Life used to be easier, less complicated. For nearly 60 years I showered using a bar of soap. Unless friends and family have talked behind my dirty back, soap worked. Keep it coming.
Now? My wife has eliminated bars of soap. I’ve a choice among tubes and sprays of “body wash” and “scrubbing foams.” Shall I go with “Lilac Morning” today or “Cherry Harvest Mist”?
And as far as I’m concerned, it’s all a con, thus no relief from the cons our sports now mass manufacture and distribute — even if consumers long ago were conditioned to recognize the con.
West Virginia’s basketball coach Bob Huggins, 69-year-old reprobate, this week resigned after his second DUI arrest. After all, it’s not as if he’s Tiger Woods.
Already suspended for WVU’s first three paid-to-slay home blowout wins after a radio interview in which he slurred both Catholics and homosexuals — only the latter was deemed an indefensible offense — he was busted in Pittsburgh.
Huggins made it easy. According to police, his car, stuffed with empty beer bottles, was stopped in the middle of the road, obstructing traffic, the driver’s door open. The car had a flat, shredded tire.
And he easily covered the FanDuel over, blowing a .21, nearly three times the legal limit.
And so Huggins, last year selected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball of Fame to join other college coaching scoundrels, resigned with this transparently insincere statement:
“I am solely responsible for my conduct and sincerely apologize to the University community — particularly to the student-athletes, coaches and staff in our program.”
Another con, stuck somewhere between comical and sickening.
If Huggins or the institutions of higher learning that employed and enabled him gave a rat’s rectum about “student-athletics,” he wouldn’t have spent 16 years coaching Cincinnati as it and he became nationally known for winning by recruiting “high social risk” players and academic non-achievers who had no legitimate reason to be enrolled in any college. Only 28 percent of his Cincinnati players, including walk-ons, reportedly graduated.
And he wouldn’t have spent another 16 years coaching his alma mater, WVU, paid up to $5 million per year to do so, apparently because WVU fully approved of his winning ways and means honed at Cincinnati.
So the national con of college sports — student-athletics — proceeds, no education, and in many cases fundamental illiteracy, in exchange for full scholarships, often on taxpayer funding.
And if for nearly 60 years I showered using a bar of soap, for nearly 40 of them I’ve played golf.
Yet golf, as broadcasted on TV, is now stuffed with verbal cons, silly fancy expressions only heard from golfers what’s now commonly heard on TV.
You golfers: Ever hear anyone after golf ask, “What did you card?” followed by “I carded a (fill-in the number).” Thus, what a golfer “shot” is being lost to the absurdly decorated and mindlessly parroted “He carded a 72” to escort “He found the bunker/water/rough,” “Hoist the trophy in the winner’s circle,” “Safely on the putting surface” and “Well holed” through golf telecasts.
Throughout NBC’s U.S. Open coverage, we were told that a player “committed an unforced error,” the latest fast-spreading fad for simply, plainly and clearly saying “a bad shot.” An unforced error is leaving open the garage door or applying hot sauce when you thought it was medium.
Why not lay up from the fairway, 120 yards out, to avoid “unforced errors”?
The Mets, Wednesday, announced the latest bait-and-switch ticket con:
Their Sunday, July 2, home game against the Giants, sold as a 1:40 start, has been changed to 7:10 to meet ESPN’s purchased authority to do as it pleases with MLB schedules.
That changes all customers’ purchased plans? Tell it to “Bottom Line” Rob Manfred; he’ll take care of it right away.
Wednesday’s Mariners-Yankees was another hidden behind a paywall, an additional pay telecast above what fans pay for YES. Commissioners? They’re auctioneers.
Joel Klatt, Fox’s lead college football analyst, over the weekend used a USFL telecast to audition his latest verbal con. He explained a 5-yard completion as “Communicating with your ball placement.”
Ray Lewis’ 28 year-old son, Ray III, this week died from a reported illicit drug overdose. His death was widely reported as caused by “an accidental drug overdose.”
The difference between such a drug overdose and an accidental drug overdose? You tell me? I haven’t a clue. Anything like “A robbery gone bad”?
I’m additionally clueless as to why SNY’s Mets’ crew — Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez — consider rover Steve Gelbs the funniest man in any team’s house. If those are forced belly laughs in response to what’s hardly worth a slight grin, cut it out. It’s a transparent and insulting con.
There’s another con coming, the MLB All-Star Game.
Once a cherished, very special spectacle as it was played between rival leagues, it’s now a game played by indistinguishably homogenized teams, players who have already this season played against their opponents. It’s like those substitutes for a bar of soap and “student-athletics.” It’s all a con.
Yankees & Mets do their worst
Perhaps I take the diminished state of baseball too personally, but Tuesday’s Mariners-Yanks on YES was the latest in a series conspicuous of self-destructions.
For starters, the Brian Cashman/Aaron Boone Yankees continue to do the least they can to take advantage of opportunities.
In the first, Anthony Rizzo stood near the plate and watched as his drive to right smacked off Teoscar Hernandez’s glove.
After discarding his bat in stylish bat flip, Rizzo belatedly began to run, making it to second. But he didn’t force a hurried throw or any other unforeseen profitable circumstance as he was in no position to even feign going to third to make anything more happen.
Funny, I don’t recall Rizzo playing that way with the Cubs nor when he first became a Yankee.
And even reliably candid John Flaherty gave him the “he thought” free pass. Over a replay: “He thought this was a two-run homer. He goes into his home run trot.”
The Yanks have been the self-assigned victims of “he thought” baseball for the last six years.
As for the Mariners, they very apparently figured that the best way to attack Gerrit Cole was to swing as hard as they possibly could under any circumstance.
Down, 3-1, in the sixth, two out, man on second, Eugenio Suarez, on an 0-2 pitch, struck out not just swinging, but trying to hit the ball to Yonkers.
The Mets have become a tough watch, too. Saturday, Daniel Vogelbach, batting .205 and the Mets down, 4-1, lined a single to right then stood at first gesturing to his dugout as if he’d just conquered Abyssinia. No such gesturing in the eighth when, with the Mets down, 4-3, he struck out swinging at a pitch in the dirt.
Wednesday in Houston, Pete Alonso, a first baseman for crying out loud, ran the Mets out of a promising inning when he was called out for running way inside the baseline — on his way to first base. He didn’t know better?
