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Okay, so it’s obvious that I don’t really stick to writing any one thing around here. So here I am writing a piece for Cheap Seats this month. My big problem with that is that I don’t really want to talk about hockey, football’s over, and baseball’s still far away. So that leaves basketball. You know how much I know about basketball? Jack shit. But I guess that’s okay since I pretty much just make this crap up anyhow. Come on, I usually review fucking children’s books. Do you really think I’m really some kind of expert on them? No, I just write what makes sense.
I don’t really give one about basketball. Never understood the attraction. From what I’ve seen about the pro level it’s all showboating, and college stuff is just kind of boring. Plus, the school I went to wasn’t big into athletics, so I never really got sucked into anything. At some point, someone around my job is going to start passing around one of those brackets for “March Madness,” and I’m going to try and refuse like usual, but I’m probably going to get pressured into doing one. Even if there isn’t money involved, I’m still probably going to spend time filling that damn thing out, and since there usually IS money involved, I’m just going to be pissing into the wind. But people don’t understand why I don’t like basketball when I like other kinds of sports. Hell, I don’t know, why don’t they like motocross?
So I’m going to make a suggestion now to the athletic powers that be, wherever you are: Dodgeball. Bring back fucking dodgeball. We used to play that on the playground all the time until they made us stop when I was in middle school. I guess too many kids were getting hurt or something. Probably because of guys like me. Without bragging too much, I need to tell you that I was pretty mean when it came to hitting kids with one of those playground balls. If you got one of the really new red ones that had good tread, you could even leave marks on a kid that would last all afternoon. But they made us stop when we started to play a version where, instead of running around, everyone lined up against the wall and was pretty much at the mercy of whoever was throwing. I guess they were kind of justified, since we did call it “execution.” But kids were still wanting to play, so it must not have been that bad, right?
Yeah, can you imagine what professional dodgeball would be like? Get an indoor arena, maybe set it up like indoor soccer or something. You could have two teams facing each other, each with an offense and defense, like in football. Say the offense has four big guys with arms like quarterbacks, and they each get a quarter of the arena. Their job is to obviously hit the guys on the defense, who are fast, showy guys who make their money by not being hit. Give each team a set time on the clock and see how many points your offense can score by nailing the defenders. Then trade off. Simple as that!
You can’t tell me people wouldn’t show up like crazy to see shit like that. Show up, get drunk, scream at the visiting team. Cheap shots on players would naturally be par for the course. Hell, half the fun of hockey is seeing fights, so why wouldn’t this work? And you can have your usual cheerleaders with the big racks, and all that too.
But no, that idea’s probably never going to happen. If they won’t let little kids play it any more, the future fan base is going wash away faster than you can say “Jesus! That was a close one!” after getting two ripped up knees from diving to the asphalt. I don’t know what they’re playing on the playground anymore, but I sure as hell hope there’s something better there than swing sets by the time my kid hits elementary. Probably a good thing, I guess, since dodgeball skills run in the family. Last thing I need is for some bitchy mom to call me up about tread marks on her kid’s arm.
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