The Sports Curmudgeon®

After last Friday’s rant about things that make me sick in sports, I got an e-mail from a high school friend - - one of the “Boys of Summer” with whom I will take a baseball odyssey later this summer. He pointed out something that made him sick and as soon as I saw it, I realized I should have had it on my list too. Here is the text of his note to me:

“It makes me sick to see athletes point to the ‘heaven’ thanking the ‘heavenly being’ for their accomplishment(s) on the playing field, as if the ‘heavenly being’ was watching his/her endeavor. On second thought, perhaps that is the case, thus allowing you explain why disasters happen like earthquakes and cyclones that kill hundreds of thousands of people with one blow, perhaps the ‘heavenly being’ was watching the different sporting events around the world reveling in the ‘thank yous’ and turn his/her head!”

I cannot comment on the theological ramifications of a “distracted heavenly being”, but I can say unequivocally that athletes pointing to the heavens in the midst of a game are annoying at the very best. Someone – I don’t remember who so I can’t give proper credit here – once said that he would like to see an athlete point to the sky after a home run/TD run and then hear a booming voice from the sky say:

“Stop pointing! It’s impolite!”

Wimbledon marches on and the buzz surrounding it is virtually non-existent. In today’s Washington Post, the big Wimbledon article is on page 3 of the sports section and it deals with Billie Jean King and how she has seen Wimbledon change over the decades. There is nothing wrong with the article; it is well written. Nevertheless, it is not news that something has changed dramatically over the last three decades.

In memory of George Carlin’s passing, he had a view of tennis that I always found interesting:

“Technically, tennis is an advanced form of pingpong. In fact, tennis is pingpong played while standing on the table. Great concept, not a sport.”

While I’m at it, George Carlin did not think too highly of swimming and running as sports either:

Swimming is nothing more than “a way to keep from drowning.”

“Running isn’t a sport because anybody can do it. My mother can run. You don’t see her on the cover of Sports Illustrated, do you?

With Tiger Woods out of last weekend’s PGA event and the women playing in the distaff version of the US Open, you might have thought that the golf-watching crowd might have tuned into the ladies’ event in huge numbers. They did not and I think part of the reason is that women’s golf has not found a way to create and sustain a mega-star. The retirement announcement by Anika Sorenstam earlier this year will probably hurt women’s golf a lot more than was apparent when the announcement was made. Anika Sorenstam was the face of women’s golf and she had a following among golf fans that other women have not yet amassed.

Michelle Wie once was an attraction but her career has been one of hype and not accomplishment. In the women’s Open, don’t spend a lot of time looking for where she finished among the money winners; she didn’t. In Texas, they would say that Michele Wie is “all hat, no cattle.”

Now a bunch of women golfers have signed up with a modeling agency. The head of that agency told the LA Times that the women had not advertising opportunities and there was “not enough pizzazz on the LPGA Tour.” So, these women are going to work with a modeling agency to try to get people interested in them and their “golf fashions” as a way to get people interested in following women’s golf.

Before I hear even the first peep out of the knee-jerk feminists about how this is just another example of objectifying women, think for a moment about what these women are doing – and choosing to do on their own I might add. They are looking for a way to put themselves in the public eye as a means to bring attention to what they do for a living. That is not a bad thing for them to do; that is a very smart thing for them to do. I have no idea if this modeling agency can successfully promote these women away from the golf course, but I think it makes a lot of sense for these golfers to give this a try.

By the way, since I mentioned Tiger Woods’ absence from the golf scene above, I noted last week that his doctors said that they were pleased with the outcome of the surgery. I hope they are right. Nevertheless, can you recall a situation where a surgeon just finished an operation on a public figure and announced that he was unhappy with the outcome of the surgery? Imagine that news conference:

“Well, the OR team just didn’t bring the A-game today. The sutures ought to hold but we have done better in the past and we know we can do better in the future. It’s all about focus in there and I felt like we had too many distractions today – the anesthesiologist is getting a divorce and the chief nurse’s daughter is in a dance recital tonight. I’m sure the patient will walk again; I hope it will be without a noticeable limp.”

Finally, there are articles out there concerning the use of Viagra by athletes – particularly cyclists – as an athletic performance enhancer. There is no real debate that Viagra is a “performance enhancer” in another sense of the word, but now athletes may be using it outside the boudoir. Greg Cote had this observation in the Miami Herald regarding this situation:

“University of Miami scientists are researching whether the sex-aid drug Viagra improves the performance of cyclists at high altitudes. The study is an indication that evidently all diseases have been cured and scientists have officially run out of important things to research.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…