Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once famously said of pornography, "I can't really describe it, but I know it when I see it." The same thing could be said about beauty. Different things appeal to different people, but I believe it is also true that there are certain things that most, if not all, people will agree qualify as beautiful, even if you can't quite put your finger on why.

I think that is the case in the world of sports as well. Some things are so delicious that, as sports fans, they appeal to just about everyone. Here, then, is my Top Ten List of Beautiful Things in the World of Sports:

10) The sun barely over the trees and undisturbed dew on the fairway as you stand on the first tee – It seems like anything is possible when you are the first group to get out on the course. Then, of course, you hit your usual crappy drive and realize you still suck. But for just a few seconds, you might as well be Tiger Woods.

9) The look on your child’s face as he or she walks up the ramp and sees the massive expanse of emerald green when attending their first major league baseball game – I still remember walking into Fenway Park for the first time when I was maybe seven years old and being blown away by how green the field was and how good the players were. It was a long way from Little League.

8) A 1-2-3 double play to get a pitcher out of bases-loaded trouble – A ground ball to a middle infielder happens all the time, but the sharply hit ball right back to the mound is a rarity in a bases-loaded situation that represents the most frustrating result possible for a hitter, and one of the real momentum-killers for an offense.

7) A running back or wide receiver who makes a big play to get in the end zone and then simply hands the ball off to an official before heading back upfield – You can keep the phony mooning of the crowd or the Sharpie hijinks or the beating of the chest or the Lambeau Leaps. One of the greatest runners in the history of the NFL, Walter Payton, put it best: “Act like you’ve been there before.”

6) The pure, unrestrained joy of the Little League World Series champions – You can debate whether too much pressure is put on kids who are still years away from getting their driver’s licenses, but the reaction of the last team left standing in Williamsport every year is annually one of the things that will put a smile on the face of even the most dour personality.

5) Service Academy Football – Almost always staffed with players who were considered too slow or too small to play major college football, the United States service academies nevertheless compete with schools that are bigger and have more resources. Often they lose, sometimes badly, but that’s not really the point, is it? These schools are filled with kids (and not just the players) who represent the best this country has to offer; some of whom are going to graduate and immediately go off to a foreign land to die. Regardless of politics and your feelings on U.S. foreign policy, how can you not root for these guys?

4) A medium-deep fly ball to left field in the ninth inning with the tying run on third base and less than two outs – Everyone in both dugouts, the entire stadium, and at home watching on television knows what’s coming next: A runner anxiously crouching at third base, waiting for the ball to settle in the outfielder’s glove so he can take off for the plate, where either a close play or quite possibly a bone-jarring collision wait for him. Beautiful.

3) A twelve foot putt on the eighteenth green to win a match – Whether it’s the Masters on the line or a five dollar bet against your buddy, everything seems to slow down as the affected player tries to control his breathing and blot out distractions. Palms sweat and knees knock as what looks really easy is in fact really hard. It’s beautiful.

2) A goaltender moving thirty feet out of his crease to stone a shooter on a breakaway – Maybe I’m partial to this one because I was a goalie, but who doesn’t hold their breath on a breakaway in a hockey game, whether you’re rooting for the team on offense or defense? A breakaway by a player on skates moving about thirty miles an hour is one of the most breathtaking moments in sports, and when it ends in a great save – beautiful.

1) A career minor leaguer getting his first big league hit in a meaningless September game – Isn’t there a little Crash Davis in all of us? Don’t you just love it when a guy who has toiled in minor league obscurity for upwards of a decade in some cases stands at the plate and drives the ball to the opposite field for a single against an established major league pitcher? Even if he never gets another hit, he will have a baseball on his mantle that he can show to his children and grandchildren, and tell the story of how, at least for one day, he was as good as anyone.
________

If you love fiction and have a few minutes to spare, check out my website, www.allanleverone.com

How do you gain acceptance from the fans in a new situation in a strange city after being traded for one of the most feared hitters of this generation, all in the middle of a heated pennant race?

Well, how about by hitting a triple in your first at-bat with your new team, reaching base four times in that game, and scoring the only two runs in a 2-1, extra-inning win? Then you could follow that up with a three-run homer in the first inning of the next game to put your team ahead to stay, while playing stellar defense, something fans in that city aren't used to from their left fielder.

Do all that, Jason Bay, and you become an instant fan favorite, even in a notoriously high pressure city, where players on every team based in that city are routinely subjected to a level of scrutiny some guys are never able to adjust to.

Who knows what the long term holds for Bay, the 29 year old left fielder beginning his American League career with the Boston Red Sox after spending his first four seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but for now, if the signs scattered around Fenway Park are any indication, the guy has the fans eating out of his hands.

A random sampling of some of those signs:

"Manny Who?"

"Welcome to the Bay State!"

"FenBay Park"

"Un-Bay-Lievable!"

"Boston Loves BaysBall!"

"We're Bay-Watch Babes!"

and my personal favorite,

"Bay being Bay"

As of Sunday night, the Red Sox are now 3-0 in the Jason Bay era in Boston. The Bay State, indeed!

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If you love fiction and have a few minutes to spare, check out my website, www.allanleverone.com 

Since when did the Chicago Cubs decide to scrap Wrigley Field and build a domed stadium?

That's what I wondered when I read the headline, "Cubs Face Competition for Fukodome," on the front page of Foxsports.com this afternoon. It was a distressing thought. I spent four years in northern Indiana and went to at least one Cubs game at Wrigley every season I was out there.

Every time I visited Wrigley it was a lot of fun, too - The cold beer, the ivy-covered brick outfield walls, the good looking women, the cold beer (Oddly enough, the more of the cold beer you drank the more good looking women entered Wrigley, even if the place was filled. Very strange).

My friends and I were in the left field stands watching batting practice before a game one sun-drenched early-fall afternoon before a Cubs-Mets game when who wanders into the outfield but pitcher Tug McGraw? He was at the end of his career, working out of the bullpen for the Mets and way before he was known as the father of country singer Tim McGraw he had a reputation as something of a free spirit.

Anyway, here comes Tug McGraw meandering out to left field and he's carrying a football. He stops about fifty feet or so from the outfield wall, with his back to the hitters, and starts digging divots in the ground with his heel, just like you and I and every kid who ever grew up trying to kick field goals did in our front lawn.

Then he sticks the football into the divot, backs up a few yards, and nails a perfect end-over-end field goal into the left field stands. He takes a bow and before he can turn around, somebody tosses the ball back to him. So he does it again. And again. And again.

Tug McGraw must have kicked twenty field goals into the left field stands at Wrigley Field that day. He had a pretty good leg, too. I don't remember if he pitched in the game that day or not - if he did, his leg drive must have been a little weaker than normal - because, to be honest, I was enjoying the previously mentioned cold beer and good looking women, more and more of whom kept piling into Wrigley as we drank more and more of that cold beer.

And that's my Wrigley Field story. I love Fenway Park, to me it will always be the foremost baseball shrine in the game, but I have to tell you, Wrigley Field comes in a close second in my book.

All of which leads me back to that headline, "Cubs Face Competition for Fukodome." I wondered why they would even consider tearing down Wrigley and putting up a domed stadium, especially a Japanese one, when they have such a great place to begin with. Well, I read the article itself and you know what? It turns out Fukodome is a player, not a stadium at all!

Kosuke Fukodome is an outfielder, and apparently quite a good one, because he has at least three teams in hot pursuit besides the Cubs - The Padres, Dodgers and White Sox. Silly me. I thought the poor guy was a stadium. But I was glad for the mistake, really. I bet I haven't thought about Tug McGraw kicking field goals at Wrigley Field in ten years or more.

Now that I think about it, I remember where I recognized the name Fukodome. It was the title of that Mel Gibson movie, the one with the great theme song by Tina Turner. You remember, right? "Mad Max Beyond Fukodome."

There's something I have to get off my chest, I just can't stand it any longer. It involves some sort of dinosaur-looking mutation that has been scuttling around Coors Field during the recently concluded World Series.

If you have read any of my material since I began blogging on this site nearly two years ago, I have two things to say to you:

1) Thank you very much, you have no idea how much I appreciate it.
2) You really need to get a more worthwhile hobby.

Anyway, my point is this. If you have read my stuff, I think you'll agree that I try to be gracious when the teams I root for win as well as when they lose. I don't see any reason to get all aggressive with other people just because the Red Sox won the World Series, one, because I had nothing to do with it, and two, because it's classless.

So you won't find any gloating here, Rockies fans. In fact, quite the opposite. I was eight years old when the Sox lost to the Cardinals in the Series in 1967, sixteen when they lost to the Reds in '75, and 27 when they lost to the Mets in '86, so I can feel your pain. I remember very well how hard it is to take to see your team so close to a championship only to have your hopes dashed.

But here's the thing. What in the world is the deal with Dinger? You know, that fuzzy dinosaur-looking thing with the multicolored spots on his head that passes for a mascot up there in the mile-high stratosphere? What in the name of Vinny Castilla does a dinosaur have to do with the Colorado Rockies specifically or baseball in the Rocky Mountains in general? Do people in Denver feel Dinger is some sort of mutation to be shunned or is he beloved in some perverse way?

Don't misunderstand, the Red Sox have their own wierd, fuzzy mascot called Wally the Green Monster that adds absolutely nothing to the game of baseball, so I'm not trying to pass judgement. In fact, I wrote a post way back on April 26, 2006 (Wanted, One Hideous Tiger-Like Mutant), where I called Wally an "asexual lump of shag carpeting left over from your parents 1974 living room," so I'm not being an insufferable homer here. Or at least, not a homer.

But at least the "Green Monster" reference in Wally's name makes sense in a saccharine, gag-me-with-a-pitchfork, all-the-eight-year-old-girls-love-him kind of way. You know, Wally the Green Monster referring to the big green monster looming over left field at Fenway. What does Dinger represent, other than all the home runs that used to be hit in the thin air at Coors field in the prehistoric pre-humidor days? Maybe that's it.

But when Dinger started sitting behind home plate hexing Jonathan Papelbon while spinning his head 360 degrees on his neck (The mascot, that is, not Papelbon), it disturbed me in a way nothing else has in a long time. My wife was furious. "He can't do that," she exclaimed indignantly, but there he was, hexing and spinning away. It didn't seem to bother Papelbon, but I couldn't take my eyes off it.

Please, Colorado Rockies management, put Dinger out of my misery and consider coming up with some new fuzzy, asexual lump of shag carpeting mascot. He can even run Wally the Green Monster over on an ATV, like Raymond, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays mascot, does when the Red Sox play in Tampa. That would be fine by me. Just promise me no more head spinning and hexing. It's just plain creepy.

It's unlikely there are many sports fans who haven't chosen sides already in the battle between east and west in the 2007 World Series, but just in case you are one of the handful of people who hasn't made up your mind who to root for, allow me to present a handful of reasons that may not have occurred to you why you should support the Boston Red Sox.

1) The "lyric little bandbox." Fenway Park was built nearly a century ago and is regarded as one of the true shrines in sports, a place people travel across the country just for the opportunity to watch one game in.

What that really means is that people are jammed together like a bunch of fat people flying coach, sitting in uncomfortably tiny seats and paying exorbitant ticket prices for the privilege of sitting so close to the guy next to you that you can smell what he had for lunch. It's a national treasure!

But what about Coors Field? Has anyone ever waxed poetic about sitting in the Rockies Stadium? NO! Unless of course you count the "Tastes great, less filling" debate. Oh wait, that refers to the ballpark in Milwaukee.

2) Classic uniforms. There is something traditional yet timeless about Boston's home whites with "Red Sox" stitched across the jersey in olde fashioned red lettering. Compare that comforting slice of Americana with the Rockies all-black uniform jersey featuring purple lettering across the front. What the?? Is that so the fans can make out the players against the white backdrop of snow blanketing the field?

3) Fairness. We here in New England are still smarting over the defection of Ray Bourque, one of the all-time greatest hockey players ever to lace up a pair of skates. After spending twenty-one years guarding the blue line for the Bruins, this Boston legend defected to Colorado at the end of his career in order to have an opportunity to drink from Lord Stanley's cup.

This cross-country trip became necessary when Bourque realized Boston's ownership was far too miserly to spend enough money on the team to make them competitive with the NHL's elite. Not all our teams spend billions, you know.

4) It will make you healthier. If the Sox win the World Series, the resulting annoying crush of fawning national media attention on the Red Sox will take your mind off the annoying crush of fawning national media attention on the Patriots and whether or not they can go undefeated this season.

5) You already know how to pronounce our guys' names. Since the Red Sox are featured on Fox practically every Saturday during the regular season, you don't have to spend any of your precious time learning how to cheer for Daisuke Matsuzaka or Dustin Pedroia or Kevin Youkilis or Hideki Okajima.

The Rockies, on the other hand, have guys who haven't been on TV that much. Troy Tulowitzki? Yikes. Yorvit Torrealba? My tongue hurts already.

So stick with what you know. There's plenty of room for you on the Bosox bandwagon, even if there isn't room in the Monster Seats. You know you want to do it. Jump on!

10/19/07

Dear Arizona Cardinals fans,

I know you feel like you're alone in this. The excitement you felt 18 years ago when you got a professional football team to call your very own is just a distant memory. Being the whipping boy for most other teams in the NFL has grown tiresome.

Trust me when I tell you I've been there. I'm a New England Patriots fan. For most of my life my team was the one that everyone couldn't wait to play. Up until ten or so years ago, if they were a college football team, the Patriots would have been the opponent the mediocre teams scheduled for homecoming weekend to keep the alumni happy.

You think you have a problem with your head coach? He's a little nutty maybe? Try this on for size. We had a guy, Clive Rush, hired in 1969, who nearly didn't make it past his introductory press conference. He tripped over some electrical wiring making his way to the podium and nearly electrocuted himself. Considering how bad the team played under Rush, many fans for a long time looked back with fondness at how close they came to having a bad choice eliminated. In true pre-1990's Patriots fashion, however, they couldn't even get that right.

Or how about #### MacPherson? The guy who made a name and reputation for himself coaching at the collegiate level at Syracuse University came to New England and suddenly all he knew how to do was hug the players. Scouting? Forget it. Game-planning? Not gonna happen. But on the rare occasion a guy made a big play, Coach #### was first in line on the sidelines with a big bear-hug. None of this six-inch no-fly-zone "Man-Hug" stuff either. You got the feeling there was an engagement ring forthcoming after some of the physicalness.

Or maybe University of Oklahoma legendary coach Chuck Fairbanks. He came here and after a while decided he missed the college game so much he made plans to leave the NFL while the team was making a rare playoff push!

And how about the stadium situation? Sure, you had to live with the fact that your Cardinals didn't have a home of their own until this year. You wanna know where I saw my first Pats game in person? Fenway Park. That's right, Fenway Park. How the hell they managed to fit a 100-yard long field in that tuna can I'll never know, but I'm telling you, that's where the Boston Patriots played for six years in the 1960's.

Then, when they finally got a home of their own, Schaefer Stadium which became Sullivan Stadium which became Foxboro Stadium was built on the cheap for about $250 bucks and a couple of free tickets which didn't matter because who wanted to see the Patsies play anyway? One of my favorite local sportswriters, Gerry Callahan of the Boston Herald, had a great column about the stadium when they finally, mercifully tore it down to make way for Gillette Stadium. He said something like any decent-sized high school in Texas has a better stadium than that, and I'm sure he was right.

So hang in there Cardinal fans. We feel your pain up here in snow country. We had decades upon decades of first-round draft pick busts, drug busts, coaching busts, busted bones and busted dreams. And I know people everywhere else in the country are sick and tired of this "Patriots, Patriots, Patriots" stuff from the talking heads. I understand, I'd be sick of it too if I wasn't a fan. But I'll say this: the Patriots could win the Super Bowl another five years in a row and it still wouldn't make up for all the agony and the ridicule we New England fans old enough to remember suffered through for the approximately forty years the franchise was the poster child for poor management and utter futility.

Better days are coming, Cardinal fans. Every dog has it's day. I'm not sure exactly what that means other than if you hang around the dance long enough, eventually the pretty girl notices you, and when that happens, it makes all the pain you've suffered through worth every second.

Sympathetically Yours,
HalfBaked

As sports fans go, I've been pretty fortunate the last several years. Teams I follow have been, for the most part, more than a little successful. The New England Patriots won three Super Bowls in four years, and the Boston Red Sox threw the #### off their backs in 2004, winning the World Series. Of course, he seems to be climbing back on, but that's a story for another day.

I only bring this up because it illustrates perfectly my typically exquisite lack of timing in buying a new big-screen high-definition TV. I took the plunge shortly after the Super Bowl this past February, meaning all those championships were won during my own personal dark ages of television-watching.

I had debated buying a new TV for a while, but a number of factors had prohibited me from taking the plunge. Prices were high, and I suspected that they would come down as the technology became more readily available. Also, I figured the longer I waited, the more the technology would be perfected, resulting in a better picture and a more enjoyable couch-potato experience.

Plus, my wife wouldn't let me. Okay, that was the only real reason; I came up with all those other justifications in a vain attempt to retain a little of my dignity and self-respect. She finally gave the thumbs-up late this past winter, and we have been living life in high-definition ever since.

I won't bore you with examples of how incredibly superior HD is to regular television viewing. No doubt you've seen the difference, either on your own TV or a friend's. For a sports fan, HD is like being at the stadium, only better, especially if you're talking about Fenway Park.

No standing at the trough in the men's room for me. No overpriced, watered down, warm beer which I have to juggle on the trip back to my seat, only to have it spilled down my shirt when the fat guy in the seat next to me leaps up to see if Trot Nixon's line drive is going to stay fair. No paying $25 for the privilege of parking in some nasty gas station and walking the half-mile to the park, then waiting in my car for 45 minutes after the game for the drunks parked around me to finally find their cars and leave so I can get out.

I have the best seat in the house, the best ticket to every game. I know it's the best seat in the house, because it's the one I picked out to watch the game in. I can show up thirty seconds before the first pitch and know I'm not going to miss anything, and if I do, I can rewind the Tivo and look again.

I can count the stitches on a Tim Wakefield knuckler, assuming of course he's pitching. I get a close-up of Julian (Freddy Krueger) Tavarez' face and shudder. I look into the Patriots huddle and almost hear Tom Brady calling my number.

All this for the low price of only....well, suffice it to say the sales people didn't know what hit them when I walked out of that store with my television and interest-free financing for 18 months. They must have been more intimidated than I thought by my hardball negotiating, considering how often they want me to come back and buy stuff. It's clear they want to keep me happy.

Anyway, that's my story, brought to you in realistic high-definition. I could talk about my HDTV for hours, but it's getting late and I have a ticket to my usual seat for the Sox game. If I'm late, the usher sometimes cops a real attitude and believe me, she's not someone you want to mess with.