Spitting - A Sporting Tradition

People are up in arms this week over a golfer spitting on the green before he putted. Some kind of nervous tic, a part of his pre-shot routine. There is quite a to-do about it and the story was a featured item on Yahoo news. Seriously - because the man spit out of doors onto the grass.

Apparently, these stodgy, anti-saliva milquetoasts have never watched another sporting event outside the gentlemanly world of golf. The links are their domain and the Golf Police will not have their beautifully sculpted grounds sullied by a golfer's overflow. It is a gentleman's sport and gentlemen do not spit. Fortunately, these folks have never had to golf with me and my ilk. We have not only been known to spit on a golf course, but to also curse on it, drive carts in an incredibly irresponsible manner (sometimes while innebriated), urinate on it (usually behind a bush - after all, we're not animals) and we have been known to occasionally walk down the fairway with our pants around our ankles after driving short of the ladies' tee-box. They would be suitably appalled.

Well, thank God baseball is not a gentleman's sport, otherwise the dugout cleaning crew would be out of work.

The baseball dugout - a mini-biohazard in the making.

Baseball players don't even wait to get out onto the grass to spit - hell, they just sluice it right onto the floor of the dugout, where their teammates can all walk through it. Baseball, known for its spitting, is equally notorious for the scratching of genitalia. The Golf Police would shudder to watch such activities on their hallowed field of play. Sometimes baseball players even spit on umpires. Let's see Tiger Woods pull that one off. In fact, players often load up with materials so they can spit even more.

Tobacco - it's what's for dinner.

I don't want it to seem as if I am picking on baseball - most other sports tolerate spitting as well. Football and soccer players don't have any qualms with spritzing the field of play, and I'm nearly certain I saw a racecar driver spitting on the ground during a pit-stop while I was clicking past NASCAR on my way the Food Channel. This could be extra dangerous and cause spinouts, I would think. Not sure - not a big fan, but I digress...

Spitting can lead to creative and classy headlines when utilized properly.

I suppose that my point is that the Golf Police should probably stick to fretting over the important stuff, such as whether or not a patch of dirt is a bunker and therefore unavailable for incidental club-grounding. Then they can assess penalties and cause a player to lose a tournament. Or, they can debate whether or not the boulder in front of the player's ball is actually a loose impediment and allow a few husky bystanders to move it so the golfer can have a shot at the green and then go on to win the tournament. Is spitting really that big of a deal? Let's get our priorities straight - until you can get the baseball players under control, you might be best served to overlook the occasional golf-goober - you'll only continue to look like a churlish sewing-circle of uptight, Victorian fussbudgets with your panties all in a bunch.

One for the road...



Whatever happened to sportsmanship?

I was watching sports on television today - something I really need to cut back on. I should be working diligently on a book a song or a play or a tree fort, or out in the sunshine, fine-tuning my melanoma, but here I sit, watching the home team put forth an amazing display of mediocrity. As I was wondering how I could somehow manipulate my own mediocrity into an obscene paycheck like these lackards, a question came to my mind - just when did sportsmanship turn into showmanship?

I thought about the old days when a ballplayer would smash a homerun into the upper deck, lower his head and trot around the bases, careful not to show up the opposing pitcher. Of course, back then, if you showed up an opposing pitcher, you might wind up taking a fastball to the kidney. That's how it worked back then; the game policed itself. Now, players crowd the plate and suit up in more armor than a medieval knight when they get in the batter's box. Back in the old days, that would have brought a little chin-music and the umpire would have watched with a bemused grin.

These days, players hit a rocket out of the park, drop the bat and admire their handiwork for a few seconds before taking a leisurely canter from bag to bag. A batter will hit a single through a gap in the infield and upon reaching first base, will make the sign of the cross, kiss his blingy crucifix necklace and point to the heavens, presumably thanking the man upstairs for his assistance in hitting the ball. I always wonder why they don't flip off the sky when they fail to reach base two-thirds of their turns at the plate. If you're gonna give the Big Guy credit for a hit, you might as well blame Him for the strike out, right? In a slump? Blame Jesus.

In football, players will flex their muscles and dance and carry on after a routine tackle as if they had just found the cure for cancer, even though their team is down 24 points and their QB is on the sideline taking an oral concussion test. I just don't get it... Basketball players have always reveled in making their opponents look stupid - I blame that on the Harlem Globetrotters with all their fancy passing and the Washington Generals' bench full of stiffs hired to take the nightly beating.

My point is this, I guess - leave the macho-in-your-face showmanship for the wrestling crowd. If I want to see a fancy dance, I will drive to Vegas and check out "Love" by the Cirque De Solei folks - I hear it's dandy. I want to watch sports when I turn on a sporting event, not a bunch of over-paid, juiced-up athletes who are more likely to sprain their shoulders patting themselves on the back than hurting themselves grinding out the extra three inches needed for the first down or diving for the seeing-eye grounder. Those legs are too valuable for that kind of nonsense, I suppose.

You can watch film of Babe Ruth dominating the game of baseball back in the twenties and throttling every pitcher who dared toss a ball in the vicinity of the plate. He would drop his bat and go into his little chubby trot - never showing up the opposing pitcher, even though he had proven at every level of the game that he had certainly earned the right to do so. There was the legendary "called shot" - which could have been construed as showing up the pitcher and the entire opposing team, but there is no solid proof that it ever even happened and eyewitness testimony to the incident varied. And you would never see Mickey Mantle standing at home plate to admire one his tape-measure jobs, even if he hit them completely out of the ballpark, which he did - several times. Just put his head down and trotted around the bases. Of course, he was probably drunk, but that only adds to the humility of the man. I readily admit that if I hit a 500-foot homerun, I would not only stand and admire the shot, I would run to the mound and kiss the pitcher right on the mouth. If that's not showing him up, I don't know what is. That's why I am not a professional athlete, I suppose.

All I'm saying is, have a little humility, fellas. Act like you've done it before. You make enough money to go take some lessons, or something. Or watch some old film of the games back when they had some class. Sometimes it's not entirely about you and your really bitchin accomplishment of the moment. Sometimes it's about preserving some of the dignity that the games worked so hard to acquire. Just sayin'.