Scott Adamson, Author at Adamsonmedia.com

Time to give up a grudge and root for the Braves

Most Major League Baseball pitchers and catchers reported for duty today in Florida and Arizona, meaning spring training games are just a few days away.

**Out of Left Field is written by Scott Adamson. It appears weekly and sometimes more frequently if he gets up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

I’m not gonna go all George Will here – getting misty-eyed and using excessive verbiage to extol the pastoral beauty of the National Pastime – but it is nice to have it back.

My love affair with the game has run hot and cold over the years, and I can already tell this summer will be one that I spend watching as much professional baseball as possible.

This will also be the year I let go of a grudge – one I’ve held against the Atlanta Braves for almost a quarter of a century.

Let me explain.

My dad was the biggest Braves fan I’ve ever known, one who stuck with the team through thick and thin (and there was a whole lotta thin back in the day).

Once Ted Turner came up with that newfangled “superstation” that gave fans across the country a chance to watch just about every Atlanta game played, Pop took full advantage of it.

Many a time I would try to sneak into the house late at night following an evening of wholesome carousing, only to find him plopped in his lounge chair. There, nursing stale coffee and well into his second pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, he’d be watching the Braves get hammered by the Los Angeles Dodgers or San Diego Padres during a West Coast swing.

Oh, he bitched and moaned about the team’s (mostly) unsuccessful string of managers in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s – a list that includes Eddie Mathews, Clyde King, Dave Bristol, Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, Eddie Haas, Bobby Wine, Chuck Tanner, Russ Nixon and Cox again – but he never wavered in his support.

He even got to enjoy a playoff appearance in 1982 and a pair of National League titles in 1991 and 1992.

However, Pop was diagnosed with cancer on Dec. 5, 1994, and died on Christmas Day that year.

The last baseball he ever watched was Aug. 11, 1994; the rest of the season was wiped out by the infamous MLB strike. At his funeral, I placed a Braves cap in his casket, and remember telling people how I wish he could’ve seen Atlanta win a world championship before he died.

Damned if they didn’t do it 10 months later.

I guess I should’ve been happy, and used their Fall Classic conquest of the Cleveland Indians as a warm reminder of how much they meant to my dad. Instead it pissed me off that they had the poor taste to wait until after he was gone to win the World Series.

Ever since then – as ridiculous as it sounds – I’ve been pissed off at the Braves.

I was never a fan of the team in the first place; I rooted for the New York Yankees overall and designated the Chicago Cubs as my favorite NL team. But because of Pop, I always hoped Atlanta would do well because it made him happy.

Seeing the club do well after he was gone, though, made me sad.

That was a silly way to feel and I knew it was silly, but the feeling was there just the same. It’s as though I thought the Braves should be punished for postponing their greatest moment to a time when their biggest fan couldn’t enjoy it.

It was petty on my part, and it’s time to let it go.

So when the season begins anew, I’ll still cheer more for the Yankees, but I’ll save a few shouts for the Braves. I’ll even christen them as my new favorite National League club.

And who knows?

Maybe I’ll head over to SunTrust Park this spring, proudly wrap a blue cap around my big noggin, and root, root, root for the home team.

After all, it serves no good purpose to hate a team Pop loved.

I’m sorry it took so long for me to realize that.

Nothing says ‘Valentine’s Day’ like crime TV and pizza

It’s Valentine’s Day, and for many of you lovebirds it means flowers, chocolates and a romantic dinner, all framed by a soundtrack featuring Barry White, Harry Connick Jr. and Michael Buble.

**Brain Farce is an alleged humor column written by Scott Adamson. It comes out basically whenever he feels like writing it. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

What does it mean for me and my darling person?

We’ve recorded a bunch of “Your Worst Nightmare” episodes on Investigation Discovery, as well as of ID’s newest series, “Bride Killa.”

We’ll watch those, eat a whole pizza and then call it a night.

What … you don’t think that’s romantic?

Maybe not in the traditional sense. But then again, we’re married and we aren’t exactly “traditional” people.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve done the whole Valentine’s Day shtick before.

In fourth grade I saved up all my pennies, nickels and quarters to buy my girlfriend a big, heart-shaped box of chocolates.

And this was a Whitman’s Sampler, too, not one of those knock-off brands full of cheap-ass chocolate filled with that weird jelly.

I can’t remember her name – or even what became of her – but I do know she had polished off the entire box by lunch period.

You’re welcome, fourth grade girlfriend, whoever you are and wherever you are.

Once in high school, of course, the stakes get much higher.

Maybe you’d actually have flowers sent to the school.

This was a truly “romantic” gesture, of course, but hardly cost-effective. The markup on flowers is about 500 percent on Valentine’s Day.

But if you go that route, just stick to red roses. I had a dozen yellow roses sent to my junior year girlfriend because I thought it was unique, not realizing yellow roses mean “friendship” and not “love.”

Turns out in my case that was not a correctable error.

And then when you become an adult, you can end up spending a fortune on Valentine’s Day.

There are roses AND chocolates AND a candlelight dinner at an intimate restaurant such as Cracker Barrel or Golden Corral.*

* Golden Corral makes you bring your own candle but it’s the best buffet in the USA, so it’s worth it.

Still, you play along with the holiday for as long as you have to, and then you finally (hopefully) get comfortable ignoring it.

And really, Saint Valentine’s Day was never meant to be about commerce.

It originated as a Western Christian Feast Day honoring a 3rd century Roman saint who was martyred, conveniently enough, on St. Valentine’s Day in 269.

I assume flowers were sent to his funeral, but I doubt Whitman’s Samplers were available back then.

Plus, sending chocolates would’ve been messed up.

You can thank Geoffrey Chaucer for making the day all about romance. In his 1382 poem, “Parliement of Foules” he wrote:

“For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”

What stands out to me more than anything is that the dude could not spell. If you took a red ink marker to make corrections on his work, it’d look like the St. Valentine’s Day massacre.

However, if you decipher it, what Geoff is trying to say is that on Valentine’s Day, there will be birds making cheese.

I’m not sure what this has to do with flowers or candy, but this is what Mr. Wikipedia says and I am in no position to argue.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with a traditional Valentine’s Day celebration.

A delicious dinner, a bottle of wine and then some intimate alone time (remember the safe word is “Gryffindor”) is a wonderful way to spend Cupid’s biggest sales day.
But my wife and I love each other and have fun any time we’re together so, at the risk of sounding cheesy, every day is Valentine’s Day for us.

And that being the case, we’ll just stick with the ID channel and a three-cheese pizza tonight.

Unless we decide to be spontaneous and head out to the Golden Corral. Nothing puts you in the mood like the endless chocolate fountain.

The Winter Games leave me mostly cold

Now that I no longer work at a newspaper, that means I no longer have to tiptoe around topics that might offend publishers, advertisers and editors.

I can write what I think without caring what anyone thinks of what I write.

And that being the case, today I’d like to admit that – for the most part – I couldn’t care less about the Winter Olympics. Unlike the Summer Games, where I’ll watch almost anything contested during the quadrennial gathering, much of the cold weather competition just doesn’t interest me.

Oh, I’ll watch hockey because I’m a hockey fan, and the bobsled event is fascinating because … well, I don’t know. It just is.

Barring those events, however, I’d just as soon leave it all alone.

Obviously, I hope my fellow countrywomen and countrymen do well and appreciate all the hard work they’ve put in. It’s just that their sacrifices don’t inspire me to actually sit down and witness the labor of their love.

The PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games begin today. On Thursday, NBC will showcase figure skating starting at 8 p.m. – opposite the Duke vs. North Carolina basketball game.

Guess what I’ll be watching?

That being said, I’m not one of those sanctimonious types who think if I’m not interested in a sport you shouldn’t be, either, or that it isn’t worth following.

If you enjoy it then it’s worthwhile, no matter what sport it is. I think it’s great if you like things such as Nordic Combined, Skeleton and curling.

But I didn’t even know what Nordic Combined was until I looked it up.

At first glance the phrase led me to believe it might be a service I’d have to pay extra for if I was visiting a house of ill repute in Finland.

That’s not the case, though.

Nordic Combined is actually ski jumping and cross country skiing. To be good at it takes great skill. Hell, to be bad at it takes great skill.

But you know what else takes great skill?

Removing an appendix.

If you went to the emergency room with a ruptured appendix that required removal, I would be quite impressed with the doctor doing the surgery.

However, I wouldn’t want to see it.

And I don’t care to see Nordic Combined, either. Unlike an appendectomy I’m not repulsed by it or anything, it’s just not on my list of things to observe.

Same goes for Skeleton, which was also something I was completely unfamiliar with until I looked for it on the interwebs.

Skeleton “…requires individuals to ride a small sled down a frozen track while lying face down and forward facing.”

I used to do something similar to that when I was young and there was a rare snow. Of course I just called it “sledding.” Really though, since I led with my face, it should’ve probably been called, “dumbass sledding.”

But Skeleton sounds better than Dumbass Sledding (unless you’re competing in the Jackass Olympiad).

And of course, there’s curling.

I once poked fun at curling in a column, only to be schooled by a reader on what the sport entails.

So to prevent offending the curling community again, let me say I have nothing but respect for the women and men who put polished granite stones on ice and slide them toward a target while other women and men use brooms to frantically sweep in front of the polished granite stones.

But as is the case with Nordic Combined and Skeleton, it just doesn’t excite me and there’s no use pretending that it does.

Much of the airtime from the Winter Games will be devoted to ski jumping, figure skating and speed skating, things I have never done and never will do.

For millions of people, however, each of those activities are mesmerizing.

Yet the first event I plan to watch is on Feb. 14 when the United States men take on Slovenia in a Group B hockey showdown. There are no NHL players participating this time out, but hey – Miracle On Ice.

Then on Feb. 20, the women’s and men’s bobsled teams will begin competition, so I’ll check out a bit of that as well.

Beyond that, I’ll leave it to the rest of you guys to drink deep of the thrills and pageantry that comes with skiing, sledding, skating and sweeping ice.

And to all of the competitors representing the United States in those other pursuits, please know that I’ll be rooting for you.

I just won’t be watching you.