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More Sports
by Rob Schaeffer
Golf:
Remember I said that watching baseball was dull? Well, I have received a
certain amount of criticism about this opinion, but, I am going to run a
great risk of backlash and say that watching golf on TV is the dullest sport,
ever. By far.
Golf isn’t really a sport, it is more of a culture. Yeah, you hit a ball
and walk around outside, but do you really need to dress like that?
Also, think about the newspapers comics without golf. Or even the New
Yorker magazine cartoons? What would the New Yorker cartoonists
do without golf?
There is also a huge golf equipment industry. I guess a lot of people seem
to feel that their clubs are why they send thousands of balls to a watery
grave.
Frankly, the only thing worth watching about golf is everyone trying to deal
with a black guy kicking butt in golf. Granted, he probably is pretty good,
but that isn’t what makes him interesting. At least it isn’t a woman.
As for playing golf: I never have. I have played frisbee golf which is amusing
and I have played mini-golf or putt-putt golf, which is great fun. Sadly,
neither is televised.
This game has another weird aspect: there are a lot of computer golf games.
What? Computer golf? I can understand computer fighter pilot, since
that is interesting, and tricky to do in real life. Rarely in real life to
you get to command armies of Orcs laying siege to a town, so that makes a
good concept for a computer game. But, golf?
Sad.
Once again, mini-golf computer games can be fun.
Car Racing:
Car racing on TV is very popular. There seems to be two basic variations:
round and round a track, and how fast can you cover a couple of hundred feet
from a stop. Round and round is sort of interesting; but I have always suspected
that a lot of the people watching racing are hoping for a crash. If there
is an accident on I-93 south, all the people on I-93 north, which is fifty
feet away and in no way physically effected, will grind to a total halt;
so accidents seem to be fascinating. Car fires are a big draw also, but even
some guy changing a tire is better than nothing.
I wonder if there will ever be a car-fire channel on cable? After 11:00 P.M.,
it is women in bikinis standing by car fires.
Drag racing, where the racers try to go from zero to really fast over a couple
of hundred feet is too much like driving in Boston to be worth watching.
I have never driven in a car race. I am way too chicken. I drive I-93 in
the rain every now and then, that is enough fear for me.
You have to wonder how how the word “drag” acquired to radically different
meanings depending on whether you are in Dayton or Key West.
Horse Racing:
This is mildly interesting. It is basically a high-brow version of car racing.
A bunch of horses line up and run like hell until one wins. This seems to
attract people who are more high in socioeconomic class, or people who want
to seem that way.
Usually, betting on sports is considered a vice or illegal, but strangely,
betting on horse races seems acceptable. I wonder if people from the New
Yorker bet on golf?
I have never raced a horse, so I can’t say what it is like. I suspect horses
rarely burst into flame, though.
Hockey:
This is soccer on ice. No. No it isn’t, since that sounds like something
upstanding British families would take the kids to. There are two faces to
hockey:
- A fairly interesting sport where people zip around at a
pretty good clip and try to do the classic sport behavior: get an object
into a net.
- Fights.
This sport seems to have the most fights of any sport. Baseball, strangely
is in second place. You’d think football would be, but I have never heard
of a fight on a football field. It may be that football is close enough to
a fight already that the players are too tired.
I have never played hockey. It looks like it would be fun until you realize
you have no control over where you are going to go, excuse me, until I
realize I would have no control over where I am going to go.
Let’s be honest.
Basketball:
This is soccer, only instead of not being able to touch the ball with your
hands, you can, but you have to bounce it off the floor, and there isn’t
a goalie, just height, to protect the basket. Basketball does seem to have
the most movies about it, after baseball.
But, basketball has two very, very, very primal links into something that
is hardwired into our nervous systems. Something that every human on the
planet has in their DNA.
- All humans love to attempt to throw things at a basket. As soon
as an infant understand the idea of success and failure, the first thing
they will try to do is throw a random object such that it goes into a trash
can or something. Everyone does this. You do this. How many times a day do
you throw something at a trash can instead of walking over and dropping it
in, knowing that the odds are good you will have to get up anyway when you
miss? How good do you feel about yourself when you make that shot?
How many times do you go over to pick the thing up, and then back away from
the trash can because you want to increase your odds of missing again?
- All humans shout “air ball” in the same key. Read
on.
Bowling:
This is a sport that is amazing dull to watch, but a lot of fun to play.
I like bowling.
But first a digression. I grew up in the Mid-west. Think corn and soybeans.
Out there, there is one kind of bowling; you have a large heavy ball, ten
pins that are thicker at the bottom, and you get two throws. Well, here in
New England you have this parallel universe bowling with croquette balls,
three throws, and weird tiny pins. It was a shock to see this the first time.
But, playing bowling is fun. It is like tearing down buildings Godzilla-style,
and then you get to try again for any you missed the first time. If you can’t
level Tokyo in two passes you need to return to Monster Island for more training.
I won’t even discus how to keep score. If you bowl and keep score you have
lost too much joy in your life.
Curling:
What is this? There is a guy throwing what looks like a cloths’ iron, and
then two guys sweeping the ice in front of it. Was this invented by two completely
stir-crazy Canadian housewives?
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