Men with Balls: The Professional Athlete's Handbook, Page 4

  THE PARAMEDICS. Done with a teammate over the body of an injured opponent. Pantomime carrying your injured opponent out on a stretcher, only to run into various things along the way: other players, watercoolers, cameramen, a churro stand, etc. Hilarity ensues.

  THE FRENCH PRISONER. Imagine it’s 1787. You have been held in solitary at the Bastille for one hundred days and nights with no light, no windows, and no outside contact, with only tepid water and gruel pushed through a slot for you once a day. At last, a window is opened. A brilliant shaft of light hits your eyes. You cover your eyes at first. You’re so happy to see the light, yet now it burns your eyes! Oh, the irony! Soon, you adjust your eyes. Your face lights up! You mime crawling out the window to a gorgeous, sunny day and total freedom! The light! The air! Oh, the feeling that comes with being free at last! Now is the time to jump and dance and mime singing your heart out! And then, do a crotch chop.

  These routines are merely a guideline. All great mimes are improv artists at heart. You must find inspiration in what surrounds you. You could mock the child with Kawasaki disease in the handicapped section by pantomiming riding in his wheelchair. Or you could unsheathe an imaginary samurai sword and wave it all around like you’re in House of Flying Daggers, or one of those other movies that ruins fight scenes by turning them into ballet. Or you could do a live simulation of Donkey Kong, especially the part where Mario grabs the hammer and starts fucking shit up. It’s all good.

  But do take care. Someone will be judging you during your routine, and they aren’t the forgiving sort.

  Integrity, my ass. Your guide to the average official.

  The job of a game official is to maintain the integrity of play by enforcing all rules of the game consistently and correctly. It sounds so simple, yet you’d be amazed at how often they manage to fuck it up. Officials, after all, are human (with exception of NFL referee Mike Carey, who is 80 percent replicant). They’re prone to developing the same biases as you or I, perhaps even more so, given the thankless nature of their occupation. So why not turn that to your advantage? With just a little effort, you can be a longtime beneficiary of their numerous, horrible gaffes. But to curry their favor, you must first get to know them. Here are some characteristics of the average official.

  Height: 5'9", or one inch too short to lead a happy life

  Weight: 185 pounds. Officials are surprisingly spry little creatures. Except in baseball. Most Major League umpires need to exit the ballpark through a specially designed gate, the one normally used for bull pen carts, professional rodeo bulls, monster trucks, and / or Joe Satriani’s amplifiers.

  Salary: Six figures. Officials are well compensated. But, given that the job entails trying to enforce rules among a group of immature men who make ten to one hundred times what they earn, officials are in essence the paralegals of the sporting world.

  Favorite Food: Boneless, skinless chicken breast, the least confrontational of all meats

  Preferred Stance: Slightly crouching, with his hands resting on his knees. This is known in refereeing circles as the Regulator stance.

  Turn-ons: Silence, a flawlessly organized sock drawer, people who can whistle just by putting their fingers in their mouth, Serbian mob funds (NBA officials only), expense account reimbursements, Latin, Sam Waterston

  Turnoffs: Happiness, jewelry, professional wrestling, chewing gum, that fucking Forget Paris movie, shoes that are any color besides black, trying to argue in Spanish

  Marital Status: Married

  Children: Two, one of whom usually has a drug habit. An official takes solace in knowing that the outcome of games is perhaps the only thing in life that he can exert some control over.

  How to Get Him to Like You: Talking to him prior to game time or just generally acknowledging his existence, ridiculing Rasheed Wallace’s bizarre gray spot, asking him about his dreams outside of refereeing (usually it’s to write a best-selling legal thriller), and telling him when he’s done a good job. Remember: refereeing is just like French kissing. You can get it right 99 out of 100 times, but mess up just once and everyone calls you a face-licker. Such bullshit.

  What Will Make Him Turn on You: Looking at him wrong on a bad day, pouting (see next page), appearing to enjoy yourself, ganging up with teammates to argue a call, giggling, condescendingly patting him on the head, causing a delay of game (officials fucking hate this), doing that thing after a three-point shot where you keep your arm in the air until after the shot falls (officials really fucking hate this)

  HEAR IT FROM AN UMP!

  Yes, that was a strike. Now shut the fuck up.

  by Joe Cargill, Major League umpire

  STRIKE!

  What? You thought that was a ball? Wow, what a shock. Yeah, I see the look on your face. You’re clearly stunned by my ruling. Well, you know what? That was, indeed, a strike. Now shut the fuck up.

  Aw, you’re still mad. Oh, you poor thing! Perhaps you don’t agree with the way I enthusiastically called that strike. My heart goes out to you. You get to make millions of dollars and give curtain calls to thousands of fans who love you more than their immediate families. Whereas I get to walk into the ballpark and have everyone throw Choco Taco wrappers at me. Boy, do I have it great! Pardon the shit outta me for actually showing some enthusiasm while performing my duty. Excuse me for taking just the slightest modicum of joy here. Did I bruise your pride? Are you hurt? Did you get a little boo-boo on your vajayjay? Let me give it a kiss to make it better.

  Asshole.

  We don’t get to choose our passions, you know. Do you think I like the fact that I love umpiring so much? God, no. I wish my lifelong passion had been for bra engineering, or luxury catamaran bartending. Instead, I realized at a very early age that my one true love was to be a professional Major League whipping boy and to deal with whiny assholes like you. Every. Single. Plate. Appearance. Hooray! Lucky me! What fun it is to love something that makes me want to curl up into a very tight ball and cry my eyes out!

  So guess what? I wouldn’t change that call even if you gave me a lifetime supply of Big League Chew. Dick.

  Still annoyed? Oh, I see. You still think it was a ball, eh? Still hanging on to that idea for dear life, are you? Good thing the league gives all of us umpires a pocket-sized rule book to carry around with us! Let me just consult it to make sure I didn’t forget rules that I’ve had memorized for thirty goddamn years. Or that the league didn’t change the strike zone right before your at bat!

  Here it is. Rule 2.00: “The Strike Zone is defined as that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.”

  Well, what do you know? The rule on strikes is still the same, which means that pitch that grazed the inside corner of the plate while remaining below the numbers on your uniform was a strike. And there’s no replay. And my visual acuity is 20 / 10. Suck it.

  Perhaps next time, you might actually want to swing at the ball instead of standing there like a fucking golem. Perhaps you’re taking your anger out on me because you refuse to confront your own glaring pussyness. That’s too bad. Let me get a string quartet to provide a soundtrack to your gripping inner struggle.

  You remind me of Paul O’Neill.

  Fucking loser.

  You’re the best of the best, and yet you are awful: coping with losing.

  Entering professional sports, you probably don’t have a great deal of experience with losing. After all, you have professional athlete–level talent. That’s enough to raise any middle school or high school team to championship caliber. You probably spent your entire high school career running up a 30-2 record against various tiny Quaker academies and poorly funded teams from Indian reservations. And I’m sure your college’s athletic department went to great lengths to make sure that yo
ur team had a “great season”: scheduling any number of lower division opponents, playing 80 percent of your games at home, playing in some bowl game that was the football equivalent of the participant ribbon they hand out at a swim meet, etc.

  As a matter of fact, the entire idea of losing is slowly being phased out of amateur sports altogether. That’s why the Olympics includes fencing, a sport that consists of nothing but losers (Fact: Eighty percent of all fencers are former Dungeons & Dragons players who took up the sport specifically to imagine themselves as dragon slayers). The idea is that sports should be a place where kids revel in the joy of participation and learn to appreciate the bonds created through shared team goals. This is a lame, stupid idea. When mankind is eventually destroyed by Google’s mechanical spiders in late 2039, this will be one of the reasons why we submitted so quickly.

  The result of turning youth sports into a suffocatingly nurturing environment is that professional sports have become the last bastion of pure losing in America. It’s a delicious irony, especially if you’re some asshole who listens to NPR. You’re a world-class athlete who has reached the very upper echelon of your chosen field. Yet, now that you have arrived there, you find yourself playing for the Orioles. God can be so cruel sometimes.

  It is often said that losing begets losing. Once you lose multiple games, the dreaded “losing mentality” can seep in, marked by varying symptoms such as indifference, lethargy, testiness, and, of course, impotence. Breaking out of this cycle won’t be easy, but I’m going to show you how. After all, I was a loser for thirty years. I’ve never won a fistfight. I didn’t kiss a girl until I was nineteen. And I was caught masturbating while watching The Price Is Right by my roommate’s girlfriend freshman year. But look at me now! I’m a published author! Just like Hitler!

  1. Know That It’s Not Your Fault. Remember: you win as a team, you lose as a team. Which means that all of your teammates are at fault. This isn’t finger-pointing, so much as finger-sweeping. There’s plenty of blame to go around, so why not blame everyone else equally? Whatever you do, don’t blame yourself. That can lead to introspection, and introspection is the sworn enemy of the professional athlete. Sure, you could have done better. But what about Tommy? And Ricky? They’re the ones who really fucked up.

  2. Switch Things Up. Pro athletes are notoriously obsessive compulsive superstitious folk. If you find yourself mired in a five-game losing streak, it should be clear to you by now that the soul patch has to go. You must do something else that will act as an effective placebo to distract your overly delicate psyche. Here are some notable historic slump busters that famous athletes adopted to help their teams get back on track.

  • 1936: Joe Louis begins each fight by kissing a small marmoset, wins heavyweight title

  • 1951: Ben Hogan switches to masturbating with overhand “claw” grip, wins two majors

  • 1956: Mickey Mantle changes pregame shooters from single malt to blend, wins Triple Crown

  • 1975: Pittsburgh Steelers hire new “team pharmacist” Jorge Tarasco

  • 1986: Keith Hernandez puts away “No Fat Chicks” T-shirt, wears “Yes, Fat Chicks” T-shirt for a week

  • 1988: Pedro Cerrano tells Jobu to go fuck himself, Cleveland wins pennant

  • 1990: All NHL teams decide to begin growing playoff beards every year. Every Stanley Cup playoff game since has resulted in a tie.

  • 1999: After being swept by the Spurs, Shaquille O’Neal decides to try caring. Three Laker titles follow shortly thereafter.

  • 2008: Eli Manning moves from diapers to training pants, Giants win Super Bowl XLII.

  3. Find a Rallying Point. You need something that will bring your team closer together, usually through some sort of media-generated controversy. For instance, you could murder a longshoreman. Nothing creates an “us against the world” mentality quite like that.

  4. Wait. Don’t worry. You’ll play some other team that’s having an off night eventually. And when that happens, you’ll end up winning by default. And nothing increases a team’s confidence quite like that. Who knows, you may win enough games this way to make the playoffs.

  Deeply Penetrating the Numbers

  1 in 2

  You have a 1 in 2 chance of losing any given game. And you know what? There ain’t SHIT you can do about it.

  Everything you wanted to know about the playoffs but were too much of a pussy to ask.

  While losing is more common in professional athletics, most leagues make up for it by allowing a grotesquely unnecessary number of teams to qualify for playoff participation. Consider it your reward for having to endure all that losing during the course of the regular season. Once your team has ensured a final win-loss percentage of .461 or higher, you can safely break out the Riunite on ice and celebrate! You’re in, man! Congratulations!

  If this is your initial playoff run, you’re bound to have some questions. Perhaps these are questions of a frequent and asked nature. Fear not. The following FAQ will divulge all.

  Q:What’s a “magic number”?

  A:That’s the number of games you needed to win (or have the team below you lose) during the last week or so of the season to make the playoffs. This was a bigger deal thirty years ago, when making the playoffs actually meant something.

  Q:Hey, why does everything seem so much more intense in the playoffs?

  A:Because everyone is now trying.

  Q:Why is my game check so low?

  A:Because now that the regular season is over, your entire salary has been covered. All leagues offer bonus playoff pay, but it’s a mere pittance compared to your regular season game check. Imagine working overtime at Wal-Mart and having your overtime pay be half your regular pay, instead of double it. And you’re forced to work even harder. It’s like that. (Note: This is Wal-Mart’s actual overtime policy.)

  Q:It’s 12:31 a.m. eastern standard time on a Tuesday and we’re playing in New York. Why is it only the third inning?

  A:Ah, yes. You’ll notice in the playoffs that your games start at a much later hour. Leagues do this to maximize prime-time advertising revenue. Never mind that, by around 1:00 a.m. or so, fans stop giving a shit about who wins and would just like the game to be over so they can go to bed. Playing games into the wee hours is what’s in the best interest of sponsors like Lextro Body Spray. There’s no better way to grow your game than that.

  Q:Why is my coach sucking on his Primatene Mist inhaler so often?

  A:Because if he loses, he’ll be fired. Or he’ll be kept on as a lame duck the following season and wish he had been fired, or at least run over by a mail truck.

  Q:Are those Japanese broadcasters?

  A:Indeed. Many international networks cover American sports during the playoffs. Play well enough here and you could become a mythical demigod in Japan, where they will then produce a twisted anime flick that depicts you as a seven-penised demon intent on destroying the world. Trust me: you’re the good guy. I don’t know why.

  Q:We won our first game, but we have to play six more. Why?

  A:Two of the major sports leagues, along with the NHL, have a “best of seven” series format. You must win four games against a single opponent in order to advance to the next round, and then the round after that, and then the round after that.

  Q:How long does this take?

  A:Fucking forever. But there is good reason for this. A five-game series, according to most league officials, is too short. There’s far too much of a chance that a lesser team will win a “fluky” series and advance. Playing best of seven makes the outcome far more predictable. Which is fun!

  Q:Why is playing the Atlanta Braves so much easier now than it was in the regular season?

  A:No one knows.

  Q:What kind of champagne do they serve if we win it all?

  A:Cook’s. Or Andre. Plus, there will be Appletiser for the dipshits who don’t drink. Either way, that champagne is strictly for spraying and not drinking.


  Q:Can I dump Gatorade on my coach if we’re about to win? I can’t stand that asshole.

  A:Absolutely. Make sure the cooler you use has real Gatorade in it, not water. Gatorade is sticky and needs at least two cycles in the wash to clean. And make sure the cooler has lots of ice in it. Ice hurts. You may even be able to brain your coach with the edge of the cooler and pass it off as an accident. Remember: you’ve earned the right to torture that dick. Don’t half-ass it.

  Q:What happens if we win the championship?

  A:When you win a championship, a meticulously planned sequence of events is set into motion. First, you are given a hat. And a T-shirt. You must put both on right away. I suggest putting the T-shirt on first. Trying to put on a shirt with a hat on is complicated and unnecessary. You may not break in the hat in any way, shape, or form. It must have a straight, idiotic brim, the kind a sixty-year-old Mites coach would maintain.

  After you receive your new clothing, a teammate will immediately ruin it with champagne. After that, the league will roll out a dais for you to stand on. It may be tiered, with the highest tier reserved for superstars, and the lowest tier reserved for people like the equipment manager, the team exorcist, and Darko Milicic. Multicolored confetti will drop.

  At this point, you’ll probably want to go hug your teammates, friends, and family. You cannot do this for another three hours. First, you must do 346 interviews for various national broadcast networks and local affiliates. Be sure to tell them you shocked the world, even if the world really wasn’t paying much attention. After that, the commissioner will give a three-minute speech no one listens to. Then, he will hand the league’s championship trophy to the trophy’s sponsor, usually a VP at Lextro Body Spray, who will then hand the trophy to your team’s owner, whom you will probably be laying eyes on for the first time. The owner will then hand the trophy to the coach, who then hands it to the MVP, who then hands it to his chauffeur, who then hands it to his friend, who then hands it to a tiny Guatemalan woman named Inez. After about 157 minutes, the trophy will eventually be handed to you. It will be very shiny. Savor the moment, my friend. There’s nothing in the world like it.