Twelve Handicapper for a Day

Wow, was golf league odd last night. Had my short game not been there, it would have been extremely embarrassing. As it was, it was just a bit embarrassing. We played the Platinum nine at Emerald Greens, a 3600-yard par 37. I managed a 43, and needed to birdie the ninth just to do that. After being happy with my last three full rounds of playing around a five handicap, this was a step back.

I might not have been upset about just any old 43, but this was one where nothing really felt right. A couple scrambles for par, and the birdie, kept it from getting way out of hand. Quite disconcerting were: One drive OB, one in the wrong fairway, a couple airmailed greens, and two hazards on the same hole...almost all of which were visibly "bad" shots, not just "near-misses." I hope it's out of my system by this Friday's Derby Days tournament in Shakopee at Stonebrooke.

An Unexpected Physics Lesson

This is late, but oh well...

While watching the All Star Game Home Run Derby, I had to laugh at yet another one of Joe Morgan's attempts to educate the audience. I learn very little baseball by listening to Joe; I learn even less about physics.

During Josh Hamilton's ridiculous display of power in the first round, he hit one shot that did not carry quite so far, and in fact appeared to sink a little, while still landing on the other side of the fence.

"That ball had a lot of topspin there," declared Morgan (or words to that effect).

Sorry, Joe, but if that ball had a lot of top-spin or over-spin as it's also called, it would not have cleared the fence. Perhaps it had less underspin than other shots, and perhaps some side-spin as well, giving it an apparent sinking trajectory. But topspin? No way. Not even a little.

Shark Attacks!

I was going to post about my 78 today at Inver Wood (77 after ESC...no bogeys today; 3 birdies, 3 doubles and a triple, the rest pars), but I'm just too excited for Greg Norman.

Of all the majors, and I still don't know which is my favorite, The Open is the one I look forward to most the night before each round because, duh, it's on the tube as soon as I get up. How cool would it be to see Norman win tomorrow?

First, he'd get to play at least one more Masters tournament. His chances of finally winning would be slim, but it would be a great scene as he makes his last putt on 18.

Second, I hate the "choker" and "over-rated" labels put on him. The "choker" label is unfair and only tells a small part of the story of his terrific career. The "over-rated" label is simply founded on ignorance. If anything, because of the stigma attached to his near-misses, he has been underrated.

Remember when Joe Montana handed Cincinnatti the Super Bowl in '89 with an easy interception in the end zone? No, you don't, because the easy INT was dropped. Joe and the Niners took advantage, and in one game Joe went from a choker to people calling him the greatest QB of all time.

I would hope a win at the Open for Norman tomorrow would erase his "choker" image once and for all.

Bigger is Better

Last week, I installed a new Winn AVS Jumbo putter grip on my Odyssey two-ball blade putter (black insert). The grip cost $8.99 at Golfsmith. I could have opted for the exact same model of grip, but with the big "ODYSSEY" lettering, for $19.99. No-brainer there; golf is expensive enough.

I haven't played a round with the new putter yet, but have practiced twice so far, and absolutely love it. We'll see how long that lasts, but the reason I'm encouraged is that my putting style favors a larger grip, because I use a piston motion from the right arm, so it's most beneficial to have the palm jabbing into the grip, different from wrapping the fingers around like a conventional golf grip.

Jack Nicklaus is probably the most famous for putting this way. (Just about anything Jack did automatically makes him the most famous for doing it.) But he still held the putter a little more conventionally.

The thing about putting is, sometimes the only cure for one's putting woes is to get rid of the instrument that was a part of so many negative visual impressions, i.e., missed putts. Some pros keep a putter for years and years...we'll see if my AVS-gripped Odyssey makes it "months and months," or even "weeks and weeks."

Painting and Puking on the Radio

I was listening to the Twins eventual loss yesterday in the car, and once again was extremely disappointed in the play-by-play. I've never been a John Gordon fan, but have learned to tolerate him to some degree. Dan Gladden, however, has a long way to go in my book.

What I've learned to tolerate about Gordon is the puking (puking is the sound bad announcers make when they are trying to sound like good announcers...think of Bob Uecker's "Juuuust a bit outside" call in Major League), the over-excited way he calls even mundane plays, and his inability to really tell how deep a fly ball is hit. Herb Carneal was the best ever at calling a home run or deep fly out. He seemed to know exactly how excited you should get the moment the ball left the bet.

Anyway, what still irks me about Gordon is the gabbing while you can hear the crack of the bat and even crowd reaction before he tells you what's happening. Worse, he'll gab during a pitch that you'll clearly hear hit the catcher's mitt, then he'll gab some more and say, "First pitch to Punto is low for a ball; Buerhle right back with a strike, it's one-and-one." As if the reason he called the pitches so quickly was because the pitcher hurried up his next pitch, and not because Gordon was falling behind in making the call.

Missing the first pitch of a new inning, something I thought KSTP would do something about when they got the Twins' rights away from WCCO, is also a steering wheel banger. (I bang the steering wheel when I'm driving and get angry. It's my method of controlling my own road rage...it works quite well!)

All that said about Gordon, Gladden is simply horrible. I don't think it's because I'm an ex-radio jock who also did sports and is thus bitter when people of marginal talent have made the big time in the biz. Maybe there's some of that. But come on. Here's a paraphrased transcript of one call from yesterday:

"He checks his swing and...oh...they've got the runner caught between second and third....and they're going to get him out. Nice defensive play there, and big mistake on the base paths by the runner."

So I'm thinking somehow Mauer, the catcher, caught the runner leaning or something and threw him out. Except:

"And (the batter) will be at first and up comes (the next batter.)"

What did I miss?? After Gladden talked about the play a little more I realized that the check swing was a check swing ground ball, and instead of throwing the batter out at first, the defense (Gladden didn't say even which infielder played the grounder, let alone let the listener know in real time it was even a batted ball) threw out the runner who was at second and got caught off base.

A play like this will happen from time to time. Charlie Steiner's ESPN radio home run call of Barry Bonds' record-breaking 71st home run was a boner that comes to mind. But it's the norm for Gladden, and it upsets me because I don't think I should have to work that hard to figure out what's going on in a baseball game I'm listening to on the radio.

Hockey is particularly difficult to get right in real time. Sometimes, before the announcer can even see the puck in the net, the light is flashing and the crowd is cheering and the horn blows. But baseball? With all of that dead time to catch your breath?

There's an old sports broadcasting philosophy that is taught, known as "painting a picture" for the listener. Virtually everyone agrees with it in concept, but it seems to mean different things to different announcers. To former Minnesota Golden Gopher announcer Ray Christensen, it often meant adding details about the color of trim on the opponents' jerseys. A nice touch, as long as he got the game right, too, which Ray did.

A truly exciting play can be enhanced by John Gordon's hyperbolic enthusiasm. And I loved Dan Gladden as a key ingredient, spark plug, etc. of the World Champion Twins teams of '87 and '91.

But as to the "picture painting" metaphor of radio sports broadcasting, to Gordon, perhaps it means just gabbing to fill dead air, and puking to add "color" to the painting. As for Gladden, I doubt whether he has even heard of the concept.

Work-free, Guilt-free Holiday

I took Thursday, July 3 off from work to extend my Fourth of July holiday. Fully expecting to catch up on some work things, I checked e-mails a few times, but here it is, Sunday night, and I didn't get any work done. I've learned not to feel so guilty about it. The five years of law school has helped my be a little less hard on myself for not putting in extra hours.

It also helps to recognize all of the times at work when someone else didn't get something done in time, even simple things, like returning my phone call or getting some information back to me. No one thinks any less of these folks. We all get it that we're in an intensely growing company in an intensely growing business.

My younger sister has the proper perspective that's good to remember if you tend to be a little self-conscious as I do: No matter how much you think other people are thinking of you, good or bad, it's probably a lot less than you realize.

Pink Eye and the Fourth of July

Instead of joining family in the Brainerd Lakes area this Fourth of July holiday, my wife and I took our sons to the Eagan Fun Fest parade today, my first parade in exactly nineteen years. It wasn't as unenjoyable as I thought it would be. No offense, by the way, to the organizers, participants, or people who like parades. I'm just not the parade type I guess.

I did enjoy watching my 2 1/2-year-old son appearing to enjoy it. He wasn't just interested in the candy, either, which is good, because as we watched from near the finish line, many of the candy throwers had run out. Having your kids enjoy something always makes even the most boring things in life tolerable. I guess that's a large reason why G movies do so well.

The only real downer of the day is that my one-year-old's pink eye is getting worse. (Is that one word or two?) We'll need to take him in soon; we were hoping to be able to at least hold off until tomorrow.

I had fevers, earaches, cavities and chicken pox just like any other kid (pre-chicken pox vaccine days), so it baffles me that my kids have had multiple occurrences of pinkeye (walleye is one word; perhaps pinkeye is too...I can Google it later). I finally did catch it from one of them in my 40s, but never as a child.

While I always enjoyed the Fourth of July as a kid, I never quite caught the Fourth of July Parade Fever. Once every nineteen years is plenty for me, although I'll probably be doing more of them in the future if gas prices don't at least hold steady for a while. I enjoy even parades if they save me $100 at the pump.

And the Gold for the 100 Meter Frog Hop Goes to...

I was watching the Olympic trials with my wife, a former Division I swimmer, and quite enjoyed it, because any time you can watch sports with your wife, and she is as in to it as you are, that makes the experience that much better.

One thing I couldn't get my mind around, and certainly didn't ask her, was why are there so many strokes?

The 400 Meter Individual Medley (aka "400 IM" in swimmers' lingo), consists of the Butterfly, Breast, Back and Freestyle strokes (not necessarily in that order...I'm still learning).

Now, if someone challenges you to a running race, you run. First one to the finish line wins. If someone were to challenge you to a swimming race, shouldn't the same rules apply? First one to the line wins...as long as they swim, it doesn't matter what stroke they'd use.

My wife's specialty was the backstroke. She wasn't as proficient in the freestyle. So the rules of swimming benefited people like her, who had special skills that allowed to swim a certain stroke faster, and that should be a good thing (to open up possibilities for as many as possible).

Great, but then where is the 500 IM, you know, to include the dog paddle? Why is the breast stroke a more respected stroke that it gets inclusion, but not the dog paddle?

In track and field, they'll change the length of the races to cover for those who may have more stamina but less raw speed. But there is no equivalent to swimming's backstroke, like running backwards, nor an equivalent to the breast stroke ("frog hop 100" perhaps?).

Not that track and field is perfect, mind you. There's a long jump and a triple jump, but what if I were the best in the world at a double jump? I would be screwed out of my place in history, and maybe even a Wheaties box cover.

And with today's technology, why is a foul on the long jump or triple jump even an issue? Just measure from the point of take-off, period. Furthermore, why isn't the standing broad jump an event? Seems to me that if it were, you'd never have the top athlete in the world fail to qualify because he/she accidentally stepped on the line.

Still, I will enjoy the Olympics this year for reasons mentioned, plus the fact that my wife still knows some of the swimming and diving competitors. That's pretty cool. As long as it's not synchronized swimming. I'll leave that topic to the other bloggers. I'm sure there's plenty of commentary on that in the blogs...or at least there will be by the time the '08 games are through.