UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

It’s hot, and it’s the humid hot, not the dry hot!

Help me.

Quick-hitters:

- To fight off the heat, I am enjoying some canned Thai Tea.

At least, the label says it’s Thai Tea.  It sure tastes like anything but Thai Tea!  Blech!

- It was quite a hallmark day in the world of sports today.

We had the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games.

We had the Little League World Series match, won by the team from Hawaii (no, I did not watch it).

We had the Redeem Team winning gold against Spain.  We had the Men’s Indoor Volleyball team win an emotionally-charged final against Brazil.

(Tangent:  You people can pick Michael Phelps as the most memorable aspect of the Olympics.  Go ahead and pick the opening ceremonies.  Usain Bolt was (pardon the pun…sorta) riveting, and I won’t argue if you think he was the most memorable part of the Olympics.

What is my pick for the most memorable part of the Olympics?  It’s gotta be the Men’s Indoor Volleyball gold medal match against Brazil.  Watching coach Hugh McCutcheon break down after the victory was somewhat hard to watch, considering the ups (a gold medal-winning team) and downs (his father-in-law being killed by some coward) he has experienced over the past two weeks.

Jason Lezak’s running down—or should I say swimming?—of Alain Bernard is a distant second on my list.  Without Lezak’s historic heat, Phelps doesn’t come close to eight golds.)

Anyway, today was a pretty sweet day filled with sporting events.  Too bad the last thing I saw last night was the Dodgers’ bullpen choking away yet another victory!

Yeah, I understand that the Dodgers could have provided more than two runs, and yes, the Dodgers’ offense left many opportunies on the table.  However, a team that is built on solid pitching HAS TO hold a lead, even a one-run lead!

That’s now four blown leads that have led to losses in the past couple of weeks!  Grrrr…

- Back on Friday, while at my desk, I glanced over at the clock on the lower right-hand corner of my screen.  Hovering over the clock, I noticed that Friday’s date was August 22.

For some reason, that date stood out in my head.  Was it my Dad’s birthday?  No; that was on the 16th.  Did I have to be somewhere that day?  I didn’t think so.  What the hell was so important about the 22nd?

Eventually, it hit me; I bought something on July 23rd, and knew that the rebate attached to the item had to be postmarked by the 22nd!

Just to make sure, I called the rebate center (it was 4:10pm when I initiated the call).  About ten minutes later, I was thinking to myself, “These guys are going to keep me on hold until 5pm, to screw me over on the rebate!”  Finally, a guy picked up, and I quickly explained my situation.  He put me on hold (*gulp*), and returned a minute later, saying that the last postmark date was, indeed, the 22nd.

I got to the post office at 4:45, fifteen minutes before the last collection.  Whew.

One of these days, I’m gonna miss a postmark date entirely, and not even realize it until a week or so afterwards.

- Either I am in training for a marathon, or I just couldn’t control my eating today.  We stopped by Olive Garden for lunch—soup and salad for $5.99 FTW—and I ate the following:

(Tangent:  Apparently, it was Plaid Shorts day at Olive Garden.  While waiting for a table to free up, I saw no fewer than seven or eight people—only one lady—wearing plaid shorts.)

• 2.5 bowls of soup (two bowls of the Zuppa Toscana, and a half bowl of Minestrone)
• several (four?) breadsticks
• a huge helping of salad
• and peach-raspberry ice tea; I have no idea how many glasses I ultimately had

As if that wasn’t bad enough, for dinner, I had a HUGE bowl of chicken with rice.  The grapes I had right before dinner didn’t help matters at all.

I should go run a half-marathon now.  It’s the only way I’ll ever burn off all those calories.

- Injuries happen in sports, of course.  However, I don’t recall the last time so many big name players have been hurt in the PRESEASON.  Just look at this list:

• The Giants’ Osi Umenyiora will miss the entire season with a lateral meniscus tear in his left knee.
• The Redskins’ Jason Taylor will miss 10-14 days with a knee sprain.
• Shawne Merriman’s season (and possibly career) might be over because of two torn knee ligaments (though who knows if the injuries were sustained and/or aggravated during the preseason?)
• Summarizing the NFL front page on ESPN.com…Carson Palmer has a broken nose, Brian Dawkins strained his ankle, the Cowboys lost LOG Kyle Kosier for a month, and the Raiders lost two members of their offense for the season.
• And finally, we have learned that Brett Favre is dealing with two twisted ankles, both of which occurred from all the about-faces he had done during the offseason.

(OK…I made the last one up.)

The only logical thing to do, it would seem, would be to shorten the off-season.  And why not?  Teams suffer through injuries over sixteen games in seventeen weeks as it is; it’s only logical to assume that an extra four games will cause more injury.  Also, it can be argued that extra preseason games give players who may not make an NFL roster more chances to deliver a harder hit on a star player, in an attempt to make an impression on all 32 NFL teams.

Why not have a four week, three game preseason, with one bye week for teams to have non-contact drills?  Or what about three weeks, followed by a week-long gap before the regular season?  Or how about three preseason games and one full-contact, intra-team scrimmage?  Scrapping the entire preseason would be too extreme, in my opinion.  On the other hand, reducing the preseason by a game or two might spare some players from the injury bug, saving them for the regular season.

Tags: bullpen, closing ceremonies, deadline, hugh mccutcheon, implosion, injuries, los angeles dodgers, men's volleyball, nfl preseason, olive garden, olympic games, postmark, rebate, shortened off-season, thai tea, zuppa toscana by Peter
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Sorry for not blogging in so long!

Quick-hitters:

- What is it about potato salad that makes it so ridiculously addictive?

(For the record, my potato salad is simple: diced potatoes, sliced olives, chopped hard boiled eggs, finely chopped celery, mayo, vinegar, and pepper to taste.)

If preparing the salad wasn’t such a PITA, I wouldn’t have a problem eating this stuff often.

- Somebody please remind me never again to wait until near the end of the (typical) 30-day postmark deadline to file my rebates!

I was filing four rebates on purchases that, so I thought, were made on 6/11, meaning the claims must be filed by 7/11. Eventually, I realized that 6/11 was the shipping date, not the order date. The actual order date was 6/9!

Whew.

- Speaking of rebates, my current rebate-o-meter reads $1550, and that’s not counting the several orders I made recently.

My toothpaste-o-meter dropped by one, because cousin David was only willing to take one box off of my hands.

- So I missed most of the Nadal v. Federer classic (and I don’t get ESPN Classic, so I couldn’t watch the replay), but if the last few games were any indication of how great the matchup was, I will have to petition NBC to sell the match on iTunes. His streak of five straight Wimbledon titles was gone in a flash, and after dismal showings (dismal by Federer’s standards, that is) in the Aussie and French Opens, Pete Sampras’ Grand Slam titles record of 14 (Federer’s two back) is starting to look somewhat out of reach.

(By the way, I thought it was really compelling to see Federer’s reaction to his loss, when he was interviewed by John McEnroe. His delcaration that the loss “[hurt],” followed by his near breakdown, was almost humanizing, because we’ve never seen Federer in this position: losing a Grand Slam final not on clay.)

More importantly, have we witnessed a changing of the guard? Nadal suddenly has five Grand Slams, and he has proven that he can win on a surface other than clay. Would it be out of the question for him, currently 22, to have ten Grand Slams by 25? Nadal is a ridiculous athlete; did you see how many shots he made that he had no business getting to? There’s no reason why his game can’t translate on to the hard courts? He might be the man to win the season Grand Slam, if anybody.

I can’t wait for the US Open.

- Friday the Fourth was spent at two locales: an annual Fourth of July BBQ (thanks Aaron!), followed by the fireworks show at the Valley Cultural Center in Woodland Hills.

As we headed out to the BBQ, the weather was awful: it was warm and sticky. Fortunately, the sun was shining brightly when we got there, and thank goodness it was a dry heat. It was hot enough, though, for me to go through three sodas, and (by my count) seven bottles of water.

We brought that addictive potato salad, and for lunch, I had a Hebrew National hot dog, a hamburger, half of a giant Hot Link, an Omaha steak hot dog, guac and salsa with tortilla chips, various fruit, and some awesome spinach dip.

Naturally, I regretted eating all that. That didn’t stop me from chasing all that with a hamburger at 2:30, when Aaron fired up the grill a second time.

My sister and I spent most of the day taking up two seats at a table, and people constantly shuffled in and out of the other two seats. Without going in to too much detail about the individuals sitting in other seats, let me just say that older people are awesome to hang around with :P.

We were about to leave at six, when Aaron fired up the grill for a seventh (?) time. I managed to choke down another two burgers, an Omaha Steak hot dog, and about two servings of insanely awesome baked beans.

I had to be carted out of the party.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 3.5 hot dogs/sausages, four hamburgers, five or six sides, three sodas, seven bottles of water, and a stomach ache when all was said and done.

(And if you think what I ate was ridiculous, apparently all I downed was par for the course!)

After food, we swung by the Valley Cultural Center to watch the fireworks show. Barnes Park’s fireworks show, that was not. The fireworks show ran along with music played by the Los Angeles Pierce Symphonic Winds, which was pretty awesome. It would have been cooler if we heard much of the music, though; we were too far back to hear more than the booms from the fireworks.

All in all, a good start to the weekend.

Part 2 next time, and maybe a serious rant on my part.

Tags: barbeque, bbq, deadline, fireworks, Food, fourth of july, grand slam, los angeles pierce symphonic winds, postmark, potato salad, rafael nadal, rebate, roger federer, valley cultural center, wimbledon by Peter
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