Monday, May 25, 2015

Sitting around ... talking sports

I was at a family wedding the other day, and during the reception, my brother, cousin and I got talking about sports.

We talked about the Yankees (especially Alex Rodriguez and PEDs), the Buffalo Bills (my brother has to get used to liking Rex Ryan), college basketball (my cousin was a star basketball player in high school, his daughter has done some coaching, and her boyfriend is a young college assistant coach) and probably a couple other topics I can't think of right now.

This lasted 15 minutes or so, maybe a little longer, and ended when my cousin got up, smiled, patted me on the shoulder and said, "Listen to us, solving everything!"

Yup ... because that's what sports fans do.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Calling BS on a Tom Brady story

In case you weren't aware, when a person becomes rich and famous, he or she frequently moves to more-spacious housing, it's harder to go out in public and easy to become isolated. 

If any of that was a surprise, allow me to share this from today's Boston Globe about Tom Brady, which has the undeserved honor of sharing Page A1 space with a wonderful piece by Kevin Cullen (although there's not really any other kind) about the Boston Marathon bombing. In addition to the above, you'll learn that a supermodel wife is one of the "trappings of fame" like endorsement deals or large houses.

Because, you know, it's not like Gisele Bundchen is a person or anything. She doesn't even talk that much! (Of course, when she does, people in Boston hate her for it.)

As usual, sports was the first section I dove into this morning -- although I read the Cullen piece when I saw it was at the top of A1 -- while I was watching soccer and eating pancakes in the living room. My wife, who usually reads the rest of the paper in the time it takes me to read sports because I spend a lot of time with the sports section, read out loud for me from the dining room.
"... after all these years we’re no closer to knowing Tom Brady.
Boston is partially to blame. People here treat sports like a religion and Brady like a deity. Fans, and some in the media, get on bended knee when the handsome face of the NFL appears in front of a camera."
Fair enough.
"They fiercely defend the QB to critics who say he should have cooperated more during the Deflategate investigation."
Indeed.
"They even bite their tongues when No. 12 dons a dreaded Yankees cap."
"Bull ... s--t," I replied through a mouthful of pancakes. "Bull ... f---ing ... s--t."

I know this will seem crazy for any readers I have outside of Boston, but Tom Brady wearing a New York Yankees hat was once actually a thing people cared about.



And it wasn't just the local media. Around that time, my wife and I were house-hunting, and I got into a discussion about it with the real estate agent who was showing us around. I said it shouldn't be a big deal what baseball team Tom Brady likes in his spare time, but she disagreed, punctuating her argument by proclaiming that the quarterback of the New England Patriots wearing a Yankees hat would be like an American wearing an "I love Iraq" T-shirt.

I don't remember if I came up with the retort that the "bombs" referred to in "Bronx Bombers" were a different type right then or afterwards, but I figured I'd better not push it too far.

After all, she was our ride. (We wound up not buying a house with her, but that was because life circumstances changed and we didn't buy one until quite some time later, and in a different town. Other than her unfortunate views on the Patriots and patriotism, she was actually very nice.)

P.S. -- Regarding Deflategate itself, since I don't like the Patriots, of course I think that not only were they deflating footballs, Brady absolutely knew about it and perhaps even ordered it.

If I'm right, he might want to perhaps rethink the possibility of federal court should his appeal not work out. It might be tough if the information he wouldn't give the league was requested under subpoena or he was asked to tell all he knew under penalty of perjury.