Sports Cliches

Through the years in the news business I have interviewed all types of people and the ones I find really entertaining are athletes and coaches.

Coaches and athletes are incapable of communicating without using trite, worn out cliches, many of which do not have any real meaning.

There's one cliche that really drives me up the wall -- one that's way overused, even by coaches and athletes who I consider somewhat articulate (is that an oxymoron?). It's the expression "one game at a time."

Any time a team qualifies for a playoff spot, I always ask the the head coach the obligatory question: "What 's your strategy for advancing in the playoffs?" The standard answer is: "We plan to just take it one game at a time."

To which I always want to reply: "Well, no duh, coach. You don't really have a choice, unless you can figure out a way to play two games at a time."

Perhaps my all-time favorite interview was once with a star basketball player. He was brilliant on the court, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer off the court. It was a must-win playoff game and the team was down 25 points at halftime. In the second half, the team caught fire and ended up winning by nearly 20 points. I asked the star player what the coach said in the locker room during the halftime break to get the players so inspired. His reply was, "Coach told us we needed to score more points than the other guys." What brilliance. What a profound statement. No wonder the school paid the coach such a high salary.

Baseball players also have their pet cliches. I once interviewed a slugger after he got the key hit to win a critical game. I asked him to talk about what it was like when he came up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning, knowing that the game was on the line. His reply was, "I just went up to the plate looking for a pitch I could hit." Gosh, what a great plan. I wonder if any baseball player ever steps in the batter's box looking for a pitch that he cannot hit.

Some other sports cliches I wish would go away --

• "This team has great chemistry." (Does that mean they pass out steroids in the locker room?)

• "Our team leaves everything out on the field." (Who's gonna clean up after them?)

• "We just need to stay within ourselves." (Nah, I think you'd do better if you had an out-of-body experience. Then, the other team could not hurt you and you wouldn't feel any pain).


• "It's the playoffs and anything can happen." (Truer words were never spoken. But anything can happen before and after the playoffs also. Sort of reminds me of something Yogi Berra once said: "You can observe a lot of things by watching.")

A Cheesey Valentine

So, on Valentine's Day I arrive home after a very hectic and stressful day at work to an innovative and creative surprise -- a Valentine pizza.
Sandy splurged and spent $5 on a large cheese pizza from Little Caesar's. To create the heart-shaped toppings, she used turkey pepperoni (bought at a grocery store). She used scissors and actually cut each pepperoni slice into little heart shapes. Took a close-up photo for illustration purposes.
Best Valentine's Day gift I ever got. Beats any sentimental card. I think it's even better than chocolate candy.
I fired up the ol' George Foreman grill and heated up a few slices. Don't know if the shape of the pepperoni pieces actually make them taste any different, but it sure was delicious.
Might be a good idea in case you want to treat your sweetheart to something different some time.

What was I thinking?

I break out in a cold sweat when I remember some of the dumb things we did during our rough-and-tumble boyhood days.
For example, when I was about 8 years old, my buddy Bubba Ponds & I were just goofing around on a lazy summer day -- typical rowdy boys trying to think up something fun to do before we ran out of summer vacation and had to return to the boredom of school days.

Bubba had a Wham-o Boomerang. You can't find them anymore. Wham-o stopped making them, and I think I know why (probably because of reports of incidents similar to the one I'm about to relate). The related photo is not me. It's a photo of a typical boy (probably sometime in the 1960s) with a Wham-o boomerang resting on his legs.

I came up with what I considered a really fun thing to do -- bomb the boomerang. We went to a baseball field near Bubba's house. I stationed him near home plate and my station was on the pitcher's mound. I brought along a collection of Dixie paper cups for making the bombs. To make a bomb, I would place a rock in the bottom of a cup and then place some sand (taken from the pitcher's mound) on top of the rock. I would then twist the top of the Dixie cup tightly.

When I had a collection of bombs made, I would give Bubba the signal to throw the boomerang. When the boomerang came within my range, I would start chunking bombs at it. It looked really cool when one of the bombs would hit the boomerang. The boomerang would wobble and fall to the ground, sort of like a wounded bird. And what was really cool was the dusty "poof" that occurred on impact when the dust bombs "exploded."

We were really having a blast, until we had a little mishap. Bubba threw the boomerang before I gave the signal. I was preoccupied on the pitcher's mound making a new batch of bombs and did not even know he had thrown the boomerang. I remember hearing Bubba holler: "Watch out!" Instinctively, I looked up at Bubba and the next instant -- WHAM !!! The boomerang smacked me hard, right in the head. I didn't cry, because it really did not hurt that much (guess there are some advantages to having a really hard head). The next thing I remember is seeing Bubba run up to me and asking if I was OK. Then, I distinctly remember seeing the sort of sick look on his face and how white his face looked when he put his hands to his mouth and said: "Oh, my God." "What's the matter?" I asked him. Then, I remember feeling something warm on my right side. I looked down and my right side and right leg were just covered with blood. Yep, my head was busted open and blood was just gushing out.

Fortunately, our house was pretty near the baseball field and my dad was there in no time, rushing me to the emergency room. It took nearly 20 stitches to close the gash. The doctor told dad that if the boomerang had hit just a little lower it would probably have struck my temple, meaning that I could have been severely injured or even killed.

As it turned out there was no concussion or any complications (although some may think that whack on the head could explain some of my bizarre behavior through the years).
Wish it could have happened a few months later. I could have missed about 2 weeks of school.

Anyway, if you ever come across a Wham-o boomerang (they are probably now collectors' items) you really ought to set up a boomerang bombing session just to see how cool it looks when the bomb hits the boomerang. Just be sure to do a better job of coordinating your signals.

The Good Old Days

I remember talking to Granny Moudry one day (when she was still alive) out on her front porch. We were sitting together on the swinging bench, just swaying back and forth and looking out on the cattle grazing in the pasture and the chickens chasing bugs around the front yard -- just generally enjoying the view of the countryside. She lived in an old house on 80 acres located about 8 miles west of Bellville. She was a sure-enough country girl. Born and raised on a farm and the only work she ever knew was farming.

I said: "Granny, tell me about the good old days."

"What good old days?" she replied. "Nobody on this farm ever knew about any good old days. The only life we've ever known is nothing but a lot of hard work. For six days of the week -- Monday through Saturday -- all I ever did was work, work, work -- from the crack of dawn until dark (and sometimes until after dark). The only rest day we had was Sunday, and that was because you were so worn out that you just had to rest. I hear some people talk about the so-called good old days. I don't know what they mean. I'm glad I've got an electric washing machine and a gas-burning stove and indoor plumbing and air conditioning and a car. I don't have any desire to go back to any good old days. They were not good old days."

Granny passed away some years back, but that little chat I had with her about the "good old days" remains as a vivid recollection. Recently, I mentioned it to my wife (who is Granny's granddaughter. Granny Moudry was not my real grandmother, but I claimed her as my granny anyway). My wife said: "I remember visiting Granny when I was very small and when we would stay a few days we would take our baths in a large washtub. There was no indoor bathroom and no bathtub, so we had to bathe in a washtub. The water was heated up in her old wood-burning stove. It was a real chore to heat up water for bath time, so we had to use the bath water as long as possible. I remember how cold and dirty the bath water was whenever I was the third or fourth person to take a bath. I also remember having to go to the outhouse. I hated that."

That brought to mind once when I was just a child and we visited some kinfolks who lived out in the country up in Rusk. Mother Nature made her call and I went through the house looking for a bathroom. Ray, the man of the house, informed me that the bathroom was outside. That was my first encounter with an outhouse. It was February and, naturally, the outhouse was not heated. I'm here to tell you, it was frigid inside that outhouse.


The "toilet paper" was a Sears catalog and the one memory that stands out in my mind was the scare I got when I discovered (while seated on the hole) that there was a wasp within spitting distance, just studying me very carefully. I did not like the icy air flowing around my fanny. I could not stand the gagging stench of the place. And I sure did not like that wasp eyeballing me. All in all, it was not a very pleasant experience.

So, I think I sorta see what Granny meant when she said she did not want to go back to the "good old days." There were certainly a lot of things about those good old days that were not very good at all.