Category Archives: Sports

Peaches for Tebow. Let’s Get This Done.

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It’s been an amazing couple of weeks if you’re an NFL fan. Especially if you’re a Denver Broncos fan. And this is only the offseason.

What a wondrous sight to behold.

First came Manningwatch 2012. I haven’t seen the media this obsessed with somebody’s every move since a certain white Ford Bronco sped down a certain Los Angeles freeway lo these many years ago. It was kind of like a real-life version of Where’s Waldo?, only everybody knew exactly where Peyton Manning was at every second of the day. The “breaking news” reports bordered on silly after awhile. Peyton’s plane has just landed at Denver International Airport. Peyton is eating dinner at a country club with John Elway. Peyton is accidentally using his salad fork to eat his steak. Peyton ordered a side of asparagus and when he went to the bathroom his pee smelled funny. 

You gotta feel sorry for the guy. I mean, as sorry as you can possibly feel for somebody who just signed a $96 million contract despite the fact that he’s got a bum neck and is considered “old” by football standards.

My neck is perfectly fine, and I’d be content with fifteen bucks an hour at this point. Employers, take note.

The guy I really feel sorry for, though, is Tim Tebow. A scant few months ago he was the Second Coming of Christ. Or at least had a direct hotline to J.C.’s daddy. I’m a little sketchy on the details. The point is, the guy was being revered for his late-game heroics and miraculous comeback victories. And then, in the blink of an eye, was unceremoniously dumped in the New York Jets’ laps for a couple of low draft picks. I’m pretty sure when he was praying for his team to find  success, trading him away for next to nothing isn’t what he had in mind. But it’s a business, and as a diehard Broncos fan, I can’t fault the organization for making the moves they did. Bringing Peyton aboard is a huge coup and, while some might argue otherwise, makes the team instant Super Bowl contenders.

I just wish their top brass had contacted me before the Jets. I’d have liked to put in an offer for Tim myself. He wouldn’t be my starting quarterback seeing that I don’t own an NFL team or anything – details, details – but I could use some help around the house. Sometimes I pray that the dishes in the sink will clean themselves, and yet, that almost never happens. OK, never happens. And, despite my most fervent wishes, the dirty litter box only gets dirtier the longer I go without scooping it. And, grocery shopping. I hate dealing with crowds. Mr. Tebow is used to playing in sold-out stadiums surrounded by 60,000 screaming fans. He orchestrated an 80-yard touchdown pass 11 seconds into overtime to beat the heavily favored Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. Certainly a trip to Safeway for a can of tuna and a box of Zatarain’s where there’s a screaming three-year-old kid and a checkout aisle four deep is nothin’. Sure, it ain’t glamorous work, but is being a backup QB for a crappy team really any better? Besides, in the glare of the Big Apple spotlight, any tiny mistake Tim makes is going to be examined and debated and thrust down the throats of New Yorkers ad nauseum. I can promise Tim that if my wine glass has a few water spots on it after washing, I won’t make a big deal of the fact. I think I would have had a real shot at the guy, too. If the Broncos were willing to settle for two measly draft picks, they might have been willing to entertain my offer. I’ve got a bread machine I hardly use and a couple of lava lamps just gathering dust. Oh, and some peaches in light syrup that have been sitting in the back of the pantry forever.

Alas, it is Tebow Time no more in Denver.

You know what would be cool? If we could trade real people the way we trade athletes. Take my newspaper delivery guy, for instance. Maybe he’s no longer at the top of his game. Sure, sometimes he shows flashes of his former brilliance, depositing the paper right next to my door and making sure it’s wrapped tightly in plastic to protect it from the rain. But more often than not, the paper is strewn haphazardly several feet from the front door, forcing me to take two or three steps across the cold, dirty concrete – in my bare feet, no less – in order to retrieve it. Maybe there’s some really awesome newspaper guy in Cincinnati or Miami, one who lays that sucker neatly by the door every single morning. That’s the guy I want delivering my paper, so I make a few calls, and suddenly they’re switching routes! I might have to add in another person or two to sweeten the pot, say the coworker in the adjoining cubicle who wears too much damn perfume but always brings in the best desserts for potlucks. I’m sure we could come to a consensus. Plus, if a relationship isn’t working out, you’ve got an easy way to solve that particular dilemma. Hell, I’d have traded in my last three girlfriends – plus cash – for Tara. She has vastly improved the quality of my life, after all. I only wish it had happened sooner.

And while we’re on the subject of football, I am still sore over that $20 I lost to my dad two years ago when he bet me the New Orleans Saints would go all the way and win the Super Bowl. They did…but it turns out, they kinda cheated, putting out incentive-laden bounties on opposing players. That’s just wrong, on so many levels.

I’m coming over for dinner tonight, and I gotta warn you, dad – I want my money back.

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Hasta La Vista, January

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I think I hit upon the perfect money-saving scheme, without even intentionally trying.

During the final waning days of December, I was in Nevada, so I didn’t have time to look for a 2012 calendar as I ordinarily would have. By the time I’d returned home and gotten around to the chore, the shelves were distressingly bare, limiting my choices to calendars with pictures of cats or Civil War heroes or the cast of Twilight. Can I get a big “no, thanks!” to each of these? I have no interest in staring at pictures of fuzzy Siamese kittens or Robert E. Lee or a shirtless Taylor Lautner for thirty-day stretches at a time. I questioned whether I even needed a calendar in the first place – my days all sort of blend together seamlessly anyway, and the mobile calendar widget on my smartphone does the trick just fine – but I suppose I’m a traditionalist. Besides, I have a decorative wooden calendar frame hanging in the bedroom. Something’s gotta go in there. I’m trying to class up the joint before Tara moves in, after all.

I realized that I could probably order a calendar online, so I went to the Lang calendars website (the brand I typically buy, and yes, I have my own favorite brand of calendar – these are just the right size and shape and feature decorative folk art by the likes of Thomas Kincade, and while the male in me would be happy to settle for the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar, see “classing up the joint” and “Tara moves in” above) and was happy to see they were marked down to $6.99 from their usual price of $15.99. It pays to shop for a calendar in mid-January, I quickly surmised.

Speaking of 88% off - she's about 12% clothed!

Only then I got sidetracked. There was another trip to Nevada, not to mention the minutiae of daily life, and suddenly it was February. I really need to find a calendar, I thought, and returned to the Lang website. This time, every last calendar in stock was marked down to $1.99. In other words, a savings of roughly 88%. I found one I liked and ordered it without hesitation, and while I had earlier come to the realization that it pays to shop for a calendar in mid-January, I knew now that it really pays to wait until the beginning of February to buy a calendar. I’m thinking I’m going to have to start doing this every year! I mean, is January really that important, anyway? The holidays are over. Winter is in full swing. The days are short. What are you going to be filling them with, other than resolution-inspired trips to the gym for three or four days before that lifestyle change peters out? You used to have the Super Bowl, but that’s been held in February for a decade now. There’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I suppose, but most people still have to work. We could probably get rid of the month of January and never even notice! Err…no offense, dad. I know it’s your birthday and all. But I don’t need a calendar to remember that. Besides, most calendars have a little miniature version of the preceding and next month in a box at the bottom. I can just leave December up an extra 31 days and if there’s something really important happening in January, I’ll squint.

Problem solved. Hasta la vista, January. Hello, 88% savings!

Didn't really want to stare at this guy for the next 12 months.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, yesterday was the Super Bowl. And while I didn’t have any real vested interest in the outcome of the game – my Broncos were defeated in the playoffs, sniff – I was sort of pulling for New England, because: A. They knocked Denver out of contention, and it’s an easier pill to swallow knowing your team was dethroned by the eventual Super Bowl champs; and 2. I made an ill-advised, last-minute bet with my dad on the outcome of the game. Granted, I only lost $5, but that negates the aforementioned calendar savings, doesn’t it? Damn! My dad hates the Patriots, so I figured I’d take advantage of his loathing and hopefully pocket an extra five bucks in the process. I should know better. The last time we bet on a Super Bowl game – two years ago, when the Saints beat the Colts – I ended up losing $20 to him, which means my dad is either some kind of football genius (who knew?) or really, really lucky. Or I suck at picking the winner.

Maybe a combination of the two.

In any case, I enjoyed the game as much as anybody watching alone can enjoy a game. The truth is, I missed Tara, and we were texting back and forth about how badly we longed to be together and how much fun next year’s Super Bowl is going to be. Which is true – it’s gonna rock! – but that did nothing to erase the fact that for one more year, I’d have to be content in watching it alone. The kids were supposed to be there, but ended up going back to their mom’s house a day early, which was kind of a bummer. Normally it’s a day custom made for snacking, but I didn’t feel like going to the trouble of preparing a bunch of snack foods just for myself, so I settled on cooking a batch of fried chicken, which – ha, I realize this now – is probably even more work than snack foods would have been. Nevertheless, it was a recipe Tara had found in Bon Apetit magazine, and despite a mishap with the salt (I doubled what the recipe called for because I didn’t read the directions all the way through in advance, oops), it turned out crispy on the outside, moist inside, and packed with flavor. So between the chicken and the bloody marys I’d been working on since 10 AM, I was pretty content. The game wasn’t bad, the half-time show felt lame in all its Material Girl lip-synced glory (can we please have some rock ‘n roll next year?!), and the commercials scored more touchdowns than either team. All in all though, a decent enough way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Bittersweet too, because this means no more football for six long months.

Boo.

I’m going to have to pencil in opening day on my new 88%-off calendar, once it arrives!

II Many Roman Numerals IV Me

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Green and yellow, baby! Green and yellow.

I feel weird typing those words. I am – and always have been – a Denver Broncos fan. They are my team, first and foremost, no matter how sorry their record has been lately. Isn’t that the mark of a true fan, though? Sticking by your team through the good years and the bad? It may be a cliche, but there’s always next season. When it comes to the NFL, there are two extremes for me: I love the Broncos and I loathe the Raiders. Everybody else falls somewhere in between. The Green Bay Packers are near the top of the heap, so when this year’s Super Bowl rolled around, I found myself pulling for them. Though I’d never stoop so low as to wear a styrofoam block of cheese on my head, I like that a team  from a relatively small town in Wisconsin, of all places, can hold their own against teams from bigger regional markets. Besides, the Packers are a team steeped in history. They won the first two Super Bowls ever played. The Vince Lombardi trophy was named after their legendary coach. Way to go, Packers!

Green Bay Packers cheese head

The nice thing is, if he catches a stiff breeze he can go hang gliding after the game. (Courtesy of greenbaypackernation.com).

A week ago, my kids suddenly declared themselves Steelers fans. All week long they were walking around the house, chanting “black and yellow, black and yellow.” I just shook my head. One of the best things about having kids is dressing them in clothes adorned with your favorite sports team’s logo when they’re too little to do anything other than drool on their miniature jerseys. Which means both Rusty and Audrey wore Broncos clothes before they were even old enough to walk. I don’t care that their interests have changed as they’ve gotten older; I certainly didn’t expect them to be Broncos fans for life, and my feelings aren’t hurt or anything. They are growing up and should make their own choices and establish their own identities. It’s just the fact that they so blatantly jumped on the Pittsburgh bandwagon that makes me smirk. After all, neither has any ties to Steeltown. A year from now, we’ll see who they like! As for me, I’ll still be cheering on my Broncos, even if they finish dead last in their division again. Sadly, I dropped the kids off at their mom’s house early – before the game – so I didn’t get a chance to rub the loss in their faces, except over Facebook. Mean-spirited? Nah – they would have done the same thing to me had Green Bay lost. Besides, that’s another great reason to have kids – there are always opportunities to tease or embarrass them. After the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland last November, I started skipping through the streets of downtown just because I knew it would mortify them. All I can say is, mission accomplished.

So, it turned out I watched the Super Bowl alone. Which isn’t nearly as bad as it might sound. I got to yell at the TV a lot and wasn’t “shooshed” by anybody nearby. I didn’t have a girlfriend asking me what a “lateral” is or how come the team with the black jerseys didn’t kick the ball after getting a touchdown but instead ended up with two points. I got to pour myself a drink at 2:57 PM and nobody chided me that it was “too early.” And I didn’t hold back on the food, either. There are two days every year where you just have to suck it up and say “calories be damned”: Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl. Between the hot wings and chili dogs and chips and gin & tonics, all I can say once again is, mission accomplished.

As for the game itself, it was everything a championship football matchup should be: close, well-played, action-packed and never dull. We even got not one, but two patriotic songs to start the game (though the Glee girl definitely out-sang Xtina, or whatever she’s calling herself these days). The commercials weren’t great, but I liked the Doritos ad where the guy licked the cheese crumbs off his coworker’s fingers. Not sure why people were throwing cans of Pepsi Max at other people, though. What kind of message is Pepsi trying to send? Our soda will turn you into a violent psychopath? The Budweiser spots were predictably satisfying, and the godaddy.com Joan Rivers ad was both hot and disgusting. (And yes, I went to their website for the “too racy for TV” versions of their Super Bowl ads. Typical guy, I know).  The only complaint I had was with the Halftime Show. My opinion? Stick with rock ‘n roll. Slash’s 30-second duet with Fergie was the only bright spot. It was all too much black leather, sparkly shoulder pads, and glowing boxes on their heads. All flash and no substance. Black Eyed Puh-leeze.

No more Roman Numerals in the Super Bowl.

We should have stopped using Roman Numerals in the Super Bowl XXV years ago! (Courtesy of flash-screen.com).

Oh, and one other thing. Isn’t it high time they ditched the whole Roman Numeral thing? It was cute way back when it was Super Bowl VI, maybe. But XLV? Who’s going to remember that, say, in another V years or so? Can’t we just use real numbers instead? Besides, how is football even remotely related to Rome in the first place? Julius Caesar and his empire never came within spitting distance of our shores. It’s strictly an American game. Maybe whoever is in charge of these things (who is in charge of these things, anyway?) thinks Roman Numerals look classier. Well, you know what? They don’t. I used to hate it when you’d be watching a movie or something and wanted to know the year it came out, but when you scanned the credits you got that ridiculous MCMXCIV copyright date. I’d be like, “huh?” That’s not a year – those are really good Scrabble tiles! It was a relief when 2000 rolled around because that was nice and easy. MM. But now it’s getting complicated again, we’re up to MMXI, and you know those L’s and C’s are looming on the horizon out there. Enough already. I vote for Super Bowl 46 next year, not Super Bowl XLVI.

Is there a petition I can sign or something?

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Throwball, Anyone?

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The World Cup, an event that captivates the entire globe for one month every four years, is here again, and I am thrilled.  This, despite the fact that I am an American, which means two things:

  1. I know nothing about soccer, and care about it even less.
  2. I insist on calling it soccer, while the rest of the world refers to it as football. 

Those are stereotypes, of course.  In reality, I know quite a bit about soccer.  Granted, this wasn’t always the case.  Four years ago, I was every bit as naive as my American brethren.  Soccer, to me, was a sport that one played up until the age of 12 or so.  Beyond that, you either moved on to something different – baseball or basketball, for instance – or devoted the majority of your time to academics (which is really a polite way of saying you didn’t hang with the popular crowd).  Maybe you joined the glee club before every other high school in the country was doing “Don’t Stop Believin’” and it was actually considered cool to sing.  The point is, you didn’t play soccer, because there seemed to be some unwritten rule that anybody past the cusp of adolescence was barred from kicking a white-and-black-checkered ball around. 

Oh, and I also knew who Pele was.  But that hardly counts.  His name’s a gimme, the same way non-baseball fans are familiar with Babe Ruth, non-boxing fans have an awareness of Muhammad Ali, and non-cartoon fans know Bugs Bunny.  Some people transcend the veil of ignorance.

And then the summer of 2006 rolled around.  One Saturday morning the TV was on and I was flipping through the channels, bored.  I stumbled upon a World Cup match.  Brazil vs. Australia.  It was nearly half over, and the score was tied at zero.  A scoreless game? I thought sarcastically.   That’s just so typical of soccer.  There must be something better on.  And yet, rather than reach for the remote, I was oddly transfixed on the game.  It took me less than a minute to realize that, hey, this was a pretty interesting sport, after all.  Soon after, Brazil scored a goal, and I pumped my fist in the air, shouting “Yeah!”  Which made no sense at all, because even if I had been a soccer fan at the time, I certainly didn’t have a favorite team.  But I had become so immersed in the nuances of the game in such a brief time, my reaction was genuine. 

True, the games are low-scoring, and often result in ties.  But that’s not the point of the game.  The guys who play are remarkable athletes.  It’s amazing to watch their prowess and skill as they drive the ball downfield, attacking and defending, passing and blocking.  If you want to see points on the board, watch basketball.  Dribble-dribble-shoot-score.  Other team: dribble-dribble-shoot-score.  100 points?  Yawn.

I love that the clock never stops ticking.  They play straight through, 45 minutes until halftime, and then another forty-five minutes after.  That’s pure sport.  No whistles, no time-outs to catch your breath or discuss strategy.  There are penalties, in the form of Yellow Cards (or the dreaded Red Card, which means sayonara, you ruffian, you), but the action onfield just keeps on keeping on.  Maybe that’s the real reason why soccer hasn’t caught on in the U.S. – how do you fit in commercial breaks?  Damn you, Madison Avenue, for deciding that talking geckos trying to shill car insurance are more important than a truly riveting sport. 

About that name.  Soccer is, officially, known as “association football”, but is commonly shortened to just “football” throughout the rest of the world.  This makes perfect sense.  The game is all about using your feet to kick the ball (the occasional headbutt notwithstanding), after all.  We only call it soccer over here because we’ve already got a sport we call football, which is sort of ironic because, unless somebody’s punting or kicking a field goal, there isn’t a whole lot of interaction between the foot and the ball.  I love my country, but I think we definitely didn’t think things over very well when we named that sport (although I’m not sure what we’d call it that would be more accurate – “throwball”, maybe?).

I watched a bunch of those World Cup matches in 2006, and when France rallied from behind three separate times to overtake Spain and advance to the final, I realized I had rarely before seen such a tense and exciting game, regardless of the sport.  From that moment, I was officially hooked. 

Plastic horns, or a hive full of angry bees?

It’s been a long four years, but the World Cup is back now, and I am just as stoked as before.  I could do without the vuvuzelas – plastic horns being blown by the fans that sound like a constant, angry drone of bees filling the stadium – but they’re a minor distraction, and a small price to pay for the privilege of watching the biggest sporting event in the world.

Bigger, even, than the Super Bowl. 

You know…that competition every February that determines the thowball champion…