Getting night schooled by old school players at The Factory
Old school at night school - I slipped into The Factory Monday at 9 p.m. to snap photos of some older guys (adult league) playing basketball. The younger and lighter games moved the fastest for the longest period of time. Older and thicker guys tended to take it down inside - some looked like old trucks backing up. But the basketball is serious business, and it’s kind of physical. There is some junk talked, but there is zero tolerance for bad behavior. One team had Brian Polk, Andre Mathews, Derek Savage, Mike Savage, Jon Warren and others I did not know. They played a team with Tyreik Burton and Toney Floyd, and I don’t want to start anything, but Tyreik lit it up because he can shoot and he’s fast, young, in shape and doesn’t back down. Basic rule of adult basketball: “Don’t take a charge. It is not in your interest.”
Remote expertise - Can a man who never played a sport as a girl be an expert on girls' sports injuries? Can a man educated in a foreign country who never attended girls' sports at the developmental level in the United States be an expert on the risk of overuse injuries? Can the expert recommend cross training who never trained an athlete in a single sport? Would a university hire a sports psychologist who grew up in the Eastern Hemisphere, a person who doesn’t drink, eat meat or use slang, to work with the football team? The answer is sure, happens every day. Personally, I can go on and on about things and have no comprehension what I’m talking about. It’s like the homegrown American with a Pakistani psychiatrist. “Doc, do you think I’m crazy?” “Yes, I believe you are very much psychotic.” “But Doc, you’re not from here. You don’t understand the subtleties of our culture.” “This is true, but I believe you are crazy just about anywhere.”
Sportsmanship - Putting Pete Rose in the Baseball Hall of Fame is like inducting a brilliant student into the National Honor Society who cheated on a test or who wrote papers for others at $5 a page. I am a liberal forgiving person by nature, but Rose and all the Juice Boxers who deceived baseball fans and thereby cheapened the game and took true sportsmanship out of it don’t belong on a stage in any enshrinement ceremony. Slide them over to the Wikipedia Wing of Cooperstown and “read all about them.” I found that I am in a minority of people who hold to this position, which is cool, but if I had one vote, I’d always vote no.
Little EPO - Sung to the tune of "Little GTO." It's a hormone-increased red blood cell production part of the Tour De Pancreas bike tour. I don’t know who is “doping” and who is natural, but those professional bike riders are the most high-performance and angular athletes across the pantheon of performance-enhanced athletes. Who wouldn’t want to look like that? EPO has also been shown to improve memory skills. So what are the side effects? The box warnings cite increased risk of death, myocardial infarction, stroke, and venous thromboembolism (my least favorite). And so how come Lance Armstrong has more detractors than Pete Rose and Alex Rodriguez and Justin Gatlin? Seriously, if the deleterious side effects of steroids and doping agents are not sold, some athletes will take shortcuts, who can bet on it.
Snippets - One more month until practices start for fall sports and that includes college. Time to get in tip-top shape and that includes officials and sportswriters and the rest of us who work on our feet. Some fall seasons I employ the No Hot Dog Rule, but I’m not ready to make that commitment at this time. David Frum, a former aide to President Bush, suggested on Twitter that Serena Williams may be on steroids. He said her muscular build raised that question for him, and now Frum has been catching hell. But he has the right to raise the question as she is a public figure. Look at early Serena and later Serena; questions arise, and raise your own questions, if any. The temptations to “dope” surround our young athletes, so all parents keep a close eye and don’t think it can’t happen to your kid because that stuff is already in the community and like most dope it is sold by stupid people. Go on now, git!
