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You’ll
forgive me for not having much to say about sports lately.
I’ve
gone from a single soaring moment on the first day of baseball season when
all of the
Dallas teams playing at the time were in
first place… to the deep and bottomless pit of a last place Rangers team and
two playoff eliminations in the same month.
Sports is a bastion of hope while at the same time a grim reminder that only
one team gets to go somewhere over the rainbow and the rest of us are just
the flying monkeys playing puppet to a water fearing ugly bitch they call
disappointment that stands right next to your road of gold and reminds you
that shit happens.
The
hottest goalie in the game quickly becomes the second hottest goalie in the
game and you lose a couple of OT games including one of the longest in
history. Shit happens.
You
are on the verge of a third straight game seven into which you would carry
all the momentum legally allowed by the sports gods… but then an arthritic
thirty-seven year old has been, makes your 12 point lead the has been and
you don’t have to bother hopping on a plane again for these playoffs.
Hell, I know
Vancouver knows what
I’m talking about. They watched a 3-1 lead evaporate to a hardly deserving
Wild team and now New Jersey is watching their team flail away after leading
2-0 it’s all tied up.
Allen Iverson usually gets all the bounces but missed some crazy shots in a
couple of frustratingly close losses in Detroit and now he’s been bounced
out of the Playoffs and his coach bounced right out of town to THE TEAM THAT
BEAT THEM.
Still, there is little more crippling to a sports man’s psyche than watching
two teams who were in first place get eliminated far short of their
destinies. For the stars it’s not such a hard pill to swallow after seeing
just what sort of team Anaheim has turned out to be. Plus, the Stars are a
young team that will for the most part be back together next year.
The
Mavs though were not what people billed them as. They were not the worst 60
win team in history… in fact it looks like they were better than the 60 wins
they ended up with.
After showing that they’re as tough as they come (especially for a team that
relies on small forwards and point guards for their biggest muscle) they
also came one bizarre 8 minute stretch from forcing a game seven against the
hottest team in the NBA.
The
sad thing is, with all due respect to Jason Kidd (all due respect to a wife
beating deva of a player that is) I don’t think anyone doubts that the Mavs
could have whipped up on the Nets, especially after the way they played
against the Spurs. So we’ve got this anti-climactic series to wade through
even though we know who the best two teams were… again… with all due
respect…
MLB:
Speaking of lost hope, how about Sammy Sosa?
I’m
not going to dwell on this, but it seems supremely ironic that the sports
very reason for a small revival a few years ago has now totally caved in
around its head.
Big
Mac and Sosa’s run for the home run record a few years ago was the MLB
version of the first weekend of Spider-Man. It got people interested and
revived an ailing sport.
Now
Mark has been found to have taken steroids and Sammy’s corking his bat.
Mothers have to explain to kids that two of the games ambassadors are
cheaters. Even if it only happened once, and even if they have lots of
talent cheating is cheating…
Sammy Sosa… the wizard behind the curtain has been discovered… and on down
the road we go…
This
time we stop at Bonds’ house. Yeah, he’s the one that the media doesn’t
like, but he’s also the one who hasn’t got an ounce of anything that
suggests the guy isn’t 100% authentic and yet when he was on his record
setting pace two years ago no one really cared because the media told them
not to.
So
while Mac was searching for a heart and somewhere along the line Sosa lost
his mind, there was Barry Bonds, certainly not the coward of the group…
we’ll save that for the media… no, there was Bonds, unshaken by the lack of
respect given by his peers. He just kept clicking his ruby slippers and
going home…about seventy times or so.
NFL:
Mini Camps. If you want a definition of
hope in sports it’s probably the NFL mini camp season which happens to
coincide with the June 1st free agent release party the NFL has
each year.
You
have a bunch of guys who hope to make a team, a bunch of teams who hope to
find a decent player in free agency to shore up problems and a bunch of free
agents hoping to cash in.
I
just hope the Cowboys stay away from Brian Griese.
NHL:
Only
two teams have managed to beat the Ducks this post season: Stars West and
Stars East (also known as
New Jersey).
Unfortunately, they both only managed to win twice (time will tell for
Jersey) and both allowed JSG to get into
his groove at the wrong time… which is to say ANYTIME.
What
else is going on in hockey that matters more than the finals? Oh, Bob
Gainey got a new job, but it’s in Canada so it doesn’t count.
HSOs:
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Does
anyone remember my article that focused on the rampant and unexplainable
firings of head coaches that didn’t deserve to be shown the door? Well,
you can add poor Rick Carlisle to that list. From now on when someone
asks the question, “What do you get if you win coach of the year and
follow that up with a first seeded team and a trip to the Easter Finals on
the tail of two back to back fifty win seasons?” Well… you can tell them
you get fired.
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But,
some people know how to treat a lady (if a lady is a 60 year old coaching
genius who lives in
Dallas and is a
male). Mark Cuban realized that he didn’t want to shake up a team that
grew leaps and bounds in this years playoffs (20 games will do that to
you) and resigned Don Nelson. But, did he give him the 2 years Nelly was
asking for? NO! The bastard gave him three years instead. No, wait…
that’s good.
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Well, not that she couldn’t compete with the men, but she could only
compete with the men who ALSO didn’t come close to making the cut. You
all know who I’m talking about and she’s gotten far too much press over
this issue to mention it again.
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Ok,
we get it ESPN “Say it ain’t Sosa.” Very witty pun. SHUT THE FUCK UP
DOUCHEBAGS!! Jesus, you guys are supposed to be the cutting edge and the
best you can come up with is Say it ain’t Sosa? How about giving this
story the levity it really deserves. Sosa found Cheating is all we need
as a public. The world of sports is sensationalized already without
shitty headlines blasted at us all day long. It’s not some fucking joke
that one of the finest players and ambassadors for the game has been found
cheating. It’s shocking, disturbing and most of all I’m hot and cold
about it, because it’s so hard to stay mad at a guy who seems to be a
class act for the most part.
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On
that note though… if you have to have a funny line how about something
cooler like, “Sosa Caught with his Cork Out?”
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In
the world of when it rains it pours Ken Griffey Jr. managed to hurt
himself during an at bat when he homered. If that’s not a sign from god I
don’t know what is.
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Derek
Jeter was made team captain of the New York Yankees only months after
Steinbrenner claimed that he wasn’t up to the normal standards of the
team, or partied too much or something like that. So which is it, a
shoddy team captain, or a shoddy owner?
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Terrel Owens managed to make himself look even more like a pompous ass by
skipping a couple of “voluntary” mini-camps. Everyone in the world of
sports knows that voluntary just means, “Voluntary if you don’t mind
looking like a douche.” But since when has Owens looked like anything
but? Not that he won’t be on my fantasy team next year or anything…
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Karl
Malone is considering
Dallas as one of
his primary choice locations next year. Despite what I’ve said in the
past… I don’t think I’d mind too much… as long as he doesn’t come in and
disrupt the team chemistry the Mavs have already… or you know… talk too
much… at all… ever
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Curt
Schilling was fined recently for beating up on a one of those cameras used
to evaluate umps called the Questec System. Despite being beat up worse
than an Arizona pitcher at a home game the Questec system claimed that
Schilling landed no strikes on the machine. In further news the broken
hand of Schilling was found to have been corked.
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