I so wish I had the strength to boycott the MLB All Star Game. It is by far, the whackest of all the all star games (Out of my many flaws, the biggest, may be unsubstantiated loyalty). Tallying up, all the injured/vote-in/special vote-in players, the AL had 36 total all stars & the NL had 38. 74 all stars! Whenever, you have nearly 75 of something, the word 'elite' gets muddled a bit. Though, baseball doesn't work this way, that's 3 back-ups per position. Whats worse is that, out of the 36 AL all stars, 18 of them only participate in half of the game! (I'm with Crash when it comes to the DH!)
Like Crash, I have a set of principles that govern my life, this one, being one of my top: IF EVERYONE IS AN ALL STAR, NO ONE IS AN ALL STAR
The reason it's so important is because it speaks to many facets of life. Whenever we deflate the excellent or inflate the reprehensible, we lose meaning. As it pertains to the all star game, the word, 'all star' is then stripped of its meaning. If everyone gets a trophy, then your 1st place trophy, becomes null & void. If someone notices a trend, that a lot of the people in prison, happen to be black and then is called a racist, it strips the meaning of the word, when you need to call the people who have set-up the system that facilitates fast passing black people into prison, racists. If everyone who has ever played a practical joke on someone, is a bully, it strips the meaning of the word, when we need it for the people who make someone a target & put all their energy into terrorizing that person. For instance, in 5th grade, someone put glue on my chair, and I got stuck to my chair for a little while, that is a practical joke. Also, in 5th grade, 2 of my friends made a cripple girl cry so many times, that they were keeping score, to see who could make her cry the most; the winner had 29. See the difference. So, if we call that kid who put glue in my chair a 'bully', and in the same breath, call my 2 friends 'bullies', it doesn't really make much sense.
It speaks to this bigger need of accomplishment based praise. Praise should be given to only those that achieve. The kid that aces his test, needs to be recognized for it. If another kid fails that same test, yet gets treated the same & given the same praise, then it strips the motivation from the achiever & subdues their accomplishment. The failing kid will grow-up, feeling more capable than he actually is & will be greeted by an unforgiving world that will have no patience for his ineptitude. It is NOT cruel to tell the failing kid that he is failing. The truly cruel thing would be to pat him on his back & tell him good job. Instead we should, come alongside the failing kid, give him the true report of his skills and then, coach him up so he too can achieve.
I guess, bottom line is this: what's the thing that successful people have in common? They all at one point, to some degree, fail. Lets not do our society the disservice of appeasement. Let us expect much! Let us be honest with ourselves, and our peers, so that those who achieve, get recognition & those who do not, get help to achieve in the future.
Why do people do this to me? My work continued the tradition of scheduling things I have to be at in concert with important sports events. I literally was scheduled to work all seven games of the NBA Finals. Gosh! Don't people know that you have to schedule life around sports! I bring it up for a couple of reasons:
When you don't watch it live, you don't get to participate in the conversation.
A couple of things are happening all at once. You have to go dark. This is nearly impossible during the NBA Finals. Even the most causal of observers are interested in this series. You say, 'shouldn't be a problem; you work at a restaurant with no televisions, just turn off your phone, you'll be fine'; the only problem with that logic is, that every server is checking their smartphones for updates & trying to talk about it with each other & the kitchen crew is listening to it, on the radio. I have spent much of my life trying to go dark with ruiners at every turn. It's hard out here for a pimp! So, lets say you do the impossible & go dark. Now your watching the game, by yourself, at 1030pm, and all of your input in the conversation is irrelevant because the game is over and/or someone else has already twat what you would've twat. In high school when I would record the must see sport event du jour, at least I wasn't missing out in the conversation. Plus, I would often have Nick or Jerry join me in watching whatever event it was. Which leads me to my next point.
Sports are generally, the only must see television that's left
In this day & age of Twitter, Hulu, Netflix, TiVo, torrents, there is not a lot of immediacy that remains. People can watch entire seasons of shows in a weekend or at whatever pace you choose. It's a pretty respected social responsibility to curb your conversation, if someone in the circle hasn't seen something yet. I remember, being in 6th grade and watching Beverly Hills 90210 while on the phone with Nick, breaking it down like Howard Cosell. With Twitter, you get to do that very same thing, with millions of people, all at once. Given all the ills of social media, that's pretty fantastic.
With all that being said, here are the tweets, I would've twat, If I could've twat, what I wanted to tweet.
Three of the five games, my recording started on the entrances with Niggas in Paris as the music. Great way to get hype for the games.
Its good to see LBJ reaching out to the international soccer community, with his life threatening monthly pains. Even better, was the hockey community's reaction to his cramps. I do wonder though, if the greater the athlete you are, the greater the pain of the cramp or are all cramps created equally. I was also kind of hoping that a white trainer would start throwing bananas at him to curb the cramps and it would be misunderstood as a hate crime.
Pretty rough week for the ASU faithful. We were all waiting for The Beard to find his Eddie House/Byron Scott NBA Finals swag, but it just never happened. All the while, UofAids is advancing to the College World Series. For proper context, baseball is ASU's thing in the same way, basketball is UofAids thing (football is a toss-up, slightly favoring ASU). In the year that the most MLB producing school is on probation, f'n UofAids is in the CWS. For my boys, Robert & Kyle, this is their nightmare!
Stuart Scott is terrible. I know he had some crazy tragic reason for this, but his lazy eye is frickin distracting, he's not a good host, he kept transitioning to LBJ, after he already talked to him.
I really missed Charles Barkley & the TNT postgame show. I heard Michael Wilbon say this week that Chuck is the most important voice in all of basketball right now. Sounds pretty ridiculous, but I think he's right. Chuck is usually proven right with his insights of the game, he holds players to higher standards & he has transitioned from former player to legitimate contributing media member.
The greatest injustice of this Finals was that Juwan Howard, Cole Aldrich & Royal Ivey got playing time. It felt like a D-League Make-A-Wish moment.
I loved that moment when LBJ checked Chalmers for celebrating in the 3rd quarter. Good leadership moment, even when the game is essentially over. LBJ has officially crossed over into Kobe/Tom Brady territory for me, where I don't necessarily 'like' them, but their skill level is so unmatched, that I have to respect it.
As the clock ticked down to 00.0, I had to pop a little champagne, in light of the fact, that the River-Canal San Antonio Demon Spawn had not just won a title.
Coach Spoelstra got his Trent Dilfer award for not pick-sixing his way out of a championship. When your expectation level, is JUST DON'T F THIS UP, you can usually succeed.
I really hope that Durant soaked in this entire moment. I hope he watched the Heat fully celebrate. I don't wanna see a smile on his face until he gets his title. I wanna see him develop that inner 'f it' inside him. I know Westbrook has the 'f it' inside him, but Durant needs to be the leader of this team.
I love Coach Brooks' speech to his players with about 3 mins left. Crazy classy! "Treat them like champions, because they beat us fair and square"
Bill Russell is the purest definition of clutch!!!!!! 11 NBA Titles in 13 years (85% championship rate)! 2 NCAA Championships! 1 Gold Medal! As a player/coach, he became the first black head coach in NBA history! 21-0 in NCAA Tourney, Olympic medal round games & NBA game 7 & 5 games; literally never lost when it mattered most! The NBA Finals MVP trophy is the most appropriately named trophy, in the history of all trophies.
Thank you for enduring my Bill Simmons-esque ridiculously long post.
