Authors should not meet their editors at baseball games with pee-stained shorts

My editor was kind enough to take Elysha and me to a Mets game last week, and though I am a Yankees fan, I love baseball and was looking forward to seeing Citi Field for the first time. 

It didn't disappoint.

Citi Field is a beautiful ballpark with a small, almost minor league feel which suits its almost minor league team well.  Our seats were spectacular and gave us access to an air-conditioned lounge with an all-you-can-eat buffet and bar.  And as expected, the company was superb.  My wife, my editor and her assistant and I enjoyed a perfect day at the ballpark.

A couple observations from the day:

1. I received a surprising amount of flak from Mets fans and parking attendants for wearing my Yankees jersey to a Mets game.

I found this cute.

Yankee fans tend to spend a lot less time thinking about the Mets, since they so rarely pop up on our radar.  A subpar team across town is hardly worth our time or attention.  But Mets fans seem to possess a genuine disdain for the Yankees.

This reminds me of the Red Sox-Yankees fan relationship.  No Yankee fan likes the Red Sox, but you can attend a Yankees-Blue Jays game and never hear a single mention of the Red Sox.

Attend any Red Sox game, regardless of opponent or standings, and you will eventually hear a “Yankees suck!” chant, even if the Yankees are beating Seattle on the west coast 39-0.  And you’ll tee shirts referencing the Yankees in a variety of negative ways being worn and sold throughout the stadium.

The Evil Empire has apparently entrenched itself in the minds of Mets and Sox fans, which I find both amusing and a little sad. 

2. New rule: I no longer drink anything if I am headed into New York City.  For reasons that I do not understand, there are no viable exits for restroom breaks once you cross over from Connecticut to New York, so if you haven’t remembered to stop on the border to use the restroom, you’re doomed. 

On Wednesday, this meant almost peeing my pants after a two-hour drive to the game turned into four-plus hours thanks to construction on the Whitestone Bridge. 

It became a serious situation.  Desperate to avoid me arriving to the game in pee-stained shorts, my wife actually handed me a cup and insisted that pee into it.

I realize that men can pee against a tree (and many other things) with relative ease, but to pee from behind the wheel of your Honda CRV into a cup while in traffic with your wife sitting next to you is a feat even I am incapable of achieving. 

For a minute, I considered climbing into the semi-private backseat and attempting to use the cup, but we had arrived at the tollbooths just before the bridge, and my wife doesn’t like to drive over bridges.  I decided to get us over the span and then trade places with her so I could conduct my business in the backseat.

But as we approached the base of the Whitestone Bridge on the opposite side, I spotted a small copse of trees and brush wedged into a triangular shaped hill of dirt between concrete barriers.  I pulled into the breakdown lane, exited the car amidst the concerned protestations of my wife, leapt the jersey barrier (almost peeing in my pants as I did so), and scrambled up the hill. 

Then I selected one of a half a dozen small trees and proceeded to relieve myself in front of three lanes of stopped traffic. 

Like I said, I’m never drinking a thing before heading into the city again.

Respect yourself and shut up.

I cannot stand to listen to people complain about being disrespected. Earlier this week I listened to professional football players complain about being disrespected by team owners for prematurely voting on a collective bargain agreement, even as their NFL brethren were calling the owners names and tweeting statements like:

Look guys I have no reason to lie! The truth of the matter is we got tricked, duped, led astray, hoodwinked, bamboozled!

You can’t be consumed with anger and disappointment over being disrespected while simultaneously disrespecting the guys who supposedly disrespected you.

Well, you can, but it makes you a hypocrite and an idiot.

More importantly, is there anything more pathetic than a guy whining about being disrespected?

Oh… you felt disrespected?  Poor little linebacker.  Do you need a hug?

One of the worst ways to get respect is to ask for it.

If you have to ask for it, it ain’t real.

But even worse than asking for respect is whining when you are not getting any.

Respect yourself.  Respect those who have earned your respect. And stop worrying so much about other people think.

I hate mulligans

I played golf last week with a guy who has a 3 handicap. For you non-golfers, this means that he is an extremely good player. And by all accounts, he was, scoring well under par for the first six holes.

Which is why it annoyed me so much when on the seventh hole, he hit a tee shot that flew wide right, and he opted to take a mulligan and hit again.

A mulligan, for you non-golfers, is a do-over. It’s a chance to hit another ball after an errant shot. Golfers who play with mulligans generally permit themselves one per round, thought I’ve played with knuckleheads who take as many as they please.

My friends and I do not play with mulligans, and rightly so. We treat every game as if we were playing in the US Open. We play by the rules. We require each other to makesix inch putts when most golfers would be permitted to pick up the ball on the assumption that their putt would be good.

We are bastards on the golf course, but we play the game correctly.

And none of us is even close to a 3 handicap.

I am of the opinion that a guy with a 3 handicap should never be taking a mulligan, but I am also of the opinion that no one should be taking mulligans, regardless of their skill level.

I despise mulligans, for three reasons:

1. Golf is the only sport that allows this kind of ridiculous do-over. It is akin to getting a fourth strike in baseball, a third free throw in basketball, or a fifth down in football. For a sport that is supposedly predicated on integrity and is famous for its players assigning themselves obscure penalties, there is no room for a mulligan at any level.

2. Golf is a game of personal bests and moments of potential greatness. Stick a mulligan into a round and you ruin your chances for both. What if, for example, that 3 handicapper went on to shoot his lowest round ever, including a hole-in-one on the last par 3?

Unlikely? Yes. But not impossible.

So now what? He’s got the scorecard of his life in his hand, but on the seventh hole, he took a mulligan, thus tainting his round.

Does he frame this illegitimate scorecard?

Does he tell his friends about the mulligan when describing the round?

Does he conveniently forget about it?

One never knows what could happen on a golf course. Unlike most sports, you can play golf exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly on any given day, and it is completely unpredictable. Playing with a mulligan taints a player’s opportunity for genuine greatness.

3.  But here is the biggest reason why I despise the mulligan:

A mulligan is almost always taken after an errant tee shot and never anywhere near or on the green.

In other words, it’s perfectly acceptable in the minds of many golfers to take a second tee shot if the first has sliced into the trees or rolled twenty yards from the box. But it would never be considered appropriate to take a mulligan after missing a 6-foot putt or failing to get a ball out of a sand trap.

For some reason, a premium is placed on the tee shot, and doing so favors the long ball hitters by giving them a second chance to take advantage of the part of the game that they excel at most.

I am a good putter. It is probably the best part of my game. But if I was playing with a mulligan, I would never be permitted to take a second shot at the 30-foot putt I just missed. Taking a mulligan on a putt is unheard of.

I would have to live with my miss, as I should. As should we all.

The mulligan also negates the dangers inherent in being a long ball hitter.  Because these guys can hit the ball great distances, an errant shot can often be costly. There is no telling where the ball may land, or even if it will be found. For a player like me, who does not hit a long tee shot, the one advantage I have is that my tee shot rarely gets me into trouble. I don’t hit the ball far enough to lose a ball or end up buried in the woods.

Give a long ball hitter a mulligan and you’ve given him every reason in the world to swing out of his shoes, because he has a do-over in his pocket.

Despite the integrity and tradition attached to this game, I continue to play with guys who take at least one mulligan every round. And even worse, it seems like the better the golfer, the greater the chances that he will take a mulligan.

So here is my plan:

The next time I play golf with a guy who takes a mulligan, I am going to purposely miss a putt on the subsequent green.

Hopefully an easy one. A three footer.

Then I’m going to walk over to my ball, pick it up, return it to its previous spot on the green and say, “Yeah.  I thought I’d take a mulligan, too.”

I can’t wait to see what happens.

Once is fine. But this is a pattern of stupidity.

I’m almost finished reading Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. Amongst the many controversies cited in the book is Jemele Hill’s regrettable reference to Hitler in a 2008 editorial about the NBA playoffs. In describing why she could not support the Celtics in the NBA playoffs, she wrote:

Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It's like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan. Deserving or not, I still hate the Celtics.

For her comments, Hill was suspended for a week without pay.

At first I felt bad for Hill, understanding how her comment, while lacking nuance, was not meant to offend. As a fan of the Detroit Pistons, she was merely pointing out that once you hate a sports team like the Celtics because of the affinity you have for your team, it is impossible to ever alter your position.

As I told a friend, it’s probably a good idea to avoid referencing Hitler in all metaphors, particularly if you are in the media.

At least to avoid Godwin’s Law.

Then I went to her Wikipedia page to see what Hill has done since the controversy.

Under the heading of Controversy was this:

In 2009, Hill was at the center of a controversy after telling Green Bay Packers fans to give Brett Favre the "Duracell treatment," implying that fans at Lambeau Field should throw batteries at the former Packer quarterback.

Later in 2009, Hill once again was reprimanded for her comments after comparing University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball coach John Calipari to Charles Manson. She later apologized to the university.

Suddenly, I stopped feeling bad for her.

One well-intentioned miscue?  Fine.

But encouraging fans to throw batteries at an NFL quarterback?

And comparing a college basketball coach to Charles Manson?

With the thousands of resumes that ESPN receives every year, I cannot imagine why she is still with the company.

I walk like a duck. And perhaps it’s how I should be playing golf, too. And maybe I should just quit.

I was playing golf with friends yesterday when one of them, a longtime friend and colleague who plays well and has taught me a great deal about the game, said, “I’ve been watching your feet. The way they impact your game.” “And?”

“Most people walk with their feet pointed straight ahead,” she said. “But you walk like a duck, with your feet pointed out. But when you go to hit the ball, you straighten our your feet, which would be normal if you didn’t walk like a duck.”

“Are you saying I should stand like a duck when I hit the ball?” I asked.

“Yeah. Like you normally stand.”

My fellow players found this extremely amusing. One suggested I also quack like a duck when I hit the ball as well.

I punched him.

It’s true that I walk like a duck, though I didn’t realize it was so universally known. For years, I played the bass drum in our high school’s marching band, and in order to avoid being blown over by the wind, I hard to turn my feet outward to steady myself. Otherwise the drum would’ve act like a sail and the wind would’ve knock me over.

Sadly, this foot position eventually became ingrained, and it’s still how I walk today.

And apparently how I should be playing golf.

I may have to quit the game.

The Bruins win! It’s kind of depressing.

For the first time since the year of my birth, the Boston Bruins have won the Stanley Cup.

This, in combination with the Miami Heat’s recent defeat to the Dallas Mavericks, has officially removed the sting of the Celtic’s early exit from the playoffs for me. I can enter the summer with a glad heart and a eye toward my beloved New York Yankees.

I was watching alone last night when the Bruins won, and I was thrilled.

I cried in 1996 when the Yankees won the first of several World Series championships, and I cried again in 2001 when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl. There were no tears last night. Though I watch the Bruins quite often and have loved them since I was a child growing up in Massachusetts, my emotional connection to them is simply night as strong as the other teams, perhaps because I root for them alone.

But despite the lack of tears, there was genuine euphoria when the final seconds ticked off the clock and the team mobbed Tim Thomas at the net to celebrate their first championship in nearly forty years.

A couple hours later, I climbed into bed, put my head on the pillow, and realized that the euphoria was already gone. I was still happy about the win, and thoughts of the game were still filtering through my mind, but I could already feel the joy rapidly diminishing.

When I awoke this morning, there was still happiness, and perhaps a little giddiness even, but it wasn’t the same feeling that I felt during those final ticks of the clock.

Not even close.

Here’s the thing:

For the athlete, the joy of the championship will live forever, because it is something that has been earned. My Little League team won the championship thirty years ago, and I am still joyous over that win, because I was a part of it. It was mine, and it still is.

But as a fan, almost all the joy that I experience comes from the journey to the championship and the culminate moment of victory. I live and die with my teams through every pitch, kick, dribble, and glove save, and in some minuscule way, I can share the field, the court and the ice with my teams.  I feel the pressure of must-win game, the tension of an overtime contest, and I can celebrate with as much enthusiasm and excitement as the players on the field when they win.

But unlike them, that excitement disappears quickly. Almost immediately.

In some ways, the best part of any championship season for me are the final ten seconds of a game, when the season is still intact, the team is still intact, and the victory is all but assured.

Once the season has ended, the championship belongs to the players, and my grasp upon it quickly slips away.

I am not the Stanley Cup champion. I have not won the Super Bowl or the World Series or the NBA Finals.

If my team is not embarked on the journey to the championship, then it’s almost as if I have been kicked off the team. As they filter off the field or the court or the ice into the locker room, the celebration continues, but it does so without me.

For the fan, we know our teams as they exist on the field of play. Once they have left the field for the final time, they cease to exist for us.

Less than eight hours after the Bruins’ victory, I find myself sitting here, happy that my team has won, but already waiting for next season.

The Bruins will go on to parades and parties and days spent with the Stanley Cup. They will receive rings and recognition and will always be known as Stanley Cup champions of 2011. For each member of the team, this championship will live on forever.

For me, the memories will last. The happiness over the victory will last.  But part of me is already sad that the journey is over, and that the team will never be quite the same again,

Already, I am anxious for another season to begin.

It is only during the chase that fans are truly joyous about their team’s championship, because it is only during the chase that we feel like we are also in the chase, a part of the team, urging our teammates onto greatness.

Cowardly punks deserve to lose the NBA championship

From Tim McMahon’s story, posted on ESPN:

Dirk Nowitzki's sinus infection and the ensuing storyline apparently was a source of amusement for Miami Heat superstars Dwyane Wade and LeBron James before Game 5.

As they walked out of American Airlines Center after Thursday morning's shoot around, Wade and James pretended to cough and wheeze, smirking as they repeatedly covered their mouths with their shirts while being filmed by Miami CBS affiliate WFOR.

"Whoa, did y'all hear me cough? I think I'm sick," Wade said before turning toward James and chuckling.

Add a row of skinny lockers on one side of the hallway and a few classroom doors on the other and you would have a scene straight out of high school:

A couple of bullies, throwing cowardly, passive-aggressive insults around at someone who they perceive is weaker than them and who is not present.

Childish, behind-the-back cruelty.

I don’t care how big or how rich these two are. These aren’t men.

They are little boys.

Can anyone ever imagine Maverick’s stars Jason Kidd, Dirk Nowitzki or Jason Terry pulling this kind of low-class nonsense?

Or even most of James and Wade’s teammates? Do you think Udonis Haslem, who has been playing on an injured foot for most of the season, would be making comments like this about a player on another team?

Had I been on their team, I’d be angry as hell.

And what if Dirk Nowitzki had suddenly appeared in that hallway and confronted them on their behavior? What might James and Wade have said?

“We’re just playing, man. Relax”

“No offense, Dirk. We’re just joking around.”

“Chill out, dude.We’re just messing around.”

Exactly the kinds of things that bullies say when confronted with their actions.

I watched this video a couple days ago and knew that the Mavericks would win the title.

The fact that Dirk Nowitzki was named the Finals MVP was icing on the cake.

In the end, the universe could have it no other way.

It was simply a matter of men playing against little boys.

The rules of golf: Remove shrapnel from the course, take cover during bombing runs and take a free drop if your ball is destroyed by enemy action

Perhaps I just enjoy golfing more, and perhaps I do not require as much sleep as most, but I have a great number of friends who enjoy golfing (and play much better than me) who are unwilling to join me at 6:00 AM on the back nine of our local golf course for a round of early morning golf. It’s quite a deal. If you’re willing to get up early enough, you can lineup at the tenth tee box with the other early risers and play nine holes of golf on a first-come-first-served basis. The first foursome tees off at 6:30 AM, and if you play fast enough, you can be walking off the course well before 9:00 AM with the rest of the day ahead of you.

For guys with little kids at home, this is the perfect way to squeeze in a couple rounds of golf every weekend. Wake up around 5:00 on Saturday and Sunday, grab a quick breakfast, and lineup at 6:00 for a 6:30 start.

Even the most demanding of spouses would have a hard time complaining about the convenience of a round of golf finishing before 9:00.

Yet I only have a small handful of friends willing to do so on a regular basis.

It baffles me.

I suspect that had these weak-willed, pillow-loving men and women lived in England during World War II, they may have stayed away from the golf course after reading this set of wartime rules.

Even I think that this is taking dedication to the sport a bit too far.

Please note the last rule:

"A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball from the same place. Penalty one stroke.”

A PENALTY? A bomb explodes in the middle of your back swing and you still incur a penalty? These Brits take their golf very seriously. _________________________________________

This notice posted in war-torn Britain in 1940 for golfers with stiff upper lips.

German aircraft from Norway would fly on missions to northern England; because of the icy weather conditions, the barrels of their guns had a small dab of wax to protect them. As they crossed the coast, they would clear their guns by firing a few rounds at the golf courses. Golfers were urged to take cover.

My ugly golf swing

My friend, Scott, is an excellent golfer. He hits the links about three times a year, uses the same driver from ninth grade and is quite capable of shooting under 80 on any given day. He’s also an outstanding golf instructor, and in the few times that I have played with him, he has taught me a great deal. His words of advice often echo in my head when I am choosing a club and deciding whether or not to lay up.

He is honest, direct and succinct.

Yesterday he was helping me with my swing. Unable to achieve distance off the tee, I asked him to watch my swing and give me some advice. After a few tee shots, he told me that he thought I was getting as much distance as I could hope for considering my exceptionally short swing.

“Short swing?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know you had shoulder problems, and I thought that’s why you don’t come close to taking a full swing.”

I had no idea what kind of swing I was taking, because I had never seen it before.

So I asked him to film it.

Watching my swing makes me never want to play golf again.

I have a new job.

Frank and Jaime McCourt, owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers and currently engaged in bitter divorce proceedings, paid a psychic hundreds of thousands of dollars over a five-year period to watch Dodger games on his television and send positive thoughts to the team in hopes of boosting their chances of winning. I have many areas of interest in my life. In addition to my future career as a life coach, I am also interested in working in the fields of economics and sociology. History, politics, the law and even physics also intrigue me. When my teaching career comes to a close someday, I could see myself perusing careers in any one of these fields.

But today I’d like to make my new career official:

I declare myself a professional psychic, ready and willing to begin work for any sports team except the New York Jets. For a fee slightly less than that of the clearly ineffectual psychic that the Dodgers hired (their last World Series appearance and win came in 1988), I am willing to send a tsunami of good thoughts to your team over the television airwaves, and if possible, in person as well.

That’s right. I’m a psychic now. And a damn good one, too.

Pretty exciting. Huh?

But please note:

I have one advantage that most psychics do not.

In addition to sending out positive thoughts to your team, I am also perfectly willing to wish destruction and annihilation on your opponent for no extra charge. While most psychics favor the positive realm of spirituality, I am an certified expert when it comes to wishing bad things on people. I am the king of schadenfreude. The champion of negativity.

I have been known to wish for career-ending injuries on certain New York Jets football players, and for the right price, I am willing to offer this service to your team as well.

Put the power of the positive and the negative to work for you today.

Matthew Dicks: teacher, author, DJ, minister, life coach, and now professional psychic.

An exciting day for me, and if you are the owner of a sports franchise, perhaps for you as well.

Cancellation celebration

Since mid-January, my friends and I have been trying to organize a trip to Florida (and later Atlanta) for a weekend of golf. With the snow piling up around us and what seemed like years before we would ever return to the links, a friend suggested the trip and I instantly agreed. Unfortunately, the limited availability of one friend in particular (and a retired guy no less) pushed back what had originally been an early February trip into late March and had shifted our original Florida destination to Atlanta.

Lucky for him, things worked out just fine. Two weeks ago we decided to call off the trip, fearing that we would be boarding a plane during the last week in March just as the golf courses in the area began opening for business.

And that’s exactly what happened.

On Thursday, with temperatures approaching 70 degrees, my friend and I went golfing for the first time this season. A local course opened 9 of its 27 holes and we took advantage of the good weather and squeezed in a round after work.

I can’t tell you how happy it made me to play golf again. Sometime in mid-January I awoke with the realization that I will probably want to move to Florida when I retire. The change of seasons is nice for the first forty years or so, but after that, it’s a drag.

Unfortunately, not everything about my golf outing was perfect. Two weeks ago I discovered that my driver and hybrids had been stolen from my golf bag, either while it was in lying in the backseat of my car or sitting in my garage. Having failed to replace any of the stolen clubs yet, I hit a 6-iron off the tee and still managed to shoot a 47, which would have qualified as one of my lowest scores of last season and one of my lowest scores of all time. I had two pars and four bogies, and I even managed to hit the flag with my chip shot on the first hole.

I’m not sure how to feel about this. After fives months away from the game and hampered by the loss of three important clubs, I managed to shoot one of my best rounds of golf ever on a soggy, brown course.

This is either a sign of things to come or yet another ridiculous moment in my ridiculously inconsistent game.

I also had the good fortune of extracting my ball from a snow drift on the third hole, the first (and perhaps last) time that has happened in the four years that I have been playing the game.

I’m still distraught over the loss of the clubs and the audacity of someone to steal a man’s driver, but the sub-50 round managed to ease my pain a bit.  My friend, Tom, has been telling me to throw away my driver for the past two years and just take an iron off the tee (this is the same guy who started me off by having me hit a 2-iron off the tee, so I never know if I should trust him), and while I’m not about to do that, it sure was nice to be sitting in the fairway on most holes.

I’m assuming that it’s all down hill from here.

But it’s golf, so it’s still going to be great.

ESPN was listening

One day after I criticize ESPN for a stupid design decision, they promote their front page video with this image: 

Much, much better.

ESPN fail: A simple design decision gone awry

Last night’s NBA freshman-sophomore scrimmage was filled with playground-style dunks, fast break offense and sparse defense.  

Bounce pass alley-oops, off-the-glass jams and other plays you’d never see in a competitive basketball game. 

Yet it was this image that that ESPN chose as the splash card for their video highlights of the game:

Wizard’s point guard John Wall doing who-knows-what, trailed by a skeptical referee.

It’s the little things that make me crazy.

 

Here’s the actual video in case you were interested in watching and noting the disparity between this image and the actual video footage. 

Sometimes the obvious should be obvious

I love basketball, almost as much as golf, but I am plagued by one reoccurring question: How long did it take Naismith to figure out that the game would be easier to manage if he simply removed the bottom on the peach baskets that served as hoops during those early games?

Or even better, why didn’t he think of this right away?

It wasn’t like he was using steel buckets or ceramic pots as goals. They were peach baskets. The bottoms could have been easily removed with a decent pair of pruning sheers or one good, swift kick with a booted foot.

To hang peach baskets on the wall for the purpose of shooting balls into them and with their bottoms still intact strikes me as insane.

Perhaps it was the game’s initial low scoring that caused Naismith to think that grabbing a ladder every time a point was scored wasn’t a big deal. The first official basketball game was played in a YMCA gymnasium on January 20, 1892, with nine players on a court about half the size of today’s modern courts.

The game ended at 1–0.

With just one basket, I guess that getting the ladder didn’t seem like much trouble at first.

But still, it’s a little ridiculous for a man who possessed the vision to create a game that is now played all over the world to fail so miserably when it came to a little common sense.

The first basketball court: Springfield College

Serious customers

There was a woman at the gym today, about eight months pregnant, lifting free weights. While I was impressed with her moxie and determination, I also thought, “There is a  woman I would not want to marry. If she is still lifting weights at eight or maybe even nine months pregnant, she must be a hell of a demanding woman at home.”

Then I hear about marathon runner Stefaan Engels, who set a new world record by completing his 365th marathon of 365 days.

The 49-year old from Belgium finished his final race in Barcelona, Spain on Saturday after running 15,000km (9,569 miles) across seven countries in a year.

I know I’m supposed to be impressed by Engels’ achievement, but instead, I’m just appalled. This seems like sheer lunacy.

Absolute insanity.

I can’t help but think of Engels as a nutcase.

You’ve got to be at least a little bit crazy to be lifting weights at eight months pregnant, and you’ve got to be a lot crazy to run 365 consecutive marathons.

Serious customers is what I call people like this.

Entirely too serious for me.

Improving Ice Road Truckers

Ice Road Truckers would have been a much better show if just one truck had crashed through the ice just once. Just one catastrophic accident and I would have been hooked.

Instead, all I got was lots of talk about the dangers of the ice and the hazards of the job, but not even one uneventful fender-bender.

All it amounted to was one great big tease.

I watched six episodes and was done.

It was like watching a NASCAR race without a single multi-car accident.

Or attending a hockey game and not seeing a fight.

Or watching John Boehner deliver speak in public without crying.

Maybe not a rapist, but the guy can’t even get a date

Ben Roethlisberger was never convicted or even charged with the crime to which he stood accused, and as someone who was once arrested and tried for a crime he did not commit, I am sensitive to this fact. I am the annoying person who is always inserting the word allegedly into people’s hyperbolic and emotional statements about well-known defendants.

You should have heard me during the OJ Simpson trial.

I also have a couple of friends who are Steelers fans, and they become rather irate when someone implies that their quarterback is a rapist.

So fine. The man is innocent until proven guilty.

But what about this:

What kind of NFL quarterback and Super Bowl champion can’t get a date without the help of his thuggish friends? Even if Roethlisberger is innocent of sexual assault, he was still waiting in the men’s room of a seedy nightclub while his minions sought out young girls who might be interested in spending some quality time with the multi-millionaire football superstar.

In the bathroom.

Is it really this hard for an NFL quarterback to get a date?

I know it sounds trite, but this fact alone causes me to question everything about the guy. Anyone who prefers his dates to be drunk and in the men’s room has something seriously wrong with him, and he is the last person who I would want leading my football team.

He may not be a rapist, but can anyone argue that Roethlisberger is at least pathetic and disgusting?

Not booing. Just cheering.

Why do sports fans almost exclusively call out players names in unison only when the name can be made to sound more like a boo then a cheer? I can’t tell you how many times I have had to explain to an inexperienced sports fan that the crowd is not booing but simply calling the name of a player that sounds like a boo.

For the Green Bay Packers, it was running back John Kuhn.

“Kuhn!” Packers fans shouted whenever he touches the the ball.

Aaron Rodgers is their superstar quarterback and Clay Matthews is their defensive juggernaut, but the fans have never called out “Rogers!” or “Clay!” in unison during a game.

Just “Kuhn!” Their effective-but-nothing-special tail back.

For the Celtics of the 1980’s it was Robert Parish, whose nickname was Chief.  Somehow, Celtics fans managed to transform the vowels in the the word Chief into a low, resonate O sound.

“Chief!” they would call out every time he scored.

Never a unified cheer for fellow Hall of Famers Larry Bird or Kevin McHale.

Just “Chief!”

The same holds true for former Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis. “Yoook!”

For the New York Yankees  and Dallas Cowboys of years ago, it was “Moose!” This was called out for now retired starting pitcher Kevin Mussina and current NFL analyst and retired fullback Daryl “Moose” Johnson.

What gives?

How Swedish Fish got their name

I brought a bag of Swedish Fish to the Patriots final regular season game two weeks ago. New England was playing the Miami Dolphins, and the symbolism behind eating fish while the Patriots pummeled the Dolphins appealed to me. We dined on mahi mahi (commonly known as the dolphin fish) in the parking lot prior to the game for similar reasons.

In discussing how my strategic consumption of the Swedish Fish undoubtedly contributed to the Patriots’ victory, a friend contended that the candy was so named because the words Swedish and fish rhyme.

I did not think the words Swedish and fish rhymed well enough to warrant the name choice and claimed that there was probably some amusing, anecdotal reason for the name.

So I looked it up.

Turns out that Swedish Fish are so named because they are made by a Swedish company named Malaco and exported to the United States.

Swedish Fish are actually Swedish. Not only that, but they are first generation Swedish, each one coming right off the boat.

Literally.

Swedish Fish therefore appears to be an apropos name, but still, it seems a little odd. Right?

Imagine if your Toyota Corolla was named Japanese car.

Or your bottle of Guinness was called Irish Beer.

Of if Coco-Cola was called Empty American Calories.

Did the marketers at Malaco really believe that it was the Swedish aspect of their candied fish that they should promote the most?

It’s hard to imagine a group of marketing executives making this decision, but apparently it happened.

Best of all, in Sweden, Swedish Fish is marketed under the name pastellfiskar, which translates to pastel colored fishes.

At least the company is consistent in its odd naming of products.

Stupidity abounds in the NFL

New York Jets coach Rex Ryan takes the time while preparing his team for their playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts to criticize Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in what can only be described as an unprovoked and utterly unnecessary insult to the future Hall of Famer. 

And he manages to insult the Colts’ coaching staff at the same time.

Bulletin board material for two opponents in one press conference.   

The Miami Dolphins management inform their coach, Tony Sparano, that he will be back for another season.  Then they interview Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh, offer him a contract twice the size of Sparano’s, and announce for a second time that Sparano is their man only after Harbaugh rejects their offer. 

Sparano must be feeling good today.  

It warms the heart of a Patriots fan to watch rival football organizations in the same division make such blunders.