Nothing But Iron: The Boy of Summer July 5, 2007 by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. I have learned in this life that I can’t do everything. I can do a lot of things, but something–like sports writing–has to take a back seat sometimes. There was a time when this frustrated me, but now I accept that being busy is the price one pays for a balanced life. At present mine is balanced by tennis, gardening, photography, coaching and watching kid basketball and the day job, which sometimes encroaches upon the night. I am on a basketball-playing sabbatical because I was not able to find the proper combination of velcro (see discussion below) devices to prevent the three days of pain and debility that followed each of my most recent hoops engagements. Tennis, though it is my second favorite participant sport, has supplanted basketball because tennis doesn’t hurt me as much. I think it has something to do with the jumping. There is not so much jumping in tennis, unless you play on television or you are young and vigorous and envision yourself playing on television. Technically speaking, it is not the jumping that is harmful in basketball, but the landing. One would think my ever-shrinking verticality would have a protective effect, but it has not so far. Perhaps I will resume basketball in the next decade when my vertical jump becomes measurable with a couple-sheet stack of construction paper. My rationale for a tennisocentric existence is that it would be wholly intolerable to spend another long stretch of the summer without the ability to play any sport, so I choose tennis. That said, the hardwood pulls at my heart like gravity on skydiving sumo wrestlers. If I were the wagering type, I would bet I don’t get all the way to August without at least one guest appearance at Sunday basketball. As a middle aging athlete, my greatest fear is not of torn ligaments or tendons, fractured bones or reduced stamina. My greatest fear is Velcro toxicity. Every time I add another brace to my sports ensemble I wonder if there is not some maximum Velcro dosage, for example 377 milliVelcro units, which once exceeded, leads to seizures, low blood pressure or paradoxical clumsiness. Without my Velcro-enabled ankle supports, patellar tendon strap and reusable ice packs, I would be reduced to a common, ineffective 46 year old, adept only at channel surfing. Who knows what brace is next, but I am getting the smallest one possible, just to be safe. I wonder too if one can accrue a tolerance to Velcro, such that more is needed to get the same effect. This may be the case with me. So far I have not had any serious Velcro-induced complications, but thoughts of toxicity and tolerance are ever-present distractions that have surely caused a few basketball turnovers and tennis mishits (pronounced my-shits) over the years. It is July, almost past lettuce season, and the Brewers still win, particularly against sub .500 opponents. The good news is that there are a many such opponents from which to choose, and in the span of 700 games, Milwaukee will play most of them about 17 times. My guess is that one of two things will happen: 1) The organization will spontaneously mature or make some kind of adaptation to improve the team’s proficiency against fellow contenders, or 2) The celebration of having made the playoffs will be very short lived, which would still be better than the established standard of no celebration at all. As for me, I will continue to follow the team retrospectively in the newspapers and on Sportscenter. I half-heartedly want to engage, but the truth is that the Brewers are not likely supplant any of my current priorities any time before the NLCS. Back in April, shortly after I abandoned you, I read that Brett Bielema was still upset that the Badgers had not gotten a BCS Bowl bid. Be assured that I am a big-time Bielema fan, but I had to laugh when I read that. Remember, Bielema, like his predecessor, Barry Alvarez, is an advocate of the bowl system. My reply, not that Bielema would care, is this: Get over it, Coach. BCS lackeys don’t get to whine when the arbitrary system they promote fails them arbitrarily. It is designed to fail. How former athletes with competitive overdrive like Bielema and Alvarez could support the BCS is one of the greatest mysteries in all of sports. On the day they want to complain about Wisconsin’s seeding in the NCAA Division I football tournament, I am all ears. The NFL draft was held. I found the coverage to be captivating. I watched the whole thing in real time. Then I watched it again on TiVo. O.K. that’s a half-truth. O.K. I lied about that being a half truth. It’s a full false. I didn’t watch any of the draft except for an 8 second replay of Brady Quinn hemorrhaging contract dollars like blood from a slit wrist. Ted Thompson, a.k.a. totally inept guy, did little to help the Packers in this draft. My credentials for saying this are as follows: 1) I watch football. 2) I read newspapers. 3) I listen to the radio. 4) I rent a web site. 5) I am an anesthesiologist. You may not know this, but anesthesiologists are required to pass graduate level courses in sports management theory prior to entering residency. In one course I had to write a paper on optimal draft strategy. Nobody knows why this seemingly superfluous requirement exists, but for me, it has worked out well. If only Ted Thompson would make better use of my expertise. Then again, we could wait until the fall, when the drafted players actually play, to judge this year’s draft, but in doing so, we risk losing the opportunity to give our friends the impression that we are intelligent and knowledgeable, even though that’s a half truth at best. I did not want Randy Moss to be a Packer, and I may have been wrong. We will not know for sure until October or November, however, the fact that New England took him makes me suspicious that it is a smart acquisition after all. I suppose the Pats will win another Super Bowl and Moss will finally be the megastar he sees every time he passes his reflection in a shiny store front window. Excuse me while clean the vomit out of my computer keyboard. As for the Brett Favre portion of the so-called Moss controversy, I can say emphatically that I really don’t care. My brother Bruce had this to say about the (other) U.S. Open: All day I had to listen to radio personalities debate whether or not the USGA had made the course unfairly difficult and if we fans found it entertaining or not. I look forward to the US Open. I don't care if they put leather recliners in the fairway and a freakin' clown on 18 that spits out your ball if you don't hit it in the right hole. I can't relate to 18 under for four rounds of golf. That's ridiculous. Four putts and triple bogeys... now that's very real and very entertaining to me. Granted it might get old if the best players are brought to their knees every week during the season. But, for that one long weekend each year I can stand in front of my television and honestly say, "Yep, I can do that." I love it. I love every minute of it. I predict Tiger will be OK. As a former health and fitness professional, I found it ironic, if not disgusting, that this man they call El Pato (pot belly and all) needed a pack of cigarettes down the stretch to help him keep his cool while a noticeably ripped Tiger couldn't catch the fat ass. This coverage probably set my former industry back about 10 years. A damn duck got away from a tiger. Go figure. And now, the hey-that’s-not-sports portion of NBI: A few weeks ago I read this headline on MSNBC: "Greenspan sees one-third chance of recession." Anybody else amused by that? If not, consider the titles that ended up on the digital cutting room floor: "Greenspan adamant: Not really sure what will happen," or this mathematically equivalent positive spin: "Greenspan sees two-thirds chance of economic adequacy." Truth doesn’t sell. Optimism doesn’t sell. Fear does. Drama does. Now that we are armed with Greenspan’s sort-of prediction, what should we do? Spend more? Spend less? If so by how much? One third? Two thirds? I suppose we could continue to go about our business of living our lives, see what happens, and respond accordingly, but that doesn’t make very good news and MSNBC knows it. Another coup for the Big Apple. Not the city, the other Big Apple, the one that makes gadgets. Bill Gates loses yet another race in the brutally competitive MP3 player market: first amphibious soap-resistant MP3 player. I would not have believed it if I had not heard it with my own ears, but the search for son Connor’s missing iPod Nano ended on the clean side of the laundry room. Connor had left it in the pocket of his shorts and Kelly scooped it up in an armful of dirty clothes and washed it. By "washed it" I don’t mean gently wiped surfaces with a damp cloth, I mean wetted, soaped, spun and tumbled dry. High heat. We held a short memorial service for the dearly departed device and pondered the best way to break the news to our kid that his Christmas present was sparkling clean but permanently nonfunctional. A few days later I saw Connor downloading songs to this same iPod. Incredulous, I asked if it really worked. It did. Even life in the electronic age has its mysteries. Two weeks ago I visited my family in Phoenix. We were scheduled to leave Monday afternoon. On Sunday I suffered an episode of SIABL (Seemingly Intractable Acute Billfold Loss). This was problematic because I keep many important things in my billfold, such as money, credit cards and my drivers license, all of which are helpful when traveling. Under normal circumstances my billfold turns up within a few hours, so I did not panic until 2:30 a.m., when I temporarily suspended the search due to darkness behind my intractably heavy eyelids. Monday morning I awoke at 5:30 to resume the search, but after two hours of redefining futility I was left with only two options: plan B, cancel the trip or plan C, go anyway. I chose plan C, which took me first to the DMV where, with the aid of a passport, I got a duplicate drivers license in about 30 minutes. Kelly’s lent me her extra credit card (the one she uses for shoes) and I used her debit card to get cash. I wouldn’t be able to shop at the Phoenix Sam’s Club, but I would be able to secure a rental car and buy dinner for my family. Ten minutes before I was to leave for the airport I went to my closet to get my last packed bag. I noticed a pair of dirty gardening shorts on the hook. It occurred to me that I should put them in the laundry so Kelly could wash them while I was gone. It was immediately apparent that these shorts were heavier, by the weight of a billfold, than shorts with empty pockets. Sure enough, my billfold was right where I put it when I got dressed the morning before. I was back to plan A. Consistent with the industry standard, our Midwest Airlines flight out of Milwaukee was delayed at the gate. We sat stranded in our seats while the runways were closed for some "emergency" that never made the newspapers. After 30 minutes the pilot announced that we had been released to taxi, but minutes later he announced another delay, along with an apology. The ground crew forgot to service one of the bathrooms, so it had to be done before we could take off. It would cost us another 15 minutes. Airline delays are too commonplace to be newsworthy, but the pilot’s honesty about the screw up is well worth mention. He could have easily confabulated an excuse to deflect the blame elsewhere: Ahhhh, ladies and gentlemen, that the duct tape has come off the aft gyrospeculator and has to be replaced or the plane will melt when we reach altitude. I suspect airline employees make stuff up all the time to appease their customers, but he told the truth instead. I respect that enough to make a point of flying Midwest again. Early July brings out my patriotic spirit, not to mention my urge to explode things. I am going to ask my friend Matt Talarczyk, a surgeon stationed in Iraq, if the soldiers light fireworks to celebrate the Fourth. My guess is that fireworks take on a different connotation when Iraqi insurgents are shooting them at you. Matt says his base gets daily mortar attacks, which I am sure is not such a big deal if you are not living on Matt’s base. He says the base is large, so the odds of being the "unlucky one" are pretty low. Yeah. It is hot in Iraq, "but a dry heat," Matt jokes. When he arrived it was in the 120's, but he was told it would be hotter as the summer evolves. Must be nice to be able to bake bread without an oven. I told Matt that he and his comrades inspire me when I am working on call late at night. My job never seems so hard when I think about what he must endure. "You and I probably going at the same pace," he replied, "the only difference is that you are not wearing bulletproof vests or Kevlar helmets. Hence I am working out more." He tells me he has lost 75 pounds since he arrived there in late May. That puts him close to his playing weight back in the youthful days of his forte–draining 3-pointers on my Sport Court. In words partly borrowed from our forefathers I commemorate our nation’s 230th birthday: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, except that some have common sense and others, like the guys who were lighting fireworks within a mile of my bedroom window at 3:39 a.m. on July 5th, are TFM’s, where T = total, and M = morons, and F is the bad word that motivated my mom to put soap in my mouth when I was 9. Furthermore, guys–and I say guys because stupidity of this magnitude is almost always linked to the Y chromosome–who are up at 3:39 a.m. lighting fireworks have a high likelihood of being drunk. I hate to be judgmental, although it is easier to be judgmental when someone wakes you up at 3:39 a.m., but if you are drunk lighting, you are not only profoundly stupid, but you must take pride in that distinction, although I am suppose these guys knew where their billfolds were. In summary, all men may be created equal, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. If I offend any readers who happened to be involved in my noise-induced insomnia Thursday morning, let me know and I will personally apologize with my car horn in the wee hours of any morning you choose. ____________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column published at regular intervals during all tangible sports seasons except during the tennis/extreme gardening season, during which time writing at regular intervals is just not a priority. This issue is dedicated, with special gratitude, to Major Matt Talarczyk and his military medical colleagues in Iraq. ©2007 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.