Monday, June 19, 2006

My treatise on sports

I was talking to a friend about sports today. She said she didn’t understand what the point of racing was all about. I was going to try to explain it to her, but it is something you either like or you don’t. Not that she isn’t capable of understanding it, she just wouldn’t care to. (I include that last sentence in the interest of self preservation.)

If you know me you know that I like racing. Not just stock car racing, but all kinds of racing. I like cars racing, truck racing, boat racing, horse racing, bicycle racing, airplane racing. I went to visit a buddy of mine in the hospital this week and there were two guys in wheelchairs going across the lobby of the I stopped and cheered them on. Most racing has only one rule – get there first. I can understand that. Oh sure there are the three R’s of racing (rules, regulations, and requirements) but basically the first guy there wins. It is uncomplicated and you can take a nap in the middle and still be able to figure out what is happening. Other sports I am not so sure about.

Canadians are rabid about hockey. I can’t figure out why a bunch of toothless guys want to strap razor blades to their feet, pick up oversized tongue depressors and chase a Ho-ho around sheet of ice; trying to whack it into a fish net in between the fights. But Canadians also brought us curling – the sport that consists of chasing a broken bowling ball down a frozen hallway with brooms. Maybe it has something to do with the amount of ice they have up there – they have to do something with it.

And speaking of bowling what is the point. You pick up a chunk of some unidentifiable material and hurl it across a hardwood floor (which you aren’t allowed to walk on) and try to knock down little snowmen. If I had thrown heavy objects at my mom’s hardwood floor she would have chased me down the hallway with a broom(not to be confused with a curling broom), not to mention what she would have done when the snowmen melted.

The dumbest sport is golf. A bunch of supposedly sane people take deformed sticks and whack a ball across a yard trying to get it into a cup. The real art in golf is cussing. I know I used to work at a golf course. I heard things out there that would make a merchant marine go running for his mommy with his ears covered.

Then consider basketball. A mob of genetic mutants bounce a pumpkin across a hardwood floor (my mom wouldn’t like that either) and toss it into a broken fishnet. At least the Canadians have a whole net. When the genetic mutants get tired of chasing the pumpkin they amuse themselves by attacking people in the stands.

Soccer is a lot like hockey but it comes from ice deprived, warmer countries where they have to contend with things like sunshine and grass while chasing a pumpkin instead of a ho-ho. And they don’t have tongue depressors. They aren’t even allowed to use their hands. Sounds like a good sport for double amputees. (It was a joke please don’t send me scathing emails – I wasn’t equating double amputees with lower intelligence soccer players.)

Baseball and softball are other odd past times. Where else do you see a bunch of guys look like they don’t want to have anything to do with the ball. One who is standing on an anthill guy throws it to a guy who doesn’t want it so he hits it with a branch. Then a bunch of guys in the yard throw the ball at each other until it finally gets back to the guy who is standing on the big ant hill. Since no one wants to touch it if they don’t have to they all wear oven mitts. The guy with the branch has a pot on his head. The guy on the anthill doesn’t want the ball so he throws it at the guy who whacks it with a branch and the whole thing starts again. Sometimes one of the guys with the branch gets lucky and smacks the ball out of the yard and into Mrs. Petrofski’s petunias. The other guys are so glad that the evil ball is gone they let the guy run around the yard by himself then swat him on the butt. I am not sure why they do that. Then the dumb guy wearing the black coat flings another evil ball to the guy on the anthill and they do it again until all the people in the stands get tired of watching and go home. Mrs. Petrofski runs around her yard talking to herself about the hoodlums that are ruining her flowers and then puts the evil ball in a box with the others.

Football isn’t really football at all it is more like hand ball but that is another can of worms. In football a bunch of guys take a small watermelon and fight over it. Unlike baseball they all want the watermelons. The spend a couple of hours running all over the pasture chasing watermelon. When someone runs it to the end of the pasture (but not into Mrs. Petrofski’s petunias) they get a chance to kick the watermelon through a giant broken pitchfork, but first they have to fight off a swarm of ants that run into their pants (perhaps the ants are trying to escape the evil baseball too).

Tennis I don’t understand at all, or its cousins handball, racquetball, volley ball, badminton, or Ping-Pong. With so many different names and ways to play it seems that no one else understands it either. I mean if it made sense someone would have made a standard set of rules and equipment. The basic rule of these games is to hit the ball, birdie, or whatever back and forth and try to make the other person miss it. Either that or you try to hit your opponent in a sensitive area, but I am not sure.


Boxing isn’t a sport. You take two overgrown bullies, put oversized oven mitts on them, and put them in a pig pen and let them beat on each other. In school it was called a visit to the principals office, and if there wasn’t a good reason for it - a meeting with daddy at home. I personally always made sure I had a good reason. I am not so sure that the bullies in the pigpen have a good reason. I mean I can see the guy how got his ear bit off being mad at the psycho who bit him, but I don’t understand what they were doing there in their skivvies with oven mitts on their hands to begin with. On top of all of that they aren’t allowed to hit the other guy where the fight can end and everyone can go home. At least in wrestling (or wrassilin’ depending on where you are from and your waist to IQ ratio) they get to bite, kick, and swing furniture. But the bald headed guys should always be able to beat the dudes with hair down to their ankles. Maybe that is why most boxers are bald.

So as you can see racing is the only sport that makes any sense. They may only go round and round in circles, but the first one there wins – usually.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Looks nice! Awesome content. Good job guys.
»