In order to commemorate my birthday, here's a list of 28 things I really like about sports, in no particular order.
1.) Sizing up potential first-round playoff opponents.
2.) Hearing the words "the (your favorite team here) made a big trade today" and immediately going into full mustache-twirling mode as to all the implications.
3.) Sitting in an unfamiliar baseball park and noticing your eyes wander, trying to find the unfamiliar location of the balls/strikes count and the score.
4.) Wearing your team's cap or shirt (not at a game) and causing a random momentary bond between yourself and some other fan.
5.) Striking up conversations with folks around you at the game; you can be best friends with total strangers for a few hours and never know or care anything about their lives outside the stadium.
6.) Scoreboard watching way too early in the season.
7.) The sarcastic applause that greets a pitcher who finally throws a strike after walking 2 batters on 8 pitches.
8.) Going to an away game and finding yourself in an oasis of other Visitor fans. Particularly if your team jumps out to an early lead.
9.) Have I mentioned the easy joy and comfort of strapping yourself in and listening to Jon Miller and Joe Morgan call a game for 3 hours?
10.) Or Sean McDonough and Jerry Remy?
11.) whatifsports.com.
12.) retrosheet.org.
13.) Plotting out a trip to visit every major league ballpark, even though you know you can't afford it and couldn't get the time off from work anyway.
14.) Watching Major League for the 417th time. Even the heavily edited-for-TBS version ("Want me to drag him out of here? Kick the (snot) out of him?")
15.) Idly speculating what your walking-up-to-the-plate song would be. Mine: "Crazy Train" (obvious), "Shove" by L7 (nicely obscure), or "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour.
16.) Out-of-nowhere teams: recently, the 2001 Twins, the 2001 Super Bowl champion Patriots, the (shhhh) 2002 Pirates.
17.) Any Larry Bird anecdotes. Especially the one where...well, I'll just lift it straight from Jack McCallum's book, Unfinished Business.
"I was talking to my agent, and he heard a deal on his speaker phone," said [Celtics benchwarmer Michael] Smith. "Milwaukee sent Ricky Pierce to Seattle for Dale Ellis."
"I can't believe that," said Bird.
"What? The trade?" said Smith. "I can't believe it either."
"No," said Bird, "I can't believe your agent has a speaker phone."
18.) The NCAA Tournament Selection show, where they always have a live feed of a bubble team like B.C., who always gets in, and a bubble team like Butler, who never seems to. 18b.) The canned righteous indignation of Dick Vitale about the stupidity of the Tournament committee.
19.) Football teams that start off 0-10 and make you wonder if they can really go 0-for-the-season.
20.) Gritty ballpayers like Brian Daubach and Lou Merloni, whom you don't fully appreciate unless you watch them every day.
21.) Knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that, if Phil Jackson had to coach Memphis or Cleveland or any other team that didn't allow him to inherit 2 superstars, that his "genius" label would disappear faster than Indians fans after a 3-game losing streak. And knowing that I could have coached the '98 Bulls. Come on, Phil. You're a fraud. Admit it.
22.) The fact that the Pittsburgh Steelers still stubbornly refuse to put stickers on both sides of their helmets.
23.) OK, Simmons beat me to it. But I love basebrawls. I love the words that are only used in basebrawls, like "donnybrook", "fracas", and "imbroglio". I love anticipating the kung-fu moves the pitcher will flail away at the charging hitter with. I love when the guys run out of the bullpen to join the fray (my Dad asks why they run all the way in to the mound, when they can just start a mini-brawl right there in the bullpen area).
24.) Teams adopting a faux-retro look with their uniforms, trying to recreate a history they don't actually have. Anaheim Angels, I'm talking to you.
25.) Watching the poor schmuck, picked out of the crowd to shoot the halfcourt shot or kick the field goal during the time out, fail miserably. In some strange perverse way, I think I'd really like to be booed mercilessly by thousands of people.
26.) The last minute "I've got an extra ticket - you in?" call from a friend.
27.) The fact that this is America, and it's amazingly easy to avoid paying any attention to golf, wrestling, NASCAR, or soccer if you don't want to.
28.) Going to a minor league game with Grandma and Grandpa and sitting in their carefully-chosen regular seats -- right behind a pole. Sorry if that last one didn't make a lot of sense. But I found out just a couple of hours ago that my Grandma died, and that's the first, and most persistent, sports-related memory of her that popped into my head. So it's the best way I could think of to remember her here; if you knew her, you'd understand.