23 Sports Thoughts Upon Turning 23 Years Old
By Blogger
23 -- I have the greatest aunt ever. I'm not kidding. She gave me two gifts this week. They are...
22 -- More than thirty souvenir plastic baseball helmets, all different designs. Back in 1983, my dad gave the collection to his nephew, my cousin, for his thirtieth birthday (I know the math seems fuzzy, but that's my family). For a while starting in the late eighties, the helmets were strung around my cousin's living room. Eventually, they found their way into a closet, and hadn't been seen until tonight, when my aunt showed up at my house with three full garbage bags. The beauty of the helmets is that they aren't just different major league teams; there are three different Giants helmet designs, two different A's designs, two different Twins designs, and two different designs of a minor league team that played in San Antonio.
21 -- It's a fantastic problem to have, trying to figure out what to do with those helmets.
20 -- And the other gift was a voodoo doll, complete with six pins and a small photo of Skip Bayless to put over the face. No joke. See the picture? I told you my nearly-seventy year old aunt is the greatest aunt EVER.
19 -- It's a wonderful day when ESPN lets up on the anal-retentiveness and allows one of their people to openly jab another one of their people, a la Scoop Jackson's latest column. ...the first thing everyone asks me when they meet me is: "Don't you just hate Stephen A. Smith?"...which is always followed by: "Oh... well... uh... then don't you just hate Bill Simmons?"
18 -- Admit it, when you first saw the photos of Barry Bonds in drag, your first thought was, "Photoshop?"
17 -- Individually, Alex Smith had a better final college season than Vince Young did.
16 -- Statistically, Jay Cutler wasn't that far behind Young last season, despite playing in a drastically better conference with a drastically worse team. I'm just saying.
15 -- Wait. Jay Cutler is from Santa Claus, Indiana? Really? Nobody has written a widely-linked blog post making fun of him for this?
14 -- Is it too early to pick the American League East? Can I tell you I think the Yankees' starting pitching will utterly collapse this year? Can I pick the Red Sox right now? Can I pick the Blue Jays to finish second? Do you notice that I haven't actually picked, and I'm using a rhetorical device to hedge my picks?
13 -- Last ESPN mention of the list... I swear... Looking at their silly little Draft Predictor tool thingy, they had the Warriors picking point guards most of the time. Zach and I talk all the time about picking the best talent available every time, but that's assuming that the player would have a place at all (eg: Carmelo or Bosh should've been the sixth man on the 2003-04 Pistons, but Dumars didn't take either because he had those positions covered and decided to go with a project pick). Baron Davis and Derek Fisher are signed and have the job locked up. I'm sorry, but it's not happening, even with fun 'n gun points that could probably be passable twos.
12 -- Heads up Uno! I'm going to bring you a full-fledged NBA Draft Philosophy Column sometime within the next few weeks, with research and everything. I'm working on the methodology, and I'll probably enlist the help of other Sportszillans to put it together.
11 -- Heads up Deuce! I've got a project in the works to herald in the new baseball season. In theory, it will be finished and up on Sportszilla by the end of the week. Let's just say it has to do with Giants fans being better than Dodgers fans.
10 -- The Michael Jordan Nike ad where the kids re-enact MJ's iconic moments is ricockulously amazing. In fact, I have it permanently bookmarked, just for when I need goosebumps.
9 -- Can someone in Houston--or at least someone who is paid to do this sort of thing--please find definitive information on the Vince Young/Crips situation? This bothers me to no end.
8 -- I'm about three-fourths of the way through The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn. It's not hitting me like Summer of '49 did, but it's hard not to get choked up reading about bygone days when it was not widely understood why Carl Erskine wanted his son born with Down Syndrome to have as normal a life as possible, and when a ballplayer like Carl Furillo had to work as an elevator installer just to make ends meet so soon after his playing days.
7 -- I'm not intentionally trying to go through the best baseball books, but it certainly seems that way. Roger Angell is next on my list, and I'm hoping to get around to a football book or two, since reading A Season On The Brink a few months ago has sated my basketball appetite for the time being. I tried The Juice, by Will Carroll, but got bogged down somewhere around two-thirds of the way through, and then I started The Education of a Coach, by David Halberstam, and got bogged down in the third chapter. We'll see. Maybe I'll give each another crack in a few months.
6 -- The Giants signed Randy Winn for more money than I will ever be worth at any point in my life. I hope he's happy, because he's getting paid Borderline All Star money, and (except for the good fortune of being on the Devil Rays at the same time as the Jason Tyner Experience) Randy Winn ain't no All Star.
5 -- The greatest t-shirt of all time is coming from one of my favorite blogs, McCoveyChronicles.com. Check it out here. I'd read MCC even if I weren't a Giants fan, just as I read USSMariner, and BronxBanter, and DodgerThoughts, and a load of other blogs, because the blogmaster, Grant, is an excellent writer who brings more to the table than a simple, "Giants rule!" Although I suspect he's not above posting that as the text for an open thread.
4 -- Either Relevant Or True linked to my Nickelodeon/ESPN column, and I would be remiss if I didn't point out that, besides being awesome enough to run a blog devoted entirely to "keeping tabs on Keith Olbermann", for every Countdown episode, they identify which tie he wears. I admit it. I giggled when I saw that. Excellent. This is why Spiro Agnew invented the internet.
3 -- [Insert Carl Everett joke here.]
2 -- Does anybody else think the New York Media thing is at least partly a self-fulfilling prophecy? I mean, sure, there's some level of intense competition between the various outlets, but the invasive and "anything goes" mentality of the press there is partly a function of the people in the media wanting to uphold New York's reputation. Everyone says that to make it in New York, you've gotta be able to handle the media pressure. Well, maybe, just maybe, you can do your job without openly baiting teams and players. Maybe you can do your job without intentionally violating personal space. Maybe the havoc wrought upon players and teams by the media should be intellectual rather than visceral. But, then again, maybe that's just me. Maybe that's just what I'd like.
1 -- Mark my words: MLB teams from Washington and Florida will be contracted after the season. Washington will be easy enough, with the other owners simply dissolving the team, while they'll also probably pay a market rate to Loria for the Marlins and then dissolve them. God knows where DTrain and Cabrera will end up. I say send them to the teams closest to their places of birth. So, Oakland would get Dontrelle, and Atlanta would get Miguel. Yes yes. That would be most fair, indeed.
22 -- More than thirty souvenir plastic baseball helmets, all different designs. Back in 1983, my dad gave the collection to his nephew, my cousin, for his thirtieth birthday (I know the math seems fuzzy, but that's my family). For a while starting in the late eighties, the helmets were strung around my cousin's living room. Eventually, they found their way into a closet, and hadn't been seen until tonight, when my aunt showed up at my house with three full garbage bags. The beauty of the helmets is that they aren't just different major league teams; there are three different Giants helmet designs, two different A's designs, two different Twins designs, and two different designs of a minor league team that played in San Antonio.21 -- It's a fantastic problem to have, trying to figure out what to do with those helmets.
20 -- And the other gift was a voodoo doll, complete with six pins and a small photo of Skip Bayless to put over the face. No joke. See the picture? I told you my nearly-seventy year old aunt is the greatest aunt EVER.19 -- It's a wonderful day when ESPN lets up on the anal-retentiveness and allows one of their people to openly jab another one of their people, a la Scoop Jackson's latest column. ...the first thing everyone asks me when they meet me is: "Don't you just hate Stephen A. Smith?"...which is always followed by: "Oh... well... uh... then don't you just hate Bill Simmons?"
18 -- Admit it, when you first saw the photos of Barry Bonds in drag, your first thought was, "Photoshop?"
17 -- Individually, Alex Smith had a better final college season than Vince Young did.
16 -- Statistically, Jay Cutler wasn't that far behind Young last season, despite playing in a drastically better conference with a drastically worse team. I'm just saying.
15 -- Wait. Jay Cutler is from Santa Claus, Indiana? Really? Nobody has written a widely-linked blog post making fun of him for this?
14 -- Is it too early to pick the American League East? Can I tell you I think the Yankees' starting pitching will utterly collapse this year? Can I pick the Red Sox right now? Can I pick the Blue Jays to finish second? Do you notice that I haven't actually picked, and I'm using a rhetorical device to hedge my picks?
13 -- Last ESPN mention of the list... I swear... Looking at their silly little Draft Predictor tool thingy, they had the Warriors picking point guards most of the time. Zach and I talk all the time about picking the best talent available every time, but that's assuming that the player would have a place at all (eg: Carmelo or Bosh should've been the sixth man on the 2003-04 Pistons, but Dumars didn't take either because he had those positions covered and decided to go with a project pick). Baron Davis and Derek Fisher are signed and have the job locked up. I'm sorry, but it's not happening, even with fun 'n gun points that could probably be passable twos.
12 -- Heads up Uno! I'm going to bring you a full-fledged NBA Draft Philosophy Column sometime within the next few weeks, with research and everything. I'm working on the methodology, and I'll probably enlist the help of other Sportszillans to put it together.
11 -- Heads up Deuce! I've got a project in the works to herald in the new baseball season. In theory, it will be finished and up on Sportszilla by the end of the week. Let's just say it has to do with Giants fans being better than Dodgers fans.
10 -- The Michael Jordan Nike ad where the kids re-enact MJ's iconic moments is ricockulously amazing. In fact, I have it permanently bookmarked, just for when I need goosebumps.
9 -- Can someone in Houston--or at least someone who is paid to do this sort of thing--please find definitive information on the Vince Young/Crips situation? This bothers me to no end.
8 -- I'm about three-fourths of the way through The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn. It's not hitting me like Summer of '49 did, but it's hard not to get choked up reading about bygone days when it was not widely understood why Carl Erskine wanted his son born with Down Syndrome to have as normal a life as possible, and when a ballplayer like Carl Furillo had to work as an elevator installer just to make ends meet so soon after his playing days.
7 -- I'm not intentionally trying to go through the best baseball books, but it certainly seems that way. Roger Angell is next on my list, and I'm hoping to get around to a football book or two, since reading A Season On The Brink a few months ago has sated my basketball appetite for the time being. I tried The Juice, by Will Carroll, but got bogged down somewhere around two-thirds of the way through, and then I started The Education of a Coach, by David Halberstam, and got bogged down in the third chapter. We'll see. Maybe I'll give each another crack in a few months.
6 -- The Giants signed Randy Winn for more money than I will ever be worth at any point in my life. I hope he's happy, because he's getting paid Borderline All Star money, and (except for the good fortune of being on the Devil Rays at the same time as the Jason Tyner Experience) Randy Winn ain't no All Star.
5 -- The greatest t-shirt of all time is coming from one of my favorite blogs, McCoveyChronicles.com. Check it out here. I'd read MCC even if I weren't a Giants fan, just as I read USSMariner, and BronxBanter, and DodgerThoughts, and a load of other blogs, because the blogmaster, Grant, is an excellent writer who brings more to the table than a simple, "Giants rule!" Although I suspect he's not above posting that as the text for an open thread.
4 -- Either Relevant Or True linked to my Nickelodeon/ESPN column, and I would be remiss if I didn't point out that, besides being awesome enough to run a blog devoted entirely to "keeping tabs on Keith Olbermann", for every Countdown episode, they identify which tie he wears. I admit it. I giggled when I saw that. Excellent. This is why Spiro Agnew invented the internet.
3 -- [Insert Carl Everett joke here.]
2 -- Does anybody else think the New York Media thing is at least partly a self-fulfilling prophecy? I mean, sure, there's some level of intense competition between the various outlets, but the invasive and "anything goes" mentality of the press there is partly a function of the people in the media wanting to uphold New York's reputation. Everyone says that to make it in New York, you've gotta be able to handle the media pressure. Well, maybe, just maybe, you can do your job without openly baiting teams and players. Maybe you can do your job without intentionally violating personal space. Maybe the havoc wrought upon players and teams by the media should be intellectual rather than visceral. But, then again, maybe that's just me. Maybe that's just what I'd like.
1 -- Mark my words: MLB teams from Washington and Florida will be contracted after the season. Washington will be easy enough, with the other owners simply dissolving the team, while they'll also probably pay a market rate to Loria for the Marlins and then dissolve them. God knows where DTrain and Cabrera will end up. I say send them to the teams closest to their places of birth. So, Oakland would get Dontrelle, and Atlanta would get Miguel. Yes yes. That would be most fair, indeed.
posted by Blogger at 4:45 AM
2 Comments:
Aw, thanks for the shout out, David! I started ERT simply because I couldn't believe someone as fab as KO didn't have his own shrine on the world wide internets. I seem to have filled a need - ties and all.
Check out this version of the Jordan commercial.
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