I found this old post that I typed while at the airportin Chitown.. It was wierd day and wierd post.. But it is what is..
So Here I sit in Chicago on my way to germany...
I have nothing but great memories of this city.. Sitting with IJ in what appeared to me as 120 Degree heat to watch the cubs play the Houston Astros.. We sweat like two fat chicks on Jenny Craig in a chocolate factory. We watched all 9 innings in that heat that day and I could not wipe the smile off my face.. Wow baseball on a hot day in chicago.. Cold beers and pizza followed.. We where big dumb fat and burnt but we loved it.. I could go on and on but I just love baseball in the summer.. IJ and traveled the upper part of the U.S. watching baseball a few years ago and I could not have had a better time.. I think of that as the baseball season begins.. Baseball is just so pure please stay away from the game Barry bonds there is nothing like it in the world.. 160 +games of pure americana.. The Twins came off the best year that I could possibly imagine.. I don't care what they did in the post season they where magical.. It was just the best days I could imagine.. Santana was onstoppable Mauer was a cagey veteran at 23 years old.. Mornea was just a solid MVP candidate down the stretch… I have said this before but I feel it again as the season begins.. Baseball is back.. Baseball is great…. FU Barry Bonds leave this game alone.. America is not a blood thirsty kille...r we love to hit baseballs and pitch in the sun and laugh.. America is alive.. America is baseball..
Sure I have had 6 glasses of red wine and 2 bloody maries waiting for my plane to depart in MSP for Chicago.. I am a little tispy but I am ready to post.. I have so many worthless things too add to googles search engine.. I ripped on wrestling on Thursday/Friday.. Dang it I was right.. My Son C was not ready for wrestling this weekedend he is apart of terrible program but all all that being said I have never been more proud of him.. So we drove to the armpit of the world and decided to enter a wrestling tournament in Wisconsin.. These people where hideaous and insane.. I think I heard one man in coveralls say to the other "LETS MAKE HIM SQUEEL LIKE A PIG" but hey I figured this was C's chance to embarce his wrestling roots.. After 4 hours of watching C entered the octagon of death to begin his journey into the sports backwash of the world.. C walked onto to the Mat thinking there was no phyiscal equal to him.. He had defeated every kid from every weight from every grade he was ready to take his crown as best wrestler without a mullet this side of the Missippi River.. (Props to simley) C got caught in an inside craddle and pinned before he knew what was happenning.. He had never seen that move before but he walked off the mat and never shed a tear or dipped his head for one minute.. He just looked at me and said what was that Dad.. I told him what I could and he shook his head and decided that he was not the best wrestler that had ever taken that mat.. C never faltered in his ability or his will to win he gave what he had every time he walkded onto to the mat but our school did not give him the tools he needed to be successful.. But that is not the story.. Let me give you my version.. I took C aside after his second loss and prepared him to face the Lions for a third time that day.. We where back in a lockeroom all by ourselves and C flat out told me that I really want to go home.. I did what worked for me.. I told him to run around the lockeroom and get warm and he ran by I hollered wrestling encouragement at him. C you need to find away to bring about the beast in you.. Wait a minute I stopped.. I am not very smart but it came to me at that moment.. The only way I could win in wrestling was to bring out the beast.. No one will believe this unless you where there but before I would wrestle I made my Dad slap me across the face as hard as he could.. I had to create artificical rage to get my blood boiling.. My Dad would slap me hard enough where the flight or fright reaction would kick in.. I had the rage I needed to "kill" wrestle the other oppenent.. Wow this is hard to admit to you all but I needed a drug to slap my body to get myself ready to kill.. Without that I couldn't muster the fight I needed to wrestle at the highest level.. ..I am an idiot I thought about play slapping C around to get him ready to wrestle at this little backwater wrestling tournament.. I am dumb but I stopped C is better than I was not.. C lost his match with class and honor he held his head high.. He has since fallen on harder times..
Go Twins
See ya KG
I tore my MCL.. Will post later..
Don't hate the players hate the GM
Heavy D.... Out..
2 comments:
So D,
Are you one of those parents that yells at his child's sporting event (even softly so as not to have security escort you out)?
I recently discovered that I AM one of those parents. The stuff just comes flowing out of me with very little I can do to control it...J's last 4 hockey games, he scored 8 goals...two more off the pipes, and a basket load of assists...
God help me, I think I may need professional help when it comes to my kids sporting stuff, and me keeping my crusty pie-hole shut...
JLO
Heavy,
That trip we took was a trip of legend. It would be an effort in futility to try to duplicate it, but I would like to try. We have to take our kids next time though. Kansas City????
The rest of this comment is schmaltzy, skip if you want to:
I am sitting in an airport in Tampa Bay, Florida, as I write this comment.
Tomorrow the Twins take on the Devil Rays, in St. Petersburg, and I will be watching the game with my Mom and Dad.
When I was a teenager, I was an idiot. I messed up so many things. I couldn't even face my Dad after my graduation. I ran as far as I could, to Thailand on a church mission. It seemed about as far away from everything as I could get.
To be honest, I didn't even know how to work things out. But my Dad did.
He sent me letters. He didn't talk about home too much, but he included the Twins box scores. I read those box scores like they were sacred. I loved them. They built a bridge and I can't separate the game from my Dad and that link that they afforded. Those box scores were just about a game, but they were really about so much more.
I am so happy I will be sitting with my folks and watching the game tomorrow.
This essay, that was part of Ken Burns series on baseball, to me, says it best. The last paragraph is the best.
(If you would rather watch it than read it I think this link will work. It starts about a minute and half into the video and is to me...priceless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsvHh2U7pfA )
Why I Love Baseball
It measures just 9 inches in circumference, weighs only about 5 ounces, and is made of cord wound with woolen yarn, covered with two layers of cowhide, and stitched by hand precisely 216 times.
It travels 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher's mound to home--and it can cover that distance at nearly 100 miles an hour. Along the way it can be made to twist, spin, curve, wobble, rise, or fall away.
The bat is made of turned ash, less than 42 inches long, not more than 2 3/4 inches in diameter. The batter has only a few thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball. And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes.
Baseball is played everywhere: in parks and playgrounds and prison yards, in back alleys and farmer's fields, by small children and old men, by raw amateurs and millionaire professionals.
It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed, and the only one in which the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.
Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years, while they conquered, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom.
At the game's heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game, born in crowded cities; an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating and has excluded as many as it has included; a profoundly conservative game that sometimes manages to be years ahead of its time.
It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers. And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions: between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual an the collective.
It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope—and coming home.
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