Mike Miller: The Anatomy Of A Girly-Man

It's long been documented over the last two seasons how much 2001 Rookie of the Year, Mike Miller, resembles a WNBA player. Really, I'm surprised this post hasn't happened sooner.

Below is a comparison chart of Washington's Mike Miller and a completely randomly chosen WNBA player who just happens to be named Miller (Coco Miller, to be exact), happens to have played for a Washington D.C. team, happens to have also entered the league in 2001 and happens to look friggin' exactly like Mike Miller. Oh. Also, if you flip Mike Miller's No. 6, what do you get? Yeah. Total coincidence.

Six Characteristics of a WNBA-er in an NBA-er's Body

1. Unruly hair undone from their ponytail caused by hard, but ultimately futile, gameplay.
2. Skinny-yet-toned arms that are technically healthy, but add to an overall awkward appearance.
3. Role-player position on a mid-level franchise, perfect for remaining anonymous in plain site.
4. Text-book form that plays well in college, but will not generate more than 13.8 points per game.
5. Chiseled features that portray a certain, um ... rough delicacy.
6. Headband. Check.

Mike Miller has to know he resembles 80 percent of the Caucasian contingent of the WNBA, right? And if he doesn't, where are his family and friends on this one?

Heck, even from behind ... same thing. Dude looks like a lady.

So where do we go from here?

The jokes are starting to get stale, yet there's Mike Miller, getting girlier and girlier each month. Is this strategy to psyche-out the other team? Like when bugs Bunny dressed up as that creepy lipsticked girl-bunny?

That won't work, Mike Miller. Not if you've seen some of the wives these guys have. Your stubble's just not pretty enough.

Look at these two pictures. Can you tell which one is the WNBA player? You can't, can you?

... All right, it was a trick question. They're both Mike Miller. But be honest, it took you longer than it should have to figure that out.

Belgium Competition Displays No Neck, Brains

I've never pretended to understand the mind of a professional bodybuilder.

All the best t-shirts would never come in my size, I could never air-guitar properly again without ripping one (or seven) of my pecs off and I'd always be slippery with grease, which wouldn't bother me so much as it would the people who sat in the same seat as me on the train.

So take my navigation through the 2009 Belgium Bodybuilding Championships with a grain of salt, will you? If you're low on salt, check out the AP Story.

Twenty nut-hugger-wearing iron-pumpers (probably grunting the Belgian equivalent of "dude" and "bro") waddled quickly out of the Arsenaal* Theater on Sunday after anti-doping officials paid a surprise visit to the infamously steroid-prone contest. How prone? Glad you asked. During last year's competition, the northern Belgium region found 22 of the 29 body builders' sample test positive with some form of performance enhancer, most showing excessive levels of anabolic steroids. That kind of prone.

*Are we all in agreement that the ARSEnaal Theater is the perfect venue name for a group like this.

So, it wasn't so much shocking as sad when the anti-doping officials arrived and witnessed the entire gaggle of muscle-men just grab their gear and run off as soon as they entered into the room. Nevermind shock, the best part of this ridiculous little story is how deadpan the anti-doping officials seem to be about it.

"The sport has a history of doping and this incident didn't do its reputation any good," anti-doping official Hans Cooman said.

Generally speaking, when a competition's competitors all flee the competition before competing, it usually means the gig is gonna get canceled. And while I'd love to tell you that some smart-assed pip-squeak from Brussels hopped onto the stage and flexed like 80s-era Hulk Hogan to grab the trophy (or whatever), it didn't happen. Nothing happened.

And it sounds like nothing will happen in he future because, nothing has happened in the past. Many of these competitions have taken place off-shore so as to avoid drug testing. Because of the testing laws in Brussels, the event had been moved across the Dutch border to Vlissingen for the weekend competition in hopes of dodging "the man."

This time around, the best Cooman can do is report the case to the Flemish disciplinary committee, which will rule on whether it can sanction competitors who refused to be tested.

Can someone be punished for not taking a test? And if you can punish them for agreeing to be tested, isn't it just a quick hop toward taking samples without a competitor's knowledge. Just sneak under them in the bathroom, they'll never know. When's the last time those goons were able to move their necks enough to look down?

And even more to the point, if everyone in the competition is cheating, is it still cheating? The playing field seems awfully even to me.

Men Are Talking About Women Fighting

Kentucky Oaks winner Rachel Alexandra almost got held out of Saturday's Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, mostly due to a cheap and perhaps sexist owner (can one be sexist against a separate species?) Dolphus Morrison and Mike Lauffer decided the filly shouldn't compete against the males, despite burning the best fillies by more than 20 lengths.

But with the second jewel of horse racing's Triple Crown come and gone, Rachel Alexandra proved that the stable that bought her, co-owners Jess Jackson and Harold McCormick, knew what they were doing entering her to race. She won. She beat the best in the field and became the first filly to win the Preakness in 85 years, all without even bringing her 110 percent best, according to her jockey Calvin Borel.

“She’s the greatest horse I’ve been on in my life,” Borel said. “She struggled and still won. It’s such a narrow track I had to give it to her. The more I did, the more she struggled.”

Rachel Alexandra is the field's best. She's not the best filly, she's the best race horse. And perhaps, she's the most important step in gender equality since...well, since ever.

There's no need to go over the myriad reasons women and men aren't able to compete side-by-side in most sports. Most arguments begin and end with the natural strength capability difference between men and women. And maybe that's why Rachel Alexandra is so special, because mares and filly's aren't so obviously different and the races don't always come down to strength.

NASCAR and golf are two sports that have also flirted with breaking the gender barrier. None of the females have ever achieved nearly as much as their hype suggests, but those sports are far closer to it than say, boxing.

But what about fighting? The idea of pitting a woman against a man immediately seems offensive and cruel. Men are never supposed to hit women, right? They're the fairer sex, delicate flowers, unable to exhibit the same brute force as the men. And for any self-respecting man, winning a test of strength and endurance is expected and if didn't happen, it was the man's shame, not the woman's triumph.

But what if there were ways to change that? Currently, the mixed martial arts world has two bankable names without contracts. They're so good that they only have each other to fight with, which can be bankable once or twice, but not every month. I bet you've already figured out the problem: they're women.

Both Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos and Gina Carano have established themselves as the Rachel Alexandra's of their sport, but whereas Rachel has the ability to test her skills against the best, the same would be unthinkable in MMA.

There's nothing that can be done about our social queeziness about watching a woman get hit by a man. Most of us are programmed to feel any such fight is unfair and barbaric. But what if we started quantifying mixed-gender fights differently than regular fights? Regualr fights categorize fighters by their weight, not their power or agility.

Clearly a 210-pound heavyweight would never fight a 135-pound woman. Even a 135-pound man carries an advantage over a 135-pound woman, because the pounds are packed differently between the two body types and because force isn't simply a matter of muscle, but of how those muscles are used.

So what if that's what the league's started looking at: how much force and power certain weight-classes exerted? Look at all the tests Drago went through. You don't think some of those could be adapted to figure out how many pounds of force Gina Carano' mui-tai kicks stacked up?



My apologies, but everything I've ever learned about competition stems from Rocky IV. We're only talking about men versus women here. THAT movie showed man's ability to defeat machine.

Isn't it possible to have genuine stars-in-waiting like Santos and Carano fight better competition without turning it into a circus? If Santos can kick with the force of 350 lbs. and punch with the force of 170 lbs., isn't it possible to match her up with a man exhibiting the same numbers? Yeah, yeah. Mixed martial arts is not just kicks and jabs, but arm-bars and ground 'n' pound and sleeper locks and so-on, but isn't that all quantifiable? And if it is, can't these organizations use those quantifications to showcase their talent?

Scrapping bottoms of various barrels ain't working so far and without the ability to parade their commodities in front of fans, they have only a faint gasp of hope for other female fighters to develop into real challengers.

Right now a filly is the fastest race horse in the world and it only happened because she was given a chance she was very close to not having. Is it unthinkable to give these same chances to human females?

To Be Or Not To Be Like Mike

Robo-Olympiad Michael Phelps returns to the pool this week after being sent to his room for three months to think about what he did.

And what did he think about in that time? USA Swimming probably hoped Phelps pondered the foolishness of hitting bongs around cameras. Maybe they hoped he would realize that there are anywhere between 10 to 18 children hoping to become swimmers when they grow up and that those nerdy kids are looking up to him.

Now what do you suppose Michael Phelps actually spent his three months thinking about? If I had three guesses, I'd guess this, this or this occupied his mind. And let's get real, the USAS gave him a three-month suspension with the same fervor a proud papa punishes his son for winning a fight, only because his wife demanded he do so. USAS didn't want to be in dutch with the morality police calling for the 14-time gold medal winner's head on a pike. The USAS wants their golden boy to swim, they don't care if he hit the party pipe outside of the pool.

For the record, Phelps is a bonehead. But he's 23-years-old, I expect him to be a bonehead. My frustration lies in the moral watchdogs who pretend (at least I hope they're pretneding) to be surprised that a 23-year-old mega-star is a bonehead.

Suddenly, the golden boy lost his sheen and it became of the utmost importance to examine every dull spot in his facade. As if he had been trying to fool us along along. He hadn't. For a reputation to be tarnished, it had to have been spotless in the first place. It wasn't. And the world faking the veneer and then faking that the veneer had vanished is just...baffling. He was Michael Phelps, the ungodly perfect swimmer from Maryland. That was it. That was all we really knew (that and that his mother was a bit of a ham). So yeah, okay. Shame on Michael Phelps for inhaling an illegal substance and shame on him for getting caught (especially for getting caught). But shame on us for everything that happened after that.

Michael Phelps was dragged through the mud over this. He lost a Kellogg sponsorship (because the irony of a stoner gracing packaging of most stoners' favorite foods was just too rich) and even faced possible prosecution from a South Carolina county sheriff with a hard-on for the limelight.

It happened, yes. But let no one sell you on the fact that it happened in the name of truth or in the name of "impressionable children." Those reasons are as bunk and antiquated as telling and kid to not ever have sex and then congratulate yourself on doing such a fine job educating that kid on sex.

He wasn't using substances that enhanced his performance (quite the opposite) and for all intents and purposes, Phelps was in private when he did what he did. If we didn't want Phelps' action to make an impression on children, perhaps parading it in front of them on every news cast , web site and magazine article wasn't the best path to take, whaddya think? And just as we demanded the truth to out, we then demanded the truth go right back in its cubby hole by forcing Phelps to apologize for something he couldn't have been sorry for doing. The demand to rip down the veneer of Michael Phelps' untarnished character was voided the minute we decided a bullshit apology and a bullshit punishment were all we needed to make things right.

So here he is making a comeback from something that he shouldn't have been absent from in the first place. His comeback begins with the five events he will swim over the three-day Charlotte UltraSwim trial and will continue with the World Championships in Rome this summer. I can't help but feel the secret nature of his new freestyle stroke is an ace he's hoping to play if the bong talk follows him past his suspension. It shouldn't, but then again, here I am discussing it. And if the new stroke isn't enough to take weight off of Phelps' love of ganja, then perhaps all that noise he made a month ago regarding his sudden lack of passion for swimming was a result of finding anything else for he media to discuss.

"I still have four more years and then I'll be done," Phelps said.

Even this feels like a depressed high schooler making small wrist cuts then wearing a t-shirt to show 'em off. I can feel Phelps clamoring to be talked about and clamoring to shape the topic.

"I did make a mistake. It was stupid," Phelps said. "There are also some important lessons that I've learned. It is all about recognizing that I used bad judgment and it's a mistake I won't make again."

Smoking bongs at dorm parties maybe, but he's 23-years-old. Does anyone really believe he's an upstanding young man who's rid himself of all poor judgment? Okay smart guy, how do you explain her then? If you think Phelps is somehow better than the average 23-year-old, then you probably also believe he was the only one at that U of S.C. party hitting that bong.

Not to get all Chris Crocker here, but leave Mikey alone. In are search for truth we made him pretend he was something he's not - perfect. And everyone who demanded that action be taken against Phelps was also guilty of pretending that they don't know this type of thing happens. Pretending that any punishment or public atonement, no matter how trivial and unnecessary, will somehow make Phelps come to Jesus.

Forget going to Jesus. Let's just work on not going to Columbia after Charlotte.

Real Fans Let it Hit Them in the Head

It wasn't that long ago that Tropicana Field couldn't fill its park, nor was it that long ago that the fans who were in attendance were rooting for the other team.

Those days are gone and these days, the Rays seem comfy hanging blame on their newly swollen fan base , such as they did at the end of the Rays' 5-3 loss to the Red Sox on Sunday.

With two outs in the ninth inning, Boston's Jacoby Ellsbury hit a pop-fly near foul territory on the third base side. Rays third baseman Evan Longoria made a play for the ball that would have ended the game and given Tampa the win. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the team logo embroidered on your hat) a fan stood up, arms outstretched and snagged himself a souvenir to put on his desk at work.

Former Rookie of the Year and butt of millions of "Desperate Housewives" jokes, Evan Longoria was unable to catch the ball and replaced the out he failed to make with a hissyfit directed at the fan who stopped him from making it. On top of that, Rays manager Joe Maddon, without being asked about it by a reporter, took time out of the normally rote postgame press conference to call out the Rays fans who paid money to watch his team compete:

I'd like the fan to understand, the one on the third-base side, you don't do those things. Really. Our fans need to know that. In a game like that, you're in our ballpark, you let our fielders field that ball, because once the fielder reaches in [to the stands] the fan can catch it and there's going to be no interference called.

And this is where I got pissed off.

Look at the pictures of the play above. Who's leaning into who's territory there, Joe? The Rays ended up winning the game several pitches later, making Maddon's postgame response all the more...ahem..."Maddonning." Going back to Steve Bartman in the 2003 NLCS Game 6 or in 1996 when Jeffrey Maier nabbed Derek Jeter's ball in the outfield in the eighth inning of Game 1 of the ALCS, there has long been a disconnect between the ballplayers' expectations of the fans and the fans themselves.

If I'm shelling peanuts and someone who works out for a living hits a ball at me giving me less than three seconds to react, here is what I'm thinking:
1. Drop the peanut! No, seriously there's more in the bag. Just sacrifice it!
2.This thing isn't actually heading toward me, is it? Holy shit, it is!
3.If I don't catch it, everyone is gonna boo me. Strangers, small children, Floridians...the hot girl three seats over, everybody.
4. How bad is this gonna hurt my hands?

By that point, the ball has arrived. and if you're the guy who caught it at the end of Sunday's game, you didn't have time to think about your spacial relations to Evan Longoria, or the strategy involved in leaning back with your hands over your eyes.

The idea that Maddon, with time to compose himself,* decided to take the fan to task for not fleeing the scene is insulting. What should he have done? Ducked? Leaned into the lap of the guy in the second row? Covered his head hoping that the ball didn't crack the backs of his hands? Fans are not athletes, they're people who pay the athletes' salaries. That Maddon and Longoria (and perhaps Rays closer Troy Percival, who mouthed something after the non-play) are shaming fans for not "letting the fielders field" makes me wonder why that fan isn't also getting paid millions if he's just as resposible for an almost-loss as the players on the field.

* Compose himself from what, you ask? I dunno. From Longoria not getting everything his heart desired on that day?

Fan intereference was not called on the play, mostly because no fan interfered. If anything, Longo interfered with the fan finishing his beer before the end of the game. Take a look at those photos again (last time, I swear), that ball left the field.

Fans aren't there to do the job of ballplayers. If Longoria could have reached the ball, great. He might have made SportsCenter. However, if you lean into a guy's lap and expect him to keep tabs on not only where he is in relation to the ball, but where the players are in relation to him...well, that's asking too much of non-athletes.

This team has World Series talent and the fans are starting to notice. Don't forget how it used to be when Longoria would've made that catch easily because no one bothered to buy a ticket for those seats.

Kentucky Oaks 135: All the Pretty Horses

Horse-whipped: Rachel Alexandra was so far ahead in the Kentucky Oaks finale that by
the time I squared my camera and snapped a picture, she was gone and all that was left
were the losers she dusted. (Pictured: The losers)

It should have been clear that something special was going to happen during the 135th Kentucky Derby weekend the minute Scott Padgett, a Kentucky University alum and member of the NBA from 1999-2007, stepped in front of me and shot me a goofy awkward smile. It didn't occur to m then, but it should have. At the time I was holding out for a smile from such D-Listers as Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Peyton Manning (in New England, where I come from, you bet your ass Manning is considered D-List. He's lucky he gets that much credit).

The Kentucky Derby must be seen to be believed. Churchill Downs in the first week of May is like a Jay Gatsby party in which every woman in attendance is under the impression she's Daisy Buchanan. There's no orchestras and even less jazz (unless you count Taylor Swift as jazzy, in which case it's just as Fitzgerald imagined it).

What you need to remember is that the Kentucky Derby weekend is only about the 23 horse races to everyone outside of Louisville, KY. Inside the town, it's about hats and mint juleps. Seeing the mares and fillies are the Garfunkel to the Churchill Downs cocktail party's Simon. As someone who's fingers were inked with the racing forms 20 minutes after I arrived, I was unaware how passing the interests of most of the grandstand elite's interests were. Over the nine hours I watched the fillies run on Friday's Kentucky Oaks races, this passivity was something that revealed itself to me as harshly as an unwashed flasher.

It took longer to understand why a woman would want to spend a day moving the wid brim of her hat out of her eyes than the basics of betting on the horses. There are 12 female races during Fridy's Oaks and 11 races during Saturdy's Derby. There are anywhere between eight to 13 horses in each race accept for each day's main event, in which there are a maximum of 20 horses.

Unlike the U.K., America sets its lines based upon the betting patterns of the masses. So if June Day is a 3-1 favorite on Wednesday, but no one bets on her by race time Friday, the odds that she'll win don't remain at 3-1, they'll decrease significantly.

American odds, like the horses existence at Churchill Downs, don't really matter. The people in attendance do. It starts there. It stops there. Don't you forget it. And while you're up, go get me another mint julep. Louisville makes me hanker for drinks that taste like mouthwash and whiskey.

Before each race, you can bet early or you can bet late. Technically you can bet whenever you want, but unless you want to be reading about horse betting for another six hours, let's go with the simplest explanation. If you bet on Senor Fuego in Friday's fourth race 40 minutes before she's set to race, you'll be basing your wager on the racing form, the analysis inside and your gut (if there's two things I learned not to trust on Derby weekend, it's my gut and men dressed in pink. Never trust any event that compels thousands of men to congregate together wearing pink). The early odds are based on the horse's, trainer's and jockey's history and has nothing to do with the people's wagers. Then again, if you bet on Senor Fuego at 8-1 odds 40 minutes before the race, by the time the bets windows close, the masses could have made her a 5-2 favorite or a 30-1 underdog and you'll be trapped into your bet.

Then again, if you wait until after the odds have been muddied with the gut-feeling wagers of the over-tanned wannabe West Egg socialites. The choice is up to you.

When you're in the wager lines, waiting for a chance to give a surely cashier money that you'll probably never see again, you have many chances to see all sorts of race fans. Churchill Downs is an old boys club to be sure. Men with money bring their wives who are living off of it to an event that they dare not miss. Twentysomethings and the very elderly alike arrived at Churchill Downs in costume. The ridiculousness was in the irony not on display. When a skinny woman in a bright canary dress spills her mimosa on her shoes because she's too preoccupied fiddling with te feathers on her gigantic top hat that she's clearly not comfortable wearing, the idea that all of here are classy sports enthusiasts is just as difficult to swallow as a second mint julep. Seriously, those things are awful.

At the races, showing up in a low-cut prom dresses and large hats or suits that make its wearers appear to own plantations is not only acceptable, it's expected. But taken out of context, if any of the people at the races los their way and wound up in another state in their getup, they would immediately be checked into the nearest looney bin.

Churchill Downs is a fraternity, replacing sophomoric paddles with cigars and handshakes and tourists affecting a southern cadence when they speak. Pledge week happens every 40 minutes and if you don't win money, you're just another sucker inexplicably wearing a bowtie.

On Friday, I bet the winning horse 3-of-7 times, came out of the day down $80 (I did win a hot dog from my girlfriend, which emotionally counted as about $25) and got to see the Oaks favorite Rachel Alexandra beat the field by 20 1/4-lengths, an Oaks record. Rachel Alexandra was such a fast horse that the common belief is that she could have won the Derby had she been entered into it. (Editor's note: Calvin Borel, the jockey who rode Rachel Alexandra to victory on Friday, also rode the 50-1 shot Mine That Bird to a shocking Derby victory one day later. Two days after that the cheapskates that owned Rachel Alexandra sold her to a wealthier stable and they will enter the filly to race among the mares in the Preakness Stakes later this month. Borel chose the female horse to ride in the Preakness instead of the Derby Winner. Rachel Alexandra is only the third filly to run in the Preakness and Borel is only the third jockey to switch off the Derby winner before the Preakness).

The win was breathtaking and brilliant, even for a novice like myself. Imagine your first basketball experience being witness to a LeBron James triple-double? What if all you knew of baseball was an Albert Pujols home run? I don't doubt that Rachel Alexandra's ass-whuppin' was on the same level and therefore bore a new race fan in me.

Afterwards, I heard Adrian Brody was at the race, along with various brats from MTV shows. When did I hear this? Les than 60 seconds after Rachel Alexandra's run, purloined from a text message off a young woman's iPhone. Then the conversation buzzing aroud the group to my left turned into Kim Kardashian's Barnstable party and where in the grandstands Michael Jordan might have been. Not the horse, or the nex day's derby or the spectator's winnings or losongs. None of that mattered because in Louisville, it's about the spectators, not what they';re are spectating.

And the only thing more shameful than the fans' attentionto the eent was how hard I tried to evesdrop the last conversation long enough to find out where Jordan was hiding.

You hafta admit, it would have been awesome to rub elbows with Mike.

The Freedom to Fail

NO JAVELIN ZONE: Leryn Franco might not have displayed much talent in Beijing,
but perhaps she displayed something of more abstract importance.

With the 2008 Beijing Olympics 3/4 finished, it seems only appropriate that I write something about the global event. And because this is me we're talking about, it shouldn't surprise you that it will have little to do with the athleticism or glory of the Games.

But that's okay because the subject of my Olympic affections also has little to do with athleticism or glory.

Leryn Franco, a javeliner from Paraguay, caught my attention about a week ago when, for my job, I was researching some of the lesser known Olympic events. Two things need mentioning about Franco right off:

1) Franco is an attractive woman and for that reason alone, she caught my attention.
2) Franco failed to qualify in the javelin event in which she was scheduled to compete.

So why, in an Olympic season with Michael Phelps, Shawn Johnson and Usain Bolt, would I bother writing about this chick? Why not just post a few pictures and move on? Well, like I said, this hasn't much to do with athletics at all and Lord knows I don't have anything to say about those Olympic champions that hasn't already been said thousands of times.* Contrarily, Leryn Franco doesn't represent greatness. She doesn't even represent competitiveness and therefore, most will lump her in with other hot athletic duds such as Anna Kournikova, Andy Roddick and Michelle Wie. Franco came in the bottom two in both of her qualifiers (51st and 25th). For all intents and purposes, she really didn't seem to have any business being at the Olympics and could not have done much worse. Your skepticism will most certainly increase when I tell you that back home, Ms. Franco is both a runner-up in the 2006 Ms. Paraguay pageant and full-time model. Her modeling, in fact, is how she pays the bills while pretending to be an Olympian.

At this point, I can almost hear your eyes rolling around in their sockets. If I were interested in this woman only because she were attractive, I'd expect this reaction, perhaps even demand it. But she's different enough from athletes like Kournikova, the Russian tennis player, who started the tennis circuit as a promising prodigy, lost most of her competitive skill and became fetishized as a symbolic female athlete instead of an actual one. Kournikova is really no longer an athlete and therefore is nothing more than a famous personality. But Franco is not that, because Franco does not get paid to throw a javelin. She gets paid to be attractive, a job for which she is clearly well-suited. She then takes that money and spends it (perhaps "wastes it" is more appropriate) on training for the Olympics, where she embarrasses herself two Olympics in a row (at 22, she tossed a javelin in the Athens Games and came in 42nd place).

Why would anyone do this?

People became annoyed with America's last tennis hope Andy Roddick because they felt he stopped caring about his sport. Teenage golfer Michelle Wie was seen as someone too wrapped up in her own hype to effectively compete anymore. Franco flies under that radar and in fact, seems only to enjoy the process of throwing a javelin, perhaps too, she enjoys the process of representing her country without having to wear a bikini to do it. Either way you slice it, Leryn Franco represents something that us Americans claim we hold dear: passion and spirit.

There's a tacit sprytness present in someone who would fashion a career in modeling so she can finance her frivolous grand-scale hobby. Musician Jack Johnson woke up on the beach one day, decided he wanted to stop being a professional surfer and start making crappy mellow music and he's generally well-liked for it. I see the same preciousness in Franco.

There was never a point in which Franco could have thought she would qualify for the final javelin competition. During the Beijing qualifiers she threw the spear 12 meters shorter than her 2007 personal best. Had she matched her personal best at the Beijing trials, she still would have only been ranked 37th, 29 slots out of qualifying. No chance.

Varieties of beautiful people are represented in these games. U.S. Softball pitcher Jennie Finch represent everything perfect about humanity (talent, beauty and dedication)**, U.S. hurdler Lolo Jones represents everything real about humanity (skill, drive, missed opportunity) and Leryn Franco represents a lighter, freer, humbler quality of humanity (the personal desire to compete and the freedom to fail).

Leryn Franco is, at best, a tiny footnote of these grand Games, but in a way, that tinniness is why it's worth noting. It's quirky. Paraguay is a quirky country, javelin is a quirky sport and her involvement in these games was a quirky failure. Most importantly however, the spoils of javelin chucking are enough to compel her to embark on that failure.

This free desire has been grossly underrepresented.

Click on photo for extra large dose of beauty... and talent?

_____________________________________________

* Except maybe that Shawn Johnson has two different sized eyebrows. Has anyone else noticed this? In every picture and every video clip, it looks as if she's raising one eyebrow. It makes her look cocky and perhaps a bit smarmy and if she doesn't make the Wheaties box like Mary Lou, you'll know why.

** Ironically, less than 12 hours after I wrote this, the U.S. Softball team lost their first game since September 21, 2000. The loss can only be looked at as a massive upset and proof that even Jennie Finch is flawed.

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily...

I think it’s important to tip cab drivers a little extra if I happen to leave puddles of water on the backseat. The cab driver is almost certainly going to get an earful from the eventual wetbottom who gets in the cab next. I just want to make that moment a little more palatable for the driver, so I left a 30 percent tip and dragged my soaked 60-pound bluejeans (and the legs inside them) out of the taxi.

Had I known getting in to the taxi what I came to understand upon getting out, I'm sure I would have done a few things differently.

If nothing else, when my girlfriend Emily asked me if I wanted to kayak up the Chicago River toward Lake Michigan to watch Saturday night's fireworks, I would have isolated two very important words: kayak and river. Looking back, I really should have weighed more closely the probable effects of any activity involving these two words. This is automatic for many people, but not me.

I told Emily yes and absentmindedly finished my taco or whatever.

Most people would show up to a kayaking expedition with swim shorts and flip-flops... y'know, as if they were prepared to get wet. For some reason I let myself act as if the cover of night and the promise of fireworks would shield me from a billion gallons of lake water.

Emily and I arrived at the kayak launch site, signed in with our tour guide and chose a life jacket. My tour guide looked at my blue jeans, sneakers and plaid shirt and asked if I had any other clothes I wanted to change in to. In my head I'm imagining all the clothes I wanted to change in to, but all those clothes were tucked away in my house. So instead, I laughed and told my tour guide that I didn't have more appropriate clothes to change into and jokingly acknowledged that I was screwed.

In a situation like this, after I've just acknowledged what a bonehead I am, all I'm looking for is a little reassurance; a "there, there;" an "I've seen worse" or a "you'll be fine, pal." Instead, my tour guide smiled, nodded and agreed that, yeah, I'm pretty screwed.

Somewhere in this story I should mention that Emily and I were not alone. There were about 14 people in our group including some friends of Emily's, so it wasn't like we were by ourselves, but for the bulk of the trip we might as well have been. Our tour guide urged us to use dual kayaks. Along with the assumption that I would somehow not get wet, I also assumed I'd be in my own boat.

I mean, what's the difference between a two-person kayak and a canoe?

I've found in my life as a not single person that my definition of "togetherness" is quite different from that of my female counterparts.

tew-GETH-er-niss n.
male definition: being in the same general area while sharing similar, but not exact experiences.
female definition: being in close proximity as much as possible therefore sharing the exact same memories and experiences.

You'll notice that my definition would most likely lend itself to being fine with my own kayak. You'll also notice that Emily (and her female friend) were more than excited to share a boat with their respective male mates. I'm sure they referred to the partnership as cute or fabulous or some damn thing. Turns out that sharing a kayak is neither cute nor fabulous because sharing a kayak is hard. Along with the syncopation, unless the woman you are with happens to be an Olympian, she ain't making up for her weight with the energy she's expending. So if the two of us are going to get to the fireworks on time, that energy has to come from someone.

Guess who?

In all honesty, I don't mind putting in grunt work. There's something noble about doing so. How bad can a little paddling be? A little paddling probably wouldn't have been bad, but the voyage Emily and I tandemly set out upon was quite a bit more than a little paddling.

Two-and-a-half miles there. Two-and-a-half miles back.

Fun on a Saturday night is seeing a movie, watching the game in a bar, perhaps playing checkers in my jammies, something along those lines. Grunting up the Chicago River, drenched and exhausted is somewhere further down that list.

I should confess that I have a pre-existing bias against kayaks and really, all row boats. A little over two years ago, I attended Maine's annual Lobster Fest and entered its blindfolded boat race with my friend Priti. I rowed while wearing a blindfold and Priti directed me with verbal cues. I'll not go into detail of that horrendous race, but I will say it went poorly and I didn't say much to Priti for a good hour after we climbed from the boat. I guess I just don't do well with tandem things.

The row up the Chicago River was both painful and frustrating. It took us about an hour to get to where we stopped and viewed the fireworks. Emily, God bless her, could sense my frustration and thought that telling me how this experience would make a good blog would be the silver lining I needed. Good blog material doesn't make everything better, okay? Blog material isn't like mommy kisses or unicorn laughter.

Sometimes the stories I get to tell aren't worth the hell of going through them.

Besides, I had already planned on writing a blog about this before she said anything. Up until I sat in the taxi, I was planning on starting with that unicorn laughter line.

Admittedly, the fireworks were kinda kickass and they provided twofold services. The first being a calm in between two storms of rowing and the second being our tour guide's insights as to what will happen to Chicago if the city wins the bid to host the Olympics in 2016. I won't go into detail, but I'm pretty sure it will create a disruption ten times larger than the Cubs beating the White Sox in the World Series.

It'll be enough of a disturbance that I will realistically move to another part of the country.

After the fireworks, the sky returned to darkness and we returned to our paddles. Sitting inertly for 40 minutes almost made me forget how wet I was and how much I hated rowing. My hands were pruned and soft, which made it all the easier for layer after layer of skin to peel away, leaving one slightly more tender layers as my only protectant between the paddle and open nerve endings. Our trip down the river went better than our trip up the river. Part of this was because we had learned from previous mistakes, but most of it was because we were now swimming with the river's current.

It felt so good to glide in a straight line. In the fleeting moments where she and I miraculously found a rhythm, I could almost understand the appeal of it all. We were moving, slicing, still grunting, but with more purpose now. We were going to make it, we were going to get there faster, faster than we could have imagined.

We flew on the wings of Icarus.

I heard wind and water, followed by voices of our friends in the distance. I could not make out the words, but the tone sounded urgent. I disconnected myself from the freedom of movement long enough to decipher what they were saying to us.

"Get over!"

It didn't take me long to understand what they meant by this. My focus shifted from my friends behind me to an approaching force 200 yards in front of me. I wasn't sure if this impending phantom was the night sky or my imagination, but it was hulking and silent.

It was a miniature barge that blew its gutteral horn as if to signal that it was not a figment of my imagination. Emily let out a shriek. How could something so massive slink through the water so quietly? How could something so opressive remain unnoticed by two people rowing directly at it? Both Emily and I shared a moment of surreal panic. Was this boat bigger than it appeared and farther away or smaller and a mere matter of feet away?

I refocused and joined in the chorus of our friends by yelling at Emily to get over. I then added "Left!"

For the uninitiated, if you want your kayak to go left, you must paddle on the right side of your boat. If you want to go left, paddle on the right side. On our ride upstream to the fireworks Emily and I had experimented with these physics to a large degree. When I said left, she'd paddle on the left side of the kayak.

It's funny what escapes your mind when you're in a state of panic.

My yelling "Left! Left!" had no effect on Emily, who lifted her paddle over her head for reasons I may never understand.

With the barge making no effort to avoid us, I drag my paddle deep into the river and started moving us. Soon after we gained momentum, Emily came to her senses and paddled with me. We got out of the way and met our friends who were laughing (much harder than I was) and just as clueless how we all missed the barge until it was almost too late.

We exited our kayaks and returned to the small area in which our group had left their belongings.

Soaked and dripping, I felt dumpy; heavy like I had grown a tail. Like all my leg hair grew out an extra foot. It was about 11 p.m. and the set of doors through which we entered were locked and there was no clear alternative exit. We were next to an ultrahip, lively restaurant and lounge called Japonais in the complex in which we were trapped. We approached the bouncer of the club who told us to cut through the smokers patio and exit on the opposite side of the club's exterior.

This club: think a mid-western "Laguna Beach." Think of tiny cocktail dresses and perfect hair, bored eyes and hair gel. This club: think 95 percent yuppies listening to 95 percent hip-hop. Think: social smoking, not addiction smoking. Pitt and Jolie were there last year (pictured right). Got it? It's upscale.

The highlight of my entire night was walking through this maximum capacity club dripping like a newly washed car, brushing past people who spent longer in front of the mirror that evening than I had in the entire month. I'm still tickled by the idea that some girl with a cosmo in one hand got dowsed with a shirt full of lake water on the other when I brushed past.

That must've been confusing.

It must also have been confusing for whomever entered that taxi right after me. You gotta figure, that next person felt some moisture and ran through all the possible liquids the backseat of a city cab could host. I'm not sure what the driver told this person, but I bet everyone assumed it was worse than lake water.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing could be worse than lake water.

The Legal Spitter

When I get nervous, I tend to sweat a lot. I don't sweat like a fat guy at the end of Thanksgiving dinner, it doesn't pool around my lower lip or hairline, but I do get sweaty pits, palms and behind the knees (which is weird). My palms feel like they've been spit upon.

I can only imagine my children will inherit only my most unfortunate traits. So beside ears that resemble two open car doors and a case of Twizzler arms, I'm certain my kids are gonna be sweaty messes too.

What kind of parent would I be if I didn't conjure some way to turn this sweaty debit into a credit for my heirs?

I'm fully prepared to pressure each of my children into playing sports and eventually into professional sports, specifically baseball. Even if I have a half dozen little girls, they'll be the Jackie Robinson of females. I can't wait to see little Lily or Abigail blowing a 95 mph fastball past whatever steroid lads happen to be ruling the sport in a couple decades.

I've already over-publicized my intention to teach all my children how to properly throw with both arms. There are plenty of switch hitters in baseball, but not a single switch pitcher.

I plan to spawn two or three of them.

But fathering baseball's answer to the Williams' sisters doesn't stop and start with being able to toss a ball with both arms; not in the steroid era, buddy. That's where my genius for turning my debits into credits comes into play.

Sweaty palms, wet as if spit upon.

Before the 1920s, baseball pitchers were allowed to doctor the surface of baseballs by spitting, scuffing or covering parts of the ball in mud. Mechanically, the ball spins, breaks or moves in the direction of whichever side the ball was tampered due to the additional weight applied to the surface. No matter how you throw it, it's going to react in an unconventional fashion once released. This unconventional fashion is part of the reason the mudball, spitball and shineball were banned. In 1920 New York Yankee pitcher Carl Mays (pictured) spitter, which hit Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman in the head, killing him instantly.

That was the beginning of the end of the legal spitter.

The illegal spitter exists even today, but must be thrown in complete secrecy or the pitcher will be immediately thrown out of the game, fined and branded a cheater until society forgets he ever pulled the stunt in the first place.

If my kids make it to the majors, their nerves causing tiny lakes of sweat to form in their palms, no one can prove or blame them for throwing a shineball. There's nothing in the rules that say you can't be nervous and nothing in the rules that say it is illegal to unintentionally tamper with the baseball.

How's that for a pipe dream? Some fathers want their sons or daughters to grow up happy and healthy, I want my sons or daughters to grown up switch pitching and throwing wet heat to home plate.

Eat your heart out Tiger Woods' dad.

3rd Grade Girls

Saturday mornings are for kids.

Most of us had a period in our lives in which we woke up with the sun, fixed ourselves a bowl of sugary cereal (or three or four) and sat in front of the television enjoying cartoons until the a.m. turned to p.m.

There was no guilt about this period of our lives. Back then, I never thought, "Gee, I'm so lazy. I really ought to go out and run a mile to get my exercise."

To be fair, I don't think that now either.

Saturday mornings were what compelled us through the doldrums of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The entire point of Saturday was its morning cartoons.
Eventually, Saturday mornings shifted from being the cartoon Mecca of the week to the period of time binge drinkers recovered.
I don't know if the networks even show cartoons on Saturday mornings anymore and not knowing this (or more specifically, not caring) bugged me. I decided to rediscover my Saturday mornings. I'm tired of sleepily ignoring, what was once the greatest period of my entire week. And while I can't claim to still enjoy the bevy of cartoons I did 15 years ago, I have figured out a way to make Saturday mornings about kids again.

* * * * *

For the past four weeks I've been the referee of local pee-wee basketball games. Technically, they don't call the leagues pee-wee anymore. I think a dwarf or little person complained that the term "pee-wee" was demeaning to small people and so they got rid of the term.*
I've never refed a game of basketball in my life, but I've played plenty of them in my day. Each game causes me to run or jog 1.7 miles over the course of 45 minutes. I never ref less than three games, sometimes I ref up to six. That's a lot of miles, man. I didn't know how much I'd have to run, but I did know the rules to the game - at least the basic rules, which I figured were all we'd be using.
Being a referee in a 3rd and 4th grade game of basketball is tough. Not because it's difficult to make proper calls, but because there is actually very little basketball being played.
I'm not alone when I ref. I'm usually stuck with any number of ragamuffin 17-year-olds who were forced to get jobs and whom, in no reasonable sense of the ideal, have any desire to be awake at 9 a.m.
If I'm not stuck with Shaggy and Scooby, it means I'm stuck reffing with Joe. Joe is the 40-year-old, clubfooted park district manager with a disarming inability to look people in the eye.

I love Joe like a brother, but he's gonna get me killed. Joe thinks that 4th grade boys are old enough to understand the finer points of the game, whereas I'm just hoping the boys remember to dribble the ball. While I'm keeping an eye out to insure the boys don't foul one another, Joe's calling lane violations and illegal defense.
If you're reading this and you don't know what "illegal defense" means - imagine how a 10-year-old feels. The first game I ever refed, Joe gave me a busted whistle** and made sure I took the area of the court where all the angry fathers were standing.
Joe proceeded to call ticky-tacky fouls that would confuse LeBron James, leaving me to answer to the steroid-clad father trying to live vicariously through his son. And Papa Steroid's kid would be successful too, if only Joe would stop calling over-and-back fouls.
I've imagined myself dying a million different ways – usually, I've pictured my death in relatively cool ways.*** Never once have I imagined a 300-lb bruiser choking me to death with my own pre-broken whistle.

One of the angriest fathers I dealt with was my 8th grade woodshop teacher, Mr. Burton. I had to admit to being surprised to see Mr. Burton because Mr. Burton is one of the most physically unattractive men walking the Earth. His presence at the game either meant that he miraculously found someone willing to procreate with him, or he wasn't a parent to one of these children and was just there to watch.

I found myself uncomfortable thinking about either scenario.

It's worth sweating through the boys games though, in order to get to the girls games. There's nothing better that's going to happen to me on any given Saturday than being a ref in a 3rd/4th grade girls' pee-w... I'm sorry, midget basketball game.

I'm not sure what it is about the girls, but it's as if they've never been introduced to the game before stepping onto the court on Saturday morning.
I don't mean to imply that they aren't happy to be playing, quite the opposite. They love being there.

Well... everyone except Joyce. Poor Joyce is a little Jewish girl who hasn't yet realized that she doesn't actually enjoy basketball and in fact, probably hates all sports.

Joyce wears jeans under her shorts.

But everyone else digs being there. But they dig it in a weird way that I'm just not used to seeing in sports. When two girls are going after the basketball, they'll both grab a piece of it, realize they're fighting over the ball and will let go of it simultaneously. So while the ball bounces pitifully between them, the two girls both look at each other and giggle.
There's always one girl on the court with a killer instinct that I'm pretty sure comes from her father. Dad always ends up pushing this girl into lesbianism sometime down the road. And while dad's pressure might cause some headaches for him later on in life, his little bruiser-angel usually racks up eight points a game because she's the only one willing to fight for the basketball.
Eight points in a game from a 3rd grade girl is like the night Kobe Bryant dropped 81 points on the Toronto Raptors: everyone knew it was possible, but they just never imagined they'd be there to see it happen.

Kobe Bryant is my least favorite player in basketball, so whenever the 3rd and 4th grade girls games get a little slow, I like to play a game inside my head called "What if Kobe Did It?" The rules are simple, one of the girls on either team will do something out of character for a basketball player and I'll imagine Kobe Bryant doing it in an actual NBA game.

A precocious blonde girl named Dayle made sleepover plans with her teammate Lucy while dribbling up the court. It's the middle of the third quarter and I hear:
"You can just come with me to Caitlin's. My mom will pick us up and you can just change clothes with us at my house."
I almost blew the whistle on the girls, but I wasn't sure what foul to call.
I had to distract myself, it was the only way I was gonna let these girls play. I imagined Kobe Bryant offering Lamar Odom a ride to his house after the game so that they could watch "The Princess Diaries."

Later in the game, I actually did blow the whistle on a girl because she took too long to inbound the ball. The rules state that you have 10 seconds to throw the basketball into play. If you don't throw it within 10 seconds, the other team gets the ball. Because no one in 3rd or 4th grade actually plays defense, inbounding the ball never seems to be too much trouble.
But one girl named Katie held the ball over her head for a few seconds and then began laughing uncontrollably.
Her faced reddened, her knees buckled and I worried that she was nearing collapse. This made everyone on her team start laughing along with many of the parents.
When Katie finally gasped enough breath to explain herself, she said, "I just passed gas! That's why I'm laughing so hard! I just passed. I passed gas!"
As far as I could tell, no one misunderstood her meaning, but through her laughter and my eventual whistle-blowing (a solid 20 seconds after she was told she could inbound the ball), little Katie kept reiterating that her laughter was because she was passing gas.

This of course, was made funnier when I imagined Kobe in the same situation.

Okay look, I want to make clear before I continue that I don't find it funny when one of the girls wrestles for a rebound and gets knocked square in the nose. I'm not saying it's funny when she begins bawling, drops the ball while it is still in play and runs toward the sideline into her mother's arms. For the record, I'm not saying any of that is funny, okay?

That would be heartless.

But I am saying it's funny when I imagined Kobe Bryant doing it.

I know that I have the potential for greatness. Frankly, I think most of us have that potential and I know that recreating some of the Saturday morning fun isn't the most succinct path to my untapped greatness. But there can be no doubt that watching three little girls idly standing around bickering over who gets to dribble the ball up the court this time, only to have the one bruiser on the opposite team steal the ball at the behest of her muscle-bound father, has got to be some sort of step in the right direction toward untapping this greatness.

At the very least, it can't be a step in the wrong direction.

====================================================================
* I wonder… if I were to angrily call a midget a "3rd grader," would they become upset by that? Does that count as a taunt?

** I didn't even know whistles could wear out. It's a piece of plastic with a wooden ball in it - how does this happen?

*** My favorite is the one where 'Free Bird' blares on the radio inside the convertible I accidentally drive off a cliff. I picture me plunging to my death right when the fast guitar solo kicks in.