The Thrill of No Costass

OK so Saturday August 16th will not go down as the greatest day in sports history, that is unless Costasshole or Jeremy "I have my tongue so far up Phelp's sphincter that I can taste chlorine" Schaap happen to be making a report on that date in the future, but it was a schizophrenic sports day for this member of TDGP.

It started with taking my nephew and wife to see maybe the worst team in professional sports right at this moment, your 2008 Cincinnati Reds. Shorn of the star power and beautiful swings of Griffey and Adam Dunn, this team wouldn't make it to the medal round in the Olympics. John Valentin started at First Base, and somehow Dusty Baker has yet again found a way to start an over the hill never star, Corey Patterson, and ruin his confidence by refusing to bench him. Patterson is not hitting my weight, there are a lot of major leaguers that aren't, but he can sure hustle down the line as he grounds out meekly to second base. As a longtime SF Giants fan who has commiserated with Cubs fans, I got to tell you, Dusty Baker is OK when he has a good veteran team that doesn't need a lot of direction, but he is absolutely horrible with young or way too old talent. 

We paid $14 for upper deck seats, the nephew not understanding the economics of a grad school budget, and the only thing that made it worthwhile was watching Albert Pujols hit 2 homers. Marge Schott would have rolled over in her grave and cursed out an African-American if she saw the between inning entertainment, which featured some douchebag doing a live feed from the souvenir stand trying to peddle Reds merch when he doesn't know the names on the back of the uniform. I felt sick from the mixture of crass commercialism and the pungent smell of hopelessness I gleaned from the Reds fans.

But enough of the boring bullshit. I wanted some Olympics, and having no cable, I searched the interweb until I came upon the official NBC website for the olympics. After agreeing to sign over my first born so Costass can suck its blood and remain ever-living, I was able to get a video of the entire US vs. Spain men's Basketball game. Sans commentary. Seriously. All you can hear are squeaks of sneakers, gasps from the audience, foul protesting in Spanish, and serious cuss words from Team Redeemable. My anger from the Reds debacle subsided as I watched Team Rakeem thrash the Spaniards for free on my computer without commercial interruption or some NBC poon-slap babbling on about Carmello being a really good teammate.

No one is going to come close to beating this team. Lebron is scaring me (an aside - at this time, even as a Laker fan, I have to admit that Lebron is better than Kobe), Dwayne Wade has his hops back, Chris Bosh is realizing that he can play seriously impressive defense, and Deron Williams is the best point guard in the world right now. All of that bullshit aside, the best part of watching was the ability to hear how serious these guys are taking it. They scream out defensive assignments and yell at each other to let the ticky-tack foul calls go. My favorite moment was between Kobe and Melo, and no it didn't involve a discussion of the Zagat guide ratings for hotels in Colorado. After Dwight Howard customarily missed the first of two free throws and the ball landed in the hands of a hapless amigo, Melo chided Kobe for not boxing out. Kobe cursed back at Melo and bet him that he will get the next miss before Melo. Which led to Kobe skying for a rebound on a made free throw and somehow all of this made me feel proud to be an American.

So the moral of the story is, spending money for sports often sucks, but somehow getting it for free is better. Just like oral sex and watery domestics.