Sports - The Knees Are The First To Go
Because most of us are just too stupid to know when to hang it up.
Please, No More Tiger Tales!
Last weekend I spent more time watching the Masters golf tournament on television than I like to admit. I guess I find it strangely comforting to see tanned, handsome, self-assured millionaire touring golf professionals occasionally shank a five iron into a sand trap.
To me the highlight of the weekend was Fred Couples making a serious run for the Green Jacket. I loved this because:
a). He is fifty years old and has more gray hair than I do;
b). His name is "Fred;"
c). In an elite sport where everything a player uses, wears, eats, drinks, or thinks about is computer engineered for maximum performance and endorsement value, this guy was playing the most prestigious tournament in professional golf wearing slip-on boat shoes with no socks.
c). In an elite sport where everything a player uses, wears, eats, drinks, or thinks about is computer engineered for maximum performance and endorsement value, this guy was playing the most prestigious tournament in professional golf wearing slip-on boat shoes with no socks.
Also, I found it mildly interesting to see Tiger Woods making his comeback after five months away from competitive golf.
Winter Olympics, NASCAR, and Red Wings: the Perfect Valentine's Day
This weekend my wife and I are enjoying a Perfect Storm of Really Cool Stuff.
On Friday the 2010 Winter Olympics* kicked off in Vancouver, British Columbia. There was a terrific Opening Ceremony highlighted by some teams marching in with hundreds of happy skiers and skaters waving at the crowd, while other teams were made up of a single athlete carrying a flag and followed by fifteen old bald government guys.
Ernie
One of my all-time heroes left our world today. Ernie Harwell, the Hall of Fame broadcaster who used his gifts to transform Detroit Tiger games into works of art, passed away today at the age of 92. Here is a column I wrote last year, when Ernie told us all that he had inoperable late-stage cancer, and that he would soon be leaving his wife Lulu and all his loving fans behind.
I moved to Southeast Michigan on a blind date in the Spring of 1975. When I arrived I was a White Sox fan, mostly because I had spent my formative high school years within easy obscenity-shouting distance of Chicago. Back in those days, probably the best thing about our pathetic Sox was a broadcaster named Harry Caray, who was known for saying "Holy Cow!" Harry used this as a fairly transparent substitute for shouting obscenities .
As that first summer unfolded, two amazing things happened more or less reshaped my life. First, Nan and I decided that the blind date was going well enough to get married, which is bound to make a summer stick in your mind, just about any way you cut it.
Second, I discovered the Detroit Tigers and a baseball play-by-play man named Ernie Harwell.
No Requiem For The Red Wings
The Detroit Red Wings did not win the Stanley Cup this year. Yikes! Our Wings are the most magnificent sports franchise since Ogg's Cave Clubbers dominated the old Neanderthal Leagues and won twenty-one straight Pleistocene Cups. How could they possibly have lost?
For those of you who do not live in Michigan, or for those of you who do live in Michigan and who are not Detroit Red Wings fanatics (we know who both of you are and where you live...) I should give you a little background.
In ice hockey, the highest achievement possible is winning the Stanley Cup. This is a trophy named after a nineteenth century British Governor of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston, Earl of Derby and Count of Crosschecking. After watching an impressive hockey contest back in 1893, Lord Stanley apparently figured that the players must be pretty darned proud of their accomplishments, and really thirsty, so he bought them a big silver cup to carve their names on and drink Molson out of.
The best hockey teams in North America have been doing that ever since.
35 Years of Tigers
A couple of weeks ago my family made our first trip to Comerica Park to see a Detroit Tigers game. I have to admit that while we're all long-time Tiger fans, I have not been in a big hurry to go down there - and only partly because I resent having to apply for a home equity loan to pay for a couple of plastic cups full of lukewarm beer.
My biggest issue with Comerica Park is that I really loved the old Tiger Stadium, a place where you could save a few dollars and buy "obstructed view" seats. This meant sitting directly behind a steel I-beam support, so pretty much all you would see of the game was that beam and the hot dog vendor.
Even so, there was always a lot of noise in that old park, the hot dogs
were pretty good, and on your way in and out you got to feast your eyes
on the greenest green you'll find anywhere in the world - Tiger Stadium
grass.
