Old Time Family Baseball

Longtime New York sports columnist Jimmy Cannon used to have a theme for rainy days, a periodic column he titled, “Nobody asked me, but….” Veering from his typical sports beat, Cannon would give his opinion on a range of topics, and for a writer who considered himself a friend of Joe DiMaggio, the columns were a marked departure from form.

Jimmy Cannon died in 1973, but as my friend and fellow blogger Michael Clair has instructed participants in this blogathon to write about whatever, I’m going to take a page from Cannon’s playbook.

Nobody asked me, but….

I love to write. If I could only do one thing for the rest of my life, I would lock myself in a room and write. Course, the writing would get deplorably bad after about Year 4 of this, but that’s another story.

My girlfriend is the most courageous person I know. She is also one of the sweetest.

This is the year the American economy starts to improve. Granted, I’ve been saying some iteration of that the last three years now, but things are still looking up in my book.

I’ve heard cats can resemble their owners. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old Tabby and Abyssinian named Augustas. Little man looks, acts, and eats like his dad.

Nirvana and Pearl Jam have begun getting played on classic rock stations. This makes me feel old, even if Pearl Jam essentially came on the scene two decades ago as a classic rock group-in-training. Those guys sounded like dinosaurs in 1996.

Kim Jong-il’s death has me thinking of “Team America: World Police.” I’ve probably YouTubed the film’s deliciously offensive musical number, “I’m so Ronery” three or four times now.

Now that America has a black president, can we start thinking about a black Batman?

I would make a terrible undercover narcotics detective. Paradoxically, I might also make the world’s worst drug dealer. In either vocation, I might get shot my first day on the job.

I also wouldn’t last a day in the Mafia.

I’ve learned a lot of important lessons in my life. Here’s one: Writers and broadcasters generally make for excellent interviews. It makes sense, seeing as they get paid to talk. Athletes, by and large, aren’t nearly so articulate.

Publicly controversial people are often privately insecure.

If there’s a Hell, that “So what we get drunk?” song must get played constantly. It booms over the loudspeakers of Hades. During waterboarding sessions with Satan.

Dancing is not as easy as it looks. Nor is singing in public, hitting a baseball, or making a citizen’s arrest.

If I went around looking like the guys on Jersey Shore, I would get beat up constantly. One of the women on that show once referred to herself a walking holiday. I’d be a walking asskicking.

I think I could run a 40-yard dash in under five seconds. I could throw a baseball at least 60 mph. If push came to shove, I could probably kick a field goal.

Graham Womack can be found over at Baseball: Past and Present.

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