Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Hoarding Numbers


When I turned 38 a few weeks ago, I did the usual sports nut thing and took to trying to identify --in my head—any legendary (or even notable) athletes who wore number 38 on their jersey. There’s not many, but there are a few.

First off, there’s #38 Curt Schilling who pitched for my hometown club the Phillies. More importantly, he pitched for the Red Sox in 2004, helping them win the World Series less than a month before his 38th birthday.

Less famous and more legendary is #38 Leroy “Chucky” Mullins, who played college football for Ole Miss as a star defensive back before getting paralyzed during a game in 1989 against Vanderbilt. During Mullins’ short life, and since his death in 1991, he’s inspired a lot of people.

The there’s the “Z-Man”, the temperamental, once-inspiring Cubs pitcher #38 Carlos Zambrano, who gave up a 3-0 lead on opening day and might have well just thrown for 38 opposing team runs.

Beyond those three, I can’t think of anyone else, so I hope that this roster – a retired pitcher, and paralyzed and deceased football player and a Cubs pitcher being stereotypically Cublike--- doesn’t bode poorly for my next year of life at age 38.

But if I ever get sick this year, I’ll remind myself that it was with a 103 temperature at “The Flu Game” that Michael Jordan almost single-handedly beat the Utah Jazz. In that Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, Jordan finished with an inspired 38 points.

It is a strange thing that some sports enthusiasts have a savant-like quality of being able to cough up sports-related numbers; whether it is jersey numbers, the score of a game 20 years ago, or a minor batting statistic of a forgotten about player. We always do this with the assumption that it matters to the rest of the non-sports-obsessed world, like anybody cares. Always terrible with numbers, I am one who is able to remember a player’s shirt number like his face or his stats in a way that suggests that I should have been good at Math. Only problem is, I stink at Math and at remembering other things too.

Yet jersey numbers do help. If I was given an address to a Saturday cookout somewhere, at, say 3144 West Irving Park Road, I would –knowing that I can’t handle numbers on their own—translate this to shirt numbers of notable players. I might remember it as Reggie Miller / John Riggins.

That’s #31 for Reggie Miller, who played with the Indiana Pacers; and #44 for John Riggins who punished other NFL teams with his yardage and won a Super Bowl with the Washington Redskins. Sometimes, this practice pains me, because, dammit, I hate the Redskins.

But it’s not just me…there is some significance to it all…this numbers and players business. Almost anytime you see an autograph of a player from any sport it is usually accompanied by a squad number. Beyond that, even bigger deals are made about numbers by players and clubs.

On June 11, the 2010 World Cup will feature an Argentina squad with a number 10 for the first time in 20-some years. Number 10 will be once again worn by Leo Messi, who is currently regarded as the world’s best soccer player. Yet #10 was last worn in the 1980s by the great Maradona, who now coaches Argentina.

For a long time, Argentina wanted, badly, to retire their number 10 in honor of their best-ever player, but FIFA, soccer’s governing body, wouldn’t let them. Then again, retiring numbers is world football isn’t very common.

Soccer’s only shirt number retired in the last two decades, to my knowledge, is that of Marc-Vivien Foé who wore number 23. Foé was an international from Cameroon who played his club career as #23 at Manchester City. Like Chucky Mullins, he had to die to get that honor of having his number retired, having passed from a sudden heart attack on the field –yes, during the game-- at the 2003 Confederations Cup. Not even Hank Gathers got his shirt number retired.

Anyhow, a month later David Beckham subsequently took #23, the unofficial story goes, to honor Foé while switching teams from Manchester United to Real Madrid. Besides, Becks’ old strip at United, #7, was already taken at Real. So in taking #23, Becks not only honored Foé, but took #23 for another reason too. Word has it that Becks took #23 to draw inspiration from another sports hero, one Michael Jordan.

In America, Jordan’s number carries a lot of clout and fanfare. LeBron James, the best basketball player in the world, now and potentially of all time, also wears #23 for the same reason. It’s after Jordan, but maybe also because LeBron is the only player up for the challenge of matching Jordan’s legacy.

Yet, if LeBron ever came to the Chicago Bulls (don’t get your hopes up, people) he would be forced to pick another number since #23 is retired by the club. The Bulls had originally retired Jordan’s shirt number in 1993, but it was resurrected in 1995 when, unannounced and to much fanfare, Jordan ditched the #45 jersey to start a game again as Number 23. Because the Bulls’ #23 was officially retired in the eyes of the NBA, both Jordan and the Bulls were fined to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

Like His Airness, LeBron, and others, Shaquille O’Neill has worn the same number throughout his career at several teams, number 32. Yet it was as #34 that Shaq won several championships with the Lakers, only because number 32 had been retired in honor of the great Magic Johnson.

One need not be famous to be savant-like and possessive about squad numbers. We’ve all had number 23s on our sports teams as adults and when we were kids. In my generation, most claim it to be like Mike. Although, I have one friend who said his 23 was for someone else; and he would not tell me who, forcing me to figure it out.

Answer: Ryne Sandberg. Not a hard guess, since I’m a Cubs fans and since my pal also has a dog named Prior (after Cubs pitcher Mark Prior). Since then, I have imagined there’s probably some die-hard Oakland A’s fan who has a dog named “Fingers” after Rollie Fingers, the great Hall of Famer pitcher. And why not? Rollie’s number, 34, was retired by two teams, the Milwaukee Brewers and the As, as was his handlebar moustache.

But this ain’t just a guy thing. For all of the sports I’ve played on a coed basis, plenty of women have staked their claim on #23 and #34 too.

One athlete friend of mine has had a lock on number 26 her entire life, and I have a hunch she dresses up her dog as #26, too. As a high school freshman she negotiated the lock on #26 for two sports –field hockey and lacrosse—and probably every intramural flag football game since. Her lifelong obsession, Philadelphia Flyers hockey and their great goal scorer Brian Propp, who wore #26, appears to be what burned this number permanently into her soul.

All in all, we hog our favorite numbers, just like we hog the ball for one reason only. It’s to grab a piece of the skills and good fortune that our favorite players bring to the sport, our team, and maybe, too, for the sake of a little self-inspiration.

And if there’s no Math involved, then hoarding numbers and inspiration is a wonderful thing.


Andy Frye writes a couple times a week about sports and life at MySportscomplex.blogspot.com and via My Sports / Complex on Facebook and Twitter.

Writings © 2010.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

"Bowling for Comedy in Paris"

‘The following is part of a series called Short Short Sports Stories which are real life stories, funny stuff, quips and things that happened around 1000 words.

“The official French National Past time is wearing a beret while smoking” is a little something I’ve joked before regarding the French. Sports fans think about stuff like national past times, such as Baseball in the US. And we wonder about what else people across the globe –those who don’t have baseball-- do for fun.

Maybe a better question is this: What should we do with ourselves when not in the domain of our own national past time?



The French are as complex we Americans and Brits. But if you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting France, you know they have a soft spot for American culture whether or not they would admit to it.

The first time I went, in 1990, it was ‘50s this and James Dean that. Elvis was everywhere even amidst tabloid rumors that Elvis was alive and well. So apparently he was alive and well in France all along and probably still is. If only the French had thought to invent the ‘50s diner first, they’d be gazillionaires.

The last time I visited in May '01, the American 1950s was still a fixation in the City of Lights.

Just so you don’t think me a wine-swilling, jet-setting snob –a stereotype affixed to Cubs fans by our brethren on the South Side-- let me point to that this was a guys’ trip. We weren’t in Europe to view the Tintorettos or exchange Rotary club banners. We were there for the fun trip in Europe, that’s all.

I arrived there on the cheapest air tickets, and I couldn’t have cared less where in Europe we had went. Lucky for us, still single, KLM’s flight attendants all looked like models and the six hour flight concluded with a good breakfast and some Mr. Bean videos.

The Sixers were in the playoffs and as usual my mind was on sports, roaming around the city with two friends, Brian, an architect and semi-professional smart ass; and Dugg, a writer who ended up staying in Europe.

The first day was the usual Paris stuff: museums, French palaces of grandeur and Revolution history. We visited Jim Morrison’s grave at Père-Lachaise, and ate lots of fried food with too much dressing. And with the Euro currency in the toilet, we dined like kings but more importantly used our dollars to drink, like drinking alcohol was an Olympic event.

Tourists second, but sport fans first, we stopped in a pub in St. Germain in mid-day to watch soccer, soaking it up with the British expats viewing the FA Cup final. But it didn’t end there.

One drizzling Sunday night we had nothing to do while roaming around the Left Bank, spotting a bowling alley, Le Bowling Mouffetard, named after the street it sat on. So, to avoid getting soaked, we went in to the Mouffetard. There, we bowled to Elvis hits as they do in France.

To this day Brian and I still refer to each other as "moof tard", which indicates either the cultural sophistication we failed to absorb, or just our lack of maturity.

Bowling is one sport that consists of 95 percent predictability, 5 percent who-knows-what. Once the ball drops onto the wood planks you know whether it’s a complete gutter ball or something good. But the final count doesn’t present itself until the ball strikes the pins. Upon impact it could be one pin down, the glory of a strike, or one pin short just to rub it in your face.

In the US, Pro Bowling gets a bad wrap. I can’t for the life of me name the best bowler of all time –the sport’s Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth—and while the game does get its share of TV time and endorsement money, it does seem like Bowling is treated unfairly as if it were a trailer park past time.

Fair enough, most of the game’s “stars” on television are tubby middle aged guys, with greasy hair who forgot to shave. The shirts that pro bowlers wear are a little dorky and the shoes are purely functional and fashionless. Definitely, bowling is an American regular guy’s sport.

That said, Bowling is fun. America regards it fun enough for kids’ birthday parties and Wednesday night leagues throughout one’s adulthood. Maybe like shooting pool, Bowling has its regimented place: it is something for enjoying over a beer, but you don’t read about it in the next day’s paper.

Furthermore, it could be that Bowling is meant to be more fun and less work. After all, have you ever known anyone who has gotten in shape for Bowling? Ever run, stretch, or lift any weights just for Wednesday night?

The worst bowler of the three of us, and possibly the world, I didn’t care much about keeping score, just the having fun part, hitting an occasional spare and many gutterballs. I thought it was weird to be bowling to the oldies, wondering what other weird things could happen.

Right after it had stopped raining and we left to walk a block away up to some plaza where –according to my writer friend-- another masculine regular guy, Ernest Hemingway, had lived and written some masterpieces. In a very un-Hemingway sort of way, a comedy of errors ensued.

Brian, sort of a tough guy, got approached by some old man holding a ferret, who had man boobs, that was trying to bum a smoke off him. Manboobs was annoyingly French; speaking his mother tongue swiftly as if any of us knew what he was saying. He remained persistent, wagging his finger at Brian to reprimand him for being cheap over a cigarette, and Brian, who doesn’t speak French or Ferret got into it with him. Brian played his usual wiseguy game, requesting (in English) that the man who didn’t speak English ask him correctly and politely for a smoke, in English.

Meanwhile, we saw some burly 20-something American guy in a Carhartt barn jacket and a baseball cap wake up next to some other passed out drunks who weren’t American. He must have gotten lost and left behind by the rest of the fraternity, because he seemed confused, and super wasted. Stumbling, stuporing, and leaning forward, the inebriated American with the barn jacket then dropped his pants and did his business right there in the public grass, before stepping in it and walking off toward us.

About two minutes later Manboobs and Barn Jacket walked toward each other, but both in their own little world, didn’t notice each other. Staggering slowly, the two collided in the square, lost their balance and almost went into a table full of tourists eating dinner. What an interesting metaphor for a clash of two cultures.

Both drifted into the darkness, which was probably a good thing. And just like in European Vacation, the Chevy Chase film, some bell started ringing.

We took that as a sign of enough past times and culture learning for the evening. After all, we too were tourists, and with ringing bells we decided it was it was time to get the hell outta there.


Andy Frye writes a couple times a week about sports and life at MySportscomplex.blogspot.com and via My Sports / Complex on Facebook and Twitter. He’s horrible at bowling on every continent.

Written words © 2010.

Check out Le Bowling Mouffetard at www.bowlingmouffetard.fr | 73 Rue Mouffetard 75005 Paris, France