The overhand right-Dad,Showtime and a nod to a past great

The overhand right returns after a long hiatus with some observations from the world of boxing..


We'll start with a few words on the joke that was the Showtime/Golden Boy card from Brooklyn shortly,but I wanted to say thanks for the all nice emails,tweets and messages on Facebook about yesterday's post about my dad.
It is always nice to have people like your work,but here I get a special kick out of people liking the non-sports posts.
Thanks again for spreading the word on that for me,it was truly appreciated.

As far as Dad goes,he managed to talk the hospital in releasing him today.
It was a day earlier than they really wanted to,but he has a way about him sometimes that allows him to get his way.
Now the wait is on for the return of the tests that will tell the tale of whether this is a short term issues that surgery has resolved or has the long term war just begun?
Thanks for the wishes and prayers,those too are appreciated...

The Showtime card from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn was simply put a sad joke on boxing.
Danny Garcia's second round knockout over undersized and outgunned Rod Salka was a disgrace.
Now first,allow me to say this,Non-title fights go back as far as I can remember and I vividly remember WBC Featherweight Champion Juan LaPorte dropping a decision to clubfighter Gerald Hayes in the mid 80's,so these aren't always gimmes,but Gerald Hayes was likely a top 25-30 fighter,so Hayes putting all together on one night could happen.
Rod Salka on his best day wasn't top 100 and against the best junior welterweight in the world,you could see that this was a mismatch.
Shame on Showtime for agreeing to this farce.

The co-main was a little better,if only understandable as Lamont Peterson stopped Edgar Santana in the 10th to keep his IBF Jr.Welterweight belt.
Santana,while being more qualified than Rod Salka,was still untested against world class fighters and it showed.
I could live with this as a showcase bout for a Garcia-Peterson bout,if anyone was clamoring for that fight.
Yes,Peterson owns the only belt that Garcia didn't,but his third round KO at the hands of Lucas Matthysse and the subsequent Matthysse close decision loss to Garcia devalued Peterson's title until he proved otherwise.
The Santana win and his previous defense over the qualified Dierry Jean haven't quite done that,so I'm happy that Garcia-Peterson might happen to unify all the belts,but Garcia is the true champion and I'm not sure anyone is really excited about the bout.

When premium cable (HBO and Showtime) show such dreck,they show a disrespect for the paying customer and hurt the game and their boxing program.
HBO and Showtime customers pay for the programming that they provide and many (me included) have their channel just for boxing.
To have such a card is disrespectful to their consumers and the sport.
This card would have not been any better had it been televised on Fox Sports 1 (a GBP Partner),but it would have been understandable due to the lesser rights fees that would have been paid.
2014 has been a bad year in boxing,Last Saturday night,it got worse....

We wrap up with a few words on the 32nd anniversary of the car wreck that cost the great Salvador Sanchez his life in the midst of a great 126 pound title reign.
Sanchez's biggest win over Wilfredo Gomez is shown above,but the wreck cost boxing so much-a move up in weight that could have seen an eventual match vs the great Alexis Arguello,but especially the match that never was Sanchez and his nine defenses of the WBC belt against Panama's Eusebio Pedroza and his 19 defenses of the WBA title in the days of just two ruling organizations.
What a great fighter and what a loss for our sport.
Look for a Forgotten Superstars down the road on Salvador Sanchez.

Dealing with Dad's changes

Today was an interesting day for me and quite enlightening in some ways.
Enlightening to the point of life-changing.

What could have happened?
Well, it started by me turning down the chance to go to Aberdeen with Derreck and Brad.
I would have liked to have gone, but I hadn't had a chance to go to see Dad in the hospital yet and I felt that I should stay close to home in case anyone (my mom and grandmother) needed me.
My brother was at work and so was Cherie, so I thought someone should be around if things were needed.

It worked out because Cal Ripken was there and I would have been forced with a choice of lowering my principles (to improve my collection) or standing tall on them and having people think I'm a jerk (what else is new?)
But today, I realized something-  my father is getting older and therefore I am too.

The toughest guy I've ever met and the man that raised me complained that he was sick.
The man that almost cut his finger off and reported to work anyway was saying that he wasn't well.
Finally,he said he just didn't care about anything, one way or the other.
It finally struck home that my father wasn't the imposing person of days gone by, rather he was just another not very well older person.
I knew my dad had reached a certain age, but I had never thought of him as I saw him today.
Dad had some heart issues a few years back, but he was still working, not retired and I hadn't gotten as close to him as I am today, so seeing him in the hospital for the first time didn't hit home as this time did.

It's sometimes a wakeup call when you realize your parents are mortal and age like everyone else.
If they are aging, that means you are too and that can be more of a realization than muscle pulls and backaches ever bring to the table.
Time wins over all of us, but it's still stunning when it actually hits home.
So now what?
Well, in one way, nothing has changed-I'm still a middle-aged man with a father that is getting even older, but in one way, yesterday changed me dramatically.
I realized my father is human and as silly as it sounds, I might have never truly realized that before.
When you put people on the pedestal for whatever reason (and the reasons do vary) it's jarring to realize that they are people with problems and issues like anyone else.
The passing of Robin Williams should show an example of that.

Dad was grumpy, growling, wishing people would leave him alone and even told me that he wasn't going to be good company because of the pain.
He complained the hospital television sucked (No MLB or MASN, so no games) and we talked a little about the terrific end to the PGA Tournament "It wasn't terrific to me, I don't like McElroy"
Both of us are Phil Mickelson fans, so we chatted a bit about Phil's future and how many more chances at majors he might have before he again said he wasn't going to be good company because he felt sick.
I told him that I'd leave whenever he wished, but for now, I just wanted to be near,if he needed me.
I silently read a book (those that know me know that a book always accompanies me on nearly all occasions) as I sat near a window with the shade pulled down.
I bet in 45 minutes, those initial words were all that we spoke until my mom came in.
It didn't take him long to wake up then or to resume his grumbling as their bickering volleyed back and forth, so I left shortly thereafter, the silence broken.
The drive home was filled with some of the thoughts that I'm typing now, but even more thoughts too.
What happens when this is over? What happens when it's me in the bed and Ryan and Rachel looking at me that way?
Do my children look at me in the manner that I always looked at him?
Do they think I'm human?
The questions really made me wonder and only a few existed that I had answers for.
One cannot really know what someone else thinks for the most part, Can they?

Now what?
Well, I'll continue the process of being a better son and family member.
I've come a long way in the last two years, I think anyway, and I want to continue to grow, but I also want to get to know this fellow that I visited in the hospital even better.
You see, now he's a person just like me and that might open things up more than I could have imagined.
All the autographs in the world couldn't give me the realization that I discovered and yesterday would have been a good time (I still don't care much about Cal Ripken :)  with my friends, but I did just fine without a single drop of ink hitting a baseball card.
Some things are simply more important.

Stumbling onto something new....

I was visiting my dad on Monday, as I often do anymore and he was watching the Olympics.
I was quite an avid follower of the Olympics as a child, having a few memories of the 72 games in Munich, but able to remember many of the stars of the Montreal Olympics in 1976 like it was yesterday.
Anymore, the summer games do not have the same resonance for me as they once did, but dad was watching some things, so I watched with him.

After watching some women's basketball (not too exciting) and weightlifting (I always have enjoyed watching weightlifting), a game popped onto the screen that dad and I wondered just what we were watching.
We would not find out just what it was until the conclusion of the game was almost near, but I found myself enthralled by the game and had to watch more the next day.
What I discovered by the end of the next game was surprising to me, considering my usual biases...

First, though, let's talk about the game which is team handball.
When I hear handball, I think of the close relative racquetball, which I always think of as an indoor game of 2 to 4 players on a small court inside gyms and clubs.
The game that we saw had no resemblance to that game and instead was a hybrid between the best of basketball and hockey that was physical, but not in an over-the-top manner.
Each side has six players and a goalie and the rules can be found in the link above, but as dad and I watched we were trying to learn the rules on the fly.
One rule which was pretty easy to learn was the arc (which looked like a three-point line in basketball) in which the players could not penetrate and had to throw the ball past the goalie from beyond the arc.
Basically, the goalie does not have to worry about being interfered with by a screen from the opposing team.
Another was the player with the ball needed to be mobile after three seconds and can only take three steps.
There was far more than to the game, but I figured those few details out as the game went.
Many of the things that I had wondered about were rules that I would figure out later online, but I really enjoyed the women's game between Denmark and Korea, which would see Korea eek out a win despite the best efforts of Pernille Larsen (shown above against Spain), who seemed to score every time that Denmark had possessions late in the game.
My only wonder was why Denmark did not get the ball to Larsen even more than they did.

I looked forward to a men's game the next day to watch and surprisingly, I did not enjoy it as much.
The men almost seemed out of control, like a car wanting to drive faster than the driver wants it to.
The women's game for me was far more enjoyable and they might have made a fan out of me if I can see more games, which would be most likely online from the top-level European teams.

Sometimes, giving something new a chance can turn out to be quite enlightening and I will be attempting to see more of women's handball as the tournament progresses.... 

Happy Birthday,Dad

My dad turns 61 today and I am not home to wish him Happy Birthday in person.
I doubt that he even knows that this exists and probably wouldn't think much of some of the things that I write here on an everyday basis, but nonetheless, here are a few words about the man who influenced who I am for good and bad.

My dad had a great love of sports and I don't ever remember not having sports magazines around the house.
There was always SI or the Sporting News lying around and sometimes the defunct Sport and Inside Sports coming into the door to read about the world outside our tiny little country area.
Dad worked swing shift a lot and I always looked at it as kinda my job to watch what he couldn't and be able to tell him what went on in sports in those pre-ESPN days, where if you didn't see it, you often didn't find out until the morning newspaper.

We didn't always see eye to eye on our teams, although he influenced teams that I root for this day in ways that would surprise him.
I became a Pirate fan because my dad loved the swaggering 70's Pirate teams of Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, and Dave Parker, and became an Indian fan through a roundabout set of circumstances that would have never happened if not for Dad.
We shared a passion for Maryland basketball that was the one team that we could watch consistently and root for together.
I am not nearly the Maryland hoop fan that I once was, but the 2002 National title team that was the culmination of so many near misses was so important to me because of the common bond with Dad.

I saw games and places that I would have never seen without Dad-Cleveland Municipal Stadium, Three Rivers Stadium, Baltimore Memorial Stadium, Indianapolis Speedway, and the Capital Centre, all were shown to me by Dad

My dad was a lefty slugger(which is why I used the great and underrated Eddie Mathews as the photo) in softball and we played together on a team for a year.
Well, he hit homers and I watched from the bench a lot like most 16-year-olds do when they play in an adult league, but of all the things that I ever did with my dad the most important was the three seasons that I played for him.
He was difficult to deal with and I am sure I was no prize either, but I always prided myself on doing whatever it took to get the win for Dad.

The system that my dad ran in baseball was the building block for how I coached and I added things, put my own stamp on things, etc, but what he did was the blueprint for my coaching days.
Dad never went to many of the games that I coached, but he seemed to really love coming to the games of the best team I ever coached in 2001.

That team was a machine that pretty much ran itself and to this day, is the best team at that level that I have not only coached but seen and I remember him laughing watching them roll up a mercy (15-run lead) win without making an out one night.
He was always telling me to run guys more and keep them moving on the bases and I got quite the kick out of that.

Things haven't always been smooth and I take a chunk of the blame for those things.
I have always felt that I have been a disappointment to Dad, those of you close to me know the story and those of you who aren't that close don't need to be bored, but suffice it to say, I have thrown away things that I can never gain back.
Wasted potential that cost me and my family a far easier life than we have, but things happen the way the chips fall, I suppose.
What he never understood was how much I wanted to be more like him in ways that he never knew.

In any event, these are just a few words on the man with the sweet left-handed swing and the person who has contributed the most to something like this blog even existing due to the love of the games that he instilled in me.

Happy birthday, Dad.