Sports   Being a guy that cares little or nothing about sports, I find that I am usually at a loss in typical guy conversations. I often find myself in in situations where I have no idea what it is that I am supposed to say or to root for or whatever. Monday mornings are especially embarrassing during the football season.   Conversations frequently go something like this...   BOSS: How 'bout them Broncos?   ME: Huh?   BOSS: The Broncos. Didn't you see the game this weekend?   ME: Wait, I know this one, you're talking about a sports thingie aren't you?   BOSS: Ha! Ha! Ha! "A sports thingie." That's a good one! Yeah, so, did you see the game?   ME: Which game? Is it one of the games that use sticks?   BOSS: Ha! Ha! Ha! "Is it one of the games that use sticks?" That's a good one! Yeah, they used a stick all right, they used a stick to ram it up the Ram's asses! Ram it up the Ram's asses! Get it? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!   ME: Ass ramming? That's a sport? You can watch this on TV? Why would anybody watch ass ramming?   BOSS: Hey, as long as the Broncos are the one doing the ramming, I'll watch it. So what did you think? Did you like the way the Rams got rammed on the third down play? Hell, I though for sure they were gonna make it with the way...   ME: Wait, hold it. You watched Broncos screwing Rams this weekend and... this is a sport? How long has interspecies mating competitions been a television broadcast spectacle?   BOSS: "Interspecies mating competitions," that's a good one! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Are you kidding? This has been going on forever! Well, at least since the Broncos got a new halfback. Hell, they've been screwing EVERYBODY! I can't wait for them to give it to the Jets next week...   ME: Ok, Broncos screwing Jets. Aren't Jets, like, really big machines? Why would a Bronco screw a Jet? Why not a Tractor? Or a Volkswagon? Or a Combine or something? That's just weird. I think if I were a Bronco with sexual frustrations, I'd get an inflatable horse or something. I don't think I'd screw a Jet, that would probably hurt.   BOSS: What, you a Jets fan or something?   ME: No, not really, I just don't think that Broncos can screw Jets. As far as I can see, it just can't happen...   BOSS: (YELLING TO EVERYONE IN THE OFFICE) Guess what? Genius here thinks the Jets are gonna screw the Broncos!   ME: I didn't say that, I didn't even know Jets had reproductive organs...   BOSS: Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! You're too much...   Unfortunately, this is closer to the truth than I care to admit. I'm forever at a loss at the importance of sports so I never pay much attention to them. What little I do see of sports almost always leaves me less informed than if I hadn't seen them at all.   My interpretation of a few sports...   Football: Football is a sport where two teams dress up in bulky uniforms and beat the unholy crap out of each other. I know that there is a football and that one team needs to get the football into the other team's end zone. I know that the ball is occasionally kicked and that there are a number of penalties that can be unfairly assessed against your team. Some particulars... "Holding" is a penalty offense. What a player can get in trouble for holding onto is beyond me. A touchdown is six points, extra points after a touchdown is either one or two points, depending on the day of the week. Games are played in arenas that are filled with people that have been released from the local jails and special homes. The Barrel Man had a heart attack some time in the last few years. I don't watch football. The players wear pads. The players do not use sticks.   Baseball: Baseball is a sport where two teams dress up in wimpy uniforms and stand around for hours at a time. There is a pitcher that throws a ball at a catcher. There is a batter that stands around while the umpire arbitrarily yells out "Strike" or "Foul" and the batter occasionally swings the bat through the "strike zone" in an attempt to hit the ball or a stray bird. More particulars... If the batter gets three strikes, he's out. I do not know what this means. If the batter gets four balls, he gets to walk. If not, the batter apparently gets to either hover or ride around in a wheelchair. Tommy Lasorda is definitely fat and possibly dead. Chickens are not utilized in the American version of baseball. I don't watch baseball. The players do not wear pads. The players use sticks.   Basketball: Basketball is a sport where two teams dress up in shorts and shoot the basketball through hoops at either end of the court. It is a lot like football except that there are fewer players, no football, and the mascots kick all of the field goals. Some informative tidbits... Shooting a hoop from outside the three point line is good for three points. Shooting a hoop from outside the stadium with an AK 47 is good for five-to-ten in a local penitentiary. The free-throw line is used for foul shots. There are no paid-throw lines in the game of basketball. I have a really long story about basketball, it's called "The Pick." If you are lucky, you'll never be regaled with this bizarre piece of non-fiction. Basketball is a fun sport to watch if you do not have anything better to do with yourself, like Self-Acupuncture-With-Rusty-Lab-Instruments or a game of Find the Large Object in the Prisoner's Rectum. I don't watch basketball. The players do not wear pads. The players do not use sticks.   Hockey: Hockey is a sport where two teams dress up in bulky uniforms and push a puck around until it lands in someone's goal. The games last one hour and have three twenty minute segments. There is no halftime in hockey and Third Time Extravaganzas are extremely rare. More stuff about hockey... Not a lot of points are scored in hockey. There have been attempts in the last few years to widen the goals to make the game more exciting but most of the fans and all of the goalies are against such modifications. This will change the game so significantly that it will no longer be the same sport. The stats will have to be split into Pre and Post goal widening groups and comparisons between old and new players will no longer be made. There have also been attempts to make the goalies' pads narrower in order to speed up the game. There is more of a split on this issue as the pads of days gone by were not as wide and not necessarily a staple of the game. Reductions of this nature aren't viewed as being nearly as "heretical" as the goal-widening issue. High sticking offenses need to be enforced more strictly. Stick incidents are going virtually unpunished these days and the league is thinking of implementing four minute penalties for stick offenses. While four minute penalties will make for some outrageous scores in the beginning, it will undoubtedly bring down the number of stick problems seen in the game today. The Avs look pretty good this year and will look even better if the injuries are kept to a minimum. All of the above stuff is junk I heard on a radio talk show this weekend and I understand none of it. I don't watch hockey. The players wear pads. The players use sticks.   The biggest problem with sports is trying to keep all of them straight. There are any number of sports and even more rules that go along with each of these sports. When staring at the sports channels, I see things that I never knew were sports. Curling, Synchronized Swimming, Weight lifting, NASCAR, Bowling, Jai Alai, and Australian Rules Equestrian Table Tennis are just a few of the many sports events to choose from when surfing through the 67,943.04 sports channels on my system. And of course I have a solution to this problem of too many sports.   Here it is...   The EmsleySportsTrack™ system of NonConfusingSports™.   In using simple standards, all sports will be combined into four distinct categories. These categories will consist of each sports usage of Pads and Sticks. The Pads-N-Sticks™ standard will round up all sports and put them into four distinct groups...   - Category one will be sports where the players use pads but no sticks. All games of this type will be known as "Football."   - Category two will be sports where the players use sticks but no pads. All games of this type will be known as "Baseball."   - Category three will be sports where the players use no pads and no sticks. All games of this type will be known as "Basketball."   - Category four will be sports where the players use both pads and sticks. All games of this type will be known as "Hockey."   The great thing about this system is that all sports are boiled down to these four groups and sports challenged people will be able to join any conversation on the topic after finding out the sports use of Pads-N-Sticks™. A few examples...   Equestrian riding is a bunch of unpadded people riding horses and jumping over sticks. The players use sticks but no pads... It's Baseball.   A bunch of unpadded overweight guys throw a ball down a lane and hit stuff. The players use no sticks and no pads... It's Basketball.   And so on...   The only problem so far is this: Once a month, Women's Baseball turns into Hockey... Copyright 2009 by Frank Emsley