A manifesto for the ballpark

I will not be a professional athlete for reasons that start and end with a lack of ability.

I could get into sportswriting, but I'm at the stage in life where my teenage dream of being the world's greatest play-by-play man probably won't happen.

I have this here blog, with it's accompanying Twitter account, that I hope people like.

But I have decided that my great contribution to the world of sports will be through a book, nothing as brilliant as what I've recently read from John Feinstein, Frank Deford or Dirk Hayhurst, but something that needs to be written.

The book's title?

"Sit the #@!& Down!" (Yes, it's inspired by this.)

I've had the idea in mind for about a year, ever since last year's Futures at Fenway, and I've touched on it very briefly here, but the Pawtucket Red Sox game Mrs. Last Honest Sport and I went to last night (they had fireworks) convinced me it had to be written.

During the game, I'm estimating we had to get up 30 times to let people in and out of our row for people getting food, going to the bathroom, calling their bookies ... I don't know what. The lowest point was the people who arrived in the second inning and then had to get up within 10 minutes ... to get wine! Who drinks wine at a ballpark, much less a minor league ballpark? What is that conversation?

 "I hear they have a great 1981 Dave Koza."

"Did you say a 1981? That was the year of the 33-inning game! That's the best Koza! Let's go! I know we just got here, but a 1981 Koza cannot wait!"

But I digress.

The book will cover several basic themes that will make the game more enjoyable for the people who read it and for the people around them at the ballpark. (Any and all other ideas are welcome.)

1. Try to arrive on time -- Traffic and lines will be what they are, so it's not always possible to be seated by the first pitch, kickoff, tip or faceoff. But if you arrive in the second inning or after the first period ends (the latter of which happened at a Boston Bruins game a few years ago, and they were obnoxious kids to boot), you get no sympathy from me. Plus it's impractical; you bought a ticket for the whole game, so you should try to see as much of it as possible.

2. Plan your trips -- Almost every sporting event has natural breaks. That's when you should go to the concession stand, bathroom (unless it's a dire emergency), team store, convenient place to call the bookie, etc. Yes, that's when there might be lines, but it's less of an inconvenience for everybody.

3. Get up judiciously -- How often, exactly, do you need to get up? Assuming you arrive early enough to go to the store beforehand or go afterward, twice should be about the limit ... once to get the hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza or whatever and then a second time for ice cream if you're so inclined. Potty breaks can be incorporated into either trip.

4. Say "excuse me," but not "I'm sorry" --  If you must make me get up once, twice or so many times that the people behind me spend half the time staring at my behind, by all means, say "excuse me." That's the minimum level of politeness. But don't say "I'm sorry." You're not. If you were that concerned, you wouldn't be squeezing by me.

5. Have a clue -- Not everybody is as obsessive as I am about sports. I get that. However, if you're at a baseball game and don't know who Jacoby Ellsbury is (or insert home team player rehabbing that night in that very minor league ballpark here), call the former Cardinals and current Angels star "Alex Pujols" or ask if "Mark McGwire had been disqualified," I don't want to be anywhere around you. (All of these happened last night.)

I also don't want to be near you if, as was the case at the Padres game I attended last year, you yell at the other fans for not knowing what they're doing and then you do the wave while the home team is batting/has the ball/shooting free throws.

6. Watch the game -- Would you go to a movie and then do everything but watch the movie? A play? A concert? Of course not. So why would you do it at a game?

I have gone to one game in a private box in my life, a Durham Bulls game where the company our friends worked for had a box that night. I have to say, it was pretty cool, especially since it was air-conditioned on a night where the game-time temperature was 103 degrees and we didn't need to go to the concession stand because they brought us food.

Yet as I looked around the box, of the 15 or 20 people who were there, I think my wife and I were the only ones actually watching the game. Everyone else was treating it as a social event ... loudly.

That's why this guy is a hero of mine.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If you don't want to watch the game, stay home and watch a game on TV. The refrigerator and bathroom are there for the using. You can talk on the phone or surf the Internet to your heart's content. You don't have to fight traffic. If the game is boring, you can change the channel or shut off the TV.

And you don't have people like me judging you.

Michael Phelps is playing with house money

A friend of mine wrote this on Facebook the other night:

In 2008 everyone was rooting for Michael Phelps because he was Superman. The reason why his 2012 story intrigues me is because despite still being fantastic, in some events he's not a guarantee.

What I find intriguing about Phelps this year is that, assuming this is his last Olympics at age 27, he's on the greatest victory lap ever, and, as crazy as this may seem, I don't think we fully appreciate what he did in Beijing.

London is a victory lap for Phelps because even if he gets left in the blocks in every race (and he won't, since he's still one of the best swimmers in the world, if not the best, so he will likely win at least some gold medals), he's in the history books. For most Olympic athletes except maybe hockey, basketball or tennis players, and maybe some boxers depending on what happens afterward, one gold medal is the pinnacle.

Phelps has 14, plus a couple bronze medals. Eight of those were in Beijing. The only number he has to beat is Larissa Latynina's 18 total medals.

But we know the numbers. We saw the races in 2008, a couple in particular.




Yet the thing I don't think we fully appreciate is the circumstance under which he did it, namely that he accomplished the impossible ... when he was supposed to.

Mark Spitz's seven gold medals in 1972 was the unreachable star. Matt Biondi made a run at it in 1988, but his of his seven medals, "only" five were gold, and Phelps won six golds and two bronzes in 2004.

So Phelps came to Beijing with a career that would have been the envy of 99.99 percent of athletes who ever took part in the Olympics, and if he had done the exact same thing, it would have been a disappointment. At a minimum, he had to equal Spitz, and that would have probably been a letdown, especially if the race he didn't win came early. (Of the two races above, I believe the relay was his second gold, and the butterfly was his seventh.)

After weeks if not months of hype beforehand, NBC's prime-time lineup for the first week of the Olympics was an eight-part drama called "Can Michael Phelps Do It?" We came back every night for the latest in the series, live finals in East Coast prime time thanks to a convenient 12-hour time difference between New York and Beijing that and a schedule switch that put the finals in the morning Beijing time.

The only way it would work was for Phelps to run the table, and while making NBC happy wasn't his motivation, don't think he didn't know what the expectations were.

And he pulled it off.

Phelps is probably going to race another eight events in London, and while he'll get a lot of attention, it won't be the same. How can it be? It can't be "Watch Michael Phelps try to do the impossible ... a second time."

We saw him do that four years ago. This year, let's just watch and appreciate and understand we may never see anyone like him again.

Do you think Geno did it? It may depend on if you like him

Let me say right off the top that I hope the sexual harassment charges against Geno Auriemma aren't true.

For one, I don't think you ever want anyone to have done what he's accused of doing, but it's also because Mrs. Last Honest Sport and I are fans of him and his Connecticut women's basketball team.

When I first saw the story, I thought there was no way it could be true. Geno is a man who has coached young women for decades with no hint of scandal in how he treated them, whose top lieutenant (Chris Dailey) is a woman and who has been known for years as a friend and supporter of women coaches such as Sherri Coale, Muffet McGraw and the late Maggie Dixon, among others. He's also a married man with daughters.

("But what about his relationship with Pat Summitt?" you may be asking. I've always thought their feud -- which may be thawing -- was less about gender and more about being the big swinging whistle in women's college basketball ... a status he wanted and she wanted to keep.)

As you might expect, he has had his defenders since the news came out.

"Obviously, I don't have any idea what did or didn't happen,'' said former UConn All-American Rebecca Lobo, who has known Auriemma for more than 20 years. "But I've only ever known him to be someone of utmost character. And I think the world of him. He's always been of the highest character in every dealing that I've ever had with him or any dealing I've ever witnessed him having with somebody else."

In other precincts, there may be people whose dislike of him make them think that he absolutely could have done such a thing. For example, this. (The funny part is the admonition in the first two comments to stick to the story, as if they knew what was coming.) In the words of poster AirVol:

To me, it's hard to believe much of what people do to get themselves in trouble. Having said that, with everything we've heard or know about him, why would you have such a hard time believing it? I won't be surprised if others come forward with similar charges.

But none of us -- not Rebecca Lobo, not AirVol, not me -- knows what happened, and I've already pointed out, our opinions are easily determined by our biases. As Mrs. Last Honest Sport and I were talking about the case over dinner last night, the conversation turned to the Duke lacrosse case, where a lot of the assumption of guilt came because of the white, relatively well-off jocks appearing to be, to put it mildly, jerks.

However, being a jerk isn't criminal (phew!), and while I wouldn't have been shocked if the players had been guilty, it never did seem like there was any evidence, and the case, as we all know now, came apart.

In all likelihood, we'll see what evidence does or doesn't exist in Auriemma's case. But until then, we should probably heed the words of Mechelle Voepel.

There will be a lot of immediate speculation by people about which side they believe. These situations can be precarious for journalists, frankly. There are times when we can prudently state opinions. But there are other times when we need to let the system take its course as we try to sort out what happened.

I can say in nearly two decades of working as a journalist with Auriemma, he has never been anything but professional. In fairness, I do not interact with him in any other capacity. No one has ever told me, on or off the record, about him mistreating them in any way.

By the same token, I have not ever spoken with Hardwick. Her allegations raise very real, serious issues that women in the workforce still face in our society. Whether her case in particular actually has merit, though, must be adjudicated.

What NASCAR fans would write about today

Years ago, my parents got a magazine called NASCAR Scene, until they realized I read it more than they did, so they transferred the subscription to me until the magazine shut down a couple years ago, a victim of the lousy economy.

I used to read it cover to cover (Jeff Gluck, who I still follow, was one of the staff members), but the most entertaining part by far was the letters. Even my wife, who isn't a NASCAR fan, used to read them.

I'll be kind and say that many of the letter-writers weren't completely comfortable with things being different. My wife's and my favorite was the person who wrote, after NASCAR started providing funding to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, that NASCAR already had enough diversity. To which my wife responded, "What, because not all their drivers are Southern?"

Yeah, pretty much.

Most of the letters fell into one of the following categories:
1. National anthem singers/drivers not properly respecting the anthem.
2. Toyota being the worst thing ever.
3. NASCAR having the nerve to race somewhere other than the South.
4. The number of commercials during races.
5. "Fox should cover the whole season!" (in spite of all the helpful editor's notes that Fox doesn't pursue the whole season because of NFL commitments).
6. The merits/lack thereof of Dale Earnhardt Jr.
7. "Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt did not win seven 'Nextel Cup' championships! It was Winston Cup then!"

If the magazine still existed, there's no doubt in my mind what else would be on that list, quite possibly the top of it.

Danica Patrick.

And it wouldn't be pretty -- she wasn't that good in Indy Car/doesn't belong in NASCAR/gets too much attention since she's not that good/has a ride that someone else deserves ... etc., etc.

The thing is, there's truth to some of it. She was a pretty good Indy Car driver, but not a great one, and she has a ton of work to do to get good in NASCAR. And she does a lot of attention because she's famous for her looks and her advertisements. (Go ahead and look. I don't mind. Just come back.)

But then again, no one gets more attention than Dale Earnhardt Jr. ... a guy who is going on four years without a win (I'm writing as the Coca Cola 600 is in progress, and I hope he wins) and has maybe seriously contended for a championship once.

Yet even if some of the criticism of Danica is valid, there seems to be a vitriol about it, that people seem to find her an affront. I can't imagine why.

I couldn't be ... could it? No....

This Red Sox disaster isn't just about the losing

Strange as this may seem coming from a Yankees fan, but I have a respect ... albeit highly grudging respect ... for what the Red Sox have done over the past several years.

Their biggest rival plays in a metropolitan area of 19 million people, while theirs is a little under 4.6 million, but ownership has tried to play at on something resembling the same financial field as the Yankees. Even during this time of caterwauling that the Red Sox owners are spending money on Liverpool and not the baseball team, they have the third-highest payroll in baseball. They've wasted a lot of it (see Crawford, Carl; Lackey, John; Matsuzaka, Daisuke), but they are spending it.

They've been able to do it by leveraging their fans, both the hardcore fans and the ones who have been lifelong fans since 2004 (or 2007), into paying high ticket prices at Fenway Park every night and watching on NESN. But with that, there has always been another half of the bargain.

The team must always be right.

Unlike the Yankees, there aren't enough people in the Boston area to justify losing fans, not if they want to keep pace with New York. Therefore, anytime something happens, particularly when players leave, the Sox and their friendly media need to make sure that it's not their fault. That's what leads to Johnny Damon being a Judas who can't throw, Jason Bay strikes out too much, Pedro Martinez's arm is going to fall off ... and of course the biggest of all ... Nomar Garciaparra is a cancer.

So after last September happened, the Red Sox needed to make sure the fans didn't turn on them, so they fired Terry Francona, even though they weren't going to have any "scapegoats." The only problem, they would have had you believe, was that Francona lost the clubhouse, but a new manager (who turned out to be Bobby Valentine) was going to make it all better.

Except it hasn't worked.

Of course, playing crappy hasn't helped, including losing the 100th anniversary game (where that "a-hole" Garciaparra got a huge hand, as I knew he would) and then blowing a 9-0 lead the next day.

And now we have the latest in "As Josh Beckett Turns."

The natives are getting restless, and it's more than just the booing. It has the potential to start hitting the team in the pocketbook, and soon, especially since we now know that the team has a sellout streak mainly because ... well, it says it does.

If attendance drops to the point where not even freebies will make a difference, that's a lot of money, and the difference between New York and Boston starts getting a lot bigger.

It's time to stop whining about safety

So it looks like we're going to find out what kind of brain injuries Junior Seau may have had, if any, and, as Dave Zirin puts it, the NFL "holds its breath" about the results, it's more than just the league hierarchy that needs to take a long, hard look at itself.

It would be nice if players like James Harrison who insist that hitting with their heads or hitting guys in the head is just the way they play the game could give it another thought now that one of their heroes is dead.

But if would also be nice if fans quit bellyaching over how the NFL has gone "soft" if it tries to actually, you know, keep players safe. Will Bunch wrote a terrific article the other day about the toll football takes on the body and the mind, and it contained this paragraph about the attitude among fans that needs to be overcome.

"Some folks say that these players knew what they were getting into, that they understood they were risking their future health for glory and riches in the present, and that there's nothing that can be done about this problem short of closing down the National Football League."

Which is easy for people like Jobe Morrison to say when they're commenting on stories like the Harrison one above. After all, it's not their lives.

"Harrison is grown up. It's the NFL that needs to grow up and understand fans want smashmouth football. Not pansy football. Not flag football. Football as we kno (sic) it is becoming too soft."

"players and the nfl need to UNDERSTAND this.... Once you sign the contract to step onto the field and play, you UNDERSTAND the consequences. You can't protect players from injuries, it is GOING to happen....... it's your risk. Don't like it? no one wants you around. LEAVE."

But some of the guys whose lives have been affected by the game understand what's at stake.

"Those who are saying the game is changing for the worse, well, they don't have a father who can't remember his name because of the game. I'm pretty sure if everybody had to wake with their dad not knowing his name, not knowing his kids' name, not being able to function at a normal rate after football, they would understand that the game needs to change. If it doesn't there are going to be more players, more great players, being affected by the things that we know of and aren't changing. That's not right."

Who was it who said those words?

One Junior Seau.

No, not Junior Seau

If you think a Yankee fan in Boston is rare, try be a San Diego Chargers fan anywhere on the East Coast.

Trust me. I'm both.

I was in Los Angeles in 2008 when the Chargers played the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, and I loved that when I wore my jersey, people gave me the thumbs-up and talked to me like I was one of them, not some weirdo.

But it was nothing compared to when I went to San Diego last year, especially after I learned that Junior Seau's restaurant was a couple miles from our hotel. And the food was great. I walked out of there hoping that one would open in the Boston area.

And then came today, when one of my co-workers yelled over, "Hey guys, did you hear Junior Seau committed suicide?" As I sat there with my mouth open, it took a minute to sink in. My favorite player, a guy whose replica powder-blue jersey hangs in my closet, was dead ... 43 years old.

I wasn't exactly sad on a personal level. After all, I never met the man. I was just a fan, but he was part of my life ... the guy you couldn't take your eye off of, who gave you a reason to watch the Chargers whether they were good, bad or average.

Then the people in my office started buzzing over the news, but they all kept taking about him as a Patriots player. I wanted to yell, "NO! HE WASN'T A PATRIOTS PLAYER! YES, HE PLAYED FOR THEM, BUT HE WAS A CHARGER! HE'S ONE OF THE GREATEST CHARGERS EVER, AND HE WAS MY FAVORITE PLAYER BECAUSE OF IT!"

But I didn't, and eventually another thought came to mind, one I couldn't get rid of.

Junior Seau's not supposed to be dead at 43 years old.

Actually, no one's supposed to die at 43, but especially Junior Seau. He's supposed to count his money, surf, prepare his Canton speech and be the king of San Diego.

Instead, he's dead. There's lot of time to speculate about what led to his death, and we'll eventually find out something, but it's still hard to fathom.

Junior Seau is dead.