Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

The Narrow World of Sports

I'm spending most of the weekend at RFK, mostly because I don't want to miss any send-off that the team might end up giving Frank Robinson.

Even before the Nats had played a game, my brother-in-law, life-long Baltimore fan, had told me that Robinson's flaw was that he runs the pitchers into the ground. Even though I still don't know baseball too well, I sort of see where BIL is coming from...but on the other hand, I'd love to see a bullpen of pitchers tough enough to play like that.

I think not understanding baseball is why I'm still as in love with the Nats as I was last year. I'm naive. I forget they are in last place. It's like watching the Caps when I was eight years old; I don't know any better. And with my combination of naivete and sentimentality, I love Frank and I wish they'd extend his contract. With an owner's money to spend, a GM could work with him to find players who respected and understood Frank's way, and maybe that could be a great club...

But I guess that's not happening, so I hope at least they retire #20 and make a huge fuss.

I am actually going to miss the Caps home opener this year, because I'll be out of town for that century bike ride. Remember how I said I was wimping out to do the metric (62 miles; i.e., 100 km)? Well, I haven't trained worth squat. The metric is going to kill me. And to make it uglier, I found out yesterday that the metric route is really 69.2 miles. I know seven miles doesn't sound like much, but once your untrained ass has been on a saddle all day, seven more miles can make you weep.

Wonder how I could score some of that dope everybody's been talking about?

Actually, I probably would have written pages about cycling and doping this summer, but I was too absorbed with my aunt's death. The quick summary of how I feel about what's up is: Lots of questions about Floyd's positive (testosterone wouldn't have helped him win that stage anyway, it was the stage 16 bonk, not the stage 17 win, that was the aberrant ride for him), I don't think it is a French anti-American conspiracy, Dick Pound is a jackass, I'm glad Frankie came clean. I doubt the extent of who-took-what-when will ever be known, and I don't think that the overall standings the last ten years have really been affected by the doping.

Football (the Redskins and the Terps, that is) has been giving me headaches so far this season, so that's it from my narrow world of sports.

Posted by Nic at September 30, 2006 01:18 PM | TrackBack