Here Wie Go Again

The star-crossed career of Michelle Wie has taken another bizarre turn this week. The 18 year old has accepted a sponsor’s exemption to play in the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open, a men’s PGA event, this week. What’s the big deal, you say? Wie has, after all, played in men’s events before. What makes this a bit different is that she is skipping an LPGA major in order to play with the guys this time around.

The Women’s British Open will be played this week and it seems some of the ladies on the LPGA don’t appreciate Wie’s blowing off one of their four biggest events of the year in order to play with the boys. Annika Sorenstam, an 11 time major champion and winner of 73 LPGA events, said that if Wie couldn’t qualify for this weeks’ ladies event she didn’t have any business playing against the guys. David Leadbetter coached Wie for years and said that she has a lot more to lose than gain by playing against the men at this stage in her career and faults her parents for steering her in the wrong direction.

The gents on the PGA tour seem ambivalent about Wie’s participation in this weeks’ event. David Duval said Wie’s attempts to play with the men, “has never bothered me in the least.” Though he did add, “I’m not sure the PGA Tour is the place to gain confidence. You can get your head beat in pretty quick out there.” Scott McCarron added, “I think it is great. It’s creating a lot of buzz for the tournament.”

McCarron’s comments actually get right to the heart of why Wie has been invited to play this week. The Legends Reno-Tahoe Open is, to be blunt, a second tier PGA event. The top 50 players in the world will all be playing in the World Golf Championships in Ohio this week. The highest ranked player participating this week is Ben Crane at #87 in the world. This is not a great recipe for high television ratings. The solution? Invite the one time phenom Wie. This creates instant buzz and controversy, generates interest, and might, just might, get some viewers to check out a tournament they would not care about otherwise. This is a move that has very little down side for the tournament sponsors. It is true that Wie’s attempts to play with the men have lost their novelty. However, it just may work one more time as the second tier field gives Wie her best shot at actually making a PGA cut. If not, it certainly won’t hurt the ratings.

Wie, herself, seems unconcerned with the criticism. She said, “All I’m thinking about is trying to play good golf.” I guess that is fair enough. However, I feel Wie needs to first establish herself on the LPGA tour before trying to mix it up with the boys. She has, or at least had, the potential to be one of the great women golfers of our time. Hopefully, she will realize this and get back to competing against the ladies. Otherwise, Wie could find herself playing the part of the Washington Generals to the PGA men’s Globetrotters on a regular basis. I would hate to think someone as gifted as Wie would squander her talents as a mere novelty act. Hopefully, somebody in the Wie family will visit the Wizard and get a brain. Otherwise, Michelle Wie may forever be remembered for what might have been.

Washington State Slide Show

Washington State Trip

Hello, all. I have just returned from a week long trip to Washington State. I had always wanted to visit the Pacific Northwest and when the opportunity presented itself I jumped on it. I, and some friends, camped between Mt. St. Helens and Skookum Meadow. It has to be the most beautiful country I've ever seen (at least in person). Of course, my being a bigfoot geek, it held extra appeal as Skamania County is the number one county in the United States for bigfoot sightings. Alas, despite our best efforts, the big fella failed to make an appearance. However, I did manage to spot several elk, a couple of black tailed deer, a fox, and a black bear. We also saw a whole lot of bear scat, cat scat (bobcat, probably), some very large canine prints, and one set of VERY big cat prints (had to be a cougar). We were surprised to hear barred owls which are common in Texas, as well. According to the locals, the barred owls are supplanting the endangered spotted owls in the region. I was awakened on my last morning by a large bull elk bugling from the valley below our camp site. Pretty cool.

It was a terrific time and hope to return one of these days. I have attached a slide show above made up of some of the pictures I snapped while on the trip. The pictures just do not do justice to the scale and majesty of the area but they are pretty nice and I hope you enjoy them.

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Nineteen Somethin'

I saw Star Wars at least eight times
Had the Pacman pattern memorized
And I’ve seen the stuff they put inside Stretch Armstrong.

I was Roger Staubach in my back yard
Had a shoebox full of baseball cards
And a couple of Evel Knievel scars on my right arm.

From : “Nineteen Somethin” by Mark Wills

I’m a pretty sentimental guy. I’m not one of those pack rat types who never throws anything away because it has some sort of memory attached to it. I am more sentimental when it comes to remembering people and places from the past. I do not spend my time looking back as that is a good way to run into a telephone pole. However, sometimes something will trigger a memory of someone or something from my past. It seems that music and smells trigger my memories like nothing else. The feeling can be so strong that it makes me wonder if time travel, on some level, is really possible. I had such a moment just the other day when the song “Nineteen Somethin’” by Mark Wills came on the car radio. While this is not a song from my youth, the lyrics nail my early childhood as no song before ever has.

I was born in late 1966. As a result, my earliest memories come from the ‘70s. I, and my brothers, did see Star Wars at least eight times. I’m actually thinking it was more like twelve times. I, too, have seen the stuff they put inside Stretch Armstrong. During one memorable battle between Stretch and his evil nemesis Stretch Monster, the “stuff” came leaking out. It was a red gooey liquid that looked like melted strawberry jello. I can personally attest that it is not easy to get out of carpet. This proved to be a negative to my mother. However, it turned into a positive as this forensic evidence allowed for the prosecution and conviction of the much more durable Stretch Monster. He would never threaten society again.

Some of the most enduring memories I have from the ‘70s are of Evel Knievel and his many appearances on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. It is hard to get kids today to understand just how big Evel was back in the day. His motorcycle jumps seem tame compared to many of the X-Game type stunts performed today. However, nobody had seen anything like it in the ‘70s. You also have to remember that this was back before cable television. We were pretty much limited to the three main networks. There was a rumor of a public television station in our area but we couldn’t get it. Much of the programming on the networks left a lot to be desired (a lot like now). So, when Evel was scheduled to make a jump on a Saturday afternoon it would draw Superbowl like ratings. I’ve often wondered how many broken armed little boys showed up in emergency rooms across the country on the afternoons after an Evel Knievel jump.

As a result of Evel’s popularity, a line of toys was created. The toys were a huge success. The heart of the toy line was the Evel Knievel stunt cycle (see pic above). The set consisted of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, an Evel Knievel action figure (remember boys have action figures not dolls), and a base. The way it worked was that the Evel action figure was placed on his motorcycle, which was then placed on the base. The base had a handle, which you turned. This engaged a gear on the base, which, in turn, turned a gear on the toy motorcycle. Once the spinning reached the proper speed the motorcycle would disengage and take off. Sometimes the bike required a bit of a push to get free from the base but the results were always spectacular. Though I was never able to get Evel to replicate the back flip I saw on the commercials, I jumped many a row of shoes. What made it even better was how the tires of the motorcycle were made of real rubber and left great skid marks on the light colored linoleum of our home. Again, mom did not see this as a positive. I have to give mom a lot of credit, however, as she put up with a lot of black marked floors and baseboards in the hall that were permanently scraped free of paint due to Evel’s less than graceful landings. Truly the Evel Knievel stunt cycle was one of the greatest toys of my childhood. I think it was about a year ago that Evel Knievel died. Part of my childhood went with him.

As I mentioned before, I was in my car when Mark Wills began singing “Nineteen Somethin’” the other day. My lovely wife of sixteen years noticed my far away look as the first verses played. She asked me what I was thinking about. I replied simply that I wasn’t thinking. I was remembering.

My best…

Coach #3

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The Ballad of "Baggy"

Coaching middle school boys is…well, very different than coaching high school boys. My main duties as a middle school coach are to teach solid fundamentals and do all I can to keep as many boys as possible in the program. I’m expected to send as many players as I can up to the high school football team. The theory is that the more kids they have to pick from, the more good athletes they will be able to find. It makes sense if you think about it and it is good for me as it lessens the pressure to win every game on the middle school level. The drawback is that I’m expected to keep pretty much everybody. It is true that some kids who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time in middle school will blossom into good athletes in high school. However, I’ve found that 99.9% of the time a middle school spaz will grow into a high school spaz. This is the true story of one of those kids I had to endure knowing full well he would never play a down in high school.

“Baggy”, the nickname his fellow students bestowed upon him, was actually kind of a cute kid. He was very short and pudgy. He wore round glasses with black frames that made him look like a cross between an owl and Harry Potter (Sort of a mini Larry King). The lenses were very thick. The kid had the eyesight of a mole. He was a very poor athlete and, possibly, the slowest kid I’ve ever coached. I could have timed his forty yard dash with a sundial. The other kids picked on “Baggy” unmercifully. They were terrible to him. I don’t think a day went by that somebody didn’t pull “Baggy’s” underwear up to his neck. I really felt bad for him and tried to protect him as best I could. Then a funny thing happened. I realized that “Baggy” was a horrible little kid. He was rude, obnoxious, crude, and a general dill weed. The other kids didn’t pick on him because he was some little helpless nerd. They were just retaliating for some terrible thing “Baggy” had said to them.

As the season went on I still had to protect “Baggy”. This kid could not keep his mouth shut and all my other players wanted to kill him. I was often tempted to put “Baggy” into some sort of practice drill where he would get what was coming to him, but I didn’t. I’d like to say it was my superior morality that prevented me from doing this but it was more my fear of lawyers. Anyway, the season progressed and I managed to keep “Baggy” alive. I even managed to get him into each game for a play or two.

Our second to last game was against a team from across town. I hated away games that year because I had to sit next to “Baggy”. I had to do this to protect him from the horde in the back of the bus that wanted to do him much bodily harm. I REALLY did not enjoy his company on these bus rides. Well, we arrived and the game began. Needless to say, “Baggy” did not play early in games when the outcome was still in doubt. He typically played one play a game toward the end of the fourth quarter once it was clear which way the game would go. This game was different, however, as we were a lot better than our opponents and got out to a big lead in the first half. So, I put “Baggy” in at cornerback for the last play of the second quarter (CB is a good place to hide a bad athlete in middle school as most teams don’t throw often). The opposing coach took one look at him and called a sweep to his side of the field. Their running back was a big guy and took dead aim at “Baggy” in the flat. Now the poor kid was terrified and completely frozen in his tracks. Their running back could have easily gone around him. However, he lowered his shoulder and collided head on with “Baggy”. At the point of contact their seemed to be some kind of explosion. Small colorful objects flew in all directions. I really thought “Baggy” had blown up and his innards were being propelled all over the field. As “Baggy” lay on the field like a slug, I saw he was, in fact, completely intact. However, Smarties, Sweettarts, and Butterfingers surrounded his limp body. It seems “Baggy” tended to get hungry during games and had stuffed candy in his uniform pants to snack on while waiting for his one play. The referee never even blew the whistle to end the play. He just stood over the prostrate body of “Baggy” and softly said, “Unbelievable.”

The quality of football might not be as good in middle school as it is in high school. Nor do we play in huge beautiful stadiums. But I do know one thing. You will never see a fourth string cornerback blow up like a piñata on a Friday night in Texas. That sort of fun is reserved for Tuesday afternoons only.

My best…

Coach #2

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