Sports

Nascar Chicago Street Race – July 2, 2023

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No, I didn’t attend. Get serious. Although, I will admit to the following: when I was 13-years old, having gone with my parents to the Daytona International Speedway and done one of their one lap ride-along experiences. Interestingly, it was right after that I stopped being able to sleep through the night.

I also will admit to having gone to drag races on a Sunday!, Sunday!, Sunday!, around that same time, though, if I recall correctly, it was at the Great Lakes Dragway in Union Grove Wisconsin, not at the U.S. 30 Dragstrip in Hobart, Indiana. My clearest recollection is that it was cold and I was underdressed, and my father wisely purchased a thick Sunday paper so that we could wrap ourselves in the pages under our coats to keep warm.

Most relevant to the Nascar event, however, may have been my trip to a demolition derby in Soldier Field while in high school, which I was reminded of when I saw the picture of the recent racers sliding into the piles of tires used as barriers on the Chicago street course.

That looked like fun. Forget watching the professional drivers floor it on the straightaways. I can see that from amateurs anytime on the local highways, and with the added factors of a cell phone in their hands and my life in danger.

No, give me a car with a safety cage and a good old pile of tires to ram into. That’s an event I could get behind. A whole new meaning to being retired.

Get (Green) Lit: Mini Golf, Big Vibes – American Writers Museum – April 11, 2023

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Though I recently decided to give up golf for all of eternity and beyond, and, accordingly, donated my clubs to a charity supporting the children of incarcerated white-collar criminals, an oft-overlooked, downtrodden minority, I decided, after consultation with, and advice from, numerous anonymous philosophers who are committed to agreeing with whatever I say, that it would not be in conflict with my commitment to golf celibacy if I engaged in miniature golf, an offshoot of the sacred Scottish pastime that emerged in the early 20th century and that still flourishes today, governed internationally by the World Minigolf Sport Federation (WMF).

So it was that my first time at one of the American Writers Museum’s new Get Lit series events was to tee it up with a large, joyous crowd of fellow competitors amidst the AWM exhibits and try my hand at bouncing the ball off walls, typewriters, books, and crumbled first drafts strewn on the floor around the premises while toting a drink that provided the double meaning to Get Lit and proof that bibliophiles can have as much fun as real people, and, presumably, more than even the most advanced artificial neural network (remember Lieutenant Commander Data’s travails regarding the emotion chip on Star Trek: The Next Generation).

I shot one under par for the nine-hole course, but, alas, ran out of time to meet the evening’s guest, Tom Coyne, who has written several books about golf, including one regarding his attempt to qualify for the PGA tour, though, perhaps, I would be better served by meeting Craig Bass, author of How to Quit Golf: A 12-Step Program.

Boswords 2022 Winter Wondersolve – February 6, 2022

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I went into my first (and last?) online crossword puzzle tournament with very low expectations, which I lived down to. I don’t consider myself to be a good pressure player (see basketball, high school), so it came as no surprise, but, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that my sweaty palms and rapid heartbeat were signs of Covid. Just to be safe, I took an at-home test after each of the four puzzles, which confirmed that I had no medical excuse for my performance.

To be fair to myself, I don’t think there were a lot of casual players, and I didn’t finish last, beating 10% of the individual entrants (unfortunately there was no senior division), not to mention some pairs, which I just did, but pretend I didn’t.

I could have scored a little better had I cheated, but still wouldn’t have approached the best players, who were finishing the puzzles in under three minutes. Seriously!? I couldn’t have filled all the answers in that fast if they were written on a piece of paper in front of me.

One unexpected joy from participating was getting to see the well-done, humorous videos that were shown between puzzles. Who knew that crossword comedy was a thing?

Play Ball!: Envisioning the 2020 Baseball Season

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The baseball season will start on the 2nd of July, with no fans permitted to be in attendance.  Players will be paid per game, at the conclusion of each game, based on voting by their teammates and the fans viewing at home, drawing from a pot of money for each game, the amount of which will assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury.
Teams will play six days a week, with two of those days being doubleheaders (but with a triple header on the 4th of July to keep people’s minds off of possibly more important issues related to that significance of that day).  There will be no limit to the size of rosters, but the total age of all a team’s players on a given day must not exceed 900 years.  
The regular season will end on September 30, with each team being scheduled to play 105 games.  Slaughter rules will apply.  Teams also will be allowed to forfeit, but doing so will cause them to forfeit their salaries for that game.  Rainouts will not be rescheduled and will be permitted only by a vote of the players, given that they will not be paid if there is no game.  
All regular season games will be within one’s division. The teams will be divided into 4 divisions of 7 teams each, selected by lottery.  Baltimore and Detroit will not be allowed to play, as small children, whose schools are closed, may be watching.   
Home TV remote controls will be reprogrammed to allow viewers to choose between levels of crowd noise and cheering or booing at every instance of what passes for action on the field.  The players will hear the resulting majority-rules sound effects over stadium loud speakers, but fans at home will hear only their choice to make them feel good about themselves.
All players and coaches will be tested for COVID-19 before the start of each game.  If any player tests positive, the entire season will be cancelled.  Any player caught spitting will be ejected from the game and made ineligible for the Hall of Fame.
The playoffs will start on October 3 and include the first and second place finishers in each division, thus 8 teams and three rounds of playoffs.  Teams will be seeded by an algorithm that takes into account wins, ballpark differences, years since last playoff appearance, and fan voting adjusted for the populations of the involved cities.
The first round will be the best of five, and the next two rounds the best of seven, but, under no circumstances will any games be played after October 31, unless permitted by presidential executive order and approved by the U. S. Supreme Court.

The Theory of Nothing

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Just because the world has ground to a halt doesn’t mean that I should stop writing, or does it? Have I misinterpreted the signs? Anyway, to help us all pass the time, here are some notes about some of the things I’m not doing.

Speaking of signs, and the stealing thereof, I’m not watching baseball games. I wouldn’t anyway, but my class on the Literature of Baseball at Northwestern’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute will be held online, instead of in person, which means I don’t get to indulge in the delicious home-made brownies that a member of the class, who is a baker, brings each week.

I’m not watching March Madness or running my pool, which is a shame because I concocted some bizarre rules this year in the hope that no one else would understand them. In that vein, in the absence of games, I have declared myself the winner of the pool.

Despite having been the Wizard of Oz in Wicked on Broadway, Joel Grey apparently does not have the power to make everything right and so is not going to the 25th Anniversary Porchlight Music Theatre Icons Gala honoring him and neither is anyone else, including me, at least until it gets rescheduled.

I’m not going to the postponed Newberry Library Associates Night, where I was hoping to cop some free wine and cheese and then sneak out before the staff droned on about research that would have bored me to tears.

I’m not going to the American Writers Museum to listen to Gene Luen Yang talk about his new graphic novel Dragon Hoops, as he cancelled his in-person book tour, and instead, according to his website, is touring as a cartoon.

I’m not going to the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s 100th Anniversary Concert, which was to feature Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, which also was performed at the orchestra’s first-ever concert on March 29, 1920. I missed that one too.

Five Iron Golf – March 6, 2020

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I’ve been using Five Iron Golf’s indoor simulators regularly over the last two months, ever since my orthopedist, when I asked him if I could play golf again, gave me the okay, though he wasn’t as positive about the violin, as I had never played that before.

March 6th was my first time using Trackman software, which we were told is more realistic than the other software we had been using. Clearly that’s so, because, on this first occasion, I got a hole in one, on the 11th hole at St. Andrews, not the one in West Chicago, but the real one, in Scotland. Well, not the real one, because we were playing on a simulator, and no one was speaking with a brogue, but it was a simulation of the real one.

Years ago I got a few holes-in-one when there were windmills and clowns’ mouths involved, but this is the first time with an actual golf club in my hands, even if the ball only travelled 10 or so feet into a screen, not 147 yards into the gray skies of Scotland.

I can’t remember the last time I was so excited – well maybe it was when I flunked my Army physical. I was like North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano, when his team won the NCAA men’s tournament 54-52 in 1983 on Lorenzo Charles’s shot at the buzzer, and he famously began running around the court looking for someone to hug.

One of the guys on staff took my picture, I think just to shut me up, not to bask in my glow, but he also said something about having to follow Five Iron on Instagram in order to win a prize for my shot. The odds of that happening are longer than they were for the hole-in-one.

Chicago Cubs Baseball Game – Wrigley Field – August 29 2018

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Today was the second time I had entered Wrigley Field since October 14, 2003, when some guy named Bartman made Felipe Alou go crazy in a playoff game by reaching for a foul ball. I was there for that game (and still have my ticket stub). Today’s game didn’t have quite the same drama. It essentially was over in the top of the first, when former White Sox player Todd Frazier hit a grand slam homer for the Mets.

So we spent the rest of the game observing things like the number of mound visits registered on the scoreboard and the number of players participating in them. On several occasions, the Cubs seemed to be channeling the movie Bull Durham, bringing half a dozen players to the mound to discuss wedding gifts, jammed eyelids, and cutting the head off a live rooster.

The Wrigley Field bathrooms definitely have been upgraded, or at least the one I inspected. The food still looks unappealing (I opted to bring a power bar from home instead) and the left field Jumbotron looks sort of surreal, but it helped light the field on a dismal day when the highlight of the action for the Cubs was a flock of birds taking up residence in short left field in the late innings.

Kyle Schwarber interacted more effectively with the birds, chasing them away, than he did with the Mets pitchers, striking out three times, and certainly more effectively than Tippi Hedren did in that Bodega Bay phone booth in 1963, a scene that couldn’t be shot today, because there are no phone booths, which also reminded me of the scene in the 1978 Superman: The Movie, when Clark Kent couldn’t find a suitable phone booth in which to change into his alter ego. Today, neither could Schwarber nor any of the other Cubs.

White Pines Golf Dome – Ongoing

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The background music at the White Pines Golf Dome is sixties rock. Fortunately, the rhythm of the songs they play suits my swing. Way back when, I loved running to the rhythm of certain songs. My personal favorite was the Spinners’ 1980 version of Working My Way Back to You (with no offense to the original Four Seasons version). Now, if only I could master rhythm on the piano. I play the piano as if I were doing interval training on the track, frequently (though unintentionally, as opposed to when running) changing the beat, regardless of how the music is actually written – let’s call it unintentional improvisation, a new kind of jazz.

The Dome opens at 7:00 am. No matter how early I get there, the caffeinated coffee urn is empty. Maybe there’s never any, even if you get there at 7:00 sharp, which I guess doesn’t really matter to me because I don’t like coffee. I drink it for the vanilla creamer. I keep vanilla extract in my kitchen cabinet, with no idea of what I’m going to do with it (I don’t bake), but reassured by it just being there. It has been suggested to me that I sniff it on days when I need a lift. Sure, why not, it’s probably not a gateway drug – I’ve never heard of flavors anonymous.

As for golf, I’m currently working on only seven swing thoughts, which is pretty good for me, and which I should be able to handle, based upon Miller’s Law. Miller’s Law refers to the oft-cited article, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”, published in 1956 in Psychological Review by the Princeton University cognitive psychologist George A. Miller. I try not to think about the article itself while swinging – that would be an eighth thing to remember, and would throw everything off.

Super Bowl Sunday – February 4, 2018

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Nine friends from the hood came over to watch the game. Though I knew they were coming, I provided no chicken wings, no chips, and no beer (I know that sounds unAmerican – I’ve never seen Gone With the Wind either), but someone brought a ten pound slab of chocolate, so we were all set. I finished it off for breakfast (just kidding – or am I?).

Two of the nine friends left the opera early to arrive in time for the game, not because they are such big football fans but because they thought the opera was so awful that they couldn’t leave fast enough (they did wait for intermission so that they wouldn’t be banned for life – a poor motivation in my opinion).

One attendee, who was rooting for the Eagles, as was most everyone in the room who knew we were watching football (remember we had opera lovers there), kept reminding us that the Patriots always came from behind to win. Even after the game was over, she seemed concerned that she would arrive home to discover that something had happened en route, well after the final whistle, to change the result in the Patriot’s favor (no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition and no one trusts the Patriots).

As the game ended my guests established a new world indoor record for quickest departure from a Super Bowl party because they wanted to get home in time to watch the special episode of This Is Us airing after the game (the intricacies of recording a show after a live sporting event apparently had eluded most of them and they were worried that the artificial intelligence of their DVRs wouldn’t pick up the slack). I‘ve never seen the show, but I gather that night’s episode was revealing the cause of a lead character’s death. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t J.R. Ewing’s and that Bobby wasn’t coming out of the shower, but who knows. After all, the Patriots were four-and-a-half point favorites.

Baseball 2017 – Phoenix, Chicago, St. Louis

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On August 12, 1994 major league baseball players went on strike. When the players went on strike, so did I. Over the years I softened my stance somewhat, but still hadn’t crossed my own picket line more than a few times prior to 2017 (amazingly the Bartman game was one of those times, though I swear I was in no way responsible for the result).

So 2017 was a breakout year for me. For the first time in over 25 years I went to a spring training game, actually three games. A week in Arizona in March seemed like a good idea (though it had been warm enough in Chicago in February to play golf four days in a row).

All the games we went to were day games. They don’t seem to play night games in spring training in Arizona, which I don’t understand, given that one could play golf during the day, while there is absolutely nothing to do in Arizona in the evening. The one day that our seats were in the sun, we spent most of the game in the shade by the first baseline bar watching the game on TV. Not sure that was worth a three and a half hour flight.

Closer to home, 2017 marked my first time at Wrigley Rooftops. Unfortunately, I’m not too fond of heights. Fortunately, it was early in the season, and very cold, so I spent about five seconds outside watching the game and the rest of the time safely inside, warm, watching on tv, and scrounging for food and drink, until I left in the sixth inning.

The final lap of my 2017 baseball rebirth was a Cardinal game in St. Louis when I was there for a conference. I don’t expect to go to many games in the future, though the nerd in me would consider an opportunity to add another park to my resume (having attended games in 13 major league parks to date despite my prolonged absence from the fray), and an invitation to watch a game from a luxury suite with a dessert bar is always tempting.