Foolery

Golf Is Trying to Kill Me

(Photo stolen from this site)

Never mind nearly being thrown from an out-of-control golf cart or hemorrhaging our discretionary income to TopFlight and the Tuscan Ridge Golf Club every month, Golf has been trying to kill me for years.

Once, as I was speeding along the Kaanapali Parkway on my way home to Lahaina (when I lived in Maui, *sigh*), a golf ball came out of NOWHERE to thwack my poor little Corolla on the hood. Had I goosed the gas by a mere fraction the ball would have hit me through the open window, killing me instantly, I'm sure. Or at least making a welt.

A few months later I walked along that same parkway from my ticket booth (where I sold tickets for the company luau and for other tours and activities) down to the luau grounds to deliver the receipts. As I strolled down the sidewalk a car turned into the driveway behind me, and the driver called to me. I turned around and waved, pausing only a second. When I resumed my walk a golf ball hurtled from high in the sky and hit to the right of the sidewalk, about a yard ahead of me. Had I not stopped to wave the ball would have hit me square in the temple, killing me instantly, or at least smarting a whole lot.

This is my only evidence that Golf is trying to kill me, but I think it's compelling. I'm cagey, however, and Golf hasn't gotten me yet. I avoid golf courses, pro shops and Chas on Saturdays.

I think Jai Alai  has it in for me, too.

How NOT to Golf

"Balance is the key to golf," says Chas.  Well, somebody forgot to tell Woody Austin today at the President's Cup.  During his second round in the four-ball match, the poor guy took a header into a pond.  Lucky for him it wasn't somewhere in Florida, because of the 'gators.  I'm pretty sure they don't have 'gators in the ponds at Montreal's Royal Montreal Golf Club.  They do have birdies, however, and Austin went on to collect three in a row after his dip.  I just hope for his sake he's not superstitious, or he'll have to hurl himself into a pond in every future tournament until his luck runs out.

"Nice follow-through," says Chas.


Photos stolen from REUTERS/Christinne Muschi (CANADA)

My Sports Year

In our little house, Chas watches sports, therefore we ALL watch at least a little bit of sports . . . all year long.

 

Following sports on TV can alter life and seasonal changes as we know them.  Here's how our "sports year" goes, starting with, um, well it's hard to find a good starting place?  How about the two days of the year when there are NO major sporting events.  Do you know them?

 

I do.  They're religious holidays for me.

 

They are the day immediately preceding and following Major League Baseball's All Star game (usually right around my birthday, in early July).

 

So, our sports year begins with baseball; in our house it's the Dodgers and the Angels (although the Giants and the A's should be watched sometimes just to keep up on the enemies).  Golf happens each weekend, of course, beginning on Thursday and ending Sunday.  The British Open is a very important golf event in our house, although Chas can't kid ME -- he'd watch the Rosanne Barr Classic if there should be one.  I have a special fondness for the British Open, going back to when Chas and I were dating.  He'd show up at my apartment at 6:00 a.m. with doughnuts and hot chocolate.  He'd turn on the TV just loud enough to hear the announcers whispering.  I'd wake up, mumble "How's Monty doing?" eat a doughnut, then go back to sleep until the hot chocolate was cool enough to drink.  The good old days.

 

By August golf and baseball are in full swing, lousy pun intended.  Football is starting with a whimper in the form of exhibition games.  Thankfully, Chas is not as fanatical as my dad and doesn't insist on watching every single pre-season game.

 

September throws the NFL into the mix for real.  Chas's beloved Rams are now so far away in St. Louis that he gets to watch only some of their games.  Still, important match-ups among other teams must be watched.  Baseball is either over or just getting good, depending upon how the L.A. teams are doing.

 

October is a critical month for sports fans.  The World Series wraps up baseball, NFL football is dominating the airwaves (not to mention college ball; can't live without UCLA and some USC games on Saturdays, can we?), and little whuffles are coming from the corner where the NBA has been hibernating.  Basketball has actually started encroaching on baseball's final days in recent years, and with golf in its "silly season," as Chas calls it, well, the TV never cools down at our house.

 

November, December and January are all about football and basketball.  I have no idea when the soccer season might be, but I suspect it's like golf -- it goes all year, and how dare they actually call it a "season?"  Glory Be, Chas doesn't like soccer or hockey.  In fact, he may be poisoning the girls' minds against those sports, because on Saturday Sparky (in accusatory tones one might use for seeing someone pick his nose on camera) yelled, "DADDY!  There's HOCKEY on TV!"

 

After football ends in early February, college basketball is the big deal, and March Madness adequately describes my mental state.  If I have to live with sports on TV all the time, I'm lucky to be married to a man who is annoyed by most sports commentators, and who keeps the volume near zero.  Because if I had to hear Dick Vitale -- "Yeah bayyyy-beeeee!" -- any more than just on vacuous TV ads, I'd go postal by St. Patty's Day.

 

So here we are in April, and the NBA season has ended.  Not to worry, though; the playoff season is nearly as long as the regular season!  Whoopee!  The Lakers lost their first playoff game last night, as predicted by Chas.  It shouldn't be long now . . .

 

After April we're back where we started, with baseball and golf -- two of the most exciting AND boring spectator sports on the planet.  Maybe Dick Vitale is available for commentary, bayyyy-beeeee.

The Bob Cousy Award

Taking a minute to brag up a very deserving man I know – Zack Whiting, the elder son of my boss Scott.  Zack is a senior at Chaminade University in Honolulu, on a full scholarship for basketball.

Zack is one of 16 national finalists for this year’s Bob Cousy award.
Here’s an explanation of the award:

Nominees for the Bob Cousy Award presented by The Hartford were solicited through the College Sports Information Directors of America (COSIDA) and the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). A committee comprised of CoSIDA members narrowed the field to 16 student athletes from all three divisions of men's NCAA college basketball. The group of 16 will be reviewed and a winner chosen by a Blue Ribbon selection committee comprised of Hall of Famers, Mr. Cousy, college coaches, media members, sports information directors and one lucky fan chosen to represent the top vote getter in the on-line poll at www.cousyaward.com . [Vote early and vote often]

The award is presented during the NCAA Final Four – probably the championship game, wouldn’t you think? – to the year’s top collegiate point guard.  Zack is one of only two Division 2 players nominated this year, and only one Division 3 player made the list.  The rest are from schools we’ve all heard of – big schools, big programs.

This is a huge honor.  Zack is being nationally recognized for qualities his family and fans have always known about.  Kudos, Zack; the north valley continues to be proud of you.

(Be sure to set your DVRs for Monday, November 20, when Zack’s team, the Chaminade Silverswords, take on the U.C.L.A. Bruins in the Maui Invitational.  Tip-off will be 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time on ESPN2.)

Oh Lord, I'm starting to sound like Ernie Johnson.

Fan Is Short For Fanatic, You Know

While watching The Today Show this morning in the kitchen, I found yet another reason to yell at the TV through a mouthful of cereal.

Matt Lauer was interviewing Andrew Morbitzer, the man who caught Barry Bonds’ 715th career home run Sunday (which put Bonds one past Babe Ruth’s career home run record, and second only to Hank Aaron at 755). Morbitzer’s story was memorable because he was waiting in the beer line at the time, and just happened to look up as the ball came down. He didn’t have a lot of competition for the ball, he admitted, because – paraphrasing here – "most of the smart people were in the stands watching Bonds."

Matt Lauer asked the question that any normal non-brain-damaged person would ask: "What the Hell kind of fan goes to buy a beer when Barry Bonds is on deck?" Okay, I embellished that a little, but just a tad. Morbitzer marvelled at his own strange decision, but assured Lauer that he was in fact a "big fan" of the Giants.

Okay. I hear this all the time. "I’m a huge Raider fan, dude!" and variations of same. Chas tells me that while he is at work watching a snowy black-and-white TV and barely able to distinguish his beloved Rams (or Lakers, or Angels, or . . . ) from whomever they’re playing, people come into the store, see the game on, and ask the score. They usually claim to be HUGE FANS of whatever game they’re currently missing because they’re out spending money.

Am I alone here? HELLO-O-O-O . . .

Let me tell you what a HUGE FAN is. Ever see the movie Diner? One of the key scenes in the movie shows a young woman being quizzed by her fiancee’s buddies, only it’s not so much a quiz as a pass-fail, do-or-die, gatekeeper moment of her life. The quiz topic is sports trivia, and what’s at stake is her engagement to her betrothed. If she fails the test, the wedding’s off. Now that fiancee was kind of a jerk, but he was undeniably a HUGE FAN.

Then there’s my dad. Dad grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and has been a life-long Giants fan. Except that when he was first a fan, the Giants were in New York. Dad skipped class to listen to the game in which Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard ‘Round the World. He also had the announcer’s recording of that event on LP (that’d be "long-playing record" for those under 30). Dad is a HUGE FAN of the Giants.

Dad is also a 49er fan. He and Mom went to 49er games at Kezar Stadium in the 60s. He suffered through the disastrous teams of the 70s, grimly watching every second of every game. When things turned around for the Niners in the 80s, Dad was ready – he’d earned it. He started the first season with Joe Montana in the fold by taking the family down to Rocklin to watch training camp. It was some kind of fan photo-op day, so there were thousands of people scrambling to get Joe’s autograph. Not Dad. He was there to watch the guys work out, to study the roster (which he'd already gotten from the newspaper), and to evaluate the newbies and the walk-ons. He encouraged us to have our pictures taken with Leo Biedermann, Scott Hilton, Scott Stauch, and others whose names are known only to their mothers and to my weird family.

Did I mention that training camp was in Rocklin? Rocklin is not a temperate place in the summer. In August it’s hotter than Hell, and there’s no shade along the chain-link fence we leaned on to watch the endless drills. Dad continued to go to training camp at least once a season, until they moved to a cooler facility closer to San Francisco.

Finally, there were the quizzes. As we ate breakfast most mornings of football season, Dad tested our knowledge of and loyalty to the 49ers. It got to the point that Dad threatened to withhold breakfast if we didn’t pass the tests, though I think he was teasing. I think. At least no one’s nuptuals were riding on my testing ability.

I have to admit to being a rabid 49er fan into my college years, when other things began to turn my head and I began to wriggle free of the Niners’ iron grip. Or Dad’s, maybe. While I knew all of the players’ names, positions, numbers, and even quite a few of their alma maters (definite quiz material), I really couldn’t spot an ineligible man down field or holding to save my life. Apparently I missed that gene, so the game was easy to let go.

I tell people about the quizzes, about Dad pulling his chair right up to the TV screen, about Mom and Dad arranging their travel plans around football and baseball seasons, about Dad watching the entire two-day NFL draft extravaganza on TV each year, and they think I’m kidding, or exaggerating. Nope. Dad is a HUGE FAN of his San Francisco teams.

So when Andrew Morbitzer (remember him? There’s a story about him) said that he didn’t know that Bonds was coming up to bat because he couldn't see the JumboTron screen behind him, I yelled at the TV. Cereal even dribbled down my chin a little bit. "Tell it to my dad, Newbie!" What, is he new here? When did he THINK Bonds batted -- last?! A huge fan, indeed. Dad could probably recite the batting order for every Giants team clear back to Leo Durocher and beyond. And you know, if you asked him, he probably would, so don’t ask him.

Hee Seop's Fables

The Korean team in the current World Baseball Championship series provided an unexpected vehicle for meaningful dialogue between Chazzer and me.

Chas was watching the ESPN II game after the 11:00 news after he got home from work Monday night.  I, of course, was farting around at the computer.  Chas starts the imaginary play-by-play, having fun with the foreign names.  "And Bum Ho gets picked up by Kab!"

I chortled knowingly, hiding my complete and total lack of understanding.  "Wow, there's a guy named Bum?"  I asked.  "And he's not a football coach in big pants?"  And that's the extent of my nuanced sports trivia knowledge.  It wouldn't take me very far at a cocktail party.

Chas, because he's a man, was, of course, flipping between ESPN and ESPN II.  As if ESPN isn't silly enough, they had to create ESPN II, as well as several other obscure ESPN channels.  Hey, curling and cheerleading need a media home, don't they?

I did what any normal female would do:  I committed the whole thing to song.  "Kum Ba Yah," to be specific.  With a twist.  I sang away gleefully as Chas fed me the team roster.

Bum Ho Lee, my lord, Min Han Son!
Kab Yong Jin, my lord, Jae Hun Chung!
Sun Woo Kim, my lord, Byung Hyun Kim!
O Lord, Dae Sung Koo!

Someone's batting, Lord, Seung Yeop Lee!
Someone homered, Lord, Hee Seop Choi!
Someone's pitching, Lord, Chan Ho Park!
Jae Seo, kum ba yah!

Okay, I'm prob'ly gonna burn in Hell for that, in several cultures and languages, but you do what you can to have a meaningful conversation with your husband.  I don't expect him to meet me more than half way when talking about hair care products, for crying out loud.

My Olympics

I’m so glad the Olympics are coming to an end.  I’ve got so many injuries, I’m a wreck.

First of all, I've developed Ski Jump Neck, which comes from thinking I can type at the computer and catch all the important moments at the same time.  I usually can, but my neck suffers.

I also suffer from Speed Skating Throat, which one gets from watching short track races with the mouth hanging open for twenty minutes or more.

I’ve bitten my tongue very hard several times watching ice dancing (isn’t that a show on Fox?), as the man-like character hurls the little girl thirty feet in the air, and hopes she lands.

I’ve lost my voice while watching the Stop Drop and Shoot thingy, yelling “Shoot!  Shoot!  For the love of God, Shoot!” at the TV.

I have Dick Button Elbow from lobbing the ‘mote at the TV during the post-skate commentary of the women’s ice skating competition.

Of course I have ‘Mote Thumb from muting Jim Lampley and Katie Couric, a lot.

And I have Couch Face from watching curling.

Yup, competitive sports are hard on the body all right.  Thank God for golf.