’re rarely given the opportunity to appreciate those closing moments of your life. They whisper by without any warning whatsoever.

Hopefully I can play tackle football one more time and revel in the finality of the moment.

Stupid name

/

So my Yankees will be playing against the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series starting on Wednesday.

I don’t want to sound mean-spirited, but what kind of stupid name is the Phillies? 

The original name of the franchise was the Philadelphia Philadelphias, a name that is quite ridiculous and even worse when said aloud, but is Phillies any better?

Imagine if other major league teams took Philadelphia’s lead and started name their team similarly.

The New York Yorkies.

The Boston Bosties.

The San Diego San Diegoies.

The Yankees should crush the Phillies just on the basis of name alone.

Let’s hope…

Golf and writing bear the same fruits

/

Golf is like writing. You only need to be told to think about the game differently in order to improve dramatically.

Imagine the backswing differently. Envision yourself throwing a Frisbee as you rotate. Think wet noodle. Swing through the ball. Forget the ball entirely.

No strength training. No demonstration. No specifics on technique or grip. You don’t even need to practice the new approach in order to improve. Just listen, absorb, swing, and presto! You hit the ball farther than you ever have before, and more importantly, you feel good doing it. You find a groove in your swing that never existed before. It’s almost as if one minute you’re playing one game, and the next minute, you’re playing a new, entirely different game.

Writing is like this as well. I find myself reading a short story by John Updike or listening to dialogue written by Stephen King or laughing to the humor of Kurt Vonnegut or David Sedaris, and just like that, I am struck by an unexpected revelation.

Wow. Setting can become character.

Hey. Silence… the absence of a response in dialogue… can be just as meaningful as the use of actual words.

Ah-ha… Using italics to reinforce the right moment of inflection can really change the humor of a sentence.

No practice is required. No lesson or tutorial. No series of explicit directions. Just like golf, I only need to be told to think about the craft in a different way, and instantly, my skills are improved.

One moment setting is setting. The next, the possibility of making setting as pervasive and unique as character has popped into existence.

One moment I am pondering an appropriate response for a character in the midst of an argument, and the next, I realize that no response might be the better choice

One moment I am struggling to bring humor to a section of text, and the next, I find the italics sitting in my author’s toolbox.

This is why I despised cross country running so much. Nothing changes. No immediate gratification. Just running and running and more running.