Game Day II...The Mouth Heard 'Round the World

You know how at every kids sporting event there seems to be some obnoxious, loud-mouthed a-hole that spends the whole game razzing the officials and blurting out rude comments to no one's delight but his own? Yeah, well that guy has a daughter on Kailey's softball team. And remember when I wrote about how nice and refreshing it was to have all of the parents cheering for all of the kids? I spoke too soon. That utopian ideal of unbiased parental support during children's sporting events has been shot straight to hell.

Kailey's game was Monday night. It was a cold, cloudy, windy, miserable night for softball, so nobody was in a particularly good mood to begin with. Then Mouth began his taunting. First, it was directed at the umpire, who had made a couple of bad calls, calling balls strikes. But understand, being an umpire in an 8 and Under softball league has to be the most BORING job in the world. The girls pitch until they've thrown four balls, then the coach takes over. As you can imagine, probably fewer than 10% of the balls pitched by the girls are strikes. If you're an ump, you're probably going to make a couple of questionable calls out of sheer boredom. I'm not saying that it's right...I'm just saying.

So loud-mouth dad, who, incidentally, is always decked out in St. Louis Cardinal's attire which further draws my ire as a Cub fan, starts in on the ump. At first he drew a few snickers from the parents, but as he continued, an awkward silence descended on the crowd. Then, it got worse the next inning as his daughter took the mound. He turned his taunting from the umpire to THE EIGHT YEAR-OLD GIRLS ON THE OTHER TEAM!! When one of the girls would strike out, he'd yell, "RING 'ER UP!" I was mortified and getting really pissed off. Finally, his wife, bless her heart, turned around and laid into him for being a complete ass. He had a couple of things to say back to her, but eventually relented. I swear I heard a mental cheer erupt from the parents.

I just don't understand people like this. Did he think he was funny? Did he have a few too many at the local pub before heading to the game? Or is he just the world's biggest jerk? I don't know. But what I do know is that his behavior is horribly inappropriate at this age level, hell, at ANY age level. It teaches young kids that it's OK and even expected to disrespect game officials and to ridicule your opponent. So much for sportsmanship.

I can understand the competitive spirit. I played organized sports through high school, college and beyond. I've experienced the thrill of getting the game-winning hit, of hitting the jumper in the face of a trash-talking opponent, and of gunning down the runner at the plate. I get it. There's no feeling in the world like it. But I believe that healthy competition should build people up rather than tear down. When my opponent robs me of a base hit with an amazing diving catch, or drains a three-pointer with my hand in his face, he deserves praise for a great performance regardless of the color of his jersey. It just seems that tearing down your opponent has become an ugly part of competition in our present day society, and I hate it.

Jumping down off my soapbox and into more important news, Kailey had a great game in a 3-2 Blue Balls Bandit loss. She went 1 for 1 at the plate with a run scored. She also had two plays on the field, one from third base and one from shortstop, where she cleanly fielded the ball and made strong throws to first. The runners were safe on both occasions, but that's typical at this level: anything hit left of second base is going to be a hit. Most importantly, she didn't freeze to death during the game.

The Blue Balls play next on Saturday and we'll see if obnoxious dad can keep his trap shut. My money is on no.

Losing My Faith in Humanity

Or perhaps I should say "lost", because people can really suck sometimes. Diane called me at work tonight at the tail end of the 5:00 newscast. I told her I'd call her back, wondering what would make her call me when she knew I was in a newscast. When I called her back twenty minutes later, after getting sidetracked by a couple of projects, I found out. "I think I lost my debit card," she confessed. Not good. She used it to buy coffee on her way into work this morning, and when she went to retrieve it sometime this afternoon, she couldn't find it. I told her I'd look into it and hung up. I was upset, but I also knew my getting mad wasn't going to help the situation, so I kept my mouth shut.

I logged on to our banking website to check on recent/pending transactions and found a mysterious one from today for $18.77. No merchant was listed, only an address. I wrote down the address and called Diane back, and she confirmed once again that the only money she spent today was the few dollars for coffee. At least it was Starbucks. I put on my detective hat, the Sherlock Holmes one where you can't figure out which side is the front and which is the back, and did a reverse address search online. The $18.77 had been spent at a Safeway grocery store on the other side of Tucson, a store that neither Diane or I have ever stepped foot in. Great. Then I called the bank and cancelled our debit cards. WTF!!!

Diane doesn't know if she left her card at Starbuck's or if it fell out of her wallet, but that doesn't matter to me. Mistakes happen. I know because I'm the King of them. But what's happened to human freakin' dignity? When did ours become such an opportunistic society, where people think they have the right to take advantage of others' misfortune? Just because I see a debit card lying on the ground doesn't give me free reign to a shopping spree! And it really pisses me off! Right now the damage is only $18.77, but I can guaran-frickin-tee the total will go up tomorrow when merchants have had a day to post their transactions. That's when the real damage will be done. I'm sure we won't be liable for all of it since I canceled the card in a timely manner (I hope), but that's not the point. These jerks will probably get off scot-free, and that pisses me off, too! I could rant on and on, but I'm going to stop here before I break a blood vessel in my head and seize right here on the floor.

I just wish people didn't suck so often.

'Tis the Season...

I'm not in a very Christmas-y mood this year. Perhaps that will change here in the next couple of weeks, but for now I'm just urked.

In the past couple of weeks we've all seen the news footage of people camping out in front of stores, sprinting en masse across open parking lots, jostling with police, and fighting each other over VIDEO GAMES. Most of these people look like the $400-$500 price tag of a game system might be better spent on something more useful, like, say...FOOD. But no, we have to get our priorities straight. Here in Tucson, our station ran a story about how a local Circuit City received a shipment of TWELVE Sony Playstation 3's, yet 30 buyers spent the night there in the hope that Circuit City was lying. They weren't, and lucky buyer #13 had the gall to bellyache to our reporters over how devastated he was to not get the game system. I fear there is much more inbreeding going on in our great nation than we're aware of.

This morning Diane had to go into work early for "Black Friday". She was at work at 5:00 am and the doors of her store opened at 6:00. The parking lots to Sears and Best Buy were packed with cars and people waiting for the doors to open. Why? Are we such stupid people that the thirty-one days between Thanksgiving and Christmas simply do not allow us enough time to get our shopping done? "Well, stores have such great specials!" people might explain. Well la-dee-frickin'-da is what I say. Retailers dangle a carrot in front of our noses and we come a-running. I guess that makes us nothing but a bunch of asses.

Do you know who's really going to suffer? The "sane" people like me. I'm probably going to have a hard time finding the gifts I really want to buy my loved ones because all the good stuff is gone. So I'll just smile and take it, move on to the Christmas "B" list, because I refuse to chase the carrot. But I still retain the right to be urked.

And it's sad. This is supposed to be the time of year where we reflect on the blessings in our life, celebrate our loved ones, and exhibit a little selflessness for a change. I'm probably starting off on the wrong foot, but I don't think my being urked is wrong. It may be affecting my attitude right now, but I'll get through it. I'm going to use my irritation as motivation to get Christmas right this year. But not right now...I've got Christmas lights to hang.