Do I Have a Brain Tumor?

Photo: mugley, Flickr Creative Commons

I spent a little time reading old blog posts here yesterday and I started wondering if I'm the only one who reads my writing and feels like they're having a seizure. It seems like when I'm reading my own work that there are starts and stops in the flow of my writing like I had been writing to one rhythm in my head only to suddenly switch to a different rhythm or to lose the rhythm entirely. I don't normally get this jarring feeling when reading the work of other writers. Is it just me? Hopefully, it's just something to do with vaguely remembering the writing process. Normally, I'm not privy to what the author had planned unless that author is me.

Speaking of retarded people, if you want to have hope for the intellectual future of our nation, do not spend time with teenagers. They can sometimes inspire you with their actions and words, but man do they lack anything resembling an intelligent vocabulary. I'm giving a test today and so far I've had multiple students have to ask for the meaning of the following words:

• Optimistic. This word comes up multiple times every year and every year I have to explain what it and pessimistic mean every time, usually to multiple students in the same class because they weren't listening the first time.
• Objective and subjective. I kind of understand this one. It's not used much outside of academic circles and high school students are just getting to that part of their education. Still, I'm pretty sure these concepts should have come up by now.
• Pity. No explanation for this. The student who asked me is not normally lacking in intelligence.
• Outcome. Seriously? This one is should be easier than pity. It's two words you already know combined in a way to suggest the meaning of the word. Also, it was used in a context of goal, motive, outcome. Just read the sentence.
• Studious. This one isn't really used a lot at home, I'm sure, but it sounds like what it means.
• Oppressed.
• Scorn.

Keep in mind that this is a class of 14 and 15 year olds who currently plan on attending college and that at least two students asked for each of these words on separate occasions. And yes, I understand that they are young and they come from a place where it's unlikely their parents have more than a high school education. It doesn't matter how smart you are if you aren't exposed to the vocabulary. I also understand that I'm exceptional in my ability to pick up and use words, a trait my 4-year-old seems to have inherited. (Seriously. He correctly explained the term "symbiotic relationship" to my wife last week after pronouncing it correctly and in the proper context in an unprompted sentence. I do not hold my students to that standard.) Then again, I actually speak the same way to him that I speak to adults. I don't dumb myself down for him, and neither does my wife, really.

I just have to repeat one of my personal mantras. Being a child is a temporary illness. Being a child is a temporary illness.

Dammit, I hate kids.

Maybe I Will Take You Back, NHL

Photo: bridgetds, Flickr Creative Commons

I was not happy when the Atlanta Thrashers left for Winnipeg. I have nothing against Winnipeg, but I actually like watching hockey. I just have trouble watching games where I don't have a team in which I'm emotionally invested. Last year when it was announced that the Thrashers were going to be sold and move to Canada, I decided I was going to give up on hockey. After all, I've never played the sport myself and I live in a part of the world where ice doesn't actually exist in the natural world, but now that the preseason has begun I'm starting to miss the sport a little.

I wouldn't mind continuing to follow it. It's a great sport combining the physicality and roughness of football with the finesse and constant motion of soccer and basketball (without the flopping). I just still have that problem of not having a team to follow, so today, about thirty seconds after feeling the urge to pick a new team, I stopped doing anything of importance and focused in on this issue. The criteria for choosing my new team are as follows:

1. The team cannot wear too much red. I'm okay, in general, with the color red. In fact, as I type this I am wearing a red shirt. It's a very nice shirt. It may be a shirt for a man who was 40 lbs heavier when it was purchased, but I like it. Too much red, though, especially on the all-white backdrop of the rink, is painful. Just watch a Red Wings home game and you'll see what I mean. I won't entirely rule out a team whose alternate uniform is all red, but it is a strike against them.
2. I refuse to cheer for the team that posers pick. Basically, this is my New York Yankees Rule. I have no problem with Yankees fans who live in New York or have a real personal connection to New York. You know, like having grown up there before moving away or having family there. No one else has any valid reason to cheer for a team like the Yankees otherwise. Doing so makes you look like the bandwagon type at best, and the type of guy who cheered for the bully to win the fights the bully started with kids half his size at worst.
3. I have to be able to see a significant number of the team's games on TV. Otherwise this whole exercise is pointless. I need to be able to recognize the face of the defender on the third line before the halfway point of the season.
4. Fuck Florida. Seriously. I hate that state. No teams from Florida allowed. (Also screw the New York and Los Angeles metro areas too.) There's no rational explanation for this rule, although the NY/LA thing may be related in spirit to the Yankee rule.

So, rule one knocks Detroit, Carolina, and maybe Phoenix. (Is this red?) Rule two banishes, in my opinion, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and the Rangers. Sidney Crosby may be enough to rule out Pittsburgh by this rule, actually. Rule three scratches all Canadian and West Coast teams off the list. Tampa and the Florida Panthers were disqualified before I even started writing this. The extension of rule four also kills off the Rangers, Islanders, and Devils.

That leaves me with the Nashville Predators, Columbus Blue Jackets, Buffalo Sabres, Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers, Washington Capitals and Chicago Blackhawks. I could just decide to root for all of these teams, but that's silly. I need passion in my sports and passion is not an product of infinite capacity. I have to focus, so I'll need to narrow this down a bit.

Let's go ahead and write off the Blue Jackets. I have a personal connection to Ohio and Columbus most definitely doesn't violate my Yankee Rule or the extension of the Fuck Florida Rule. I just don't know the last time I've seen them on TV. Ohio's just too far away and it's a small market team. Same goes for Nashville, although I could see them being real contenders if one of the regional sports networks I get start carrying their games. I'm not positive, but I should probably rule out Buffalo for similar reasons, although they're a much more established team and probably get more national TV coverage than the other two. Washington is a former rival of the Thrashers. They were both in the Southeast Division and it feels weird to switch allegiance to a team I used to actively root against. Also, because of baseball and football, I dislike Philadelphia. Cognitive dissonance sucks and I think I'd have some trying to reconcile disliking the Phillies and Eagles while cheering for the Flyers. (Nothing against you, Mickey.)

That leaves the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks. I'm going to briefly lay out my reasons for and against each team and will give time for readers to make their cases before officially declaring my new allegiance.

Both teams are part of the Original Six, the heart of the NHL. These teams were in the league from the very beginning and have a lot of historical significance. That's definitely a plus. Both will also receive a significant number of games on Versus. Boston will have 13 games there and Chicago will have 11. Boston and Chicago have both made the playoffs each of the last three years. That means more national games are likely in the post-season and that the season may actually matter. Since I'm having to pick for reasons other than geography this time, I'm willing to pick a team that doesn't suck like the Thrashers did.

The main drawback for Boston is that they border on infringing on the Yankee Rule. The Bruins have been a dominant team for forever and Boston is a major market. Still, I have a small soft spot for the city. I've never actually been (I haven't been to Chicago either), but they hate the Yankees, so that helps. I remain a little uncomfortable with the fact it would border on looking like I picked Boston just because it's popular if I chose the Bruins.

The Blackhawks, on the other hand, used to suck. A lot. There were jokes until Chicago had that playoff run three years ago that the Chicago Wolves (the AHL affiliate of the Thrashers until the move) was the more popular professional hockey team in the city. That gives them a bit of an underdog feel, which I like, despite the fact they've been consistently good for a few years. They did win the Stanley Cup in 2010, and that seriously brings the bandwagon issue into play (although I didn't realize they had won it all until just now when I was looking them up.) The other main drawback is that because they don't have a history of dominance, they aren't covered nationally quite as well. They have only two fewer games on Versus, but they also may not receive as much extra coverage on national TV. I'm not really sure how the television rights work in hockey.

Of course, in the end, I may end up with a more natural solution. Honestly, if the Carolina Hurricanes games end up being carried on SportSouth, I may forgive them their all-red home unis and former divisional rivalry with Atlanta and follow them instead. After all, I do hope to move into western North Carolina in a few years and they would become my local team. Until then I need a team to focus on once the regular season starts next month.

I'm Not Always Right

Image: Ben Templesmith, Flickr Creative Commons

I'm a pretty astute amateur observer when it comes to football. It's a shame I didn't play in high school and college. I think I really could have made a decent career at being a scout or position coach. For example, I was incredibly pumped when Atlanta signed running back Michael Turner a few years ago. He was a lightly used backup for Ladanian Tomlinson, but I could tell he was going to be great. I was right. (By the way, I expect Turner to last a little longer than some experts expect entirely because he was so lightly abused in his four years in the league.) I knew Matt Schaub was going to be a great passing quarterback when he left Atlanta. The guy has been crazy productive in Houston.

I thought Matt Ryan was going to be a good quarterback in the NFL, although I did disapprove of Atlanta's drafting of him. At the time I knew the team was too weak in other areas to be able to allow a rookie QB to succeed. Turns out that the relatively new front office at the time was much more competent than Falcons fans were used to. I now know to give General Manager Thomas Dimitroff and Coach Mike Smith the benefit of the doubt.

I knew Calvin Johnson was going to be a beast. He has been.

I even predicted that Detroit and Buffalo would both have winning records this year, although I admit I would not have guessed the Bills would overcome a 21-0 deficit to beat the New England Patriots, who had been playing incredibly well until that point. How is it that I was the only person on earth who seemed to realize that Ryan Fitzpatrick, a Harvard alum quarterbacking for Buffalo, was a perfectly competent starting quarterback before the season started?

Despite all of this evidence of my genius, I have to admit that I was completely wrong about Cam Newton. The guy was incredible in college, although he always seemed awkward when attempting a pass. I thought there was a chance the guy could succeed in the NFL, but no way would he be any good as a rookie on a team as bad as the Carolina Panthers. His physical talents wouldn't dominate NFL defenders the way they did in college. In the pre-season and even now, the guy still looks funny trying to throw the ball, but the ball always seems to go to the right place at the right time. He did throw three picks in his second game, but I'm willing to give a first-year quarterback a little slack when he's doing everything else right. His physical talent doesn't carry him as far as it did in college, but a relatively tiny defensive back trying to bring him down in the open field during a planned keeper or a scramble is a pretty funny mismatch.

I had thought I was being vindicated yesterday when Newton only threw for 158 yards after he threw for 422 and 432 yards in his first two games. Then I looked more closely at his numbers. The guy may have only thrown for 158 yards, but he threw one touchdown and didn't have a single interception or fumble in a game where part of the stands flooded during the game from the torrential rain. That's not bad. He wasn't being asked to throw the ball as much as he did in the first two games because of the conditions and score, but he didn't screw up, and there's a lot to be said for that.

Just don't be surprised if the guy ends the season having been exposed as a flop. Like I said, I'm not always right.

Go Vick, Go! (Just Not This Weekend)

Photo: elvis_payne, Flickr Creative Commons

I used to hate Michael Vick. The only professional sports team that I have ever really cared about is the Atlanta Falcons. I have teams that I prefer in the other pro sports (and they're almost always from Atlanta), but if the Hawks lose, I'm not really going to care. I'm a little bitter about the moving of the Thrashers to Canada, but I will survive.

I would murder Arthur Blank if he moved the Falcons out of the state.

And to any FBI or other law enforcement agencies, that is hyperbole. I would not actually murder Arthur Blank. This is just to make the point that I'd be really pissed off. I'd probably resort to a nasty blog post here and leave it at that.

Back to Vick, I hated him because he was on my team. He had so much talent, so often flashed signs of genius, but never consistently rose any higher than mediocrity. It was painful. At least Joey Harrington was supposed to suck, so seeing him suck was never painful. I was actually relieved when Vick was shipped off to prison because it meant his time in Atlanta was over. I was better able to bear the miserable Bobby Petrino season after Vick's arrest simply because I knew the Vick era was over.

That doesn't mean I'm a complete asshole, though. When the guy was released and picked up by the Eagles, I really hoped he'd changed. I love a good story and a guy like that turning things around and regaining what he could have lost is a great story. I love positive exceptions to the rules. When it turned out that Vick at least turned around his game last year, I immediately started pulling for the guy. Listening to what people who are more likely to know than me have to say, it really seems the guy has grown as a person as well. If it's true, I wish the guy nothing but the best. I hope he plays his last years in the NFL at a Hall-of-Fame level and retires before it's obvious that he's washed up...

Except this weekend. I hope he gets smashed into the Georgia Dome turf repeatedly, throws nothing but interceptions, and limps off the field a broken man. He's playing my Falcons, after all.

Next week, I'll be cheering for him again, and that's why sports are so awesome.

On a related note, if you get the time, read this article about Atlanta receiver Roddy White. It's another redemption story, although this one a just-in-time about face. This is the second article about how White recovered from being a near bust just after Vick's last season that I've read, and they both make me appreciate the guy even more.

Respect Is Not the Same as a Vote

Photo: Texas Governor Rick Perry, Flickr Creative Commons

This morning I gave Rick Perry a little more respect. I still wouldn't vote for the guy. He gleefully revels in political positions that I either find abhorrent or at least think deserve more careful consideration and less reckless certainty.

Still, it takes guts to defend, without equivocation, a political decision you've made in front of a crowd you should know will hate you for it, and that's exactly what Perry did last night. When asked about his decision to allow children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at public universities in Texas, Perry did not back down. To him, it was the right decision. End of discussion. Who cares if the crowd is booing and elections are a popularity contest. I'm sure this was much more difficult for him than it was to answer a question about the death penalty when the crowd cheered when the moderator brought up the record number of people put to death while he was governor.

Of course, it's easy for me to respect him this time, too. I agree with him on the in-state tuition issue. Would I respect him if he'd been booed about the death penalty and he stood by his past decisions just as firmly? That's an odd scenario as no Republican audience would ever boo the death penalty, but if they had?

Yes, I'd have respected him for not quivering in the face of public opinion, but I wouldn't be writing about it because I wouldn't like his opinion. Ron Paul is really the best example of this. When he leaves the Republican party line, it's often to head into hardcore libertarian areas. I tend to agree with libertarians on social issues, but when it comes to government services, I'm often in disagreement. I respect the guy for not backing down even when he knows some of his ideas are going to be unpopular with regular Republicans. I just don't write about him much, partly because he's not really important and partly because I don' t like the opinion he's standing up for.

Does it matter? I don't know. I still wouldn't vote for either one of them, and, honestly, a lot of times it's better if a guy is willing to change his mind or at least accept nuance in the issues.

But, god, will that get a guy crucified in public opinion.

And that may be the more important issue here. Do we really need leaders who are certain that they are entirely in the right? Shouldn't a leader be willing to admit mistakes, change their mind when new information arises that shows previous positions were wrong? Shouldn't we encourage politicians to admit the nuance and gray areas of the issues and treat them accordingly? Of course we should, but every last one of us will write off a president or other major politician as weak, wishy-washy, or worse if they try any of that. Obviously, with the Perry thing, I do it too.

None of You Asked For This, But I'm Going to Expound

Photo: avpjack, Flickr Creative Commons

Update: After I posted this, I found out that one of the panelists on Slate's "Shut Up and Listen" podcast made the same point I did here at around the 23 minute mark of today's podcast. Basically, it was said that teams like Oregon and Boise State were built with this edgy design and it seems a little sad when a team like Georgia tries it.

I hated the UGA uniforms this weekend. This is not because I hate UGA. I do hate UGA, partly because I'm a Tech fan and partly because of how I perceive the team's fan base. Saying you love Georgia is a lot like proclaiming that you're a stupid hick. I know plenty of Georgia fans who don't fit into this category. Most of my family consists of Georgia fans, if they care at all, and several of them are far from being the smokeless tobacco dipping, mud-splattered truck driving, passively racist twits who plaster the Georgia G on everything they own. Hatred is irrational. I'm fully aware that I'm unfairly stereotyping here, but I reject that element of my heritage (although there are tons of elements of Southern culture that I take great pride in), and it makes me uncomfortable to lump myself in with the people who embrace those negative elements.

But really, the greatness of college football is being able to hate without really hating. This faux vitriol really just makes being a fan more fun. If you're a Georgia fan, I will happily trash your team to your face and then fully enjoy defending Georgia Tech while you trash mine. It's the one area of life when you can embrace your inner tribesman without risking genocide.

I hated the UGA uniforms because they're ugly. I have to admit that despite my spite for the Dawgs, their regular uniforms are classics nearly on par with teams like Alabama and Penn State. I actually think Penn State is a little dull, but it would be a shame for them to suddenly start taking part in the trashy-flashy fad in uniform design that Oregon started a while back. For teams like Oregon, it makes sense. Their colors are already non-traditional and a little edgy. They don't have a long history of mattering in the sport. When they do something weird, it makes sense. That's who they are. When a team like Georgia does it, it seems like they're the middle-aged man getting an earring during his mid-life crisis. It's annoying and doesn't seem to fit who they are. To make it worse, the design Georgia used was a generic one that I've basically seen a dozen times in other colors on other teams. Maryland on Monday may have been garish, but at least you couldn't point to other teams who've worn anything like it before. (Also, by halftime when the shock of that uniform wore off, I started even appreciating the Terps' kit at little.)

Another problem is just the color scheme. It wouldn't have been so bad if the jersey and pants were different colors. Red is a HORRIBLE color to double up on, and the shade they chose for this one-off was even worse. The only two colors that are acceptable to me for monochromatic kits are black and white. The brighter the color, the worse it looks when all parts of the uniform are in that color. All white uniforms look crisp and the all black kits look kind of badass. No team should really do these for every game unless it's tradition, but it's a nice look for those special games.

An example of this was Boise State's all whites against Georgia. I genuinely liked this look on them. The oversized Bronco logo was neat looking and the all whites didn't overwhelm the eyes, and again, this is not because I've had a soft spot for Boise State since I started following college football in 2002. I'm not a huge fan on the regular blue-on-blue home unis. I loved the old-gold jerseys Georgia Tech used to wear. It was a really unique uniform color and looked great, but I would have hated an all old-gold uniform.

Whatever. To hell with Georgia.

100 Miles of Holy Hell

I completed the Savannah Century on Sunday. For those not familiar with cycling terms, that means a 100-mile organized bike ride. Now, I can't say with any experience how this compares to other similar rides (I was promised free lasagna and barbecue if I signed up for and completed a century in Albany this coming weekend), but I don't have any complaints with the event. The rest stops were well-spaced and ample. Each one had at least cold water and plenty of food options for snacking, ranging from fruit and cookies to salty snacks and pickles. Most stops had watery Gatorade/Powerade as well. The support vehicles cruised by regularly, just as promised, although I was lucky to have no need of their services. I have no complaints with the organizers of this ride.

That being said, the last 20-25 miles were hell.

I got to the ride a little late. The photo above is me heading over to the starting area half a block away. The back pockets of my jersey are stuffed with Larabars and Honey Stinger Waffles and one of the four water bottles actually holds my tire-changing supplies. The Larabars and Honey Stingers are two of the few energy foods I've tried that I don't hate. Both are legitimately tasty on their own. There's also my mp3 player and charger for my phone in case the battery couldn't handle nearly 8 hours of GPS tracking. This photo makes me look a tiny bit chubby, because I actually still am a tiny bit chubby. There's another photo of me standing in my kit that makes me look awesome, but I wanted to be honest here.

But seriously, if you saw my post on Facebook or Twitter of my standing around in my cycling jersey and uniform, I was freaking hot.

By the time I finished getting my stuff together and on the bike, I barely had time to pedal over to the starting area in time to make the police-escorted rolling start over the Talmadge Bridge. The bridge is normally closed to traffic, so the police actually blocked traffic as we had a rolling start up and over the bridge into South Carolina. In South Carolina we were promptly greeted by a decaying discount fireworks store and a strip club. I was kind of surprised at the strip club. Savannah lets people in the historic district buy their beer to go from any of the bars in town and walk around town with an open container, but they don't allow strip clubs? Honestly, I'd rather drink beer while strolling through town than pay to see someone's boobies, but it seems a strange combination of laws. There was not another building except for on the Savannah College of Arts and Design's Equestrian Center for the next 10 miles. These two buildings obviously only existed to service people in Savannah. It was not long after the group passed there that a major wreck up front happened. I caught up to the wreck well after it happened but while it was still being cleaned up. At least one guy had to quit because of a broken collarbone. Oddly, this was a completely flat, completely straight section with no real problems in the road surface. Apparently someone dropped a water bottle and in the swerving to miss the obstacle, people collided and in the tightly packed group it caused at least a dozen people to go down.

I didn't wreck. Not even close, so go back up to the top of this post and take a look at my cycling kit. Notice the fancy logo shorts I'm wearing? They're from Perry Rubber Bike Shop, a local shop in Savannah that I'm willing to fully endorse, although I bought the shorts because they were cheaper than the other bib shorts. If you're not into cycling, you probably have no idea what it means to wear bib shorts. It means that they have built in suspenders that go on under your jersey. They're great for keeping your shorts from migrating, which is especially good for a guy like me with a little bit of a gut. I had a lot less chafing than I have had recently on some of my shorter training rides because the shorts staid up. They were worth the money. The problem comes when you have to pee.

That's right, when I felt the urge to pee just before the first rest stop, I realized that I was going to have to take my shirt off in the portapotty in order to get my pants down enough to take a leak. This is not the easiest of tasks, but I was successful. Didn't even have any of my back-pocket items fall out in the portapotty. It just took a little time. Good thing it wasn't an emergency.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. I spent a lot of it in a pace line with members of the Pecan City Pedalers, a cycling club out of Albany, Ga. Most of them rode at around my pace. I wish I'd found them earlier in the ride and made a conscious effort to stick with them the entire ride. It may have helped. The terrain was touted on the event website as flat to rolling, but they were exaggerating about the rolling terrain. There were a lot of false flats, though, stretches that appear to be flat but drain your legs and soul because they're slightly uphill. One of my two training routes is by far more rolling so the few hills in the middle of the course were nothing. Close in to Savannah, the marshes and ancient-by-American-standards city was interesting to look at. The farther from the city we got the more it just looked like the extremely rural area where I live.

My longest ride until the Savannah Century was 51 miles and it was last week. The weather was warm and humid and I forgot my money before I left so I couldn't eat enough. I struggled with a severe case of nausea for an hour after the ride. I was exhausted. The route for the century was officially 103 miles, although my GPS claimed it was only a little longer than 101 miles. There were 50 miles of this ride that I had no proof I could ride. I just didn't have the time to fully prepare for this. I was happy to discover that I'd actually breezed through the ride well beyond my longest training ride's distance. If I'd stopped at 60 miles I would have been pumped. Drafting in a pace line really does help, as does stopping every 10-15 miles for a short break. It wasn't until around mile 70 that I started wondering if I was going to make it and it wasn't until closer to mile 80 that I couldn't keep up with any of the pace lines I'd been following. My thighs were aching in a way I've never felt them feel before for the last 15 miles and they continued to ache like that for at least 30 minutes after the ride.

By the time I finished, I was crawling. I usually finish a flat mile in the high 2 or low 3 minutes range during a long ride. By the end of the century it was often taking me 5 minutes or more to finish a mile. I just didn't have anything left.

But I finished, and, surprisingly, my legs were fine after that 30 minutes. By the time I finished my meal at The Distillery and got into the car, I was in no pain. I was kind of a dud the rest of the evening from general exhaustion, but I wasn't hurting. I woke up the next morning perfectly refreshed.

I have a renewed admiration for both professional cyclists, who do distances like this daily for weeks at a time during stage races, and Iron Man triathletes. I never would have belittled the amateurs who ended up walking much of the running leg of the Iron Man, but do you realize that in an Iron Man, you ride 100 miles before running a marathon without a break? I couldn't have run 5k after my ride Sunday. It's hard to imagine ever being able to accomplish that feat. It was nice to go out and accomplish something like this that was so far out of my comfort zone, though.

If you're interested in checking out the ride data from the century, check out my RunKeeper page.

It's A Joke, But I'm Serious

Photo: Tyello, Flickr Creative Commons

I posted a throwaway joke over on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. Tomorrow is the first day of college football, I said. Finally there'll be a sport on TV besides tennis and cycling.

Honestly, I assumed most people wouldn't even get the joke. It's an implied dig at baseball, my favorite sport to hate on. I don't even really hate the sport. I can't watch an entire game. Not enough happens between the bouts of standing around and sitting on the bench to keep my attention but I actually follow the sport pretty closely. I look for results of Atlanta Braves games. I follow stats of individual players. I play in more than one fantasy baseball league. I know what sabermetrics are and I understand why it's weird that Moneyball would be turned into a movie. It's the perfect sport for those who like statistics. It's just a less-than-ideal spectator sport for someone like me.

Another thread of the joke was the tennis and cycling thing. Very few people watch tennis, but I do, mainly because I play. No one watches cycling except me, or at least it seems that way, and I'll be the first to admit that professional cycling (and really any endurance sport) is not a particularly telegenic activity. Even more so than baseball, there are large chunks of the event that don't really matter. Namely, the beginning and middle. Those parts exist just to make the riders tired so the end is more interesting. I'm not actually claiming the sport is more watchable. The joke was that I watch it.

One of the commenters on my Facebook page got the joke and answered in the spirit. A second started debate. I didn't really want to debate this. I enjoy debating. As a kid, my friends and I debated while most boys play wrestled. We brain wrestled. I look forward to those kinds of discussions. It's just not something that I want to start up with someone when I don't know how they react to opposing viewpoints.

So, for the record, here's why I often dismiss (half-jokingly) baseball as a sport.

For me, sport is a continuum and requires intense physical activity in a competitive situation to be considered as such. Gymnastics, marathons, and rugby all fall into this category. They're intensely physical and competitive. Games require skill and/or tactics in a competitive manner, but may not be intensely physical. Billiards, target shooting, and dressage riding are examples. Many sports are games. There's a lot of tactics and skill involved in football. It's both a sport and a game. There are few tactics and relatively little skill in running the 100 m dash. I'm not saying there are no skills required -- those guys do have technique and stuff to learn to get better -- but 99.9% of their result is from physical ability and fitness.

A Venn diagram would be a great representation of this except that it doesn't take into account scale. No one can realistically claim that baseball is as physically demanding as football, basketball, or swimming. It's not. The guy who's the most physically exhausted at the end of the night is the starting pitcher and it's just his one arm. No one's breaking a sweat unless the weather is hot enough to cause the fans to sweat with them. It's a sport, but not to the extent that football is (and football is less of a sport than rugby, which provides almost no break in the action outside of halftime). Golf barely requires any display of physical prowess outside of the drive, although I will say that pro golfers may be more athletes that AL pitchers. They have to walk a lot more than American League pitchers, and, John Daly aside, none them can get away with being as fat as this guy.

What I find funny is that I in no way consider this an insult to baseball. I can't make those pitches. I can't make those catches. I couldn't even hit an "easy" pitch thrown by a #4 starting pitcher accidentally left hanging over the plate unless I got really lucky. There's a lot of skill involved there. There's an incredible amount of skill involved in golf. Golf is a huge waste of resources compared to other sports and game and may be mildly unethical, but that's another conversation.

As for baseball and sports, I like categorizing things. I need more precision to my categories than "things people do." Get over it.