the only college football preview that matters

(to me)

college football season kicks off this weekend, you say? is that so? you would think that something as big and fantastic as the introduction to the best four months of the year would receive more hype. something like a cable-sports channel devoting of full day's worth of scheduling around the projections and prognostications of persons no more qualified than me about what will happen on the way to usc winning the national championship. yeah, you're right. that did happen.

quite honestly, i am a little surprised at how indifferent i feel about the weekend. sure, having a real, live college football game on last night, sarah and i agreed, "just felt right". having quality games on tomorrow afternoon and night do get me excited a little. but i am not frenzied. i am probably still more nervous about the braves game tonight and this weekend's series with the mets as i am anything else sports related. why is this?

my best guess is that alabama doesn't really start their season 'til next week. i know. i know. they have their (pre)season-opener against western carolina tomorrow night, but this will be nothing more than a ceremony that will mean nothing more than setting a depth-chart for fans for the rest of the season. the only exception to the notion that this game is meaningless is for those lucky 90 some-odd thousand that will be there in person. preseason or not, a night game at bryant-denny is a night game at bryant-denny. and only in person will you be able to feel how awesome it is to have nick saban roaming the sidelines. i may be able to feel the electricity coming from the stadium around kick-off all the way here in birmingham, but let's face it. that alabama is without prince hall, keith brown, the starting nose-tackle, among others and i still will be disappointed if the game doesn't end in a forty point margin tells me that i should wait and get my rile up next week for the vandy game.

my second-best guess is that hannah has sucked the life out of me. i am not kidding. i feel like i've been walking around with a blank expression on my face for days. and that's a shame. i will look back on this week, maybe as soon as sunday when i go back to work, and wish i had enjoyed having so much time with her and the rest of the family more. sarah and i agree, though, that we are both better off working for a living and not being so wealthy that we could stay at home with each other all of the time for several reasons. one, hannah and caroline would become spoiled, socially handcuffed children and nobody wants that. two, we would kill each other. i feel like i am acting out bill cosby's himself routine in real life. all i am telling hannah is what she can't do. stop this. quit that. it's ridiculous. she is not a bad kid. she isn't even acting out this week. she's just here. and in the way of the ideal week i had in my head that never would have played out anyway even if the shigella didn't keep her out of school all week.

i am trying to take a deep breath and enjoy the last couple days home (not that i haven't, to some degree, enjoyed all of them. this has been a very special week.) i have with the girls. i feel like i've been "good" with regards to taking care of them, but my attitude has probably not always been the best. it's funny. in my mind, after coming home from work and picking hannah up from school, i wonder and wish for more time with her. i am sure it'll be the same with caroline. it's definitely that way with sarah. but, maybe, we aren't meant to be together in the same room with the same three people all the time. maybe without the time away from those that we love the most, we wouldn't really appreciate them as much as we should and eventually do. it's an interesting thought. one worth debating i guess. one that i'll ponder when i wake up sunday and start cursing under my breath at the thought of going back to work.

so, i may not be all go-go gadget college football just yet, but i am sure that'll come. before it does, a couple of predictions for the upcoming season.

- if you believe "the experts" and that usc and their crap-tacular system quarterback is going to go undefeated and win the title this year, i have some land in west virginia to sell you. oh, and on that land will reside the real national champion. quick, name me one guy on usc not named booty. or mcknight. or gable. or turner. your turn. go.

- if you believe darren mcfadden will win the heisman, you don't know dick (and by dick, i mean the quarterback that will lose the heisman for the best player in the country.).

- if you believe lsu is as good as miss. st.'s quarterback made them look last night, tune is next week when they beat va. tech 7-0, touchdown courtesy of the coolest player in the country, trindon holliday.

- if you believe alabama will go any better than 7-5, please send me what you are smoking. or shooting up. or snorting. no, really. whatever it is, send it to me. i want to live in the same make-believe world as you.

- if you believe brandon cox is good enough to win any of auburn's four big road games, well, what can i say? enjoy the delusion. i wish alabama had an oft-injured, really old quarterback that can't throw very hard or run very fast. that would be awesome.

- finally, if you don't believe that the only thing that matters is whether julio jones comes to alabama and brings his five star buddies with him, then you can't see the forest for the trees.

enjoy the weekend. roll saban.

to catch a thief

("how dare you accuse me of stealing?")

((uh...because you stole?))







there is a line we draw in our mind. a line that is formed/molded/defined in any number of ways. those ways include our upbringing. literal black and white laws of our school, city, county, state and country. the bible. what we see on tv. the music we listen to. the friends we hold dear. etc. etc. etc. on one side of that line is right. on the other side of that line is wrong. every one of us, each and every individual on this planet that is as unique as a snowflake, have different translations of right and wrong. each of us have priorities unique to our own person that allow us to rationalize things some would see as wrong as ok. and that brings us to last thursday.

bending the rules is a time-honored tradition in every aspect of life. the idea of "if you aren't bending the rules, you aren't trying hard enough" has almost become cliche'. old hat. a given. acceptable as the norm. but why? i understand that society has (and must) evolved. i understand that with that evolution, there has and will be "rules" that need to be updated, changed even, to fit the current time and culture. but with those changes, some things will always stay the same. one of those things is stealing. if something is not yours, no matter what you think "the world owes me", you cannot take it. it is not right or acceptable to sell stolen merchandise to fellow co-workers to make a profit for yourself. it is not cool to haggle male customers (let's play like the "hypothetical" person i have in my head is female) for their extra change in exchange for your fake phone number. it is not passable to claim two dependents on your federal tax return and reap the financial benefits while you are a hard-working, single-mother of none. and it's not fair for "someone" to bring merchandise taken from a psp and return it at my store for a full-price refund when you didn't pay for it in the first place. because the last straw was the one that i had some personal control over, it just so happened to break my proverbial camel's back.

"how dare you accuse me of stealing, kevin?????"

"you know me!!! how dare you accuse me of stealing????"

i didn't really accuse anyone of stealing. i just called into question that the product returned was a) returned in it's original plastic, plastic that is not used in any psp merchandising, b) the "person" in question did not have "her" receipt and c) "she" had just left "her" store a half-hour earlier/claimed that "she" didn't want to drive back to "her" store to return it/had the product in "her" possession in the plastic for a over a month and thursday was the day "she" "needed" to return it/...at our store. long story short, my boss got involved, the "person" in question was confronted with it and was asked to provide proof of purchase and made "her" way to our store to go apeshit on me.

it's funny how the back and forth ultimately went. i, calmly, asked "her" to explain why "she" was upset. "she", in a ferocious, obscenity laced tirade that even made me proud, could not calmly explain anything. "she" was upset that i had made it an "issue". i mean, why wouldn't i trust "her"? if someone's right/wrong governor was so fucked in their head that they thought it was fine to steal from the government, in my mind, stealing from your employer surely was acceptable too. the hissy-fit ended with "her" telling me that "if i lose my job over this, kevin, i swear to god. it's me and you. it's me and you." now, the "it's me and you" and it's intent is, obviously, debatable. from my end, i didn't get the impression that "she" was talking about going out to lunch and talking things through. but i've seen boyz 'n the hood enough times that it worried me about walking through any narrowly lit alleys for a while.

and then caroline came later that night. and this little dramatic episode felt a lot less important. i told my boss before i drove home thursday that i wasn't sorry for what had happened. i didn't want any apologies for having been berated with language that might have made more of an impact if i weren't an expert in their use. what i was sorry for was that "she", at least as of thursday afternoon, was the one that thought "she" had been done wrong. that "her" life situation was in poor enough shape that stealing had become a natural and acceptable means to an end. if "she" had needed 73 bucks that day, i would have written her a check. but instead she made a bed that slept "her" looking for a new job.

work last thursday was pretty easy for me. i just did my job. i followed the rules. enforced a couple that needed to be enforced. but at issue here is not that an employee stole and got caught. it's that they thought stealing was ok. it's that their right/wrong line in their head had been kicked by the mule that is life and they now stared at the world cross-eyed.

i don't believe that we are born bad. i believe that we are born into a world that needs us to make choices. i believe that we are bred by a god that allows us to make those choices. some would call that a fallen world. i call it grace. and by grace, i don't think stealing is ok. or other "bad" things. and i thank god for that. in that same breath, though, i wonder what my role is to the cross-eyed.

i don't really understand how i came to where i am today, therefore i am unfit in many ways to lead. and so i choose to lead, not by command, but by example and hope that, also by grace, god's will leads my actions. the world is not fallen, people, but there are parts of it that are broken.

here's to fixing them.

hannah and caroline and me
(part two)

this is just a tease. in a couple days, hannah's website will become hannah and caroline's website. all of the hospital and coming home pictures will be up for your enjoyment. you can just follow the link from this page on the right. under "to pass the time", click on my muse(s).

hannah and caroline and me
(part one)


whew!!! what a week! the fall softball season started with a whimper. the braves began what looks to be their slide out of playoff contention even though they rid themselves of the cancer that was bob wickman. i had my physical person threatened by an about-to-be ex-employee of pet supplies "plus" and, let's see, what else...oh, yeah...we had a baby!!!

that's right, folks! caroline lilla o'kelley (20 and 1/2 inches long, 7 lb. 9 oz.) joined this world on august 23rd at 10:26 p.m. thursday was pretty much going according to normal (outside of the physical threatening part) up until sarah got home from tuscaloosa suffering from "back" pains. turns out those back pains were, in fact, labor pains. hannah and i ate a quick dinner, took a quicker bath and we were off. we made it to the hospital around 800. sarah got her drugs and things calmed down around 915. the nurse checked sarah around 945 and things ramped up again when the nurse looked at me and said, "we are going to have a baby in a few minutes." i jumped into action as the dad, which entailed not much more than rubbing sarah's forehead and pulling her left leg back when instructed by the nurse. the whole birthing process went really fast as sarah pushed for all of 15 minutes and caroline was here. as kiker so eloquently put it, "with the second one, the tracks are already greased." ahhh, kiker. it was fun that it happened fast enough that hannah was still hanging around with maine in the waiting room. she and grandmother got to come in and meet the new addition before they went home for the evening. shortly after the initial meet and greet, the weekend took a turn for the somewhat unexpected.

as hannah tried to fight off sleep on the car ride home, she threw up. then, when she woke up friday morning, she threw up again. we are no doctors, but this told us something must be wrong. so, i went home and cleaned up, picked up puny hannah and we came back to the hospital. after some short notice help from amy, i took hannah to the doctor along with a poop sample (yes, you read that right. amy and i fished hannah poop out of the toilet to take it to the doctor for them to test and make sure that she didn't have a disease that i only heard of two weeks ago and still have no idea what is. thankfully, we found out this morning she doesn't have the "shigella". she just had a stomach virus...edit - as of monday afternoon, hannah is now POSITIVE for shigella and out of school for a week. amy, i am going to need you back here around wed. for another stool sample gathering. :(), we came back to the hospital, finished the day one visits and came home for the night. sarah and caroline stayed at the hospital alone, which kind of made a daddy sad, but things are going to be different the second time around. it's only taken two days for that to become very apparent.

day two and this morning were very smooth and calm. hannah turned the corner and became herself again. sarah began breast feeding and already feels better about this go-around as compared to her and hannah's experience. several people have commented that caroline favors me, which i don't really know if that's the case of if they are just trying to make me feel better. hannah still looks so much like her mommy that i am now certain that all of my dna got beat up by sarah's mean, bully dna. caroline, on the other hand, came out with product on her big, head full of hair self which led to several "you and caroline have the same haircut" type jokes. no matter. i'll take what i can get.

and so, the adventure has begun. caroline has been, thus far, very respectful of my priorities. her timing will not interfere with the fantasy draft tomorrow night or week two of softball. what a good girl she is. hannah and i are going to be spending a lot of time together the next few weeks, what with mommy's driving restrictions and the whole thing about her being the baby's only source of nutrition. this should work out fine for me. i'll let you know when hannah starts getting sick of the daddy/daughter time. as for sarah and me, i have no idea when we will ever see each other or talk again. there seems to be so much to do and take care of. sure, we are in the same room, but so are (now) two other girls that very much need attention. this is going to take some getting used to. i can feel it. but it's just another challenge. a mental one for sure. but a physical one too, and those were always my preferred choice anyway. i think we'll be fine.

so, here we are. o'kelley, party of four, reporting for duty. let's light this candle!!!

sarah and i.
are.
alabama football.


it's funny that he put it this way, but when sarah's dad listened to his daughter telling him about her mom being in the hospital and feeling shorthanded for the coming weekend, his response was, "i am coming. you can add me to the depth chart." perfectly appropriate timing considering we are less than two weeks away from the first college football saturday of the fall. football analogy aside, it spoke, in a very profound way, to the way that our support system seems to be strengthening at the same time our family (sarah, hannah, caroline and me) does the same. this is, most likely, not a coincidence.

when sarah and i met and began our courtship, our family compared and contrasted in similar ways. we both came from divorced families. we both were raised in strong, single (at least in spirit) mom households. we had brothers on/recovering from drugs. we had both lost touch and contact for some period with our fathers. done the same with god and church. we were caring people and giving of our time. but we couldn't seem to translate that care and concern fully to the significant other that we happened to be around. and then we ran into each other.

and something, very naturally, clicked.

we married, but my baggage, at the very least, would keep us far away from our relationship "peaking too early." we were strong in ways. not so strong in others. we knew of mistakes of our parents that we didn't want to make again, but that would not prevent us from making up some of our own. we had hannah. we stayed busy. we enjoyed some days. and we didn't others. i couldn't get over how many jackasses there were at my church. i left the church. sarah supported me. i went to huntsville.

and then it clicked for real. it took almost four years for us to learn how to be married. and now it all makes sense. the bad seems silly. the past seems like, merely, a means to a greater end. and we now move forward. stronger than ever.

along the way, as our health increased, other things improved. sarah's dad, who had already peeked his head back into the door, knocked the door down and introduced himself as her father again. my friendships with andy and kiker became defined by real life and not just by sports. my other friendships found new meaning. young persons that i befriended while they were in high school became true friends that i could call on short notice and they would be happy to pick up hannah from school and take care of her. relationships with youth council members evolved into adult and meaningful conversations over mexican food. we randomly visited with my mother and nothing bad happened. things change, but things never change. these are only small (in number) examples of my and our cup beginning to overflow. and this doesn't even include the fact that i am beginning to look forward to church again.

great things have a tendency to lose their shine from time to time. just ask alabama football. but if something was great from the beginning and the legacy's foundation was laid true, there will always be potential for a new coat of wax. a new look. a sparkplug here. a five-star recruit there. an anniversary and second child everywhere. it's just a matter of putting things back in perspective.

the good things along the way of my life didn't "just happen", but i kept getting in my own way and couldn't appreciate what was happening. and that doesn't mean that everything is perfect now. but the potential for greatness is very much in our grasp. with increasing depth and air in our lungs come the fourth quarter, who knows what we as a family may end up accomplishing. who knows what may be healed or created along the way. who knows will take care of itself.

i read a column this week talking about a major league player that, in his first season, felt like he had to prove his worth in every single game, but this year he was realizing that he and his team were defined by their year, not 1/162 of it. what a wonderful moment that must have been for him. and i can relate. i can look back and see where i tried too hard some days and not hard enough on others. and i can remember the severe peaks and valleys that came with my defining myself by those individual days. i don't know if it's an age thing or a state of mind thing, but i don't do that any more, and i am a lot less stressed, which is a good thing. my and sarah's marriage, if health and circumstances treat us well, will not be defined in any one year. it will hopefully be defined by fifty or more and i count myself blessed to realize that at 30 and not 60. in the same way, my church will not be defined by the success of our effort over the next five years, but that definition and legacy is already written in it's over hundred-year history. that is also good to swallow.

some day in the future, sarah and i will talk about how awesome it was way back when alabama won the national championship in the 2009/10 season. it will be fun to combine those memories with those of '92 and the seventies that we read about and the bear that grumbled over the coolest pregame montage in football. it will be fun to catalog the parallels of our life and the school that helped shape ten-plus years of sarah's life/taught me why "fan" was short for fanatic. it will be easy to remember, with flippancy, the bad times of both. our foundation has been laid true. and we may have to slap on a fresh coat of vacation from time to time. but our life will be well worth cheering for. and the folks we hold near and dear to us will help tell our story.

"i am always for the animal...never for the person."

listen. i am coming to a conclusion that may sound mean-spirited, but the longer i work in a pet store, the more confident i am in my theory. i feel comfortable sharing this with you because i share the same boat as those that i am about to call out, but experiences like the one i had last night only drive my point home. that point? people that live with an animal inside their house will eventually go crazy. some have already crossed the divide into lunacy-ville. but make no mistake, people, if you have a pet inside your home, you (and i) are traveling down that road.

you don't have to invest too much time in The Word to happen across the creation story, days four and five. these happen to be the "days" that god creates "huge whales, flying birds, cattle, reptiles and wild animals - all kinds" including us humans. he also proclaimed that we, humans that is, either hold dominion over or are responsible for (depending on which translation you subscribe to) all the animals on the earth. as people go, you can probably place yourself, as it concerns your feelings towards animals, into one of these two camps. you are either in the "dominion over" camp and can rationalize everything from eating meat to hunting for sport or you can fall into the "responsible for" camp and can rationalize everything from eating meat (as long as the meat doesn't come from a slaughterhouse or mcdonald's) to never visiting a zoo because it seems "inhumane" for an animal to be held in captivity. as goes any either/or subject, the evolution of society has seen the "dominion over" camps and the "responsible for" camps develop their own specialized, extremist sects. the extremists in the "dominion over" camp go so far as to disembowel weak pit bulls like mel gibson in braveheart because the owner just bet his bmw that his rich, nfl-quarterback cousin bought him and came out on the losing end. the extremists in the "responsible for" camp can be defined in the lady that came in the store last night.

the lady seemed nice enough when she came in. she was wearing her sunglasses at night, which added cool points in my book and i didn't think of her as a troublemaker until several minutes later. several minutes later, i overheard her bitching to tiffany about the "health" of our cockatiel. and in some of her points, she was correct. the bird is sick. it is listless. it does seem lethargic. all of those things are true. but the lady started getting hostile in her accusations that we were going out of our way to harm the bird. she alleged that in her previous trip into the store she noticed that the bird had been fed hamster food (which could have happened on accident, but i don't believe did). she alleged that all the young people responsible for the birds and small animals well-being were idiots. and she told me that in cases such as these, she "was always for the animal, never for the person." and she lost me. i could go into detail about the rest of our conversation, but in those details i would lose my point. the short version is that i, in some way, convinced her that we were all doing the best that we could to educate ourselves in the way of cockatiel care and we would go out of our way to do the same with the rest of the animals. she seemed ok with my assertion and left. my point, though, is that she had already punched her ticket to crazy town.

and why? probably because she, like many others, have fallen victim to the notion that animals can become "part of the family" when the truth of the matter is that the notion of "family" as humans define it is lost on a pet. do my cats appreciate my giving them food and water? they seem to. but would they care any less if it was someone else giving them food? no, i think not. and this is even more of a truism when it comes to some of the other "pets" that we sell. hamsters? gerbils? birds? snakes? spiders? i have a hard time believing that past their instinctual needs of survival they place any great weight on their relationship with those that tend to those needs (dogs may, to some degree, be the exception in this argument. if a thief came into my house, my cats would either hide under the couch or purr and rub against the robber's leg. my dog, KAMmie would probably bravely and ignorantly get in the way because she likes me.). in fact, even with pets that have been in a loving home for years upon years, i am willing to bet, if such a thing could be proven, that most of their waking life is spent inside their cage/aquarium/house worrying about the next time the "hand of god" will reach into their prison and lay "crickets from heaven" at their feet. and because of this combined with being around persons that take pets a little too seriously on a daily basis, i tend to be disappointed in those persons more than i am a champion for them.

that said, i am an enabler. i now exploit these very primal and very human desires to feel like you are taking care of something for money. i encourage crazy cockatiel women that their own would be better off with bird "candy" and other things in the store with high profit margins. after all, that is my job, right?

i just feel like there is something almost inherently flawed in the idea of of keeping an animal in your house and developing a parent/child relationship with it. i think you can start to lose sight of the intended relationship between man and animal as god intended it. i think you can place too much weight on the plight of a cockatiel versus the importance of talking in a civil manner to a fellow human being. i think you can shelter yourself off from the world and forget that being "responsible for" an animal does not give you the right to call out people who have not gone quite as crazy as you just yet.

but who am i to judge? like i said, i am in this boat. i have cats and who knows what weight i would put into my relationship with them if something tragic happened and my real family was taken away from me. right now, though, i am thankful that i still maintain a perspective that allows me to differentiate between the role i play in hannah's life and that of my cats and dog. i am thankful that i am not in a place that i think it would ever be a good idea to put my dog in a t-shirt. i am thankful that i am certain KAMmie enjoys her sticks in the backyard just as much as a $30 tire rope. and i am thankful that i am nowhere near the crazy cockatiel lady last night that is always for the animal and never the person. god, help me never reach that place. and if i do reach that place, that crazy place, please give kiker or andy the peace of mind to shoot me and put me out of my misery.

hannah and me, part twenty-nine

"a picture is worth a thousand words." - chinese proverb

i surely won't add a thousand of my own. but it's hard to believe that this may be the last pre-caroline chapter in the series. i don't even know what i want to write about, necessarily. i just thought it would be nice for hannah to know that i was thinking of her. thinking of times like the one pictured above that i always seem to take for granted. i remember this particular nap in georgia vividly. you know what i remember? being uncomfortable and hot. pretty sad, huh?

it wasn't until i saw this picture that i thought about hannah being perfectly content. happy to take an exhausted nap on top of her daddy. meow in one hand, daddy in the other. it was a good, long nap and it served it's purpose. she was recharged for the rest of the day and the ride home afterward. and that's really what it's all about, isn't it? trying as hard as you can to make your child perfectly content. trying to balance that effort with her childish wants of candy and barbie movies and more candy and everything her way all the time. it's during those childish times that i tend to lose sight of the greater good. my benefit to her in times of better and in times of worse. my need to be for her full-time the kind of father and relationship that i lost when i was eight. i get frustrated. i get moody. i get short-sighted. and i hate that.

i think i am getting better, though. i haven't really been ashamed of myself, with regards to my actions around her, in a long time. maybe being aware of wanting to change really can translate to actual change. maybe. it's this kind of attitude that i am going to share with hannah soon and thank her for the lessons. because of her and her patience and grace, caroline will be the better for it. hannah will be the better for it. and we as a family will be better for it.

soon enough, the name of this series will change. hannah and me will be retired. hannah and caroline and me will be introduced. that sounds like fun. hannah, you are the most wonderful muse a man could ever ask for and your daddy loves you for inspiring me to couple something that i enjoy with what i hope, someday, is something you will see as a fun and special gift.

sleep tight, baby girl. you'll always have a spot on daddy's chest.

dale murphy is concerned for our children

i am a day late referencing this story due to working yesterday morning, but i wanted to comment on it anyway. it provides an interesting conflict, for me anyway, between the unconditional love of a childhood hero vs. the unconditional respect i have for the new home run king. the story came out yesterday that dale murphy, my all-time favorite baseball player, thinks that barry bonds is a "terrible example for our kids." He is also quoted as saying that he knows, "without a doubt", that barry used performance enhancing drugs. and this enlightens me to something i never knew about dale murphy. dale murphy used to stick needles filled with horse testosterone into barry bonds butt.

right? i mean, he said without a doubt, which means he has what we have wanted all along with this whole steroids/barry bonds mess. empirical, first hand evidence of barry bonds juicing. and the only way he could have such evidence that would lead him to making such a claim is if he was holding one of barry's butt cheeks in one hand, telling him that "this may sting a little" (or a lot depending on the quality of the horse testosterone), sticking the needle in the other cheek and then emptying the syringe. thank you, dale murphy, for closing the book on this oh-so-frustrating story.

obviously, i am giving good 'ole dale a hard time. i mean, he is mormon, so the real story here is which one of his wives came to him and told him that it was time for him to throw his two cents in. the older, fat one that usually cooks dinner. the middle-aged, soft-spoken one that takes all the kids to school. or the trophy-wife one that is just pissed off that the older, fat one got dale in bed before she did. listen, it's hard for me to swallow all of barry's accomplishments as "natural", whatever that even means. but the more i hear people like bob costas bash the guy, the more i sympathize with him. the more i want to cheer him on. the more i want him to set the record so far out there that even arod can't catch him. the more i want to give him a big hug and tell him that this too shall pass. and i appreciate dale for his concern for hannah and caroline and all the other children in the world that he is certain will try steroids because he "knows" barry did, but i have a message for dale. shut the fuck up!

we are not all experts on everything. when did it become so unacceptable to just say i don't know? when some reporter approached dale about barry, shouldn't the response have been something like, "well, he looks bigger to me than we he first came up, but if we are going strictly on putting on weight as you get older, someone must be injecting me with hgh...in. my. belly. hahahahahahaha!!!", and let that be it? but no, he had to act offended at the thought of someone not hank aaron, someone not as mormon as he is having the record and just couldn't deal with it. or maybe he had some other motive. who knows. and i mean, i get it. i do. when someone asks me a question at the store about fish that i don't know, it would make me sound better if i made up some bullshit about ph and nitrate and blah, blah, blah. but i don't. if i don't know for sure, i ask someone else and hope that the customer respects my want to be honest over my want to be "right."

i guess i shouldn't complain too loudly. i like to know what athletes are thinking just like the rest of us. and i've often wondered about how cool it would be to talk baseball and hitting with dale murphy, but, most of the time, i just come away disappointed because i realize that they don't have any special insight into anything other than the sport they are really good at. and this is another example of that. i guess if i ever talk to dale, i'll ask him about baseball or about how he keeps his wives from killing each other.

i just won't ask him about barry. he may take hannah and caroline away from me and throw him in his barry-free basement never for me to see them again.

let me just go ahead and say i am sorry...

(a prelude to my championship)

i get it. i really do. i know how horrible it is to try and listen to someone talk about their fantasy football team if you aren't playing in their league. i mean, seriously, you could give a crap, right? i don't want to hear how lucky you are to have drafted ldt or how you "just had a feeling" that frank gore was going to come out of nowhere and be all-world. it's a pain. and so, let me say that i am sorry for subjecting anyone that isn't included in the same fantasy football league as me for this post. please just humor me. i'll be back to bitching about the church or the braves soon enough. for tonight, though, i am going to play the "this is my blog!" card and just hope that you don't tune out because of it.

for the first time in the history of our league, we are doing a draft lottery (sarah is serving as the super-secretive accounting firm) based on the order of finish from last year's season. it's the first time in our history that we've had so little turnover that it's realistic for us to take last year's record into account and work from there. the rules are simple. clint's the only newbie, so he's screwed. he has a 1 in 55 chance of getting the first pick. cody is almost as screwed. he won the playoff and, thus, the league last year and he'll have a 2 in 55 chance. because i am awesome every year, i, too, am a longshot at 3 in 55. the memphis grizzlies of our league (team with worst record and best chance in the lottery)? good 'ole heath, who suffered gamely through one of the worst seasons in the history of our rather competitive league. he's got a 19% chance of the first pick. sarah will pick names, the first name gets the first pick and so on, until she gets ten different names and our order will be set, one through ten. keep in mind, the grizzlies ended up picking fourth in this year's nba draft. and so, drum roll please...without further ado, the results (and pithy commentary) coming up next...

and the first pick goes to...the grizzlies!!! god bless heath. inexperience led him to draft a kicker in the fifth round last year. a mistake not likely to be repeated. would he ever trade out of the first spot??? that is now the question.

2) richy (ex-champ)- damn him. richy autodrafted (he wasn't present for the live draft) ldt last year with the third freakin' pick because jeff went with larry johnson and ken got hosed. no way he gets ldt this year...right?

3) jeff - one of three new editions last year and the best performer of the freshmen. rode a pretty solid draft to a hot start and then slumped in the second half. could be a sleeper.

4) old man kiker (ex-champ)- one of four founding fathers (me, ken and richy the others) left in the league. kiker will be in it 'til the very end even if his team sucks. and his team sucked last year. decimated by huge injuries. and still lost the final to cody. unbelievable. a really good fantasy player. and my biggest rival.

5) ken - why did ken get hosed? he claims he couldn't get in the draft in time. and who did he autodraft ahead of ldt? shaun alexander, fresh off his mvp season. also a really solid fantasy player. it feels like it might be time for ken to finally win this league.

6) me (ex-champ)- i couldn't pull a top three pick in this league if my life depended on it. last year i drafted fourth and that was as high as i've ever picked. i got peyton with that pick. i will have to play without him this year. there's no way he's falling to six. dammit.

7) perry - infamous in the league for one thing. several years ago, before the undroppable list was created to prevent such things, perry purged his roster after losing a few games in a row. it was also before we went to a two day waiver period, so all of his stars were immediately available to whoever showed up in the league and noticed first. the beneficiary of perry's white flag? richy, who rode his newfound loaded roster to the title. this is our league's fantasy equivalent to an already playoff-ready spurs team drafting tim duncan. completely unfair, but it's a great story to this day.

8) clint - has played with us once before and returns after a year off. we'll see what happens this time around. the first time wasn't pretty.

9) rookie - rookie gets screwed in the draft order worse than i do. but then again, rookie always ends up with at least one of "those guys" like frank gore who will burst out of the 8th round and carry his team.

10) cody (ex-champ)- our league's namesake this year. the honor for winning the previous year wears off pretty soon for our champ. he drops to the last pick of the first round. he is rewarded, though, with the first pick of the second and will pick back to back through the entire draft. kind of a cool consolation prize.

there you have it. three weeks from tonight, the draft is on!!! i can't wait!

how do you spell underachiever?

(part two)

((H-U-M-C S-O-F-T-B-A-L-L))

what does this picture represent? i could wax philosophical on your ass if you wanted me too, because, to me, this pictures represents a lot of different things on a lot of different levels, but i won't do that today. i'll answer the opening question with a direct quote from one of my teammates. "I believe the team out there last night is the strongest and the most talented team i’ve seen you have." and he's right. i've been organizing humc softball for seven years now, and the team you see above (not pictured: mark mccollister, brian gulock and a man named cody) is, by far, the strongest we've ever assembled (and there is something great to how we've done it. i don't know if there is a "right way" to build a team, but we don't go out searching for ringers. we have just added friends and guys that we like to be around and we play together. it's that simple. we just happen to be pretty good too.). that taken into consideration, though, tuesday night we fell victim to the same thing that humc teams of yore have fallen to with a scary (and shitty) amount of consistency. a first-round flame-out. and i don't know why. i don't know if it's because we know how good we should be and we let those expectations get to us. i don't know if we just happen to have "one of those nights" every night we open up a tournament. i don't know if it something deeper or darker. maybe some cruel force has something against us and it leads to the only night of our season that sees three of our strongest bats go 1-9, all the while leaving runners on base like that is the point of the game instead of actually scoring those runs. whatever it is, it is completely (shitty) frustrating. in past seasons, we have won the regular season only to be unceremoniously dumped in the first round. in past seasons, we have lost but one game only to match that season long total in the only game we allow ourselves in the postseason. this season, we won seven out of our last nine regular season games and entered the playoffs with, what seemed like, a great deal of momentum, momentum that we lost somewhere between the parking lot and field three. i gauge the power of our team versus others in the same manner i make my picks for my ncaa bracket every march. i look at our match-up and ask myself if i think we would win a seven game series. this season, i only answered "no." to that question with one team (you can guess it wasn't the team that beat us tuesday.). the same goes for march madness, which is why i was not at all surprised that florida won the championship game. there was not one other team in the field of 65 that i thought had a legitimate chance of taking florida in a seven game series. so, i (and many, many others) were not dumbfounded at how the bracket shook itself out. but the reason that there are upsets that have people all over the nation cursing and ripping their brackets up every march is the same reason our softball team seems to wallow in misery more often than not when it comes to our own tournament. it's one and out. upsets are bound to happen. and they do. and george mason becomes a household name. and some crappy church team that we mercied eight weeks back ends up making us carry heavy chins and hearts to our homes prematurely. but we move on. and we play another season. we only have to wait a couple weeks to begin exacting revenge and then in another couple months, we'll have another shot at a tourney. another shot at defeating the failures of our past. another shot to live up to expectations we make for ourselves during the regular season. we'll see what happens.

on a positive note, jesus was in the building last night in atlanta. a three run home run is how mark teixeira introduced himself to his new fans. and mahay and dotel closed out the already defeated astros like they should have. by forcing the knife in just a little farther and then twisting. you never get a second chance to make a first impression? well, consider me impressed then.