Left Field

Few sport-related events are as bizarre and endlessly confusing as the NBA Draft, which comes just a few weeks after the end of the nipple-twistingly long NBA season, at the precise moment when the needle on most fans' Give-a-Damn-o-Meter is fluttering between “whatever” and one of those thumbs down/fart sound combinations that was the ultimate dis of 1998.
There was a time when the NBA Draft was exciting, or at the very least, topical. It was a graduation of sorts for the best college players to cross the bridge from undergraduate poverty to instant millionaire status as fans proudly welcomed whatever All American their team of choice had selected from the pool. Then, it changed about a decade ago with the influx of straight-outta-high-school hotshots expediting the process by foregoing college all together. Also, people in countries most Americans (sadly) had never heard of started playing basketball – and getting damn good at it, too.

I wish I could have been in the meeting. I would have had some valuable input to provide, especially considering I'd be from the future, my time traveler identity concealed by a fabulously curly mustache. The meeting? I'm of course referring to the gathering of old-timey baseballers sometime after the Civil War when it was decided that a hat would be required atop the heads of all baseball players.
This is a seminal moment in not just sports history, but in the narrative of Western style. Imagine if some guy named Chester Knickerbocker Westinghouse (those were the sort of names people had back then) were to have spoken up.
“The idea of these caps is a straight crackerjack, I tell ya, but would not we be remiss if we didn't at least explore other head-adornment options?” Westinghouse, also fabulously mustached, would have said, receiving a chorus of “here, here” and “oh bully” from the assembled baseball royalty.

Mark Cuban, the crazy-eyed muscleman who sits at the end of the Dallas Mavericks' bench sweating furiously and sometimes bounding onto the court to scream at officials and attempt to chest bump bemused players, is a very rich man. According to Forbes, only 458 human males with more money than Cuban exist.
But here's the thing, those other 458 dudes don't own the Dallas Mavericks and, thus, don't possess a team that just won its first NBA championship. And what do you do if your team just beat out the most overhyped team in the history of the game? Well, you pick up a bar tab that cost about the same amount as a modest home in your hometown. That's right, the multibillionaire (his money came from computers or dial-up modems or something else that seemed futuristic in 1999) picked up a $90,000 tab (with a $20,000 tip, which, all right, I'll admit is cool) all of which went toward a giant bottle of champagne that only a man with the strength of Thor, whoops, I mean Dirk Nowitzki, could lift. The bottle also appeared to be fully gilded (which means it was covered in gold, y'all) which probably added a few grand to that tab.

On Friday, Shaquille O'Neal plopped the massive collection of muscle that is his body in front of a webcam and told his fans that this past season, his 19th campaign and one that was pocked with injuries, would be his last. The friendly giant has been an institution in pro basketball – for a few years my mother worked out in a Shaq shirt she got in a box of Cheerios, if that's any indication of his popularity – since he began tearing down hoops for shits and giggles during the Clinton administration. But he was more than a basketball player, as those who own a rare VHS copy of the “hit” 1996 film Kazaam know quite well. Here are my favorite Shaq moments of all time.
The Skinny Shaq: The year was 1990 and a lanky man-child named Shaquille O'Neal put on some shorty LSU shorts and began blocking any shot that came near the basket. He once blocked 12 shots against Loyola Marymount in a game that freshman season (he did allow Hank Gathers to score 48 points in the same contest, but whatevs) and did it as a slender, sexy young man. Soon, he began eating.

Last weekend, rather than absorb my typical diet of basketball from my couch or baseball atop a barstool (where I would have almost certainly found myself engaged in an argument with a stranger over the obvious benefits of the designated hitter), I went to a music festival for four entire days of rock and/or roll music, but absolutely zero sports.
You're probably thinking to yourself right now, “Jeez, this damn guy gets to go to the internationally known Sasquatch Festival and now he's bitching about having missed out on sports? Puh-leese.

Anybody seen that new Thor movie? Yeah, neither have I.
But from the previews, I've gleaned one thing and that's the fact that Thor looks and probably acts almost exactly like Dirk Nowitzki. And judging from the way the lanky German is dominating the Thunder in the Western Conference Finals, maybe he is some sort of demigod. Right, I know, Thor is from the Norse tradition and Dirk is German, but wasn't Thor the god (or part god or whatever) of thunder? If that's the case, chalk a point up for Dirk, would ya pal, because he's definitely in charge of the Thunder right now.
And if you're slamming down your horn-adorned helmet and angrily stroking your massive blond and/or red beard at the effrontery that is my lack of Norse mythological knowledge, I'm sorry. But shouldn't you really be in line to see Thor again instead of reading this stupid sports column? Thor never reads sports columns, but you'd know that because you're an expert, right?

One time, I took a golf ball to the neck. True story. I wish I could say that the ball was merely bouncing along the cart path and caromed harmlessly my way, nicking the top of my back. But no. This was a 125-yard shank job that nearly knocked me from my perch atop the diesel-powered industrial lawn mower on which I spent most of the summer of 2002. Son of a bitch hit me square in the side of the neck, an inch below my ear, almost prematurely ending my career in golf course maintenance.
I brought the mower to a halt and turned to see in the distance, at an adjacent hole, a sunburned man in a Hawaiian shirt giving me a half-assed and seemingly apologetic wave. I leapt from the mower, picked up the offending golf ball and hurled it toward my assailant. It fell a good 75 yards short, so I also chucked my neon hard hat – the design flaw of which turned out to be its lack of neck coverage – for extra effect, before realizing that my neck was slowly swelling to a near-immobile state. That bastard stood there with his hands on his hips, shaking his head disapprovingly at the behavior of the minimum-wage employee he almost erased from the face of the earth.

Well, L.A. Lakers, you win some and you lose some. And when you lose some, you apparently start body-slamming people in an attempt to embarrass your soon-to-retire coach.
Rarely has such a hyped team of reality television stars and veteran players flamed out so badly in the NBA playoffs. The Seattle Sonics (they don't exist anymore) did it back in 1994. The Spurs kind of did it this year against Memphis. But the Lakers' four-loss flameout to the Mavericks was perhaps the most unglamorous playoff series loss and it came from the NBA's most glamorous team – and one that many thought might be on its way to a third consecutive world championship.

Here's something you should know, especially if you plan on visiting Portland any time soon. They have a soccer team. And a real soccer team, at that. Not the jive-ass minor league, playing-on-Astroturf-with-baseball-dugouts-in-the-background sort of team, but an actual MLS squad with a big-name corporate sponsor emblazoned across the chests of its players and a real-life mascot who actually cuts logs in half on the sideline with a chainsaw.
They're called the Timbers and Portlanders love them. A lot. And unlike in other U.S. cities equipped with MLS teams, Portland fans actually watch their team. The games are sold out and last Saturday I couldn't find a bar that wasn't equipped with an audience of beer-in-hand, eyes-on-the-screen fans, many of whom were draped in the Timbers' yellow-on-green jerseys. Given that Portland is essentially a European city masquerading as a well-read mid-market American settlement, this enthusiasm fits well with their bicycle lanes and efficient mass transit.

I don't watch much hockey. During a standard non-Olympic year, which we happen to be in presently, I would guess that I take in a culmination of about three full games, maybe more if you add in the amount of hockey I watch at bars during the commercial breaks of college basketball games.
But last week, I ended up viewing at least a half hour of a Stanley Cup Playoffs match up between the Vancouver Canucks and the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday, and then almost another full period of a game between Buffalo and Philadelphia later in the weekend. And I realized something about hockey players: These guys kind of look like hell. I mean, in the same way I typically look like hell – eyes in need of a nap, teeth that could use some work, hair terribly unkempt and a beard that's completely out of control. This was when I remembered one of the few things that I like about hockey, other than the fancy backward skating: “playoff beards.”