Teachable Moments

"Turn me around. The game is on."

One of the things I have looked forward to most about being a parent is the opportunity to share my wisdom and warped perspective on the world with my young, impressionable progeny.  As evidenced by previous posts, I have probably spent more time than is strictly healthy envisioning ways to turn my child (or should we be so blessed, children) into a veritable nightmare for the poor teachers she will one day be assigned to learn from. You poor, poor souls....

Even though my daughter is not yet old enough to retain any of my wise instruction, I am trying to get in the habit early of finding and utilizing “teachable moments.” The phrase “teachable moment” is a popular buzzword (buzzphrase?), which I can really only tolerate using with a healthy dose of irony and/or sarcasm. Since virtually all of my instruction to my daughter is laced with irony and/or sarcasm, I think I’m safe.

Over this Labor Day weekend, we encountered a few teachable moments. During the first quarter of the USC v. ECU game, I was able to instruct Olivia on the definition of a “piss-poor effort.” Spike TV’s Star Wars marathon allowed us to observe an “overly simplistic paradigm of good and evil.” On Sunday, we were fortunate to have a few people over to play cards, and we learned all about inside straight draws, bluffing, and throwing good money after bad. Not that there was any actual money involved. Ahem.

And my obligatory Labor Day weekend yard work and grilling allowed us to expose her to early olfactory associations: sweat, fresh cut grass, charcoal smoke, grilling meat = daddy.

The weekend was also full of teachable moments for her parents. The things I learned:
1. Nothing starts your day quite like a triple helping of spit-up in your boxer clad lap.
2. Four hours of uninterrupted sleep is a blessing beyond dreams of avarice when you have a three-week old infant.
3. There is a nexus of cuteness at which some adults will voluntarily cease all higher brain function in favor of making “squee!” noises. Mostly this effects the female of the species (not to be sexist, but it does), but there were a few males who lost all reasoning, too. In case you are wondering, the equation for this appears to be 2 human infants + 1 kitten weighing less than one pound crawling on said infants = 1 cretinous mass of adults.  
4. Until daddy grows mammary glands or the baby is bottle-trained, he is nearly always the wrong person to hold her, even when she’s not actually hungry. Conversely, if she is not actually hungry, nearly anyone with boobs seems to have the ability to keep her happy.
5. Our baby’s bladder control is inversely proportional to the newness of the clean diaper. To put a finer point on it, there is a 50% chance that any given new diaper will be soaked through before we pick her up off the changing table. That’s talent.

All in all, a very instructive weekend. Hope yours was just as good.

Preseason Hype!!!

I am a late convert to college football. I attended games as a kid with my uncle and cousin, but truth to tell I wasn’t terribly interested back then. It could have been that, never having played football, I didn’t completely grasp the game beyond the obvious “run the ball in that direction” object of the sport. It could have had something to do with the fact that, throughout my formative years, the South Carolina Gamecocks - very definitely “my team” despite my ambivalence about football - were downright mediocre. Sometimes terrible.

If the fact that my ten year old self was a little “meh” about a team I only saw win at home about three times total makes me a fairweather fan in your eyes, then fine, I’ll own it. My wife thinks I still am, when really I just have a self-preservation instinct. If I don’t turn off the television after Stephen Garcia’s second pick in as many possessions, my blood pressure will literally explode my head. But I digress.

The fact is, it was really grad school before I finally started following college football with anything approaching genuine interest. The Gamecocks were less mediocre by then, certainly, or at least more consistently not-terrible. But I also think the sport as a whole had become more interesting, or at least better marketed, than it was when I was a kid. The BCS, for all it’s loathe-worthy crapitude, has at least made the entire football season an incredibly lively affair. Every week matters in the national title race, which makes for compelling entertainment, even for someone like me who grew up with nothing but a great big shrug for most professional and collegiate sports.

I enjoy watching college football, and I’ve enjoyed watching the (relative) success of the Gamecocks over the past several seasons. I particularly like watching some of the Gamecocks’ recent all-stars in action: Marcus Lattimore and Alshon Jeffery most notably. These guys are phenomenal athletes, and the individual accolades they have received are certainly deserved in my humble opinion. Moreover, unlike so many college athletes, they and several other recent recruits appear to be decent human beings. Laying aside Stephen Garcia’s off-field shenanigans (and why shouldn’t we? After this off-season, how hard can we really be on a legal adult for drinking?) the current crop of Gamecocks appear to be a high calibre bunch... in the greater scheme of NCAA athletics at any rate.  

All of that said, the recent article by The NY Post picking USC to win the national title is a bit of a stretch for a team with single digit post-season wins. I’m not saying it can’t happen, and I certainly would love to see it happen, but lets take this thing one goal at a time?

The pick has gotten a lot of coverage, both nationally and locally. That’s exactly what The Post wanted. If The Post (not noted for its extensive sports coverage as far as I can tell) picked Oklahoma or Alabama, who honestly would have noticed? How many extra issues would they have sold of that issue?

South Carolina makes some sense as a black horse pick. They are favored to win the SEC East this year, and the winner of the SEC (not the East per se, but hey...) has won the national title pretty consistently in the past several years. There’s just that little matter of actually winning the East. Then winning the SEC. Then winning the title. I will say that I don’t remember a time in my life where such a string of event was more likely. Which is not the same as saying it is likely.

But, then again, anyone who picked Auburn to win the title this time last year would have been laughed out of town by most supposed experts. And at this point in the season, everyone has the same record, and the same shot at the crystal football. That’s one of the joys of college football. You never know. I'm looking forward to seeing how much of the hype we can live up to.

They did it again!

For those of you buried under a rock, or who do not have a single Facebook friend with a remote connection to the state of South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Gamecocks won the 2011 College World Series last night in a 5-2 win over the University of Florida Gators. There is very little I can add to the voluminous coverage this event has already received, so I'll keep this short, and highlight some of the...high...lights... ahem.

- USC's win last night set new records for consecutive NCAA Tournament wins (16) and consecutive CWS wins (11) .

- USC joins a handful of other schools (six) to repeat as National Champions.

- USC had the distinct honor of having closed out Rosenblatt Stadium, the home of the CWS for over 60 years, in 2010. This year, they have opened the new home of the CWS - TD Ameritrade Park.

Additionally, there are a plethora of individual storylines that are simply phenomenal - Christian Walker playing through a fractured wrist bone not the least of these. But I'm not a sports writer - I'm just a fan who is immensely grateful that they won this series in two games so I can go to bed at a reasonable time tonight.

Well done Gamecocks. You give me hope that my daughter will not grow up despairing because of Gamecocks athletics.

The Gamecocks, the CWS, and Dads

I thought this would make a good, if belated, Father’s Day post. Somehow the link to a video of Samuel L. Jackson didn’t have the same tone.

For those of you not tuned in to the world of College Sports, or even those who just don’t care about anything other than football and basketball, you may not be aware that the Gamecocks of the University of South Carolina are currently defending their national championship title in NCAA men’s baseball at the College World Series (the CWS for short) in Omaha, Nebraska. Go Cocks! (See, we are allowed to say stuff like that out loud in South Carolina without anyone raising an eyebrow. Try that in Chicago.)

So far, so good. The Gamecocks are 2-0 in CWS play and have tied the NCAA baseball tournament record for consecutive games won (carried over from last year) with 13 straight. Not bad for a few kids from Columbia. They currently need one more win to get to the best-of-three national title series for the second time in two years (and I believe the fourth time in the program, but don’t quote me on that). They will get their chance on Friday night against the winner of the loser’s bracket game (Cal v. UVA), which will be played on Thursday. We will anxiously await the results of both of those games.

What you may not be aware of, even if you have followed the CWS, is this little item. David Roth, the father of Gamecock’s pitcher Michael Roth, was forced to choose between his job and following his son to Omaha. David missed seeing his son play, in what essentially was his breakout performance, at last year’s CWS, because he could not get the time off from his job selling cars in upstate South Carolina. He vowed that if they made it back to Omaha this year, nothing would stand in his way. Ultimately he quit his job to follow through.

David Roth has taken some flack from members of the public for this - giving up a stable job in this economy seems like the height of foolishness. But he has his supporters too, and personally I think the odds are good that his job may still be available for him after this tournament is over, or some member of the Gamecock nation might have an opening for a salesman and dedicated father. But who knows? Frankly, I doubt all that was much of a consideration for David. I suspect he just wanted to watch his son play.

Parents - the good ones, anyway - make all kinds of sacrifices for their kids. I know, because I can’t imagine there is anything in this world I wouldn’t do for my daughter, and I haven’t even had the pleasure of meeting her yet. Most of the time though, parental sacrifice is not of the big gesture variety exhibited by Mr. Roth. Not to take anything away from Mr. Roth’s actions, but it’s the everyday, unsung sacrifices that make the biggest difference: foregoing a trip, or purchase you were looking forward to so your kids can take a field trip or go to camp; putting hobbies on hold so you can spend a little more precious free-time at tea-party or soccer games; working a job you hate, or even a job you like for longer hours than you want to so your children have everything they need.

The thing is, I doubt most of those parents - again, talking about the good ones - see any of that as a sacrifice. Still, it bears saying thank you. So, thanks Dad.




...and Mom, but Mother’s Day was a lot longer ago.