Thursday, 28 August 2008

• Currently Reading Me Talk Pretty One Day By David Sedaris see related

  Phelps is God

  Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in a sport that I don’t really understand.  There is no doubt that he’s a phenomenal athlete; it takes tremendous athletic ability to swim 100 (or 200, or 400, etc.) meters faster than anyone else.  But, if the purpose of competitive swimming is to get from one end of the pool to the other, then I don’t really understand the sport.  Michael Phelps trained for years to be able to beat seven other guys to the other side of the pool, but I can still walk along the side of the pool faster than he can swim.  This fact makes swimming seem superfluous.  I suppose that traveling through water adds an obstacle to the goal of traveling 100 meters, but why does that obstacle have to be water?  Running through 100 meters of dense shrubbery or running 100 meters into a 100 mile per hour headwind are also difficult tasks.  Why can’t those be Olympic events?  I suppose that the intrigue of swimming is that the pool presents the slight risk of death (particularly if the athlete cannot swim).  However, trying to get out of a patch of quicksand is more dangerous, so why can’t that be an Olympic event?  I think that “Quicksand Escape” should be strongly considered for the 2012 London Games.  Don’t get me wrong.  Michael Phelps is a spectacular superhuman and deserves all the praises and accolades he is receiving.  I have nothing against him.  At the very least, I can’t begrudge a guy who looks like McLovin’ (from Superbad) on steroids.  That’s pretty rad.

  I’ve been in Olympics withdrawal ever since the Games ended last week, and I don’t suppose that I am the only sports fan who has been feeling like this.  College football doesn’t start until this tonight, and the NFL doesn’t kick off until next week.  The only sport that is on every day right now is baseball, which doesn’t carry the hype that the Olympics or football does.  Over the past two decades, baseball has been perceived as America’s most dreaded sport.  Baseball players aren’t given demigod status like football players.  Baseball isn’t as socially relevant as basketball, and baseball isn’t as white as hockey.  Cool people will say that pop culture has rejected baseball because it is slow and boring, but that criticism is unambitious, unintelligent, and senseless.  The real reason why America hates baseball is because baseball players are just regular guys with jobs.  They wear slacks and button down shirts to work, and they go to work 5 days a week.  During work they have conversations around the water (Gatorade) cooler, and they can take bathroom breaks whenever they want to.  They’re allowed to take smoking breaks (chew tobacco) and snack (sunflower seeds and peanuts) without getting yelled at by the boss.  Lastly, they take days off from work whenever they feel like it.  Baseball eerily resembles real life too much and, as a collective culture, we can’t stand it.  We don’t want to see regular guys wearing trousers smack a baseball with a wooden stick.  We want to glorify men in tank tops and long shorts who can stomp into the stands and punch a fan in the face without consequences (i.e. Ron Artest).   We don’t want to see a dude in a button down shirt chew dip during a lunch break.  We want to idolize men who eat 5000 calories a day as long as they can get to the other side of the pool really fast (i.e. Phelps).  We don’t want to see athletes take time off.  We want to lionize athletes who say they’re going to take time off and then change their minds (i.e. Brett Favre).  We don’t want to see athletes who look like us.  We want to see athletes who transcend our standards of what is good and moral.  As a whole, we hate life, and baseball has no place in a society that looks to sports to escape real life.

  I can’t wait to get off work and watch the college football season kick off tonight.

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