Men with Balls: The Professional Athlete's Handbook, Page 3

  JOURNEYMAN. You are good, but you aren’t good enough to keep your current team from trading you to some other team that has been unwisely suckered into dealing for you. You have been passed from team to team like a bad wedding reception canapé everyone is willing to try but unwilling to finish. But your experience bouncing (or, in some cases, shuttling) around the league has become a valuable asset in its own right. You know the ins and outs of at least eight other teams, and that knowledge could prove valuable to your new team. It never does, but it could.

  You also have a familiarity with many of the cities on the pro circuit. Other players may rely on you out on the road to know the whereabouts of good restaurants, hot clubs, or the phone numbers of various local Polish escort services. Journeymen are also called “grizzled veterans.” But journeyman is a much cooler moniker. It makes you sound like some kind of nomadic vigilante who only plays by his own rules. You should carry a guitar around with you wherever you go, just for the romance of it. Fans think you still play for the other team. Refs respect you. Journeywoman groupies worship you. I suggest avoiding them. Lotta tread on those tires.

  JUST ANOTHER GUY (JAG) . Not to be confused with the Judge Advocate General acronym of the TV show JAG, starring the rakishly handsome David James Elliot and the fantastically bejugged Catherine Bell, JAG is shorthand for Just Another Guy. This means that you are eminently disposable. There are plenty of other players out there who play the game as well as you do, but you had the good fortune of being nearby. Nice work.

  Being a JAG means fans ignore you unless you tell them you play a professional sport, at which point they will do a thorough Google search to verify your claim. Refs use you as a foil for their outrageous calls in favor of superstars. The only groupies you score are ones that have something egregiously wrong with at least one part of their body.

  ROLE PLAYER. You excel at one particular aspect of your game and one aspect only: things like shooting, returning kicks, baserunning, or making flagrant elbows look innocuous. You have a particular knack for doing this one thing, but are terrible at everything else. Being a role player also means knowing your role, and never venturing from it. Steve Kerr tried posting up once. Michael Jordan had his pinkie toe snipped off with garden shears as punishment. You may also be known as a “specialist,” which is really just a condescending euphemism. I’m good at packing a car trunk. You don’t see anyone calling me an automotive compartmentalization specialist. Only die-hard fans know you. Commercial sponsors will only use you if your talent has some kind of clever alternative usage (“Morten Andersen can kick a football. But can he kick EL Fudge cookies?”). Refs cannot actually see you. And the only groupies you score are the ones who are themselves role players: dominatrices, girls dressed as Little Bo Peep, etc. Depending on your tastes, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  GRITTY (WHITE) OVERACHIEVER. Subset of the role players. As an overachiever, you are notorious for your tireless work ethic. You are the first one to the practice facility and the last one to leave. You watch hours of film every night. You go hard on every play and treat practice like games. Your coach loves you and holds you up as an example to the team, saying, “The rest of you need to be more like little Ruettiger here,” which will in turn force your teammates to do more work than is necessary. Within a month, they’ll hate your fucking guts. I guarantee it. The gritty overachiever is often labeled by announcers as “scrappy,” or “tenacious,” or “a grinder,” or “our last one true white hope before the physically superior black man finally crushes us in the Great Racial Holy War.” Enjoy the extra attention. You worked hard for it, you annoying little white man.

  PROJECT. You are raw (Note: All human beings are raw in their natural state). You have a huge body that you have not yet grown into, or you excel at some sort of basic athletic ability but possess no way to apply it practically. Your team will spend millions upon millions of dollars trying to make you into the all-star they envision you to be. They may even continue to try to develop you long after their plans have gone awry. But, chances are, you will end up remaining the same as you are now: a physical freak of nature who happens to be shitty. That’s the way it goes sometimes. But hey, at least you suckered a few people along the way.

  SCRUB. You suck. Stop reading this book. If a fan sees you out on the field, he will become visibly angry at your presence. You are a blown assignment waiting to happen. Enjoy playing semi-pro ball in the Quad Cities a week from now.

  * * *

  DID YOU KNOW?

  Former NFL player Tom Tupa lasted eighteen years in the league by being a rare double role player. Tupa played both third-string quarterback and punter. He also played the bugle, making him the most versatile useless player in league history.

  * * *

  Your playbook, now with 80 percent more confusion!

  Upon being drafted by your team, you will immediately be presented with your team playbook. It will be six hundred pages long, single-spaced, with writing on both sides of the paper and copious notes in the margins. Do not lose your playbook. An unpaid assistant coach spent more than one hundred hours copying, laminating, collating, and color-coding that thing. If you lose it, you will make him cry. And you will be fined $25.

  You will be expected to have your playbook committed to memory by the second week of training camp. By the third week, you’ll need to have memorized all the plays for everyone else’s position as well. By the end of the month, all of the plays should be second nature to you and you should be able to school others in how to interpret the detailed workings of your coach’s brain. Coaches and fans alike will expect you to never make a single mental error. Ever. But don’t worry. All it takes to master a playbook is a photographic memory and the Kasparovian ability to anticipate all probabilities for multiple scenarios and plan an endgame by instantly recalling similar plays throughout history and their statistical success rate, then calculating the correct move based upon all you’ve absorbed. Surely you picked up a similar skill while studying the History of UPN at Ball State. Consider this sample play:

  Split Right 48 Waggle Razor Q Butterfly Jingleheimer Schmidt Oklahoma Blue

  In this play, the receiver on the left is the X, or wideout. The receiver on the right is the Z, or flanker. The tight end is Y. Split refers to the backfield formation. Right refers to the side the tight end lines up on, which is the “strong” side. The 48 refers to the patterns the X and Z must run (here, a quick slant and a square in-and-up). Waggle means the fullback chips off the rush end and then flies up the field. Razor is a word thrown in to make the play sound more badass. Q is the flat route run by the tailback. Butterfly is the dummy audible call. Jingleheimer is the actual check-down call. Schmidt is the second dummy audible call used to confuse the defense as to which call is the actual dummy call and which is the real nondummy call. Oklahoma is the blocking scheme. Blue is a type of color.

  Now, this is but one play. It actually has 132 different variations depending upon the formation. You’ll also notice I’ve drawn up this play against a base 4–3 defense. This, of course, isn’t how the defense will line up in reality. Chances are, they’ll move all around just to fuck with you. For example, if the nose tackle shifts from a one-technique to a three-technique, the quarterback will audible to “I Right Fifty-two Motion Left Hitch Blaze R Logan’s Run Macanudo Vermont.” You see the difference? And, if the outside linebacker shifts outside the end into a “hip” position, the play becomes “I Left Shotgun Royal B Post Jigsaw Krull Jabberwocky Chinatown Alaska.” See? It’s not that complicated.

  Just remember that a sport like football presents infinite strategic possibilities that no one person could ever possibly absorb, let alone comprehend. But your coaches will attempt to do so and expect you to instantly apply all of it flawlessly in adverse conditions. But you are in luck. You do get to keep a laminated cheat sheet on your wristband with every play listed in .5-point font. That should help.

  Yep, you’re going to fuck up. Repeatedly.
Just make sure you paralyze someone while doing it.

  Because “I fucked your mother” just won’t cut it: trash-talking.

  Within a single professional match of football, or basketball, or even a pussy sport such as lacrosse, there is a series of battles within the game itself. And this is no team game. This is strictly a mental battle, one-on-one, between you and the man guarding you. That’s right. It’s time to lay a hardcore verbal smackdown on a bitch. Win this verbal tête-à-tête, and you’ll have gained a permanent mental edge over your opponent. You’ll be helping your team win. But more important, you’ll be savaging a man’s dignity and inflating your own ego in the process.

  Nothing is out of bounds when it comes to trash-talking. If telling the catcher that you just stabbed his mother with an AIDS-infected needle throws him off by even one degree, then it’s well worth it. Remember: aim high when you’re aiming low. Consider these targets:

  • His mother

  • His father (especially if his father is dead)

  • His wife

  • His children. An underage daughter makes for an especially sensitive target, often literally!

  • His sexuality

  • His hometown. If he’s from rural Georgia, you should have lots to work with.

  • A recent injury

  • A recent “trial separation”

  • Appearance

  • Religion, especially if he’s a Buddhist or some other bullshit religion

  • Grooming and hygiene. Ever smell Manny Ramirez on a Sunday? Not pleasant.

  One thing I left out here is race. Racial taunting is only permitted in certain scenarios. Black-on-white taunting is permissible. White-on-black will almost certainly incite an angry mob. Black-on-Asian usually gets a pass. White-on-Latino is out of the question, but White-on-Sikh is allowed. And everyone can make fun of Samoans without consequence.

  Remember, your goal is to shift your opponent’s focus from the task at hand to you. Making him mad is just one way of doing this. You could offer him a brainteaser. For example, ask him, “Are you PT?” If he says, “No,” then say, “Oh my God! You weren’t potty trained? Loser!” If he says, “Yes,” then say, “Oh my God! You’re a pregnant teacher? What a douchebag!” You see? There’s no right answer! He can’t win! You have him completely out-riddled!

  But the best trash talk is often highly personal. You’re not gonna shred your opponent’s last nerve if you’re just making general insults. You need to do your homework. Check out his MySpace page. It’s undoubtedly been laid out in a sloppy and careless fashion. Be sure to let him know that. Or edit his Wikipedia page to include a blatantly false fact and then tease him about that. Read his autobiography. Find out where he lives. Send a pregame death threat to his house using letters cut out from magazines and ask him, “Did you get my note? Remember, you have until three p.m. Wednesday.” That’s the kind of shit that really distracts a man.

  But your pregame research is only one facet of being an all-star trash-talker. Your opponent will have done his homework as well. Even more crucial is having the perfect comeback. You need to train yourself, to sharpen your instincts for a witty rejoinder. You don’t want to be the kind of guy that figures out the perfect comeback thirty minutes into the car ride home. God, that’s annoying. Train your mind. Consider the following comebacks.

  Soon, you’ll have mastered the art of the dance. No one will dare joust against you.

  Then again, why let him get a word in edgewise? You can suffocate your opponent with a steady, never-ending barrage of inane chatter (imagining you’re a woman in this scenario helps). Drink lots of water before the game if you need to, but just keep talking. Forever. By the third quarter, you’ll have completely destroyed his will to live. Take it from one of the all-time greats.

  HEAR IT FROM AN ATHLETE!

  You ain’t got shit

  by Gary Payton

  C’mon, boy. C’mon! You wanna challenge me? This isn’t some JV shit you’re playing now. You ain’t got shit. You hear me?

  YOU AIN’T GOT SHIT.

  Where’d you get those shoes, you poor-ass motherfucker? Are those British Knights? I didn’t even know they made British Knights anymore. Why don’t you just go buy some shoes at TJ Maxx while you’re at it, you bargain bin–scrounging bitch? Know who else offers the max for the minimum? Your momma.

  Oh, you want personal? Oh, I can get more personal than that. What kind of Social Security number is 948-02-2301? Did you know that number is a cryptogram for YOU IS SHIT? I did. I solved that shit in my head right as I was talking. I just blew your fucking mind with puzzles. I even checked out your credit report online. Know what your credit rating is? It’s Ass. That’s an actual rating, too. See this printout? See what it says at the bottom? ASS. Who buys a scooter on layaway? With a Discover card, no less? Kiss my black balls.

  I can even fuck with you in different dialects, if you like. Ever been heckled in cockney? I’m about to get all up in your skyrocket. You understand that? I can tell by the look on your Chevy Chase that you don’t. Care for a foreign language lesson? You ain’t scheisse. See that? That was German. I took lessons with Herr Ludewig in Stuttgart for eight weeks just so I could fuck with you like that. I can even fuck with you in sign language. I saw Children of a Lesser God twice. See this middle finger? Suck on that.

  (You start crying.)

  Oh, are you crying now?

  (You furiously deny it.)

  Shit, I’ve had plenty of guys get mad. But I’ve never seen a bitch go and cry. What’s the matter, rookie? Are you just realizing now that you ain’t got shit? Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Pussy. Would you like some Puffs tissues? I got the ones with aloe vera, just for your overly sensitive ass. Here, take this lace handkerchief. I keep it between my thighs for occasions just such as this. Only half of it is wet.

  There, there. Relax. It’s just a game. Everything’ll be all right. As long as you remember that YOU AIN’T GOT SHIT.

  Showboating and the lost French art of pantomime.

  In a perfect world, scoring would be its own reward. There’s a certain purity to making a great play and then simply tossing the ball back to the officials. The purpose of this section is to explain to you why that sort of mentality is stupid and gay. You busted your ass all year long (in theory) to get to this point. It’s your right, nay, your duty, to celebrate a good play in an overly demonstrative fashion. Even if it wasn’t a scoring play. Even if it was just a routine play. Even if you didn’t make the play but were in the general vicinity of it. Even if you only visualized the play in your mind. Regardless, you have carte blanche to go apeshit.

  Remember: you aren’t just an athlete. You’re an entertainer now. Regular game play and the thrill of winning are no longer enough for today’s ADHD-riddled masses. They demand more. They want cheerleaders to ogle. They want loud music to drown out any potential conversation. They want T-shirt cannons. They want flying monkeys. They want war veterans paraded out onto the field at the half so they can feel genuine emotion for ninety seconds. They want a show, even if you have no formal training in the dramatic arts. So, you better dance for them. Dance, I tell you!

  In fact, many of today’s top professional showboaters have abandoned simple dancing and gone straight into the field of pantomime. This is a field traditionally dominated by overly enthusiastic seventh-grade drama class students, but more and more pro athletes are joining the fray. When you see Terrell Owens pretending the football is a pillow and sleeping on it, or Sam Cassell running down the court jiggling a pair of imaginary three-inch testicles, you’re watching classic mime techniques in the vein of Marcel Marceau, or that one dude from that Bobby McFerrin video.

  Want to be like David Larible, “The Prince of Laughter”? Consider the mime routines below. They can be used to celebrate your own greatness, or to taunt the inferior skills of your opponent, or to inflame drunken fans, or, ideally, to do all three at once. Consider using a milk crate in these routines. In th
e world of mime, a milk crate can be anything.

  THE STAGGERING PENIS. Standing with your legs a little more than shoulder-width apart, squat down halfway to the ground and mime the lifting of a very heavy concrete tube or an oaken log, placing your hands underneath. Once you have “picked it up,” hold it out and pretend to lose your balance as you stagger under the mighty weight of your own monstrous appendage. Then “place” it on your milk crate. Wipe your brow and mime opening a beer. You’ve earned it after all that imaginary manual labor, Captain Bigdick.

  THE BREAKTHROUGH. A nouveau twist on a classic routine. Pretend you are trapped inside an imaginary box only you can see. Oh, despair! But wait. You have a plan! Make a fist. Form a look of determination on your face. Play the Chariots of Fire theme in your mind. Now break through that imaginary wall! Smash through that air! BOOM! You’ve done it! No one thought you’d find a way out, but you did! Très fantastique!

  THE PHANTOM STEAMER. Inspired by Randy Moss’s performance against the Packers in a 2005 playoff game. Turn your back to the opposing team’s fans. Bend over and simultaneously mime the pulling down of your pants. But keep your legs straight. This is how strippers remove pants, and it’s a great ass accentuator. Squat down. Mime reading a newspaper. Strain. After five minutes, stand up. Find a cheerleader. Mime wiping your ass with her pom-pom. Do the classic “look back” at the pom-pom to see that you have wiped sufficiently. Wipe again. Watch with great joy as Joe Buck’s head explodes.