Men with Balls: The Professional Athlete's Handbook, Page 5

  Q:What if we lose?

  A:Shut up. Don’t say a fucking word. Don’t even look at anyone when the game is finished. Keep your goddamn head down and walk straight to the locker room. There, your coach will tell you he loves you (a lie) and is proud of you (also a lie), and that you’re a great group of guys (a lie if Terrell Owens is on your team). He’ll also swear you will all be back to avenge this loss next year (he’ll have a five-year deal with Seattle by the next week). Then, he will exit the locker room for a solemn, three-minute interview with Jim Gray. Then, you pack your shit and leave. Don’t shower. Don’t change clothes. Just get the hell out of there. You’ve already been relegated to history’s discount rack. Find a drink as fast as you can. And learn how to perform under pressure.

  That Billy Joel song was so prescient: pressure.

  Superstar athletes are widely admired for their ability to thrive under intense circumstances. And make no mistake, the pressure at this level is high. Many people may scoff at that notion and say, “Pfft. It’s just a game. Try paying the mortgage! That’s pressure!” These people are morons. No one watches you try to pay the mortgage. If you default on that shit, you get to keep that shame all to yourself. No, athletes must perform at their peak with millions of people watching and judging. You think Mr. Barely Supporting His Family could handle that without reaching for the Paxil?

  In fact, I’d argue that athletes face more pressurized situations than any other group of people on the planet. Even more than soldiers fighting a war? Oh, yeah. If you get killed during a war, you’re a hero. If you survive, you’re a hero. Where, I ask you, is the pressure in that? Sounds like a win-win to me. Throw in the standard U.S. military pension of $500 a year (with vision coverage!) and that’s a pretty sweet deal, my friend.

  Try having to make the winning putt at Royal Troon. Now that’s a real bitch. You got everyone staring at you — fans, family, friends, TV viewers, reporters, sponsors, wildlife, ghosts, indifferent cameramen — and just waiting for you to shit the bed. Make it, and you’ll be bathing in White Grenache for the next week. Miss it, and you’ll find yourself teetering on the precipice of a deep psychological black hole, one very few athletes manage to climb back out of. It’s the same as getting your first DUI. You’re never the same. Ask David Duval, or Bill Buckner, or Scott Norwood, or Nick Anderson, or Ray Finkle: failing under pressure can destroy a man, or even turn him into a woman. You need to be able to calm yourself and phase out all distractions, both physical and mental. Visualize with me . . .

  It’s the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series. You’re down one with the bases loaded and a 3-2 count. This is it: the defining moment of your existence. You need to focus here. Stay in the present. Remember, you get paid either way, so don’t freak. There’s no need to think about what will happen if you fail. You don’t need to visualize the New York Post Photoshopping a donkey’s head onto your body for their late edition. That’s unnecessary. There’s also absolutely no reason you should be thinking about your wife leaving you. She’s always been your rock. Hasn’t she? There was that one “incident.” But that was years ago. Let it be. You also shouldn’t be visualizing having to face your father after all those years of never being good enough to win his approval. The coldhearted bastard. What the fuck more could he possibly want? You shouldn’t be thinking about that at all. It’s not healthy. Stop.

  Nor should you be thinking about that one chick in the third row along the first base line with the tight V-neck sweater. God, she’s got a luscious rack. No! Focus! Stop looking! Man, they’re big. Like two well-formed ski moguls. Oh, how you’d just like to bury your nose in those yabahoes for just a second. Take in their scent. I bet they smell like cucumbers. I wonder if she’s local. If you blew the game, maybe she’d still offer you pity sex. After all, you do have an apartment with a killer view. That alone impresses most ladies. Or, if you hit a home run, you could give her a quick, playful glance as you start your trot. Oh my God, that would totally make her cream her panties. The sex could be mind-blowing.

  Stop! You must again focus. This is everything you’ve ever wanted. C’mon, man! You’re an athlete! Emptying out that melon of yours shouldn’t be so hard! You know what it is? When your mind is normally empty, it’s not because you tried to do it. It was just naturally vacant. But now that you have to consciously bear down and concentrate, it completely refuses. Stupid brain. If only it functioned involuntarily, like the heart or lungs.

  What you should do is just start thinking about completely random shit. Like, for instance, Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. They’re just like Ho Hos, only they’re ninety-nine cents a box! Seriously, you can’t beat that. Oooh, Star Crunches! Remember those? God, they were fucking good. They were made of Rice Krispies, chocolate, and, like, crack. See, this is better. You’ve completely distracted your distractions. Now all you have to do is hit a 90-mile-per-hour fastball somewhere within a confined area where nine other people can’t get to it.

  Okay, the pitcher’s winding up . . .

  And here comes the pitch . . .

  Curveball . . .

  Oh, God . . .

  Divorce, Mom, pain, Dad, tits, money, God, death, Dolly Madison Zingers . . .

  CRACK!

  FOUL BALL!

  Phew! You’re not out.

  But now the whole mental process starts anew.

  Shit.

  Clippable Motivational Slogan!

  In clutch situations, it’s important to just relax and play your game. What’s “your game” mean? Fuck if I know. Leave me alone, you little rapscallion!

  — CASEY STENGEL

  Stats are for losers. Unless your stats are awesome.

  Statistics are the lifeblood of sports. They provide everyone — fans, columnists, opponents, management — with a continuous way of determining your viability as a professional athlete. It’s like walking around with a performance evaluation stapled to your forehead. Isn’t that fun? Statistics can even become part of your identity. For example, former Bears running back Curtis Enis is known to many around the Chicago area as Curtis Enis, the Fat Fuck Who Averaged 0.8 Yards per Carry.

  General managers and owners are relying ever more on statistics to evaluate player performance. In fact, some rely on them exclusively. They don’t even bother to watch the games, because games lie. Billy Beane once signed a catcher to a $1 million guaranteed contract because that catcher had a PARP rating of 1.786, even though Beane did not know what a PARP rating was, or that the catcher in question was a female softball player.

  Stats like PARP (Performance After Resting Placidly) are part of a new generation of statistical study known as Sabermetrics. With a name like that, you might think some sort of tiger is involved, but it’s not. Sabermetrics were devised by a baseball fan named Bill James. James, in a frantic effort to remain a virgin, pored over historical records from Major League Baseball and devised an entirely new means of measuring athletic performance. For his efforts, James was bumped up from fan to the level of scholar, then finally to the level of historian. Many teams even asked him for his input on personnel matters. As a result, fans across other sports have rushed to devise new statistics of their own, which is why we now have stats like VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), DVOA ratings (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average), and VO3RPLGSALHFSG (Value Over 3rd Replacement Player in Late-Game Situations Against Left-Handers Factoring in Scrotal Girth).

  But there are some old-timers who do not believe statistics are at all indicative of player performance. TV analyst Joe Morgan once cast an all-star vote for Cristian Guzman because “he looked like a ballplayer,” even though Guzman was batting .001 (rounded up from .0006). People like Morgan believe that athletes have certain “intangibles” that cannot be measured by statistics. It’s only after you see the player play three times, Morgan argues, that you can then accurately measure his intangibles, even though intangibles by definition cannot be measured. Morgan has also gotten into many heated argum
ents regarding the legitimacy of the periodic table of elements. Not so clever, that Mr. Morgan.

  So where does that leave you? What stats should you care about? And do they hopefully coincide with the success of my fantasy team (Britney’s Rehab Sponsors) next year? Fear not. I have sorted out the critical stats you need for your respective sport. Turn the page for a detailed chart.

  This chart is strictly a guideline. Chances are, you will have incentive clauses in your contract that stipulate which statistical milestones will trigger a salary bonus. Keep note of them. After all, if management wants to give you an extra $500,000 for averaging twenty points a game, then it’s clear they don’t want you to pass the ball. Right?

  Compound fractures aren’t as cool when they happen to you: injuries and a guide to your body.

  Injuries are any athlete’s worst nightmare (a curved dagger to the rectum excepted). And it’s not the physical pain that’s the hard part. It’s the mental aspect of it. Once you get injured, your cocksure strut and bulletproof demeanor are temporarily, if not sometimes permanently, destroyed. Getting injured means facing the mortality of your career. But, more than that, an injury is a landmark event in life that signals the end of youth. You start out this life with a perfectly functioning body. As time goes on, injuries chip away at your bones, your ligaments, your muscles, and the rest. Once that happens, you can’t ever go back to the flawless, pristine body you once had, no matter how hard you rehab, no matter how well the surgery went. You may fully recover. But you get scars. You build up scar tissue inside. You lose cartilage. You change. Irrevocably. There’s a finality to getting injured. It means your body has begun a slow decaying process that cannot be undone. Ever.

  BASEBALL STATS

  IMPORTANTKIND OF IMPORTANTWORTHLESS

  Home Runs RBIs At Bats (stupid)

  Batting Average Runs (lame)

  Stolen Bases Hits (borrrrrring)

  Slugging Percentage (if only because having a high one makes you appear to be very strong and/or sluggy) Errors (forgotten a game later!)Doubles

  Strikeouts (only if you’re a pitcher. If you’re a batter, by all means swing freely) Triples (little-known fact: no one over 5'7" has hit a triple since 1937)

  ERA (this is the average amount of runs every 9 innings that are totally your fault) VORP (they don’t even tell you how they calculate this. What are you hiding, Baseball Prospectus?)

  Wins (you don’t even have to pitch well to accumulate these!) ELO Adjusted (no clue)

  Saves (or these!) PECOTA Rating (no idea. Ask the 47-year-old dipshit keeping score in the loge-level deck.)

  Innings Pitched (or these! In fact, Innings Pitched is a shockingly important statistic. If you can pitch a large number of innings, regardless of quality, you’ll be saving the ball club from having to use all the good pitchers, which would wear them out. Good pitchers are not meant to be enjoyed. They must be preserved, like a wheel of exceptional Gouda.)

  FOOTBALL STATS

  IMPORTANTWORTHLESS

  TDs (yeah, bitch!) Yards Per Attempt

  Yards (especially in yardage-heavy fantasy leagues ... like mine!) Yards Per Rush

  Sacks Yards Per Anything, Really

  Interceptions Receptions

  40 Time Tackles

  Vertical Leap Game Time Blood-Alcohol Level

  Number Of Times You Can Bench 225 Lbs. In One Minute

  Number Of Pints Of Fresh Orange Juice You Can Squeeze By Hand

  BASKETBALL STATS

  IMPORTANTWORTHLESS

  Points Everything Else

  SOCCER STATS

  IMPORTANT

  Goals (likely zero)

  Assists (likely zero)

  Yellow And/Or Red Cards (this is the one soccer stat in which you can make some headway. Players who get carded frequently, like Wayne Rooney, often become national heroes for helping to make soccer games more eventful.)

  Jesus, that was depressing. I need to go lie down.

  When you go down with an injury, lots of questions will run through your mind. What just happened? How bad is it? Am I dead? I am not dead. Did I hear a snap? I definitely heard something snap. How long will I be out? Will I need surgery? Is morphine as awesome as I’ve been told? Does this mean my career is over? Will the team cut me? How long will rehab take? Will I ever get my initial burst back? Can we still afford the grand piano in the foyer? Can I still fuck? Am I a pussy if I stay on the ground much longer?

  Relax. These questions are all perfectly normal. The important thing is to not panic. There’s a system in place when something like this happens. First off, the entire crowd will fall silent to watch you writhe in agony. Then, a team of doctors and trainers will come to your aid and ask you what hurts, and if it hurts when they give you an Indian burn in the affected area. Your head coach will come out, look at you, ask the doctor, “How’s he doin’?,” pat you on the shoulder, and then leave. Some of your teammates will form a small prayer circle. Then, you’ll be helped off the field, everyone will clap, and you’ll be forgotten for about a year or so.

  See? No big deal.

  A severe injury will likely require diagnostic testing, surgery, and multiple doctor visits. The good news: as a pro athlete, you get preferential treatment from the health care system. Your co-pay is only $10 ($50 if you play for the Arizona Cardinals). And you don’t have to wait to see the doctor. Know how, when you go to a doctor’s office, they make you wait for half an hour, then bring you into an exam room to talk to some assistant who you think is the doctor at first but isn’t, and then they make you wait another fucking half an hour after that? Then you gotta go all the way across town just to get a goddamn X-ray? Doesn’t happen when you’re an athlete. You get treated like an actual human being by doctors, and that’s quite refreshing.

  After surgery, you’ll have to endure months and months of painful rehab, which usually involves you doing a complex series of stretches and exercises using either a big red latex band or a giant rubber ball. Either way, your hands will smell like tires for hours and hours afterward. Rehab will be presided over by a perky young female assistant trainer who looks fucking tremendous in a pair of Sevens. At first, you will find her insanely cute. But, as the weeks go on, you will begin to loathe her sunny mercilessness. You’ll also resent having to spend countless hours in the training room hooked up to heat pads and stim machines. Ever read the same issue of Outdoor magazine seventeen times over? You’ll learn.

  Here are some common sports injuries you should be aware of.

  TORN ANTERIOR CRUCIATE LIGAMENT (ACL) . The torn ACL is the granddaddy of all knee injuries. It signals an immediate end to your season. The good news is that advances in modern medicine have made ACL reconstruction a relative snap. You’ll almost certainly be ready to go for the beginning of the following season. After that, everyone will assume you’re exactly the same player you once were. Of course, you won’t be that player for another two years, if ever. But people will keep believing that a return to full speed is right around the corner, and teams will pay you as such. It’s kind of reassuring to know everyone is so dumb.

  PULLED HAMSTRING. Preferred injury of pussies, the pulled hamstring is perhaps the most useful injury in all of sports. A simple “tweaking” is enough to get out of practice and head straight for the whirlpool. Be sure to pull up during wind sprints and clutch it in dramatic fashion! But beware. Come back from a pulled hamstring too early, and you may reinjure it for the rest of the year. Come back too late, and everyone will know you’re nursing it like a little bitch. A good guideline is two to three weeks. That gives you enough time to heal both your leg and your vagina.

  SPRAINED ANKLE. A sprained ankle isn’t a very serious injury. But my God, have you ever rolled an ankle? Holy fuck, it hurts. Like someone sawed off your foot and then put an acetylene torch to it. Brutal.

  TURF TOE. Turf toe occurs when the connective tissue between your foot and toe is severely hyperextended and / or torn. It can be a very serious injury. Un
fortunately, because it goes by the name “turf toe,” people will think you’re a real Nancy for missing any time, because they assume all you did was stub the goddamn thing. Annoying.

  GROIN PULL. Ever been the subject of a hackneyed joke and / or lame pun? Get ready. Apparently, injuring your inner thigh is exactly the same as having something bad happen to your cock and / or balls.

  SEPARATED / DISLOCATED SHOULDER. This is when your arm pops out of the ball-and-socket joint that keeps the arm attached to the body. Now, this may sound excruciating, and it is. But if you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to wriggle out of straitjackets for money just like Riggs did in Lethal Weapon 2. So badass.

  HERNIA. A hernia occurs when the lining that holds in your internal organs tears, causing your intestines to droop down into your scrotum. This can happen while lifting weights, straining while out of position, or listening to Tyra Banks speak.

  CONCUSSION. A concussion is a bruising of the brain, often from taking a vicious hit. Bruising can vary, and diagnosing the degree of a concussion is very difficult. But the good thing is, you won’t remember any of that. In fact, you’ll probably be able to play the next week. Sure, ten years from now, the merest trace of sunlight will feel like a sharp knife to the temple, and you’ll have mood swings that rival those of a pregnant woman during labor. But it’s totally worth it to play in a handful of games you’ll have no future recollection of.

  BROKEN NECK. You’re fucked. Hope you own a DVD of Murderball to cheer yourself up.

  SHIN SPLINTS. What are you, a girl? Walk it off. Pussy.

  Chapter 3

  Hot Naked Men

  Teammates / The Locker Room

  “You’re putting that where?” Rookie hazing rituals.