Sports Corner
THE CASE AGAINST THE “LOS ANGELES” ANGELS:
Rooting for or against sports teams is, to me, an arbitrary exercise… beyond the home or regional team I’m somehow groomed to root for, but may or may not get into position to do anything in the playoffs. Given the nature of sports — free agents dumped in and out of everywhere — I have no problem with complete lack of loyalty, and jumping on and off of various bandwagons (although I have a set of vague arbitrary rules on what bandwagons should be jumped upon.) Of course I’m perpetually against the New York Yankess — huge pay-roll be they, and I’m a bit parochial with an anti-big city and anti-East Coast bias. Why was I rooting for the Boston Red Sox last year? Actually, I had a mixed emotion (to the degree that I care) — it’s as George Carlin said, “Nothing would be more boring than if the Cubs, Red Sox, Vikings, and Bills won the Championship.”
So why do I not like the Angels? Ignore the fact that they are on their third moniker — California Angels to Anaheim Angels to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (a slap in the face at their cross-city rivals). That may be annoying, but it’s not deadening.
The reason I do not want the Angels to win the World Series is because of something that was uncovered when they won the World Series a few years back: Anaheim has no downtown to speak of for which to march a victory parade through. Downtown Anaheim is Disneyland! When the Anaheim Angels did their “Downtown Parade” lark, they basically toured Disneyland, fans having to pay their way to see. (Which brings a new twist to the old ad campaign “What are you going to do next?” “I’m going to Disneyland!”… Their home ballpark is at Disneyland, for Pete’s sake!) Their Victory Parade was a complete and utter joke!
So, someone else will just have to win the World Series, be they the Chicago White Sox, Houston Astros, or Saint Louis Cardinals. That’s just how it’s going to have to be.
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LOSER!!!
NFL News: The New York Jets (who play in New Jersey), lost their two quarterbacks to injury. Vinny Testeverde called in to inquiry about coming back to play quarterback. He came in, fans cheered wildly when he was introduced, and…
Fun fact: Vinny Testeverde holds the NFL record for greatest number of losses of any starting quarterback.
Which, of course, means that he’s a good quarterback. If he were bad, he wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to lose. You will note that he’s playing football again. (Incidentally, he won. And against the team that he piled up the bulk of his losses: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who spent a godly amount of time at the bottom of the NFL heap… and I will note that there is no such city as “Tampa Bay”.)