Woefully Off Topic

Here we are, in the midst of a pennant race where the home team is making one of their most exciting runs of my lifetime. And what do I have to contribute? Last time out, I managed about 1,500 words on college football and random baseball stories, with very little about the Twins. Today, I am taking another step in the wrong direction, settling on an entirely frivolous topic, laying to waste the beautiful material that the Twins have generated in the last few months. Instead, I have a few sports observations that have little to do with anything, other than their common intersection with my current state of consciousness.

1. Kirby Puckett Syndrome: I know I am not the only one who has noticed how many former athletes gain a ridiculous amount of weight after retirement. So why do we keep making them wear suits? Puckett, John Kruk, Charles Barkley, innumerable former NFL linemen- all of them seemingly forgot every lesson learned about living a healthy lifestyle, preferring to focus on wonton indulgence. Correct me if I am wrong, but wearing a suit is supposed to be a standard symbol of neatness, professionalism, and self-confident. When I see these guys “dressed up,” my first two reactions are embarrassment on the player’s behalf, then feeling put off by his utter slovenliness. The suit is antithetical- it is neither neat, nor professional, and the players’ discomfort entirely undermines the notion of expressing self-confidence. Take a cue from the fat football coaches who look grungy-but-acceptable in those baggy warmup pullovers. Nobody asks Charlie Weis to wear a suit, and there is a good reason for that: we would gouge our eyes out. These are not businessmen with a reputation to protect. Let’s do the reasonable thing and lower our expectations for them, just this once.

2. Stationary Bikes: Terrell Owens has seemingly made a career change from football player to professional (immobile) cyclist. If he spends any more time on that bike, he is going to have to send a backup urine sample to the World Anti-Doping Agency. Some people find his antics obnoxious, and I agree, but that does not mean that I want him to stop. First of all, I hate the Cowboys and want to see them fail, and the sooner he implodes, the better (as long as he holds it together long enough to return to Philadelphia, where he may or may not be gang beaten to death with stale cheesesteaks). Secondly, he looks absolutely preposterous on that bike day after day to the point where I want to see other parts of life adopt the stationery bike. Imagine the possibilities- someone in an office botches a project and gets relegated to the bike for the next couple of days. If all of your buddies buy a round of drinks at the bar except for one guy, get on the bike! A mechanic tells you that changing the spark plugs or some insignificant thing is going to cost $400, you guessed it… TO THE BIKE! This movement has to start from the ground up, so if you see a stationary bike, pick it up and put it to use.

3. Excessive Use of the Turbo Meter: You know how watching a funny movie or a stand-up comedy routine typically gets less funny with successive viewings? I think I found a similar effect that helps quantify the effect in a voodoo sort of way. Anybody who has ever played a sports video game is familiar with the concept of the turbo meter. Players can run faster in short bursts, but as the turbo boost is consumed, it replenishes more and more slowly. Additionally, after using it for a while, it can never return all the way to the top of the meter. Watching a great, but straightforward comedy, like Wayne’s World, follows the same formula. The first viewing is the best, and the next few views are pretty awesome, as well. But as you watch the movie time and again, it gets further from that original point of comedic purity, never to return. Just like the video game, taking a prolonged break from the movie (or the turbo boost) refreshes it considerably, although not to the point of its original fullness. Think of this effect as that weird in-between state of recognizing a joke, but not being able to generate the punch line. It may seem like you don’t actually know the joke, which is a bummer, and is compounded by the fact that you miss out on the payoff of laughing at the punch line. There remains the curious case of the movie that gets funnier with every watching. People include really clever movies on that list, such as Caddyshack, The Big Lebowski, and Anchorman. My suspicion is that these movies are like video Allen Iverson, so good that you do not immediately notice the depreciation. Video AI can run by anyone, shoot threes, make crazy layups, and shoot off-balance shots, so you can progress from one infatuation to another. These classic movies have enough jokes, that it takes time to pick up on each one, staving off the time until they become expected and less amusing. The metaphor is growing forced, so I will move along.

4. Cop-out Injuries: I watch a lot less tennis these days than I did when I played tennis in high school and cared about Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. Still, the U.S. Open has enough intrigue to encourage a few viewings each year, especially with the sentimental value of Agassi’s retirement. With a White Sox blowout over the Red Sox, I switched on Maria Sharapova versus someone named Golovin, two of the top seeds in the suggestively dressed gorgeous women bracket. It really seemed like both of them went shopping for prom dresses at a wholesaler, chose their favorites, and had them remade out of lycra with Nike swooshes added for effect. Naturally, it is compelling television. That is, until Golovin got down 3-0 in a tiebreaker and decided it would be a good time to take a break. She complained that she had a blister on her left foot, and spent ten minutes getting what looked like a pedicure from the finest athletic orthopedist Queens has to offer. After several unfortunate close-ups of her mangled athletes’ feet (not as in the fungus, but the condition that arises from running in sweaty, tight shoes for hours every day), Sharapova became annoyed and started hitting practice serves. I couldn’t help but thinking that this would have been a perfect time for a stationary bike. It would not have been particularly notable for her to disrupt that match’s momentum with a bogus injury- Sharapova once left for two bathroom breaks in the same match- except that the male commentator openly questioned whether she had a legitimate injury. He even mentioned that NBA players deal with far worse foot injuries every game, to which the female color commentator responded that NBA players do not work as hard as women’s tennis pros, whose matches sometimes last under an hour. It was a tennis battle of the sexes the likes of which have not been seen since Bobby Riggs puffed a cigarette while walking into the sunset. Personally, I do not believe that women’s sports are the locus patriarchal domination. Eliminating sexism does not depend on hyper-masculinized women imitating the men who still dominate their industries. I digress. The greater point here is that the tennis rules stupidly let players who are losing take an indeterminate break to repair non-injuries, and that rule makes no sense.

5. Game pacing: Anyone who watched college football over the weekend probably noticed that the games were decidedly speedier due to the rules changes that start the game clock sooner after first downs and changes of possession. For better or worse, the faster game is a good thing for most sports, since Americans value time, frequently at the expense of pleasure. Why can’t baseball find a similar way to make the games quicker? I know the overall game time has decreased slightly in recent years, though I think a few minor rules could make the game go a lot faster. I have heard others mention that pitchers who enter mid-inning should be required to stay in through the inning to prevent the Tony LaRussa trademark ass-dragging. I think we should also take the suggestion from college football and speed up the transitions, limiting the time spent between innings, possibly by starting a clock when the third out is recorded, rather than when the other team takes the field. I recognize the lost commercial time as an obstacle here, so I don’t expect that one to take hold. Also, I would like batters’ timeouts curtailed. Once the batter goes in the box, he should not step out until the at-bat ends. Who on earth benefits from Nomar Garciaparra’s endless fidgeting, including Nomar Garciaparra. Everyone probably remembers fans counting down from 10 during Karl Malone’s long free-throw routine. Now imagine if Malone was allowed to wait nine second, then say, “you know, I think I’m going to start over.” Fans would stay away in droves. Where else, besides tennis, do players get to waste as much time as they want? Even Sergio Garcia gets put on the clock when he does his human rain delay routine.

6. Abandonment- That’s Where I’m a Viking!: Bill Simmons wrote a column a few years ago outlining what needs to happen for a fan to abandon her or his home team and adopt another allegiance. Without going into the specific details, the gist of Simmons’s article was that your home team has to go beyond mere struggling to warrant a divorce, such as indifference on behalf of the ownership, or outright offensive behavior. Around the same time, Rob Neyer wrote an article supporting the hypothesis that the Vikings are the most insufferable team in all of pro sports, and this was before the Red Sox won the World Series. My theory has long been that the Vikings enjoy finding new and creative ways to disappoint their fans every season. At first, they were content to fill the role of “always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” with four Super Bowl losses. From there, the team built up to the most disappointing Conference Championship loss in recent memory after a 15-1 season that got everyone’s hopes up. A couple of years later, they had that hideous 40 point loss to a mediocre Giants team in the NFC title game- agonizing, but distinctly different. The ensuing Mike Tice era was doomed to incompetence from the start, probably because he looks more like Grape Ape than any human I have ever seen. The draft foibles were historically stupid. The disappointment became so customary, that they had to come up with things that had never been done in history, like missing the playoffs after starting 6-0. Throw in a constant feeling of hopelessness prevalent throughout the entire fan base, and it seems reasonable that I could abandon the franchise. On top of all of that comes an argument that may independently convince some people of the Vikings’ failures, the behavioral challenges. There was Moss running into the cop, mooning fans, and saying dumb things in interviews, team fights and constant missed curfews, arrests, and suspensions, a coach who had no control over any part of it, and the inevitable culmination aboard the Loveboat. I am not one to make moral judgments, and I typically do not care what athletes do off the field. Here, though, it was apparent that the behaviors became distractions on the field, and indicated Tice’s total lack of control. Plus, I do not want to have to sift through dozens of non-sports related content to get to an article about my team. I don’t need that from football, I get more than enough of it from Eddie Griffin. What I’m getting at here is that I have given up on the Vikings, and I think I am more than justified in doing so. Upon moving to Philadelphia with the rabid football culture surrounding the Eagles, I decided that I would fully join their fan base. I know that I cannot entirely give up on the Vikings; no divorce is that clean. Still, if the Vikings and Eagles play, I will cheer for the Eagles. In other cases, I will cheer for the Vikings. How serious am I? I have already bought an Eagles hat, and am currently shopping for a Thomas Tapeh jersey (failing that, an Orange Donovan McNabb one from Syracuse) and tickets to a tailgate-worthy home game at the stadium two miles south of my house. And don’ say I am jumping on a bandwagon. Even though any team looks good compared to the Vikings, the Eagles are coming off a 6-10 season with tons of bad press. Many more people have jumped off the Eagles bandwagon in the last year than on it. E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES! By the way, I am already catching hell from my housemates who managed to move to Philadelphia without being tempted by the fruits of a foreign franchise. And just so we’re clear, this would never happen with the Twins. Baseball is far more important than football to me, and the Twins have already done far too much for me to ever abandon them.

7. As a closing note, Joe Sheehan recently called the 2007 San Francisco Giants “Linden and the Liver Spots,” which is good. I think I can do even better. Here’s my initial offering: the San Francisco GerIAtric geNTS.