Thoughts of spring training down South

Published:  Thursday, February 14, 2008 (2 years, 1 month ago)
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Spring training.
The cold and snow we just experienced remind us that winter is going to be with us another five weeks, while baseball players head to various points south in the United States of America to begin that annual rite of passage for the Boys of Summer.
Lucky buggers!
It must be nice to be a professional baseball player.
Oh, well, we can all dream, can’t we?
I don’t know what to make of the Roger Clemens snafu.
I find it interesting that his former trainer, Brian McNamee, would keep all that stuff for all these years but maybe not. Maybe something happened that told him to do so, to cover his backside.
We all know pack rats that keep everything; dirty needles and such are a little strange to keep but to each his own, as they say.
At the same time, Andy Pettitte backs up McNamee’s claim.
Think Andy (soon to be known as Traitor-Judas-Quisling-Benedict Arnold) will be welcomed back by his colleagues? He did the right thing and will pay for it. So much for players wanting to clean up the game.
Unless I am mistaken. It could be that the players will finally say “we are tired of this. It is not being a Judas to want to clean it up. If we don’t, NO ONE WILL.”
Let’s hope it’s the latter.
I know it’s been a couple of weeks since the death of Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess players that ever lived.
In my younger days, I was a decent player. A friend of mine and I, Steve Kroeger, played constantly. We studied chess books.
Fischer was a hero — along with Alexander Alekhein and others — but we had no hope of matching his brilliance.
We also were no match for his paranoia. It is sad that a man so brilliant ended up being, well, a nutcase. I once heard a tape of a talk he gave that was utter nonsense. Some of the things he has written or was quoted as saying about Jews, Americans, etc.; it was all on this tape.
Perhaps the utter single-mindedness to be a grandmaster at the age of 15 — think an elite pro like Roger Federer or Tiger Woods at that young of an age, when everyone thinks you’re a geek — takes a terrible toll in not being able to play and be a youngster like normal. Heck, he was more Russian in that regard than American; the Russians loved him as “one of their own.”
That might be a reason he became a bitter person.
He showed those signs already when he took on Boris Spassky for the world title in 1972. It was an “us vs. them” match for Fischer, the Free World vs. the Commies — “the free world against the lying, cheating hypocritical Russians” — in the midst of the Cold War.
He didn’t just want to beat you: he wanted to slit your throat, stomp on your heart and steal your soul.
If only he’d have defended his title against Anatoly Karpov in 1975, he would have crushed him like a bug — in my humble opinion. Karpov had to resort to all kinds of shenanigans to beat Gary Kasparov years later.
R.I.P., Bobby.
I wonder how many times that has happened in professional hockey: a skater getting his carotid artery slashed by a teammate’s skate?
That happened to Richard Zednik of the Florida Panthers.
He lost five units of blood due to the accident. Even though doctors claimed his life was never in jeopardy, I guarantee you his family was scared to death (no pun intended).
Do you think he thought about skating again in those moments?
I just read the story of former Sabre goalie Clint Malarchuk, who had a jugular vein severed by the skates of a flying foe upside down March 22, 1989. In the story, the incident was reported to have caused two heart attacks, three players to have vomited on the ice and 11 faintings.
It took 300 stitches to close the wound — and he was back at practice in four days and played less than two weeks later!
And they say football players are tough!
Gustavo (Guga) Kuerten of Brazil is beginning his farewell tennis tour.
I remember attending the Cincinnati Masters tournament in Mason several years ago. He was playing a doubles match on one of the outside courts and I decided to watch.
He has a well-known entourage that attends almost all of his matches and I was right by them.
I ended up being Brazilian for a day. It was a blast, even though I didn’t understand one single, solitary thing they were chanting.
I think that is one reason for the popularity of professional wrestling; the people that attend an event don’t care what someone thinks about them.
At least I experienced that the time I attended a WWE card at Nationwide Arena in Columbus.
Let’s face it; all of us are under a lot of pressure to perform daily duties, be they work, family or whatever.
We need a time to just BE and not care about anyone or anything. Those times are just that: no one “knows” you — you’re just a face in the crowd — and you can just be YOU.
You can cheer the “good” guys, boo the “baddies” and act like a hooligan. As long as you don’t get into a fight or some other event, we can all use time to just blow off steam.
It’s a fantasyland that we need to visit every so often.
I love dogs.
That being written, I just cannot get into these dog shows, like the Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Garden.
I guess I’ve never understood why someone would spend gazillions of buckos on their dog, to primp, train, etc., to be in a show like this.
Maybe it’s the answer to the old question: why did the man climb the mountain? Because it was there.
Why put your dog in a show? Because you can.
I doubt very much that you see too many people and their dogs here that are not well-off financially and can afford this pleasure; I do believe the owners get a sense of accomplishment when their dog does well and gets recognized.
Maybe that’s why I don’t understand it; I am not made of moolah.
I’m sure the dogs enjoy the attention, too; anyone that goes to a friend’s house and has his/her dog jump up and down like their hair is on fire knows what I’m talking about.

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