Winning isn't everything

You perhaps have read about the girls’ basketball team in Texas that beat another team recently 100-0.

It didn’t surprise me to hear of something like that. When I was a sportswriter I had to watch a lot of girls’ basketball games, and let me tell you, it could be tough. I liked girls, and I liked basketball, but I didn’t like girls’ basketball.

Now, this was 20 years ago, and I’m sure that the female side of the game has improved greatly, but I still can’t bring myself to watch. They even have a professional league for women, which I also haven’t watched. I assume the players aren’t as heavily tattooed as they are in the NBA.

I covered one high school game where the final score was 70-4, and believe me, it wasn’t that close. I saw a girl travel, double dribble, pass the ball to herself, commit an offensive foul and throw the ball over the backboard, all on the same play. The poor referee just looked over to the sideline and shrugged.

The coach of the team that won the 100-0 game got fired after he wouldn’t apologize for running up the score. He said he wasn’t trying to embarrass the other team, but he probably was. I’ve seen jackass coaches like that all my life. I questioned a girls’ softball coach once about running up the score, and he told that his girls were racehorses and they couldn’t be held back.

Did I mention they were 10 years old?

When my son was 7, he played on a Pee Wee league football team, and you would not believe how those redneck coaches behaved – yelling, screaming, throwing things, acting like complete fools on the sidelines. Picture Steve Spurrier with much smaller players, and you get the picture.

I remember the last time I coached baseball. It was when my son was 11, and I didn’t plan to coach, but I got guilted into it because apparently they didn’t have enough coaches, and some boys weren’t going to get to play. So they gave me a team of all the leftovers who didn’t get drafted, and it was quite an experience.

There were a few boys on the team who didn’t know a baseball from a canteloupe. My son was a good player, and so were two or three others, but for the most part we were the Bad News Bears without the drinking and cursing.

I assessed this bunch early on and realized we would not be playing for a title, so I decided, what the heck. Every kid gets to play. Every kid gets a chance to pitch or bat leadoff or play shortstop.

I had a parent come offer to help me coach, and it wasn’t long before he was giving me a talking to about what to do, and how I needed to establish a consistent batting order for us to have a chance. I said, are you kidding? There are boys on this team who couldn’t hit a beach ball with a boat paddle. Bobby Cox could fill out the lineup card and it wouldn’t make a difference.

We lost all but one or two games, so I feel for those girls who lost by 100 points, and their parents. It’s just a game. But when a coach feels it’s necessary to beat a team that badly, it’s easy to see who the real loser was.

An unfortunate inheritance

When I finally graduated college, got a job and moved out on my own, my parents went sort of crazy.

These two very frugal – some would say cheap – people suddenly started spending money like they were Congressmen. Every time I’d come home to see them there’d be something new – a car, a truck, a TV set, a motor home. They would just laugh and say they were spending my inheritance.

I was the youngest child, so when I was out of their hair, their financial obligations to their children were over. I figured that I had been given enough by them over the years, and I’ve never really planned on inheriting anything, at least monetarily. But they both left me with me something.

What I got from my dad, who is 81 and still going strong, was mostly things to help me get through life, things I learned just from watching him and paying attention. My dad didn’t give me a lot of lectures. We didn’t have Ward Cleaver moments where he would sit me down and say, “Son, I hope you learned a valuable lesson today.”

No, I just observed him and figured out that there were certain things a man needed to know – that you should work hard, and provide for your family, and don’t go around whining and complaining all the time. I also learned that a man should always cut the grass, drive the car and control the TV. And I picked up some key manly skills from him, like how to blow your nose when you’re outside and don’t have a Kleenex (you just close one nostril and blow hard through the other one. And make sure you’re not against the wind when you do it.)

But while I learned a lot from my dad, most of the things I inherited came from my late mother. I have her sense of humor, her love of reading, and her sharp wit, also known as a “smart mouth.” I also inherited many of her ailments, the worst of which is a propensity for headaches.

I don’t mean those little nagging headaches that make it hard to concentrate. I mean the ones that make you feel like your head is being jackhammered from the minute you wake up. Ones that feel like you are being stabbed in the head from the inside. Ones that make it impossible for you to see straight, walk straight or think straight.

My mother called them “those old sick headaches.” She had them most of her life, though they stopped when she had a brain tumor removed in her ’70s. That’s comforting.

I went to a doctor who had me try some “preventive” drugs for a while. The first was some sort of anti-seizure drug that had shown some success preventing migraines. It made me insane. My mind raced 100 miles per hour, my hands and feet tingled, I slept about 4 hours a night and food tasted different. On the bright side, I dropped about 10 pounds in a month. But it didn’t stop the headaches.

Then, he put me on an older anti-depressant. It also didn’t stop headaches, but it made me hungry and sleepy. I would eat breakfast, and then eat something in the car on the way to work, then hit the vending machine as soon as I got in. I put back on the 10 pounds I’d lost, plus about 10 more, in a month. The silver lining was, I wasn’t depressed. I was truly fat and happy.

Recently, he had me try some medicine that they give to people with high blood pressure. I don’t have high blood pressure, but he swore that this drug has been an effective headache preventer. I’m starting to suspect that he just has some drugs stockpiled and he’s trying to get rid of them, because all this stuff did was sap what little energy I had left.

Oh, well. There are worse things to have to live with. I need to just buck up and stop complaining. I’m giving myself a headache.

A wonderful day in the neighborhood

I realized the other day that I don’t know much about my neighbors.

I know some superficial things about them. I know, for example, that the people on the corner still think it’s Christmas-time, as all of their decorations are up. I know that the people next to them must have mental problems, because they own six Great Danes, and keep them in their house.

But I hardly know anybody’s name. I confine my interactions with most of my neighbors to a friendly wave, an occasional “How you doing?” and a dirty look when I suspect it was their dog who crapped in my yard.

When I was growing up, I knew everybody in my neighborhood. I knew to stay out of the crazy lady’s yard three houses up, because she would come out front and cuss at you. I knew never to eat anything prepared in the house across the street, because my mama said “those people are nasty.” I knew which dogs were friendly and which ones would bite.

There was a family across the street and one house up, and the man and woman would get into unbelievable screaming matches. You could hear them from 100 yards away. Then the next time you’d see them, they’d be all lovey-dovey, laughing and playing with each other. It’s a fine line, I reckon.

There was the redneck family up the road with the slutty teen-aged daughter who wore denim cut-offs that were so short she could have gotten a colonoscopy without ever taking them off. I found a lot of excuses to walk by their house when she was outside.

My next-door neighbor’s name was Mike, and his dad was very strict. He wouldn’t even let his kids listen to rock-and-roll in his house. One day, Mike snuck me into his dad’s bedroom and showed me a stack of Playboy magazines about 5 feet high, dating back to the 1950’s. I looked at some pictures of Miss September 1976 and thought, man, this beats the hell out of Ted Nugent any day.

Now, I don’t know much at all about my neighbors. The guy who lives on one side of me is named Tommy. That’s all I know. He and I have talked quite a bit, but almost exclusively about our lawns. If I ever go on a multi-state crime spree, the TV newspeople will come interview Tommy about me and he’ll say, “Well, he was quiet, kind of kept to himself. He knew a lot about weeds. I never saw this coming.”

I don’t know the name of the guy who lives on the other side of me, or even what he looks like. I couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup, even though he’s lived there at least two years with his wife and small child. I think he has some form of agoraphobia, as he comes outside in the daytime less often than Barnabas Collins.

There’s a guy across the street that I’m pretty close with. We talk all the time about all sorts of things – football, baseball, golf, weeds. He’s lived there for about eight years, and up until the past two years, I called him by the wrong name, and he never corrected me.

For the life of me, I thought his name was Clay. And that’s what I called him. One day my wife ran into his wife in the grocery store, and his wife kept referring to someone named “Thad.” She finally asked her if Thad is her husband’s name, and the woman (I don’t know her name, either) said yes, it is.

I have no idea why I started calling him Clay. It doesn’t even sound like Thad. At least it has the same number of letters.

Maybe I’ll make an effort to be a better neighbor. I can go around and introduce myself, exchange phone numbers, invite them over some time, and offer to help dismantle the manger display.

Lucky and me

There’s a big hit movie out now called “Marley and Me,” which is about a man and his relationship with his misbehaving, unruly dog. First the guy wrote a best-selling book about it, then they’ve made it into a movie, with Jennifer Anniston in it. She is not a dog.

The commercials for the movie show scenes with the dog doing all sorts of funny and cute and destructive things. My guess is somehow the people in the movie will, through their relationships with this lovable scamp, learn some things about themselves, and then, as in all good dog movies, the poor mutt will die.

I looked down at Lucky sprawled out on the floor at my feet the other night, lying on her back, all four legs in the air like she had died and rigor mortis had set in, and I said, “That could have been us.”

She grunted, broke wind, closed her eyes and rolled over. I guess the “dying” part didn’t interest her.

I don’t know that a movie about Lucky would be a success, because many of the things she does would not be believable on the big screen.

Take this morning, for instance. It was 13 degrees outside. I let her out of her crate in the kitchen, where she sleeps every night, and she scooted out into the backyard, where she spends most of her time. But since it was so cold, I decided to let her back in this morning after she did her business.

I opened the back door to call her in, and I didn’t see her. She has a doghouse, which is lined with hay so she can burrow down inside it and keep warm, but do you think that’s where she was? No. She was sitting in the middle of the yard.

So I called her. “Lucky, come here.” She just looked at me. I said, “Come back in the house, it’s cold.” She turned her head and pretended she didn’t hear me. I suspect my wife or kids taught her this trick.

Meanwhile, just standing there calling her made my face freeze worse than Kenny Rogers’, so I gave up. Never argue with a dog or a woman.

After a few minutes, I decided to try again. This time, she was up on the patio, so I thought maybe she had come to her senses. I opened the door and said, “Get in this house.” She wagged her tail, bobbed her head a couple of times, let loose a stream of drool, and didn’t move. She just sat there, happily defiant. So I decided to use the only truly effective way of persuading her, which is to grab her collar and drag her in.

But as soon as I made a move toward her, she put a Knowshon Moreno move on me and sprinted back out into the yard. I realized now it was hopeless. I gave it one last futile attempt, yelling “It’s 13 degrees out here!” But dogs have no concept of temperature, so it left her unmoved.

I’m not too worried about her. She has a thick coat, and a place to get out of the wind, and I’ve never heard of a dog freezing to death in Georgia.

And just like in the movie, through my relationship with Lucky, I have learned something about myself: that I have an insane dog.

Temper, temper

I decided to sit out this year’s old men’s basketball league, despite having played the previous two seasons.

I had a number of valid reasons, including a balky shoulder and a lack of talent, but the bottom line was, I just didn’t want to play. I finally settled on the reason why: I don’t like referees.

Perhaps I have some sort of a problem with authority. But I cannot get through a single game without getting angry at one or both of the referees. Here’s my problem with them:
A. You cannot win an argument with them. They get final say.
B. They are often wrong.

I try to obey my better angels on the court, but the devil in me always comes out. I end up saying something like, “Is this your first basketball game?” or “I didn’t know waterheads knew how to blow a whistle,” or something like that.

Did I mention this is a church league? Well, I can’t help it. I know I ought to act right.

Sometimes I think in these situations, What would Jesus do? But as far as I know, Jesus never got called for a charging foul when the defender WAS CLEARLY MOVING!

I actually got kicked out of a church-league softball game last year. It’s a coed league. My daughter played on the team with me. As did the preacher. But let me explain.

There was a close call in the first inning, and the umpire got it wrong, which is OK, except when I innocently asked him why he called the guy safe when Stevie Wonder could see that he was clearly out, he got a little huffy with me.

Not wanting to cause trouble, but seeking clarification, I said, “Am I not allowed to ask you a question?” He looked at me and he said, “Shut it.” I didn’t think that was very nice, but to my credit, I did indeed “shut it.” For the time being.

Next time I came up to bat, I was still a little steamed, and I bombed one over the left-center field fence. Your classic church coed-league softball no-doubter.

I began to circle the bases, and the grumpy umpire was standing near second base, and as I jogged near him, we made eye contact, and, well, I might have said something.

To this day, doubt lingers over what happened. It’s possible that I said, “It’s gone!”, meaning the home run that I hit, a natural celebratory reaction by me. It’s also possible that I looked at him and said, “Did you like that?” And then winked. The mystery may never be solved.

Either way, I think he overreacted by charging toward home plate, ostentatiously throwing me out of the game as I crossed, with the veins throbbing in his little neck and sweat running down his face and into his cheesy 70’s porn-star moustache.

I have this wonderful effect on people, it’s really hard to explain.

Regardless of my guilt or innocence, I felt bad about the incident, so I resolved to keep my mouth shut the rest of the season, and I did. At the umpires, anyway. I might have yelled at players on the other team a time or two. All in good fun, of course.

So I think it was wise for me to sit out basketball season, and I promise to approach the upcoming softball season in a positive, conciliatory, turn-the-other-cheek frame of mind. I might have to wear a muzzle, but I can do it.

For the love of money

I think that I’m about to get a divorce from the first love of my life.

I’m talking about baseball. Specifically, professional baseball.

I just don’t know if I can take it anymore. Sure, there have been times I have come close to walking away before. When the players went on strike in 1981, I was pretty upset. When they did it again in 1994, I was livid. And when all of the steroid news came to light a few years ago, I was disgusted.

But every time, I came back. Even though major league baseball never told me it was sorry. No players ever sent roses to me or bought me jewelry. They didn’t ask for my forgiveness. But I gave it anyway.

I started loving baseball as a kid, when I would throw a ball against the house for hours, pretending I was Nolan Ryan striking out Reggie Jackson; or throwing a Whiffle ball up in the air and hitting it over the roof, then circling the imaginary bases slowly, like I was Hank Aaron or Willie Stargell.

What do kids do now? Make imaginary calls to their agents, demanding they negotiate with their parents for more allowance? Do they emulate a hero like Manny Ramirez and pretend to be hurt until they can get traded? Do they imitate Gary Sheffield and spout off their mouths to the media, talking nonsense, then get praised for being “candid”?

Here in Atlanta, there’s been a lot of talk about John Smoltz leaving the Braves for the Boston Red Sox. Many people seem to be mad at the Braves for not offering him more money, even though he has been injured a lot lately, is 41, and is coming off of major shoulder surgery. I’ve heard people on the radio almost crying about the shabby treatment of this great Atlanta icon.

There’s no guarantee he’ll pitch an inning this year. Last year, the Braves paid him $10 million, and he was only able to pitch in a handful games. As far as I know, he didn’t return any of that money.

And yet, the Braves offered him $3 million this year to play baseball. Do you realize how much money that is? Odds are, you don’t, because you don’t make anywhere close to that. Unemployment in the country has hit a 16-year high, companies are cutting back, people are losing their retirement, and there’s more angst about the economy than we’ve felt in a long time.

Oh, and if you want to go to a baseball game and take your kids to see Smoltz or others play? You’d better get a second mortgage on your house first, or rob a bank.

And against this backdrop, a man is offered $3 million to play a children’s game. Not work for a living, but play. Throw a ball, catch it, run around in tight pants. And he decides, you know what? That’s not enough. Somebody else offered me $5 million. I’m going to take that.

Actually, I have no problem with that. It’s a free country. He has a right to earn as much money as he can. More power to him.

My problem is with the reaction to all of this. Fans and sportswriters are angry at the Braves for the way they “treated” Smoltz. Smoltz said it made him sad. Chipper Jones – who’ll get paid about $11 million this year to play a child’s game – is “very upset” and said the Braves disrespected Smoltz.

Are you kidding me? Are you freakin’ kidding me?

I like Smoltz a lot, always have. One of the greatest Braves ever. But don’t kid yourself, he is motivated by what motivates nearly every professional baseball player – greed. Show me the money.

The amount of money professional baseball players are paid is shameful. Remember Mark Teixiera? He was just signed to an 8-year contract by the New York Yankees for $180 million.

I did some crack research – I Googled it – and learned that the average salary for a registered nurse in the U.S. is $42,000 per year. Nurses are pretty important, wouldn’t you say? Society would suffer if there were no nurses. Society would survive if there were no more baseball players.

Do you know how many years a nurse would have to work to make as much money as Teixiera? 4,285 years. That’s well past retirement age.

By the way, here’s how many championships Teixiera’s teams have won – zero. Same as me.

How about firemen? Remember after 9-11, when firemen became national heroes? How they rushed into those burning buildings, how they risk their lives, and how they help save our houses, our property, even our lives? They’re pretty important, right?

But are they as important as the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez? See, he does things like hit a ball over a fence, walk around Central Park without his shirt on and hang out with Madonna. And while a fireman’s average salary is $55,000 a year, Rodriguez’ last contract was for $275 million for 10 years.

In other words, it would take a fireman 5,000 years to earn as much as Rodriguez got in his last contract. A 5,000-year-old fireman can’t run into burning buildings.

And Rodriguez is also in a tie with me and Teixiera for number of championships won. Goose egg.

So when I hear baseball players, or any professional athletes, start talking about fairness, or being disrespected, or getting paid what they’re worth, my head explodes like in the movie “Scanners.”

If somebody offers you $3 million to play – not work, play – baseball for a year, you shouldn’t feel sad or upset or offended or disrespected. You should fall to your knees, thank God, and realize how lucky you are, and then shut the hell up.

Rise and shine

I woke up at 6 today, put on my exercise clothes, and drove to the gym for an early-morning workout.

I get it in my head every year that I should work out in the mornings, and then I try it, and then I go another year before I try it again, because it always reaffirms two things for me:

1. Exercise is stupid.
2. I am not a morning person.

I do not enjoy, nor have I ever enjoyed, mornings. I don’t like to talk in the mornings. I don’t like to interact socially in the mornings. I don’t like to think in the mornings. I gotta have three cups of coffee in me before I’ll even grunt at anybody.

I got this from my mother. She was also not a morning person. When I was going to school and she was working, we had a simple routine. She would come to my room and say, “Get up.” I would drag myself up in a few minutes, stumble into the kitchen, and we would have a wordless breakfast. We didn’t even look at each other. It was the way things should be.

My father had a very endearing way of waking me in the morning. First, he would come in my room and turn on the light and start shouting, “Come on, wake up!” If I didn’t immediately respond, he would come and snatch all the covers off of me, then pull the pillow from under my head.

If this didn’t work, he would grab me, shake me, roll me over and tickle me until I screamed bloody murder and I had no choice but to get up, usually swinging my fists at him blindly. Then he’d laugh and walk out of the room. He found of all of this funny. Looking back on it, I sort of understand the Menendez brothers a little more.

This morning wasn’t bad because I was bolstered by a rare good night of sleep on our new mattress, which is a very exciting new addition to my life. (When you reach your 40s, you take excitement where you can get it). We realized the other day that we had gotten the old mattress when our daughter was a baby, and since she’s now 17, it might be a good time to get another one. That, and its shape resembled the surface of the moon.

I didn’t realize how much thicker the new mattress was until the delivery man put it on the bed. It hits me about chest high. I feel like the girl from “The Princess and the Pea” up on that thing. My poor wife is going to need a mini-trampoline to get up on it.

I hope she doesn’t roll out of the bed during the night. She did that once early in the marriage, and she’s never forgotten my reaction. She got back in the bed, woke me up to tell me that she had fallen off the bed, and I looked at her and said, with a little irritation, “Well, you’re back in it now.” She was about six months pregnant at the time. I lost my chance at “Husband of the Year” at that moment.

So now I’m looking forward to another restful night on my mile-high mattress. Then I’ll wake up in the morning, sans backache, drink my coffee in silence, and wonder what the hell I was thinking about the previous day when I went to the gym before sunrise.

A weighty matter

I tipped the scales this morning at a robust 203 pounds.

In my defense, my hair was still a little bit wet from the shower, and I haven’t clipped my toenails in a while, so my actual weight is probably somewhat lower than that. But still, that’s too much.

As I looked down at the numbers on the scale – leaning forward so I could see over my protruding belly – I made my annual vow to do something about it. Starting tomorrow.

For me, it’s not a physical appearance issue. I’m not vain and don’t much care what I look like, though I am a little frightened by the man-boobs. My underwear-modeling days are behind me now. Instead, it’s a quality-of-life issue.

For example, a while back I went to the basketball court with my 15-year-old son to play a little one-on-one. This is getting to be a bigger challenge, as he is now as tall as me, and he plays basketball about four hours a day. But other than one fluke occurrence last year, I still maintained the upper hand.

We played two games and I lost them both. By the time the score was 3-2, I felt like I had just completed the Iron Man triathlon with a refrigerator strapped to my back. It was only through sheer determination, meanness and a willingness to cheat that I was able to keep both games fairly close.

Afterward he was beaming with pride, and I suppose there’s a part of a father that feels good when he sees his son grow more mature and accomplish a goal. So with that in mind I looked him in the eye, shook his hand firmly and said, “Congratulations. Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.”

He, of course, handled the win with grace and humility. Every day for a week, he greeted every person he met by saying “I beat my dad in basketball.” If he had enough money, he’d have hired a skywriter to fly over our neighborhood spelling it out.

The other day we had a rematch, and I won both games, so a bit of my pride was restored. I sank the last winning shot, held my hand in the air after the follow-through, and said, “Get some!” Then I went home and took 17 Advil tablets. He complained later that the court was wet, and that took away his quickness, so I asked him if he’d like a little cheese with that whine. Sportsmanship is not big at my house.

It’s clear that I won’t be able to maintain my sports dominance at home for much longer, though I plan to hold on to my mini-golf crown. I’ve never been beaten in a Williams family match, and I hope to retire undefeated.

Anyway, a new year has begun, and before I begin to get mistaken for the pregnant man, I am renewing my efforts to be less of a man. I’m eyeing 190 pounds as a goal and I hope I can get there by the beginning of summer, which is bathing suit season. I’m wondering if they make any “relaxed fit” Speedos?