Poor Dumb Dirk

All that money and all that contact with who knows how many women, and Dallas Maverick's star Dirk Nowitzki chooses this woman. I'm disappointed in ya, Bud! It sounds like Dirk has the "lost puppy dog" syndrome, in which he falls for sob stories. Being tender-hearted ain't necessarily a bad thing, but you can't let it make you stupid - especially if you're a multi-millionaire star player for an NBA team with championship aspirations.

Surely he and other athletes were warned of such women. They're out there, and people like Dirk are like honey to these bees. The Dirks of the world simply can't afford - financially and metaphorically - to be stupid in times like this. I would imagine the temptation is enormous when women are throwing themselves at your feet. Heck, I'll be honest in saying that I don't know what I'd do in that situation; I've never had lots of beautiful women throw themselves at my feet - editorial cartoonists just don't get stuff like that happening to them.

But I'd like to think that I'd have enough willpower to realize that these women don't love me for me, they want me for my money. I can imagine that Dirk is also lonely. Still, you can't let loneliness make you stupid. I'm not sure what I'd advise Dirk to do if he ever asked me, but he was told by friends and family about this woman, and it looks like he should have listened. I suppose that's what he needs to do: let friends and family meet whomever he has an interest in and let them tell him what they think. Being in love, it is said, can make you blind - and it's in such times that you need your family and friends to help you see straight.

But relying on them telling you such things is one thing - listening to them when they tell you is another. Hopefully now Dirk will be more willing to listen next time - but then again the "lost puppy dog" syndrome can be hard to shake. In a very real sense, this whole embarrassing episode could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him - provided that he learns the lessons from it. Time will tell.

Thrilling NCAA Tournament disgusts BCS officials

Found this through a fellow blogger, and am I glad!

I think this....




....should be a t-shirt. I would buy it.

A-Fraud Day with the Fort Worth Cats

A local semi-pro baseball team, the Fort Worth Cats, will be hosting its annual Cats Fest as a way to promote the start of the selling of tickets to its summer games. Among the promotions is "A-Fraud Redemption Day" in which former fans of the former Texas Rangers baseball player, Alex Rodriguez (aka "A-Rod" in case you didn't already know that) can redeem their A-Rod merchandise for free tickets to one of their games. Here's the blurb about it:

Cats Fest to feature A-Fraud Redemption Day The Cats will host Cats Fest on March 14 from 10 a.m. -1 p.m. at LaGrave Field in Fort Worth. The event marks the beginning of individual ticket sales for the upcoming season.

Also as part of the event, the Cats will be holding A-Fraud Redemption Day, allowing all fans who were a victim of A-Fraud between 2001-2003 to bring in A-Rod related merchandise or collectibles and receive four general admission tickets, good for a 2009 Cats’ game at LaGrave Field.

Fans can run the bases, play catch on the field, take tours of the ballpark and enjoy complimentary hot dogs and sodas while gearing up for the 2009 season. There will also be bounce houses and other activities for kids. Fans can get autographs from current and former Cats’ players as well as Dodger and legendary first base coach Wayne Terwilliger.

The Cats 2009 season begins on May 14 with a 7:05 p.m. game at LaGrave Field. Spring training begins on May 1.

As for the issue of A-Rod himself, I 'm not quite sure what to say about the dude. How he can not know that he was taking steroids? Having something foreign injected into your butt should be a clue! If he's an athlete and he doesn't have a cold, then was else could this substance being injected into his butt be? Apparently, whatever it was, it didn't boost his intelligence. Nope, I don't buy his alibi - I believe that he knew what he was doing, and I think he should suffer the consequences for his actions.

I'm going to switch to a sport that I know doesn't have cheating scandals: Boxing. :-P

TCU falls to Utah, dooming BCS chances

As I was in the process of noticing that fellow blogger Joel had posted rather lightly yesterday, I watched in horror as my local university, TCU, lost to its conference foe Utah. Thus, its hope for a shot at the BCS is dashed for another season. See, if we were USC or some other BCS school, we'd still have a shot even with two losses, but non-BCS schools have to be abso-freakin-lutely perfect just to get a look in our direction. I wanted to wax eloquently about the heartbreaking loss, and I wanted to describe the agonies of defeat and such, but despite all that, only one word comes to mind:

CRAP!

TCU moves up to #12!

The Mighty TCU Horned Frogs move up to #12! YESSS!

Now if we can finish the season unbeaten, we just might have a shot at this rigged election that is the BCS!

New poll: What sports do you watch the most?

New poll, folks: What sport do you watch the most? I'll give my views on this issue later. In the meantime, I think it'd be pretty much unanimous that Cuba's Angel Matos deserves the biggest jerk award for kicking a referee for disqualifying him in a taekwondo match for taking too much injury time in a bronze medal match at the Olympics.

Texas Rangers baseball team loses wild one

In a game that probably displayed the Rangers' season in microcosm, they lost to the Boston Red Sox 19-17 last night. Nope, that ain't a typo. That is the score.

If you saw the game last night, you saw what us fans have gone through all season: nuclear offense (best in the majors) and nuclear meltdown pitching (worst in the majors). Our offense can score 17 runs in a game, and LOSE. Just like last night. We have a modern day Murderer's Row, and even that's not enough to overcome the pitching in way too many games. If we had decent pitching - no, even halfway decent pitching - then we'd at least be in the lead for the wildcard race. But nope, we have the worst pitching in baseball.

Last night was a perfect example of this. In the first inning, the BoSox scored 10 - 10! - runs. David Ortiz hit two - two! - 3 run homers in the first inning! It looked like it was going to be a long night for Rangers fans, but the offense really gave the BoSox a run for their money. They found out just how nuclear this offense is. They took the team on their backs, and damn near won the thing. Fortunately for the BoSox, our pitching bailed them out. In the 8th inning, we had a 16-15 lead, and our pitcher gives up one run to tie, and then another for a 3 run homer. It's like the pitching is not on our side - it gets so bad.

It used to be that the Texas summertime heat was blamed for why the pitching was so bad, but the local semi-pro team Fort Worth Cats have won 3 championships in a row and could win a fourth this season. They play in the same summer heat. And the local college baseball team, the TCU Horned Frogs, have managed to win their conference championships as well. Nope, this is all management's fault. They have an annoying habit of trading top pitching prospects for over-the-hill veterans for - their batting! On a team that has enough bats!

Yeesh. And you thought the Cubs have had it bad!

Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez has turned to the dark side!

Remember that scene in the first Star Wars (the 1977 one!), in which Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star? Remember how Obi-Wan Kenobi had sensed through the Force the destruction of an entire planet that so shook him that he had to sit down to gather himself? That's how we in Rangers Land felt when we heard the news of former Rangers catcher Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez joining the New York Yankees.

Pudge had been with the Texas Rangers baseball team for years. He's still a fan favorite even now. But to hear that he joined the Evil Empire, the Dark Side, the Buttered Side Down of major league baseball - well, it was like hearing that the neighborhood kid that everyone liked had joined a gang. Pudge has had a fine career, and he deserves the Hall of Fame one day. But if he's wearing Yankee pinstripes in the Hall - sigh. It'd be like seeing Mr Rogers in a Nazi uniform.

Pudge, Pudge ... what hath thou done??

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UPDATE: I was hoping that it was just a vicious rumor, but...



There's no joy in Mudville tonight. <:-(

Texas Rangers baseball

Fort Worth has three baseball teams. One is the semipro team, the Fort Worth Cats, and they have won 3 championships in a row in their league, and they hope to make it 4 this season. By the way, the Cats used to be a minor league team for the majors, so there's a lot of history here. I'll share some more of that later.

The second team is Texas Christian University's Horned Frogs. The Frogs have won 4 conference championships in a row. Frog baseball has vastly improved since we got our new field, which is a far cry from the old field, which barely qualified as a high school field.

Then there's the Texas Rangers. When it comes to being a fan of the Texas Rangers baseball team, "long suffering" and "fan" go together like "Hot" and "Texas Summer". Historically, we have been great on offense, and the opposite in pitching. This season is no different. Also historically, it is at this time of the year that the Rangers tank, which is just about the time that the Dallas Cowboys start camp, so we can at least look forward to that.

At least Fort Worth has championship baseball teams, but geez louize, just once I'd like to see the Rangers win it all. My grandmother was a diehard fan, and she never got to see them win the pennant. Through the years, the fans have come anyway, but this year has been different. Mainly because of the price of gas - why come all that way just to watch them lose? Anyway, even the management has taken notice, so hopefully they'll work harder to put better players on the field instead of trading them just as they're starting to shine.

Just once, fellas - just once. Let us know the feeling of winning a pennant. And then, somewhere in heaven, a diehard fan will finally get to cheer for her team.

WNBA "Girls Gone Wild"

There has been much ink (metaphorically speaking) made in the sports world this past week of the brawl in the WNBA. Some were shocked and saddened by this violent turn of events. Not me, though - ya ask me, the brawl was probably the best thing to happen to the WNBA probably since its inception. Before the brawl, how many of you even knew that the WNBA's season had been going on? Yeah, me too. But you know now that the WNBA's season is going on, right? See? There ya go.

Now, if they can keep a once-a-week brawling pace, they might be able to make their own version of a "Girls Gone Wild" video after the end of the season... ;-)

Just kidding!





Sorta....

Sports, continued

Last time I talked about football. Today it's basketball.

Locally, the Dallas Mavericks are close to not making it in the playoffs. They're one of the bubble teams that has to not only win, but depend on the other bubble teams to lose. Not only that, they are without Dirk Nowitski for maybe a few more games - games in which he is desperately needed. The Mavs started slipping after the Jason Kidd trade, and while it's easy to just blame Kidd, it's not necessarily his fault. Someone like Kidd is different from what the Mavs are used to, and his entry into the team is disruptive to team chemistry. Adjusting accordingly is going to take a while - maybe more than the games we have left in the season. Come post season - if we are in it - perhaps the Mavs are going to have to learn very quickly, or they're going to get bounced out faster than Eliot Spitzer was as governor of New York.

In the meantime, the college basketball playoffs are going on, and I couldn't care less this season. No more of my teams are in, so I don't care anymore, other than to show the BCS how a playoff series should go. For that reason alone, I hope that the Final Four is as exciting as this year's Super Bowl. In local sports news, TCU's men's basketball team recently let go of Neil Dougherty after six seasons. In those six seasons, he had only one 20+ wins season. He's a decent guy, but he wasn't cutting it as a coach. It was time to try someone else.

I miss Billy Tubbs, though, and his high-speed and high-scoring style of basketball. It wasn't Billy Tubbs that TCU hired, though, but Jim Christian from Kent State. During his six years, he's been winning, and I hope that he carries that over to here. In the last month of the basketball season, former coach Dougherty had encouraged fans to come to the games, and some did. But it's not enough to cite school pride to bring fans to the game, the home team also needs to win games, and that they didn't do enough of. Here's hoping that Christian will make a difference.

Sports stuff

I haven't talked sports in a while. Mainly that's because the local teams haven't done much to talk about!

Let's start with my local university team, the TCU Horned Frogs. The football team is a great team coached by a great coach in Gary Patterson. However, The Mighty BCS is geared to "the big boys" - that is, big schools with big bucks - so that smaller schools don't have a chance. Each season to have ANY chance that the BCS Boys will even look their way, TCU has to go undefeated. Once the Frogs get that one loss, then they're out of it.

Some teams can have TWO losses and still have a shot at the national title. This past football season demonstrated most clearly how screwed up the BCS system is. And yet, despite the "changes" that they're going to implement next season, the TCUs of the world are still not going to have a chance to win it all. We need a playoff system in which anyone with enough heart and soul can take it as far as they can go. THAT'S the classic American underdog story that we all know and love so much. The BCS has to go.

We saw an example of how much better a playoff system is with this year's New York Giants team. Little ol' NYGs took on the big boys (including my team, the Dallas Cowboys), and even beat the previously undefeated New England Patriots. See folks, THAT'S an underdog story! THAT is what the college playoff system should be! I would hope that the BCS Boys would be listening, but they're too busy listening to their cash registers to pay attention.

Coming later in the week, more sports reporting, including the baseball season, which just started today.

Cheerleaders suspended for Spears routine

Watch the video below, and let me know what you think. This note continues after the video.



So were the cheerleaders suspended over the routine, or over their defiant behavior when asked to leave? Just from what the cheerleaders themselves are describing, it sounds like they were being obtuse when asked to leave, thus the cheerleader coaches had little choice but to up the punishment.

So what do you think? Did the cheerleaders deserve what they got, or were the coaches over-reacting?

Tony Romo does it again!

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo has done it again! I can't think of anyone else who was further in the jaws of defeat as Romo was, and still managed to snatch victory away like that. As a writer, it's my job to come up with words to describe ideas and concepts; and yet, I'm at a loss to explain Tony Romo style football. Therefore, I have appealed to a higher authority on such sports matters. I have appealed to none other than Mr. Fair and Biased, Randy Galloway. Below is my e-mail to him:

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"Mr. Galloway,

You are urgently needed to come up with a term to describe the kind of football that Tony Romo plays. I come to you because of your creativity for coming up for names like this. I cite your previous efforts, such as Deion "Nine Toes" Sanders, Shaquille "Tormented Toe" O'Neal, and the recent "El Dorado" Owens. And of course, who can forget "hoodoo voodoo" to explain why things go wrong.

So now you must come up with a term for Romo-style football. Who else can take a badly bobbled snap and make it a 4 yard gain AND a 1st down? Who else can have 6 TOs and still win the game? It's a sort of reverse "hoodoo voodoo" when you think about it. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad we're winning, but I don't know how much my heart can take! ;-)

Anyway, I hope you come up with a good "Randy-ism" to explain Romo-style football. "

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If he replies and if he offers his term, I'll let you good folks know about it.

The game with the New England Patriots this Sunday is likely going to be a huge ratings draw. I wonder what else Tony Romo is going to come up with?

"Slammin' " Sammy Sosa smacks 600th tater

In a bit of happy news in an otherwise dreary season, Texas Rangers' Sammy Sosa smacked his 600th career tater ("homer" for those of you who don't know the slang). I was actually watching it at the time. For a moment, I forgot that the Rangers are having a dismal season. And we won the game, to boot!

Sports!

Hey! It's been more than half a month, and I ain't talked sports yet! Maybe that's because there's very little good news in our neck of the Texas woods.

The Mavs bowed out early this time around, and the San Antonio Spurs instead ended up taking the championship. And most importantly, Michael Finley finally got his championship ring. He deserves getting at least one. Even though the Spurs are the whiniest team in the NBA, I still prefer that a Texas team won the title than for some East coast team to take it. ANY team but an east coast team - or the Lakers. And a Texas team winning the title will only get into the craw of those East Coast boys, so I gotta love it. >:-D

And then there's the Texas Rangers. Yes, take the Rangers. Please. (badaBOOM!) Thing is, the Rangers are supposed to be this bad AFTER the All Star game! To suck so badly so early into the season is going against the script! SIGH. We have a new manager, and the players had allegedly loved him. Well, the love is gone. Maybe it wasn't important whether they loved the manager. I'd take a manager they hate if it meant winning games! I'm ready for Mark Cuban to buy this team, but why would he?

SIGH.

Well, at least football's coming up...

Dumb sports ideas

Here's a couple of dumb ideas involving school athletics that I just gotta comment on.

First is the proposed booing ban in Washington state. Yeah, you read that right. They want to ban booing at high school games. Their explanation is that they want to cut down on boorish behavior, but we all know that Washington is one of those so-called "blue states" and that they frown on such things as competitiveness because there will be winners, which means that there will be losers, who will be hurt and traumatized for life and will have to spend thousands of dollars for therapy for the rest of their life and so forth and so on and blahblahblah. Well, of course we just can't have that.

What a dumb idea. What a stupid idea, actually. Booing is part of the game. If you're the home team, booing can motivate you to do better. After all, the best way to make the boobirds shut up is to turn things around. Even a good effort will often be enough to stop the booing. If you're the visiting team, then booing will motivate you to win as well, if for no other reason than to stick it to the home fans. For the visiting team, when you make the home team go silent, then it's a beautiful thing. You don't want the crowd to be silent because they've been banned from booing. Booing sends a message, and whether you're the home team or the visitors, you take that message and respond to it. I hope this idea is fought stubbornly and ferociously. In a real sense, this is a form of restriction of free speech. So I say to these bozos: BOOOO!!!!

Next up is another idea thunked up by those who have no idea what they are doing. In this instance, I refer to the NCAA's Committee on Women's Athletics, which is proposing to ban the practice of women's basketball teams practicing with men (usually not the men's team, but a group of volunteers), because they feel that the usage of such men sends the message to the female bench players that they aren't good enough to practice with the starters. The coaches of these teams aren't complaining about this practice, nor are the players involved. The only ones seeing discrimination is this committee. No one asked them to step in - nope, just like in Washington state, a group of "our betters" simply decided that they need to tell us what to do.

The women basketball players benefit from practicing with men, because men give them a different challenge than does practicing with other women. Plus, who says that the starters aren't ALSO practicing with the bench, AND that the bench isn't likewise practicing with men? No one is being robbed of anything - rather, this is to the benefit of all. While trying not to sound sexist, women's basketball is boring when compared to men's b-ball. Men's b-ball is fast and furious and exciting to watch, with the bullet passes and dazzling dunks and all. By comparison, even the women's pro leagues look like high school basketball by comparison.

You ask me, women's basketball needs all the help it can get. So rather than banning the use of male volunteers, the NCAA should be ruling the useage of men practicing with women in ALL colleges and universities. If the NCAA (and whoever else came up with this clueless ban idea) really wants to help women's athletics, maybe they should ask the women themselves what they want instead of deciding for them. What this NCAA ban idea - along with the Washington state idea - actually represents is a form of social engineering by people who think they know what's better for us. I say we tell them to take their bans and shove it! Keep your social experiments out of our arenas!