Sabrina Parke: CoBi and Friends

CoBi and Friends



Like most people, I assume that you’ve always wondered what would happen if Kang, Kodos, and the T-2000 made babies together. Oh, you haven’t? Well, the question must have been plaguing the British collective conscious for some time, because it’s the only explanation for London’s 2012 Olympic mascots.

Wenlock and Mandeville are two liquid-metal, cyclopses – I believe this is the plural of cyclops; information on this subject is sparse since they are usually loners. The hermaphrodite monsters, each with his/her own mysterious markings, will adorn everything from baseball caps to QVC decorative plates, as the ring in the 2012 games.

According to the official Wenlock and Mandeville website, the three points on top of Mandeville’s head represent the winners’ podium. The lights above their (respective) eyes represent London taxis. Mandeville’s wristwatch embodies personal excellence. The list goes on, but I, along with most people, do not care. If you need to explain what should be a generic symbol, the creator has missed the point. While Wenlock and Mandeville are clearly the most horrifying mascots in Olympic history, we should have seen this coming.

The tradition of Olympic mascots dates back to the 1968 Grenoble games. (Yes, unfortunately there’s no cute cartoon to symbolize the 1936 Oympiad. However, I assume it would have been a sterner version of 1984’s eagle). France’s ‘Schuss,’ who was basically the red 7-UP ball on skis, was just the beginning of what would become a (sometimes) proud Olympic tradition.

For the 20 years that followed Schuss’ reign, Olympic mascots continued to be slightly altered versions of cereal spokesmen. Tony the Tiger became South Korea’s Hodori. Sugar Bear became the adorable symbol of Soviet rule in 1980. The characters’ designs neatly lent themselves to stuffed animals and commemorative cups. Olympic mascots were in a golden age, but it wouldn’t last.

From January until May, 1992 had all the markings of a banner year. Rick Moranis was blowing up children, to the delight of audiences across the country. Paul Heinreid had done us all a favor by finally dying. Life was good. Then came Spain. Until this point, nearly all Olympic mascots had been chosen through nationwide art contests, where young citizens competed to color within the lines. The youth vote was most apparent the year of Canada’s beaver mascot. But, despite these past successes with child labor, Spain bucked tradition and limited the competition to a handful of the country’s best known artists. Eventually, they settled on Javier Mariscal. Spanish authorities did have a point. Why rely on children’s drawings when you can turn to a cubist most known for crafting urinals that look like lips?

Mariscal gave the world CoBi the Catalan sheepdog. First of all, if you’ve ever seen The Shaggy Dog, Annie, or watched a mopey Sarah McLachlan commercial, you know that CoBi does not look like a sheepdog – if anything, he looks like a flattened Chihuahua drawn by Klasky Csupo. Half the time, CoBi was naked, leaving his Olympic chest tattoo for all the world to admire. The rest of the time, the one-dimensional quadruped wore a business suit with white sneakers. White sneakers. The fact that the ‘B’ in CoBi was capitalized for no other reason than to be quirky is more than enough reason to not only hate Spain’s Olympic committee, but to despise the entire country. While I’ll admit that my reaction to CoBi is a tad on the strong side, he and he alone paved the way for the Island of Misfit Mascots that would follow.

From 1992 onward, Olympic mascots were increasingly designed by ‘experts’ and grew increasingly bizarre. There was the Whatizit/Izzy/Sperm Wearing High Tops debacle of 1996, Owls drawn by mental patients in 1998, and the Greek monsters of 2004. Although Sydney’s kookaburra, platypus, and echidna were a brief return to sanity, it didn’t last. Which brings us to today. Which brings us to Wenlock and Mandeville. Given the elaborate backstories that were given to these amorphous metal alloys, it’s clear that these hideously deformed monsters took far longer to design than any cute, likeable mascot would have. All we wanted was a fox in a riding jacket. Was that too much to ask for, London?

Tina Rowley: The Bittersweet Symphony of Sports

Sports, you say? You’d like me to talk about sports. “Excuse me, ma’am. You appear to have two hands. If you could just run over here for one second and perform the other half of this appendectomy, that’d be tops. What? I SAID, You APPEAR to have TWO HANDS. Oh, well. Be off with you, sissy!”

Sissy is right. Well, no, sissy is wrong. I mean, screw you! I’ve been through two childbirths, and was a rubber-stamped hero during both of those deals. And you can march up to me with your worst, most horrifying emotional problem, and I can look at it smack in the gruesome face with you. You can’t scare me. Whatever it is, it’s peanuts, and we can crack it together.

Just don’t ask me to come out and play softball with you on a Saturday afternoon because I swear to God I will BREAK.

It began early. It was piped into our house like Muzak*, pumped into the air like laughing gas*. Weee’re noooot spoooorts peeeeeople. And we weren’t sports people. We were brain people. (Oh, well, my mom’s brothers in Finland - my twin uncles Jorma and Esko - they were local soccer stars/ladies’ men. But blood doesn’t travel all the way over the sea, am I right? No, it stays in soccer player’s bodies, right where it always was.) My dad and brother both went to Harvard. My grandfather was a brainy, bespectacled fellow who’d been known to have tea with Heisenberg of an afternoon. Education was his baby. No, it’s a miracle I was born with a body at all.

*What positively dental images. Apropos. What do I fear as much as I fear participating in sports? That’s right. That guy. I require valium and nitrous oxide to merely open my mouth in your office to say hello, Dr. Svore. Thank you for hooking me up. See you soon. Don’t be alarmed if I appear to have aged.

At our house, we read books, and we watched the two hours of TV we were allowed to watch in a day, and I made my dolls act out Jane Austen storylines. (Occasionally, it was Jane Austen After Hours, but that’s another topic altogether.) When I was seven years old, my older brother was diagnosed with Perthes disease in his left hip. He was on crutches for ten months. Big black and silver numbers. He got very fast with them, and could give terrifying chase around the house if I crossed him. David’s Perthes diagnosis marked the onset of the Atmosphere of Infirmity that pervaded our household approximately forever after that. We were all sick all the time. Bronchitis, nervous breakdowns. Migraines. The vapors. It was almost a daily competition to see who was the most ailing. Competition! Hey! Sports!

Thanks to a congenital heart murmur, I was eventually able to get P.E. waived. Sweet relief. No more making up fake excuses to sit out T-ball. No more, “My doctor said I’m supposed to sit down and rub my leg every day at 10 am.” No more crab soccer. Little sorry to say goodbye to that big nylon parachute thing that they’d bring out some days, where everybody grabbed an end and we whooshed it into the air and ran underneath it and brought it back over our heads. I’d do that right this minute, if there were enough of us and somebody had a parachute.

I want to say that I don’t hate sports. Once every five or so years, I love them for a minute. The Mariners in 2001? Right after they got Ichiro? Oh, dreamy! Ichiro. Ichiro is a sportsman I can get into because he doesn’t seem like a person, quite. He seems magical and fake and elegant, like Bugs Bunny*. He’s not going to beat my brother up behind the junior high. And the Seahawks in 2006? They were in the Superbowl! They lost, but they were given no choice. The song that was played for them when they ran onto the field? The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony. Really? Really? That whole thing was rigged. Something special is bound to happen in 2011, though. I’m due.

*Yes, I think Bugs Bunny is elegant, in his way. Not vocally, maybe. And his feet aren’t. Other than that, though.

Watching sports is fine. Playing sports is horrific. When I was in junior high, and trying to finesse my way into some measure of popularity, I fell in with a group of little ladies that were known, forgive us, as The Preps. A softball team was formed, named eponymously. We played in Levi’s and Top-Siders, and sewed little alligators onto our jerseys. Our coach’s dad worked for Domino’s, so we got free pizza every time we won, ergo we were undefeated, no thanks to me. All the other girls were sporting wizardesses, so all I had to do was show up with a nice personality and try not to get in the way. The feeling of being out on the field, or at bat*…oh. Horrid heart-pounding responsibility. And the shame. Everyone was so nice, “Hey, Tina! You made contact that time!” Thanks, thanks. Feels GREAT. My body vibrated with terror during every play. I didn’t want to let everyone down and I knew I was going to, every time. Nobody cared, we won every game and went and collected our pizza, but I ate mine shamefacedly, because I knew I hadn’t kicked in.

*A group of friends and I used to have a game where we’d pick the wrongest at-bat songs ever, if we were professional baseball players. Best choice ever: Simon & Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair”.

There was an exception. I had a brief and joyful affair with tennis when I was a freshman in high school. I somehow forgot to care that I was a terrible tennis player. The “fwoomp” sound of the ball hitting the racket hypnotized me into a state of oblivious bliss, and there wasn’t really a team to let down. I could only harm myself. But that’s a story for another time, a time that has already passed, a story that I have already told somewhere else.

I’m trying to imagine what I would do if I were suddenly forced into an afternoon’s softball game. I’m older, now, and wiser, and maybe kinder to myself than I once was. I could probably wangle a couple hours’ worth of character-building out of it. The inner monologue would probably be worth transcribing. But it’s safe to say that it wouldn’t resemble anything close to fun. Tell whoever’s putting that shit together that I have a dentist’s appointment.

Barbi Beckett: Brought To You By...

My journey with sports is one of consistent mediocrity starting with Bobby Sox Softball in fourth grade. My personal pattern of excelling as a beginner, hitting an early plateau and then quitting had yet to develop so, there was just a forgettable four eyes, too small and permed to look athletic to anyone but herself.

Without memorable skills, the details that do remain vivid are all in the uniform. The bevies in the Bobby Sox league were differentiated by colors (this is common in sports to distinguish teams) - yellow, red, blue, purple, green, orange and, the coveted, black. Each year you'd be assigned to a different color.

Working from the top, we had the standard baseball lid - white plastic net in the back half, with a semi circle cut-out for ponytails and an adjustable plastic strap. The front half was team-colored polyester with your first name stitched in white cursive.  The hat was the only thing we got to keep.

Moving down, all players were loaned white short-sleeved polyester button-up shirts.  The distinction on the shirts was an 8X10 sign that would later be velcroed on the back.  This was the logo of your team's corporate sponsor printed in your team color.  You didn't find out who it was until the day of the first game.

The shirt was tucked into the monochrome polyester shorts.  We bought our own team-colored, fat striped, knee-high tube socks.  And, lastly, nothing makes an untalented ten year old feel bad ass like a pair of cleats.  God, I loved my cleats.  Unfortunately, they were a couple sizes too big because my dad wanted them to fit for a good long time - so, clown cleats, but still . . .
 
Preparation for the first game consisted of learning to catch grounders without turning our heads and fly balls without closing our eyes.  I remember little else about practices, probably because of the day I decided to work on my swing with two bats as I'd seen sporty looking girls do.  I nailed myself in the back of the head with a mighty force and learned that it's very hard to play-off humiliation when you're concussed and disoriented.  
 
On our way from the parking lot on the day of the first game, my friend and I saw our opponents, The Red Team, warming up.  They were already wearing their sponsor signs and they looked cool.  Coca Cola.  We pepped our step to learn what logo would so neatly bring our yellow uniforms together.  We arrived at our dugout  to find a few teammates and coaches standing around quietly and avoiding eye contact.  And then we saw the signs we'd be wearing for the season.  Roto Rooter. 
 
Jingle: Roto Rooter, that's the name/Flush your troubles down the drain
 
Hardly.  Nothing can destroy a team's morale faster than having to play for clogged toilets.  Oh, the fun the other colors would have with their taunting cheers.  I suggested we beat them to the punch by embracing it and singing, "Roto Rooter, that's the name, Flush your tee-eam down the drain".  Everyone was too dejected to see the brilliance in that idea.
 
I don't remember how our team did that season but I do recall that a lot of Roto Rooter signs "accidentally" went through the wash.  And I never grew into my cleats.  Ever.

Jonathan L. Burbridge: Fandumb

I grew up in a little town in the middle of the desert just outside of Palm Springs, CA called Desert Hot Springs. Its two claims to fame were that Al Capone had a hideout there, and for several years in the late 80's and early 90's it was the Meth Capital of the World. We had more crystal meth and less teeth per capita than any place on the entire planet!

(The second part of that sentence may not be true, but any visit to the local supermarket sure made it seem that we only had enough teeth to make a complete set for about a third of the town’s population)

I was what you would call an “Indoor Kid,” and when you live in a place that gets in the 120’s in the summertime, quite frankly I can’t see why all Desert People aren’t Indoor Kids.

The only local sports for kids was a non-AYSO soccer league that I played on for one season during my third grade year. I can’t remember the position I played, but that’s because I am pretty sure it isn’t a real soccer position. The lazy Indoor Kid that I was, running wasn’t my strong suit, but I wasn’t nearly agile enough to play goalie, so my coach had me hang out maybe a dozen yards away from the real goalie as some sort of pre-goalie. I don’t think my foot ever touched the ball in any meaningful way the entire season. Thanks in no part to my awesome pre-goalie footwork, but mostly to a giantess of a girl ringer who towered over and intimidated everyone else on the field, we went undefeated that year. Even then, I knew the benefit of going out on top, so that was the last year I played any kind of organized sports, unless you count the ones I was forced to participate in during P.E. classes.

Being from a crappy town, and without the benefit of any decent local sports, I never developed either any interest in sports or any sort of pride in my home town. Which is why I will never understand the phenomenon that is the Sports Fan. What mystifies me about sports fandom is very akin to what tends to mystify me about patriotism, and that is the fact that both things pretty much come down to the circumstances of your birth, and very little else. But both things also inspire so much passion and fervor that it seems downright blasphemy to question either. Now, those of you who know me know that I LOVE blasphemy, so let me first start off by questioning patriotism and the knee-jerk tendency of most people to blindly proclaim patriotism without giving it so much as a thought, let alone a second one.

Sean Hannity is a big fan of saying that America is, “The single greatest, best, freest country God ever gave man.”

And I am sure millions, maybe even hundreds of millions, of Americans would agree.
But why? How do they know? And who’s to say that if they hadn’t been born in Mexico they wouldn’t say the same thing about Mexico, or Canada, or Pakistan, or Iran for that matter.

I am reminded of a conversation I was having with a friend from Nebraska who was considering moving back there from California, and I ask, “Why would you want to go back there? Nebraska sucks!” She said, “Hey, I’m from Nebraska!”

Well? So fucking what? Just because you’re from a place doesn’t make it good. Just ask the Indoor Kid from the former Meth Capital of the World! I mean, the FORMER Meth Capital. We couldn’t even keep it together enough to hold onto that dubious distinction!

And just because a sports team is from the same place that you're from doesn't make them good either. I don't think I will ever understand the undying allegiance to a team that just happens to have your hometown name on their jersey.

Perhaps if there was Desert Hot Springs Speed Freaks team playing Major League Baseball, I might feel different. Perhaps if I hadn't been a terminal Indoor Kid, I may have played more sports and gotten a different perspective, but alas I did not.

And so what if they are good? How do people let the outcome of a game between groups of strangers affect their lives so strongly? So much in fact that they get into fights and destroy property if their local team wins a game!

I wonder about the Good Old Days, back when teams were made up of people from the local area. So when you were rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, you were actually rooting for people from Brooklyn. If you grew up there, you felt a connection to these people who may have been your neighbors, or your friends, but something tells me that it wasn't very long before sports got to the way they are now.

If you're from New York, you might love the Yankees, but if you were born a short few hours away, say if your dad had gotten a great job and your parents moved shortly before your birth, you would hate the Yankees and cheer for the Red Sox. Why? The people who play on a team aren't from the town they play on. Sometimes they're not even from the same country as the team they play on. A team rarely has the same members for very long, what with trades and free agency, people called up from farm teams and sent back down, and so on and so on.

So in the end people are rooting not for a home town bunch of heroes, but rather for a uniform, a name on a jersey that happens to be the name of the place you call home.

Don't get me started on the people who love teams from a place they've never lived! I can almost understand the love of your home town's team, it's pretty much expected. But people who love a team from a town they've never even visited, let alone lived in, boggles my mind more than people who wait until they get up to the register before deciding what they want to order.

I enjoy a good game every now and then. One of those real nail biters that comes down to the last few seconds on the clock, or the final inning and one last pitch. I am not immune to the come-from-behind victories where the underdog finally triumphs over the juggernaut favorite. I understand the love of Sports, and the thrill of competition. But the undying devotion to a bunch of guys who get paid to play games in multi-million dollar arenas is something I think that will bewilder me to my dying day.

Nathaniel Hoyt: How to hate sports and influence others.

Maybe it was a little fucked up for my mother to do what she did, but I can't now, nor ever really could, blame her. Stuck in a loveless relationship for far too long, and - let's face it - being a passionate woman, she threw herself at him with a ferocity that only the mortally terrified atheist can have. Closing in on fifty, gaining speed over that hill, I can understand her need to have someone else beside her to enjoy what remains. Still, I would've appreciated a little warning before I found myself watching her and a stranger cuddle on a little blue loveseat in the stranger's suspiciously tidy home. Just a little heads up would've been nice before my sister and I had to wonder just who this man was who'd suddenly earned such an exultant position in my mother's life.

As if all this weren't suspicious enough, this man's - this stranger's - favorite place to hang out was a dingy faux-Irish restaurant in a strip mall. There, incidentally, one could also find my red-nosed English teacher after - say - three-fifteen most afternoons. Boy, did this teacher love hating to see me come in with my mom and the man, but I can't say I blame him either. To this day I still don't know why I had to go with them. I was old enough to look after myself, maybe twelve or thirteen by then. I figure my mom thought, too late, that I should get to know this new person who - despite suddenly occupying ostensibly the exact same role - I needn't regard as my new dad. Like hell I would! MY dad didn't hang out at a place called Kerrigan's run by two Italians name Sal and Lou. MY dad didn't cuddle! With anyone!

Lou and his wife, two more strangers, were buddies with the man - fine, his name is Allan. This meant, apparently, that Lou and his wife were also buddies with us - my mother and me. Some Sundays we'd all sit down together during the buffet brunch, in the awful-ugly smoke-stained brown and green vinyl booths. While the adults talked, I would quietly contemplate the poisonous nature of passive obedience, praying all the while for a fire in the kitchen, an exploded gas main, or anything to get me out of that place and away from these insufferable people. Their talk was so full of names and places I'd never encountered before that it was essentially incomprehensible to me. To this day there is nothing more tedious to me than being forced to listen to a stranger's gossip.

Sometimes there would be a few younger girls there, nieces of Lou and his wife. Although I was only three years older, I looked on them as barely hatched things, almost as unpleasant to see as they were to hear. They knew I was older, and with girls that young being older is just about the most fascinating thing you can be. They asked me about a thousand questions in drippy voices the color of plastic sequins and Kool-Aid: do you like this and do you like that? What's your favorite this, what's your favorite that? But their souring tone and narrowing eyes made it obvious that they were beginning to get a feel for what a nerd I was. The interrogation persisted until finally, getting frustrated at how disappointing I'd turned out to be, the uglier girl asked, "what sports do you play?"

"None," I said, bored, eager to confess to anything that might annoy these young things into leaving me alone.

"What do you mean," she asked, "you don't play anything?"

"Nothing," I said too loudly. "I hate sports!" Despite how inconsequential that seems now, I saw my mother, a stranger herself amongst this new clique and therefore also insecure, visibly tense up. Because she was responsible for me, because I was an extension of her own self, her acceptance into this new scene was dependent upon my own acceptance. It was the first time I'd noticed my mother get embarrassed by me. What I'd said was not a small remark to her. Lovesick as she was, and uncompromising in her efforts to win her crush's affection, to her what I'd said was a confession of the unforgivable crime of being different. She knew, instinctively, that what the world likes least is someone different, so after a shouting match on the drive home she eventually told me, acidly, "keep your opinions to yourself. You don't want to seem weird." I would often be told to stop being “weird" after that.

Nowadays I'm an openly weird man living in a mostly weird-friendly city. I have weird friends and weird hobbies. I don't have to secretly despise professional sports anymore and perhaps because of that my derision has mellowed. Or, more likely, it's because as I've gotten older I've noticed so many absurdities in the world around me that to give them all their due attention would require entirely too much energy and would eventually, definitely, drive me absolutely batshit. At any time I could ponder the fact that Derek Jeter's 2010 contract is to the tune of $21 million; enough money that were it to be spread around, it would do enormous tangible good to countless more deserving people. That's a sum of money that no argument - no argument - can be made to justify. I could suck on that one for a while, but I try not to. Because, in this our fucked up free market economy, if people want to throw money at the MLB, then the MLB has every right to throw money at Derek Jeter. All I can do is stay out of it and encourage my friends to do the same. So, my friends: go out there and throw or kick a ball around. Score a point if that's what makes you feel good. But please stop giving your money to Derek Jeter. There will always be professional sports. If everybody suddenly stops watching and starts playing, the only thing that's going to happen is that the quality of the play will improve. Seriously, America, get fucking with it already.

Christine E. Taylor: Vomit, Magic, Passion, Texas: Baseball in my Youth

"A sick man just threw up on a lady!"

On a relentlessly humid August day in the classy town of Baltimore, a beer-drunk Orioles fan vomited chunks of Memorial Stadium fries and probably something with crab in it onto the feather-haired woman a row ahead.

I was fascinated.

"Is this what grownups do? Is that normal? Is that a piece of potato? How will she get clean?" For a 7-year-old, the Ken Singleton home run that followed had nothing on the aroma of chaos, on the palpable erosion of civility.

My father was not a man who enjoyed the unexpected, and my mother was not a woman who enjoyed a loud party. Their collective tension just enhanced the sweaty, heady fiasco. We planned to stay for the whole game, and so, damn it, that's what we were going to do. Schedules don't waiver, plans don't change. And something should be done about that man and that mess.

My attention was forcibly averted by one or more of my parents when the drunk started to move from bleary, shocked apology into indignation over the woman not being cooler about wearing second-hand stadium food. It did not take a turn for the better after that.

Everyone within 3 rows soon wore a hint of bile-scented sweat, and it became impossible to endure. We left, 5 innings into a losing game.

--

"Do you think Eddie will hit a homer for you today? Of course he will. You're here!"

Like magic, Eddie Murray hit a home run at every single Orioles game I attended throughout my youth. Any games that didn't comply with that slice of family lore were quickly swept under the rug, and it became its own truth, veracity be damned.

I always felt a charge watching Murray take the field, in even seeing the number 33 out of context. We had a connection which was verbally reinforced by my father hundreds of times each summer: "When Chrissy's at the game, Eddie's got at least one RBI in the bag."

On stadium days, a Murray home run was as sure as lemon ice, and I will always love him for that.

--

A life-sized poster of Cal Ripken, Jr. hastened my pubescence by at least several months.

Cal was my first intense crush (David Copperfield and Freddy "Boom Boom" Washington meant NOTHING -- they were just child's play!), and now I could stare at his flat, full-bodied likeness while rubbing against a heart-shaped satin pillow any time I wanted.

Celebrity milk endorsements have really been sapped of their dignity. But when Cal was representing, I couldn't help but drink my 3 glasses a day to feel closer to him. Just looking at the poster fortified my bones. He was super-hot sunshine.

The poster was also a growth chart, and the words "strong" or "drink" just sullied the clean lines of his uniform and the clarity of his blue, blue eyes. My GOD! Those eyes were so blue!! And the way he leaned on a bat? I bet he could really, really kiss a 9-year old like she deserved to be kissed.

My connection to Eddie was edged out by the certainty that Cal and I would be married soon. It wasn't anything that Eddie did -- he was a great guy! -- but you can’t deny the smoldering heat that burns between a 5th grader and her shortstop. Eddie stopped hitting home runs at every game I attended. I still cheered, but the sound came out all hollow.

--

YEEEEEE-HAW!

The Astrodome represented ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING I hated about Houston and Texas and moving away from Baltimore and the horrible scale of the misguided ego of the Lone Star State's big-bellied inhabitants.

The sealed behemoth of a stadium managed to be both aggressively air-conditioned and prodigiously stifling. The food was twice as large and half as good. Drinks were served in large plastic boots -- cuz it's Texas, ya'll! Git it?

My father thought that taking in a baseball game would soften the blow of our sudden move and lessen the anxiety of entering junior high with an Ogilvie Home Perm and absolutely no friends. But people here weren't real baseball fans. Head-sized portions of BBQ brisket didn't make up for disinterest in a well-executed sac bunt. And they were playing on the same turf that Putt-Putt used. When the real big animatronic bull bellowed real smoke from its real big nostrils on the first home run, my young soul crumpled.

I kind of tried to enjoy the game for my father's sake. But I ached for home, a time and place where the home run itself was enough.

Steve Strong: Baseball in LA

There’s nothing better for young boys than having a day out at the ball park. That’s where memories are made. Fathers and sons get to cheer for the same team, sing the same songs, and eat the same food – perhaps the only time in their life they’ll really be on the same page!

I became a Dodgers fan because: a) I lived in L.A. for eight years, and b) growing up I was a Tigers fan, so the National League Dodgers were no threat whatsoever. When I lived in L.A., I tried to attend 10-15 games a year, and when I moved to Central California I had to cut that back to one or two games a summer.

In the summer of 1995 I took the four-hour road trip from Fresno to L.A. to watch the Dodgers play the Cubs. We timed the drive to get to the park an hour before the first pitch, and planned to drive home at the end of the game.

With me in our group was my wife, my five-year-old son, his five-year-old best friend and my four-month-old baby boy. I bought five seats so we’d have plenty of room for the baby and we could sort of spread out.

We got to our seats early, and of course the two five-year-olds wanted all kinds of cotton candy, hot dogs, Skittles, and anything else that would make them more wired and hyper than they would normally be.

Now, you should know that Los Angeles is full of people like me who grew up elsewhere, so you see a lot of visitor’s apparel in the bleachers. In the seats in front of us was a real Southern California Classic. They were a husband and wife - she was decked out in a complete Cubs uniform, and had Walkman headphones on. Yes, she looked like a female Steve Bartman. Her husband, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less interested in anything, as he slouched there reading a novel.

As the game started, I noticed they were turning around and looking at me a lot, and I had no idea why. Turns out they were irked that the two five-year-old boys who were hyped up and full of energy and were “kicking” their seats from the back as they were generally horsing around.

When I figured out what the dirty looks were for, I told the boys to knock it off and control their legs. But you know… trying to get a couple of kindergarteners to control their legs in those seats that are too big for them anyway is like trying to get Mark McGuire to admit performance enhancing drugs actually enhanced his performance.

It’s just not going to happen.

To her credit, the woman in front of us was pretty cool. She cast all her nasty glances to her husband. And, of course, he then started getting confrontational with me.

He would turn around and tell me to make the kids stop, and then go back to reading his book. He would take his arm and kind of swipe at the kid’s legs, and then go back to reading his book. He would make a big grunting noise and lean way forward, and then go back to reading his book.

Mind you, all this time I’m trying to take care of the baby, keep the Kindergartners under control, and watch a bit of the game myself. My wife? She was out of it completely!

When the guy in front of me couldn’t take it anymore, he stood up, turned around and got in my face and yelled, “This is no place to take children!”

I was shocked at how illogical that sounded. I said, “I think it’s the perfect place to take children. Baseball is all about children. This is where they’re supposed to be.”

The guy scolded me and said, “This is an activity for adults only. I’m going to report you to the ushers.”

I was so shocked, I said, “You’re going to call the ushers and tell them I’m not supposed to be sitting here with children? Oh, I’ve got to hear this. In fact, let me call them for you. This is going to be great.”

At this point I think even the bookworm realized how stupid that sounded – and what made the whole thing especially ridiculous was the fact that the stadium was less than half full! He and his wife removed themselves a few rows away and lived happily ever after.

I, on the other hand, still had the misery of taking care of the baby, two hyper five-year-old boys, and managing the grumpiness of my wife. So for me… no difference really.

But I think we all learned a beautiful lesson that day: I think Rodney King said it best, “Can’t we all just get along – and sit as far away from others as possible?”

Katie McMahon: Who are we? The Wildcats! Who are we gonna beat? The Wildcats!

I am the person who fell off the elliptical machine at the gym.

Yes, that was me swimming into your lane.

I have been hit in the head with a basketball. I have been hit in the head with a softball. A tennis ball. A baseball. A football. About fifty wiffle balls.

I tried out for cheerleading in sixth grade and didn’t make it. The next day, I fell down the stairs.

If I was being tortured or held over a cliff and someone asked me what my favorite sport was as a kid, I would say softball.

We were a team of eight-year-old girls called the Wildcats. As cats, most of us were ferocious and ready to attack. Others of us only found ourselves in the park because someone had brought us there and let us out of our cat cages. We were hungry, lazy, and confused as to where we were and why. Now, instead of lying on the grass and chasing butterflies, we were expected to run around in circles and catch things with big leather gloves on our hands.

They even put t-shirts on us with big numbers printed on the backs. As Wildcats, we wore forest green. Cougars wore yellow. Cheetahs wore baby blue. Other cats wore other colors (pink, orange, any colors you can think of). Our t-shirts were too big and much longer than our shorts, making it seem as though we weren’t wearing any pants. There we were: just a bunch of eight-year-old girls running around with no pants on, playing some softball.

The sunlight peaked around the tree branches and through the holes in the fence and out onto the field. I could feel everybody crossing their fingers as I walked to the plate and grabbed the bat, heavy and wobbly in my hands. My dad had finally made it to a game and I could hear him yelling my name, along with some expert tips on how to hit the ball in the right direction.

“Look at the ball,” or “Don’t look at the ball.” I don’t remember anything specific, just yelling, yelling, yelling, and then maybe a groan of disappointment here and there.

I’ve never understood how violent screaming could be regarded as a sign of encouragement. If he hadn’t been there, I think things would have gone better -- at least I wouldn’t have had to deal with as much embarrassment and self-loathing. I could’ve stood in the outfield again, pulling strands of grass out of the ground, tying each one together to make an extra long grass string. Maybe I would’ve run to first base in the next inning. It’s quite possible I would’ve made it all the way around the bases without getting hit in the head with the ball or falling and getting little rocks embedded in my knees.

Why do parents like to make their kids’ lives miserable? I was born with some kind of weird hip problem and messed up knees and had a hard time learning how to walk. My mom tells me I could barely crawl, and instead would just roll around the room if I needed to get anywhere. I’d curl up into a ball or on my side and roll on over to get a closer look at the television. Eventually, I managed to walk, and almost immediately, I was thrown out onto a soccer field, then a softball field, a basketball court, an ice skating rink, a swimming pool, even a golf course. Why?

It probably went by pretty quickly, but my dad kept hollering and complaining about the umpire or the catcher, or whoever had given me the bat that was too heavy or too light for me. Each strike was draining and my heart felt like it was going to jump from my chest into my throat and then out of my mouth, while all of the water in my body flooded out of my eyes forming a colossal natural disaster in the park. Everyone would either float far away or drown within minutes.

Other parents seemed legitimately supportive of their children, but my dad’s voice was terrifying, echoing throughout the park. This was not a tone of cheerful optimism, but rather infuriated resentment and dissatisfaction with my ultimate failure. “You can do it!” felt like “If you don’t hit that fucking ball and run around these damn bases in ten seconds or less, then you can find your own ride home.” Wet, hot tears rolled down my face and I felt like throwing up all over my feet and whipping my bat at the other Wildcats on the bench making up stupid cheers. Shut up, shut up, shut up. I opened my eyes a little wider. My damp eyelids felt cool in the breeze. I didn’t even want to be here. I am not cut out for this.

My brain likes to tell me things like that. It says things like, “You suck at running. Why are you even trying?” or “Who cares about winning? Maybe afterwards, you can eat pizza, fatso.”

Up until recently, I thought my brain was wrong. Often it is wrong, because it tells me I suck at a lot of things that I’m actually pretty okay at. Then I realized it was right about this one thing. I do suck at running and I don’t care about winning. At all. To a degree, I understand why my parents were so insistent about my involvement with sports. I mean, I would never have made my kid play every single sport I could think of; an entire summer of golf seriously seemed like punishment. Though mostly I believe they just wanted me out of the house, I sort of see they also wanted me to try new things and be active. I guess.

Recently, I came to the startling realization that as an adult, I can say no. I say no to lots of things now, but most importantly I say no to basketball and softball and kickball and pretty much every sport you can think of. No (or sometimes, “no, thank you”). Competitive sports have left me emotionally unstable and full of self-pity. I figure the only way to get better is to eliminate them forever.

I still do my best to say yes to being active. I say yes to yoga, riding my bicycle, walking and being outside as much as possible. It would be completely out of place for my dad to be yelling words of so-called encouragement in my face while I’m in the middle of downward dog. As long as he doesn’t see me lose, maybe he won’t think I’m a loser.

I want to say that my dad was never purposely trying to hurt my feelings or give me anxiety that would continue into my teens and now my twenties. He was just always competitive himself and wanted to see his kids win. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t care. When he did show up for games, he never yelled at me afterwards, even though his sighs of defeat washed over me. Whether I ended up winning or losing, we never talked much after the game. And every once in awhile, we would get ice cream or pizza and he wouldn’t call me fat or tell me to stop eating.

He left that up to my mother.

Josh Grimmer: O, the majestic slapshot!

For someone who's functionally illiterate, I certainly do read a lot. Mostly the internet, but before that I read a lot of newspapers. Remember the newspaper? No? Okay, so think back to like, 2007. There was this big, folded up thing that got dropped on your doorstep every morning. It had pictures and words and the paper itself was kinda thin and icky. Seriously? Well, just trust me on this one – these things existed. Some even say they still do. I don't know about that.

Every morning in high school, back when I was a bigger prick than I am now (if you can believe that), I would go to the news stand across the street to buy a New York Times and a Boston Globe, because I was a Man Of The World, you see. Now, there are plenty of reasons to read the paper. Maybe you want to be informed about the world around you. Maybe you want to look at photographs of suspected terrorists. Maybe you want to get smelly ink all over your fingers. I bought the paper for three things – op-ed, sports and crossword puzzles.

Reading the paper was what I did between, and occasionally during, classes to pass the time. I never really cared what was on the front page, that's what op-ed is for. The op-ed takes news stories, writes them in better words, and then tells you how people that you agree with politically feel about things. Maureen Dowd thinks this is good? I'm sold! PJ O'Rourke says this is typical Dem spending? It probably is, yeah. The crossword was something I did – and still do – to make myself seem a lot smarter than I actually am. (Crossword puzzles aren't that hard, guys. Just know what words like "ewer" and "amah" mean.)

Along with my distaste for the actual news portion of the A-section, I never really read the box scores in the sports section. I already know who won last night, and there are only so many ways one can say “Boston 5, Detroit 2.” The real appeal of the sports section is the freedom of the writer to expound on the things that aren't black and white. A score is boring. A stat line is boring. The important stuff isn't the result, it's how the result came about.

Before I get too far in, I'd like to mention how much I hate sports poetry. “The elegiac symmetry of the Emerald Chessboard!” “Nine men strong and true!” That shit sucks. That kind of writing has no place in the world. It's flowery, purple, repulsive. I barely like John Updike's “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” and that's really only because it's about Ted Williams. If it weren't about a Boston athlete, I'd probably hate it.

I understand I'm a rarity, going straight for the commentary and not the box scores. Millions of people nationwide wake up every morning, open the doors to their hotel rooms and grab the USA Today to find out how their teams did last night. The sports section is easily the most read section of the paper. If the Los Angeles Times showed up tomorrow with no sports section, there would be rioting in the streets – and LA is a lousy sports town.

Of all the things that should drive me insane about Los Angeles – tourists, gangs, graffiti, traffic, teenagers who pretend to be homeless, incredibly intense fakeness – the thing I miss the most is the communal sports experience. Not just going to games – walking down the street, yelling words at strangers. “SAAAAAAWKS.” “GO PATS!” In earlier times, a hearty “NOMAAAAAH” or two. Los Angeles is the meldingest pot out there, and there aren't really a lot of locals. There are St. Louis fans and Detroit fans and Boston fans and Seattle fans and Pittsburgh fans and everyone else fans. The city doesn't quite... erupt like it ought to when something monumental happens. The Lakers, much to the dismay of anyone with a soul, won the last two NBA titles. Barely anything happened here. I'm not saying I want car-flipping and shootouts, but I'd like a hearty “WOO” or an air horn or something. Barely even any loud music. What gives, guys? You're a city that gets fired up over international soccer matches that don't involve any country you've ever even visited.

I get so mad about LA being such a shitty sports town, overrun by executives and frontrunners that every once in a while, I think “that's IT. I'm moving back to Boston! Fuck this giant shitberg!” Then as I get off the subway at Hollywood and Highland, I turn to see the giant ceramic Tyrannosaurus Rex bursting through the roof of the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, surrounded by bright neon bulbs and holding a clock that runs backwards. I know, deep down, I belong here. I'm willing to put up with reading box scores if it means I get to look at that giant stupid dinosaur every day.