Guttersnipe

You know what really grinds my gears?

Those people who make a big mewling deal about the name “soccer”. It’s called soccer in North America. We have a football already so we call the other one soccer. Just deal with it. Those who insist on calling it football as if they were some worldly global citizen – better yet pretending not to know the term at all or acting as if anyone who mentions football is taking about soccer – just makes them the biggest jackass on the farm. Oh – that argument that you kick the ball with a foot therefore it should be called football? And it’s oh so obvious? Asinine.

By that logic all sports should be named after the game’s main object or “sportguffin” and the part of the body with which you hit or otherwise manipulate said object. Because otherwise we’d all be backwoods rubes, right?

Brilliant. Now racquetball is called the same as always but so is tennis. Squash, badminton, and ping pong, too.

Handball is handball. But so are basketball and volleyball and baseball. Or should it be batball? That would be cricket’s new name, though. Maybe it could be glove-and-mittball. And what of football? Handball yet again? Or maybe hand-and-footovoid?

Hockey becomes stickpuck or handstickpuck if you want to get that deep into it. Golf is rendered handclubteeball, perhaps. Don’t even get me started on track and field and the pool sports.

And on it goes into a huge pile of wet, wriggling, meaningless tripe.

I perused the most recent bowling standings and apparently we are now into the “2nd Part” of the league year. In the first part we ended up in 4th place out of 18 teams with 52.5 points, trailing the leaders by 9.5 points. Not a bad placing if it weren’t so very misleading. We were the very worst actual bowlers but our initial awfulness set such a low handicap that the slight improvements we had been making were enough to secure us many an undeserved victory.

I don’t know how many games we are into part 2 but we’re sitting in 12th now with a mere 9 points. That puts us 6 back of the leaders but a healthy 7 points up on the last place squad, who have mostly just stopped showing up.

Last week’s game did not help us, dropping us from 5th place all the way down to the mid-gutter where we currently reside. It was a motley crew we faced but they were hardened bowlers. One was a middle aged guy who runs some of the stuff around the league. He’s on the mic doing the 50/50 rolls and other such events sometimes. There was also a middle aged woman, though she did not appear to be his wife if I remember correctly. Several shots of rye would suggest that I do not. Then there was a younger guy, maybe early thirties. Weird fella, just from looking. And finally, a woman of a certain age. Strange mix but they were ruthless on the lanes.

In the opening game they whomped us by nearly 60 points. Our best score was a 144 and their worst was a 139. I brought up the rear with a sparkling 105.

In the second game they whomped us again, just not quite as bad. Only 35 points this time. I was the best on our side with 124 piddling points and that was only better than one of the ladies on their side.

In the third game they whomped us. 30 point spread. And spread us open they sure as hell did. Our best was a 145. Again only better than their bottom roller. It was an all around ass-kicking, all three games and of course the overall.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles in the tough world of mixed league handball. That’s why we find ourselves languishing in the bottom third of the standings. We hit our peak at #1 some thirty-seven weeks ago now it seems and we’re not getting back there any time soon. We might just have to take up handball next year instead. Maybe go footgrounding or bodywatering. Who knows. It’s a big, confusing world of sports these days.