Alex Rodriguez's life hasn't been great lately -- not hitting, benched, rumored to have been trying to score with a female fan during a game (to which I say, dude, your girlfriend looks like this ... stop) and perhaps headed to Miami.
However, if he wants it, I have a way to make things better for him. I can't fix his swing, but I can fix his image.
The first thing he needs to do is pick a cause, and no, "Alex Rodriguez" doesn't count. He hasn't had to face down a deadly disease, but I'm sure there is something near and dear to his heart.
Secondly, he needs to find some way to symbolize this cause, something that says to everyone, "I support what Alex Rodriguez is doing."
Then he needs to publicly raise tons and tons of money, preferably something in the hundreds of millions of dollars, to make real headway toward whatever he's trying to do.
He also has to understand there will be critics. After all, he's not a particularly popular guy (hence my need to give him advice on improving his image), and he did use steroids. But here's the great thing about being the man behind a cause that makes tons of money (and if he does get traded to Miami, and the Marlins beat the hated Yankees in the World Series, so much the better) ... if he does that, the drugs and perceived personality flaws can be explained away with "Everybody did it!" and "Look at all the good he did!"
You're welcome, Alex.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
I'm a Yankees fan. If you don't like that, too damn bad.
By virtue of where I've lived for nearly 10 years, I've grown used to people questioning my sanity when it comes to the baseball team I root for.
However within recent days, I've learned that Yankees fans are horrible people...
... whose fans are also into heartless killing ...
Let me be painfully and abundantly clear on this. I have been a Yankees fan my whole life, and I'll be one until the day I die. I'm from New York, from a family full of Yankees fans. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent at my grandfather's kitchen table talking about the Yankees. (We used to complain that Dave Winfield hit meaningless home runs back when Alex Rodriguez was in junior high school, and he always referred to Jim Leyritz as "Ley-re-witz")
We didn't have cable or satellite for most of the time when I was growing up, so it was exciting when one of the local TV stations picked up the WPIX games when I was younger.When they weren't on TV, I would carefully adjust the dial on my radio to get the games.
I remember the (especially by Yankees standards) lean years of the 1980s and early 1990s, when Don Mattingly was just about the only thing worth watching, and I celebrated when the Kingdome was blown up because of the 1995 playoffs.
When the Yankees won the World Series in 1996, I called my best friend from high school to celebrate, and in 2003, the last time I saw him alive was watching the Yankees against the Red Sox in the playoffs.
Yes, King, I get mad when the Yankees play like crap, and Mike, winning makes me feel somewhere between pleased and delirious. And I get that I'm lucky to root for a wealthy, successful team that is going to make me happy more often that not, but I'm getting sick and tired of people assuming the worst in me because that's the team I root for.
I'm a good person. I love my family, feel incredibly lucky to have Mrs. Last Honest in my life and cherish my friends. I work hard and try to treat people well.
I'm also a New York Yankees fan.
And if that bothers you somehow ... the problem is with you, not me.
However within recent days, I've learned that Yankees fans are horrible people...
@king_kaufman "I wish there was a stat for most boos for a team that keeps playing in October." Smoltz nails those horrible Yankee fans.
@LastHonestSport@king_kaufman Why are they horrible? They've seen their homer-only team blow scoring chances all year!
@king_kaufman The Yankees could go 162-0,@LastHonestSport, and the fans would boo every time one of them strikes out with runners on@LastHonestSport@king_kaufman No they wouldn't. It's the failing over and over that makes them boo.
... that Michael Rosenberg feels are incapable of feeling joy ...
I understand why people cheer for the Yankees. (The usual reasons: They grew up in New York, their parents did, they love the uniforms, etc.) I understand why the Yankees spend so much money. (They have it, and they want to win.)... and the Yankees are, apparently, al-Qaeda ...
I just don't understand how anybody gets joy out of it anymore.
And I don't think they are.
@Will_Bunch The Yankees (terrorists) are dead, and Detroit (GM) is alive#BaseballCampaignSlogan
I'm starting to think I either need to go to therapy or start drinking.@EdgeofSports Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the hunter who killed Bambi's mom.
Let me be painfully and abundantly clear on this. I have been a Yankees fan my whole life, and I'll be one until the day I die. I'm from New York, from a family full of Yankees fans. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent at my grandfather's kitchen table talking about the Yankees. (We used to complain that Dave Winfield hit meaningless home runs back when Alex Rodriguez was in junior high school, and he always referred to Jim Leyritz as "Ley-re-witz")
We didn't have cable or satellite for most of the time when I was growing up, so it was exciting when one of the local TV stations picked up the WPIX games when I was younger.When they weren't on TV, I would carefully adjust the dial on my radio to get the games.
I remember the (especially by Yankees standards) lean years of the 1980s and early 1990s, when Don Mattingly was just about the only thing worth watching, and I celebrated when the Kingdome was blown up because of the 1995 playoffs.
When the Yankees won the World Series in 1996, I called my best friend from high school to celebrate, and in 2003, the last time I saw him alive was watching the Yankees against the Red Sox in the playoffs.
Yes, King, I get mad when the Yankees play like crap, and Mike, winning makes me feel somewhere between pleased and delirious. And I get that I'm lucky to root for a wealthy, successful team that is going to make me happy more often that not, but I'm getting sick and tired of people assuming the worst in me because that's the team I root for.
I'm a good person. I love my family, feel incredibly lucky to have Mrs. Last Honest in my life and cherish my friends. I work hard and try to treat people well.
I'm also a New York Yankees fan.
And if that bothers you somehow ... the problem is with you, not me.
Friday, October 12, 2012
The Olympics will always be in Lake Placid
Due to a death in my family, what was supposed to be a one-day trip to my hometown in upstate New York for my cousin's wedding last week turned into a three-day trip where Mrs. Last Honest and I had nothing planned for the middle day.
So we decided to make the 2 1/2-hour drive north to Lake Placid.
I had been to Lake Placid three times previously, twice for an all-star concert band when I was in high school -- in case you're interested, I played trombone -- and once about 11 years ago not long after my wife and I started dating. It's a beautiful place, but probably not that much different than a lot of Adirondack villages ...
... except for the Olympics. It's actually hard to believe the Olympics took place three hours north of where I grew up.
I stood at the top of the ski jump during my last trip, forgetting my lifelong fear of all means of elevation that involve riding along a wire, and chickened out of a bobsled ride when I heard someone say you needed to sign a waiver. (At the time, I said I didn't want to spend the $30, so while I guess the blog is called the Last Honest Sports Fan, I'm not honest all the time.)
We had also gone to the Olympic ice hockey arena, but just kind of poked our heads in the door. This time, however, we stayed, walked around, watched skaters on one of the other rinks. It was then that I was struck by the fact that the Miracle on Ice took place in the arena we were sitting in ... an arena small enough that the second level was a half-dozen rows of wooden benches.
By the way, as an example of how times have changed, in a town where one of the great sporting victories of the Cold War took place, the USA Hockey store was selling Soviet jerseys, the red ones with the CCCP across the chest.
Then we walked outside, and onto the speed skating oval, although there was no ice.
Hard to believe I was on the site where Eric Heiden won five gold medals.
(As an aside, back in my pickup volleyball days, the mother of one of the neighborhood kids who showed up from time to time brought samples of some drink mix she was hawking at the time. She tried to impress me by telling me it was what Eric Heiden was drinking when he finally won a gold medal after all his previous failures. I didn't correct her; I figured it she couldn't tell the difference between Eric Heiden and Dan Jansen in her sales pitch, she deserved to lose a customer someday.)
I love how Olympic sites in Lake Placid are so accessible to the public, but to my mind, the reason why is kind of unusual ... that Lake Placid will never host an Olympics again.
I've had a few arguments with a friend of mine who insists that the Olympics could come back to Lake Placid someday, maybe with Montreal or Albany, both of which are impossibilities. The Olympics have just gotten too big for a town that had a population of 2,521 as of 2010. By comparison, Whistler, British Columbia, which hosted only a few events in conjunction with Vancouver in 2010, had 9,595.
But when we went to Vancouver in the summer of 2010, not even six months after the Olympics, the sites that weren't being modified for other use weren't open for the public to view. It's almost like they were trying to put the Olympics behind them. My wife even bought a pair of Olympic mittens with the maple leaf in the middle, which had been all the rage when we were in Toronto the year before, out of a clearance bin.
But then again, Vancouver is a bustling, awesome city that has a lot going on. The Olympics were just another event that happened there.
Meanwhile, the Olympics give Lake Placid its identity as something more than another pretty Adirondack village. For that reason, the town embraces its Olympic past, and wants to share that embrace as much as possible.
So we decided to make the 2 1/2-hour drive north to Lake Placid.
I had been to Lake Placid three times previously, twice for an all-star concert band when I was in high school -- in case you're interested, I played trombone -- and once about 11 years ago not long after my wife and I started dating. It's a beautiful place, but probably not that much different than a lot of Adirondack villages ...
... except for the Olympics. It's actually hard to believe the Olympics took place three hours north of where I grew up.
I stood at the top of the ski jump during my last trip, forgetting my lifelong fear of all means of elevation that involve riding along a wire, and chickened out of a bobsled ride when I heard someone say you needed to sign a waiver. (At the time, I said I didn't want to spend the $30, so while I guess the blog is called the Last Honest Sports Fan, I'm not honest all the time.)
We had also gone to the Olympic ice hockey arena, but just kind of poked our heads in the door. This time, however, we stayed, walked around, watched skaters on one of the other rinks. It was then that I was struck by the fact that the Miracle on Ice took place in the arena we were sitting in ... an arena small enough that the second level was a half-dozen rows of wooden benches.
 | ||
| It's not a very big arena, but you can't beat the history, and except for the seats they put behind the rails to the staircases, there's not a bad seat in the place. (I didn't bring my camera, so all the photos are from Mrs. Last Honest.) |
By the way, as an example of how times have changed, in a town where one of the great sporting victories of the Cold War took place, the USA Hockey store was selling Soviet jerseys, the red ones with the CCCP across the chest.
Then we walked outside, and onto the speed skating oval, although there was no ice.
 |
| The only sport suitable on this day would be speed splashing. |
(As an aside, back in my pickup volleyball days, the mother of one of the neighborhood kids who showed up from time to time brought samples of some drink mix she was hawking at the time. She tried to impress me by telling me it was what Eric Heiden was drinking when he finally won a gold medal after all his previous failures. I didn't correct her; I figured it she couldn't tell the difference between Eric Heiden and Dan Jansen in her sales pitch, she deserved to lose a customer someday.)
I love how Olympic sites in Lake Placid are so accessible to the public, but to my mind, the reason why is kind of unusual ... that Lake Placid will never host an Olympics again.
I've had a few arguments with a friend of mine who insists that the Olympics could come back to Lake Placid someday, maybe with Montreal or Albany, both of which are impossibilities. The Olympics have just gotten too big for a town that had a population of 2,521 as of 2010. By comparison, Whistler, British Columbia, which hosted only a few events in conjunction with Vancouver in 2010, had 9,595.
But when we went to Vancouver in the summer of 2010, not even six months after the Olympics, the sites that weren't being modified for other use weren't open for the public to view. It's almost like they were trying to put the Olympics behind them. My wife even bought a pair of Olympic mittens with the maple leaf in the middle, which had been all the rage when we were in Toronto the year before, out of a clearance bin.
But then again, Vancouver is a bustling, awesome city that has a lot going on. The Olympics were just another event that happened there.
Meanwhile, the Olympics give Lake Placid its identity as something more than another pretty Adirondack village. For that reason, the town embraces its Olympic past, and wants to share that embrace as much as possible.
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