GOOD SPORTS
By Sorcha Blaine
It’s mid-August and the Boys of
Summer who were winding up are winding
down. The end of the season is at hand and
in that hand is a baseball. Or a golf ball.
Or a soccer ball. Any ball at all, really,
except a football because it’s too early -
no, wait. They’re playing football now, too.
I haven’t been able to watch a lot of
sports this summer.
Or any other summer.
Or any other fall, winter or spring,
for that matter.
It used to be that the sports were
all nicely divided up - summer was
baseball, winter was basketball - and
I would know what I was avoiding.
Now I’m running for my no-sports life
with my remote control. Sadly, and all
too often, I get caught in the act of
seeing one of those ball shows. I quake.
I cower. I wonder why anyone would
spend time watching a game designed
for failure. The players are required to
negotiate impossibly difficult goalposts,
tees, bases, etc., and they can rarely
do it successfully.
And they make mistakes.
And a time-out is called.
And I end up missing Will and
Grace because the stupid game
runs over.
This is so wrong on
so many levels.
So I’m here to offer my advice to
the pros and semi-pros and semi-hemi-demi
pros and all their bosses. Maybe you’ve
been looking at the game so long you can’t
see it anymore. Maybe you need a
different perspective on what would work,
what’s slowing things down and what
changes would speed things up..
I’m offering my analysis here.
Free. And I’ll be done way
before Will and Grace comes on.
GOLF
The main problem seems to be the big
pools of sand everyplace. I don’t want
to criticize how someone else manages
their budget but you’d think the owners
of the golf courses would put a teensy
bit of money into cleaning out those
sandy areas before a tournament - pay
some kid $10 an hour, give him a shovel,
a wheelbarrow and let him go to work
As it is, whenever a ball lands in one of
those beachy-places, the poor player
spends forever trying to knock it back
onto the grass. This is a lot of work for
a golfer to go through just because the
owners can’t manage their money
efficiently. Again: not my business, but
an obvious improvement that would
move things right along.
BASEBALL
Here, everybody is too far apart -
move the bases in closer so the batter
can see where the ball is going to be,
for Heaven’s sake. How can he hit it if
he can’t see it? Another thing would be
to make the bats or the balls bigger.
Maybe both. And if the balls were
wiffleballs that would be good because
it would slow them down even more.
FOOTBALL
Take away the padding. All that
protective gear just prevents the players
from getting hurt and getting hurt is the
objective, here, isn’t it? You’ve got a
field full of huge guys running and slamming
into each other with all their force.
Maybe I’m missing something but it
seems to me the point of the game is to
disable as many of the other team as you
can until you win. So I say tell the players
to quit being such babies about pain and
make them throw away the damn padding.
Instead of padding, an acceptable
alternative might be cute little leather togas
like Russell Crowe wore in Gladiator.
I guarantee you female viewership
would go up 100%.
I know I’d gladly miss Will and
Grace for that.
