BRONX, NY – My esteemed colleague, Fake Sandy Alderson/Big Al Sternberg, was right: Mid-week is a crap time for sports stories. But sometimes you can take some of the same old garbage and recycle it into something beautiful, like an old Houston Astros jersey, Gay Pride flag, a toilet paper neck brace for Short Matt or a pillow made out of Oscar Gamble’s pubes. But this isn’t about recycling, it’s about stripping a few things down to their basic truths and hoping to get a post out of it. Let’s get this thing going before my wife starts watching HBO’s “Girls” and I lose all focus.
March Madness. The truth is, I loved March Madness a whole lot more 20 years ago. Recent history has given us way too much chalk making it to the Finals and winning it all, and far too few Cinderellas. I was wavering on filling out a bracket this year but, to be honest, I love the first four nights of the tournament too much not to have some rooting monetary interest on some genuine dogs.
Carl “The Truth” Williams. I was gonna just shoehorn something in here about this journeyman heavyweight boxer who always seemed to come out on the short end of his bouts. But upon further investigation, he had a short but interesting life. Yes he lost to Tyson and Terrible Tim Witherspoon and others, but he did beat perennial British punching bag Bert Cooper and Trevor Berbick, a guy who like to wear his black socks way up high. After his boxing career ended, Williams worked as a security guard at the World Trade Center. Later he worked out in Queens for Verizon. He succumbed of cancer in 2013 at the age of 53. One last interesting factoid, among his surviving kin was a daughter named Carlahorse. True!… at least according to Wiki.
Johnny Manziel. Sports Illustrated.com has an article on their site entitled: The Fall of Johnny Football. Nice angle, but let’s be truthful. The fall of Johnny Football was set up a looooong time ago. I’m not saying that he’s without talent, but his background was rich, entitled, and above the law. No one bothered to tell young Johnny that that kinda crap does not play outside of college, or anywhere else in real life. One of my favorite quarterbacks was a seriously-flawed guy who played his college ball in Texas (Rice). His name was Tommy Kramer. He drank and gambled and played QB for my Vikings for a little over a decade. He ran afoul of the law too, with at least one DUI (if not more) to his record. He was no saint, but he was smart enough to pull it together and have some semblance of a career. Manziel and “his people” don’t seem to care. Yes he’s an addict, but no one is giving him any solid help or advice, probably because no one ever has.
This Will Drop Your Jaw! The biggest lie on the internet–yes, even bigger than our subhead “Where Sports Gets Funny”– is any link that says anything to the effect that “These photos” or “What this girl wore” or “What so-and-so did next” will DROP YOUR JAW. The God’s honest truth is that 100 times out of 100 these statements are absolute garbage. Donald Trump’s claims and promises even have a slight edge. Slight.
Golden State Warriors. It’s no secret that I am a Warriors fan and have been since the days of World B. Free, Purvis Short, Larry “Mr. Mean” Smith, and pre–Knicks Bernard King. And of course I want to see Golden State best the Chicago Bulls record 72 win season. But checking out their remaining 16 games I truthfully have my doubts. At 60-6 they can still lose three and break the record, but they have 3 games left against the Spurs, who are friggin’ 56-10! Two of those games are in Texas. No way GS takes all of those. They could easily lose 2. They also have 2 left against Memphis as well as other conference foes, Dallas, Portland, and the Clippers. I’m hoping against hope that I’m wrong and they pull it off because, truthfully, F**K the Bulls and their record!
Come back tomorrow for a truly epic, jaw-dropping column from someone.
