Sports Thoughts

Sometimes sports figures, even those with higher education who ought to know better, say things for public consumption which make one pause and say, “Huh?”  

Florida’s head basketball coach summed it all up this way in a recent media tidbit. “We aren’t very good on defense, we aren’t rebounding well, and we aren’t scoring.” in justifying his team’s recent loss string of three games in a row. Really, oh savant? Thanks for straightening that out for all of us who read the sports page and understand absolutely nothing about basketball.

Why is it that an American professional baseball player can be from almost anywhere in the country, have a good mind and yet when interviewed what we get is “I think I can he’p this ball club; it’s a good ball club, and I think I can he’p it!” All this, of course, drawled in a trashy mush mouth accent reminiscent of the love child of an Alabama sharecropper and Randy Macho Man Savage, even if the interviewee is from Minnesota. These guys then, off camera, revert to standard English. This a generalization, I admit, but far too common to reflect geographical distribution alone. I think it’s a side effect of pine tar, which may explain why American League pitchers seem less affected.

In much the same fashion, every person involved with the sport of football seems unable to just say “ball” or “team” or “game.” This is especially true of the ‘color guys” in the booth, who seem obligated to remind us every time the use of the word “game” is appropriate, that what we’ve been watching for the last 90 minutes has been a “football game.”  Or when the Quarterback is sacked, and a fumble occurred, we’re reminded that he didn’t protect the “foot” ball, as if we might assume he was protecting other ball(s?) Then of course we’re reminded that what we’re watching is a football game, as if we might think it was a tennis match gone strangely awry. As noted before, baseball players can apparently remember that the “ball” club they play for is a baseball team, but footballers seem determined to remind us that it’s a “good ‘football’ team”, so we don’t think it’s roller derby or something else other than football.

New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, after receiving a one game suspension for the mother of all cheap shots, “justified” it thus in his apology, “It was frustration and that’s what happened.”  The hit was blatant, late, deliberate and avoidable had Gronkowski even thought of not doing it. What has been very little mentioned in all this is that Gronkowski plays for the same team as the late Darryl Stingly, whose neck and career were shattered by a late hit. Jack Tatum’s hit on Stingley was, believe it or not, far less blatant than the lick Gronk laid on Tre’Davious White. One can almost see a domestic violence perpetrator telling the judge that, “Well, it was just frustration and that’s what happened, your honor.”