Category: History and More

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.

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.

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.

In case you haven’t heard (but I suspect you have), Vince McMahon is bringing back the XFL in 2020. You remember the XFL, right?

It was the one-and-done league from 2001 that mixed bombast and sleaze with subpar football. It went out of business because – by the end of its lone campaign – so few people cared about it there was no reason to keep it around.

That McMahon is giving football another try isn’t all that puzzling since he seems to have a genuine passion for the game. Not sure why he is reviving the XFL brand, though, because it will only remind us what a failure the original was.

But he’s got some disposable income and really wants a gridiron do-over, so more power to him.

He mentioned last Thursday when he announced the revival that he wants suggestions on how his league should “reimagine” the sport. About the only things he seems intense about are shorter games (around two hours) and no halftime (a move which might make for some really sloppy play by tired players in the fourth quarter).

But, as a fan of Brand X leagues I have a few ideas and am not shy about sharing them.

The first and best, of course, is to raid the NFL for talent and field teams with the best players possible. But even though Vince has deep pockets, I doubt they’re that deep.

Most likely the new XFL, like the old XFL, will be stocked with players not good enough to stick on NFL rosters.

But that’s OK … if you can’t have the best players, you can make up for it by being wildly creative and having the best rules.

So here are some outside-the-box changes to consider …

Touchdowns will be worth 7 points instead of 6 (I stole that from the old World Football League), and the PAT kick is eliminated in favor of a run or pass from the 2-yard line with a successful conversion worth 1 point.
(There was no extra point kick in the old XFL, either, by the way).

I also think there needs to be creative ways for defenses to score points.

You can keep the safety, of course, but the unit can record a single point for their team by recovering a fumble or making an interception.

Radical? A little, perhaps.

But not nearly as radical as this; the new XFL should have no kickoffs, no punts and no first downs.
Each game begins with the team that wins the toss starting at its own 20-yard line. From there, it has 10 plays to try to score a touchdown or field goal.
If it fails to score, the opposition takes over wherever the drive ends. Or, if on its final down (the 10th down) a team finds itself deep in its own territory, it can concede two points to the opposition in exchange for the other team starting at its 20.

You always hear that football is a game of field position, and these rules truly up the ante when it comes to strategy.

McMahon said he wanted the new XFL to be concerned with player safety, so from that standpoint the elimination of kickoff returns should go a long way toward lessening the likelihood of concussions. I know fans love the “headhunter hits,” but I think it’s time we evolve when it comes to how the game should be played.

Other changes that would differentiate XFL 2020 from what you see in the NFL and college football:

• End zones are 20 yards deep (that rule is borrowed from the Canadian Football League) and goals posts are situated on the goal line.
• All backs are allowed in motion toward the line of scrimmage (also borrowed from the CFL).
• Receivers need just one foot in bounds to be credited with a reception AND as long as the pass catcher has the ball and keeps the ball from touching the ground up to the point that his knee hits the turf and ends the play, it will be ruled a completed pass.
• Any pass that is “thrown away” is considered intentional grounding (spiking to stop the clock is excluded).
• Teams have 20 seconds to snap the ball after officials give the “ready to play” signal.

Anyway, if you’re reading this Vince, I hope these suggestions help. And if, in 2020, I can see the Birmingham Brigade faced with a 10^th and goal situation against the San Diego Surf, I’ll feel that my work here is complete.