No Tennis, Anyone?

Now that I've explained in exhaustive detail my "history," such as it is, of me being a sports writer, I will now explore the natural follow-up question¹: Why not my favorite sport?

The obvious answer is one of accessibility. While basketball is far from America's favorite sport, it has a massive following and has a team what seems like every five miles across the country. During the season, there are games every night. Anyone with a decent cable or satellite package is likely to find five or more games on TV a night. There is no shortage of basketball, which means there is a need to provide coverage of it².

My position is kind of unique; everyone wants to cover UNC. Few people want to cover the MAC, but there is a decent amount of people that follow it. Being one of those people that actually want to cover it, I found a niche. No such niche exists in tennis.

While college basketball is probably not even in the top five most popular sports in America, it is still far, far ahead of tennis. Only professional tennis matters; nobody cares about college or the minor leagues³. And, in case you didn't know, professional tennis tours. It moves. I can find MAC games within a few hours' drive 2-4 times a week; Cincinnati has a one-week tournament, Indianapolis is the same, and that's it. The next closest tournament is the US Open in New York, and a couple other tournaments of significance are sprinkled around the country. However, the majority of the tour happens beyond my reach and means.

I suppose I could follow the tour on TV and write about that⁴, but what is the point of that? While I know more about tennis than most and probably could lend some insight into what is going on, it's not going to be enough to be worthwhile. This dovetails into a couple more important points. The first is that tennis is a simply awful sport for television, perhaps the worst. Tennis loses everything in translation on television, and I mean everything. You don't get any sense of the speed, the athleticism, the spin on the ball. I'm the biggest fan of tennis that you know, but even I have a hard time watching it on television. In person? Riveting. I can't take my eyes away.

Basketball, on the other hand, translates excellently to television. Not as well as football⁵, but very well. I love watching in person, but I can tune in and lose very little, perhaps even gain a little; it's easier to take the court as a whole on the screen than in person. I'm not getting to every MAC game, but I am watching it on TV and listening to it on the radio, and it gives me enough that I can use to write about. Not so for tennis.

The other point is that tennis, frankly, sucks to write about.

John McEnroe wrote in his autobiography that tennis is "poetry written on water." It is beautiful, but once it's over, you can't recapture it. The sport is by nature somewhat ethereal; the written word can't really capture it. This is why so little actual tennis writing actually has to do with the matches themselves. Instead, writers look more for what is happening around the game. Occasionally, they try to play psychologist and figure out what is going on in a player's head, a fruitless exercise.

Also, there is no way to statistically quantify tennis. There's that etherealness again. Sometimes, the player that wins the most points loses the match. It's goofy. We don't really try, either. Look at the stat set for a match sometime. It ain't telling you much.

I know some sports reporters grow to hate the sports they cover for a living. However, I think I could deal with seeing the world and meeting all sorts of people for a while. Plus, I'd be intimately involved with my favorite sport.

Heck, I can't be worse at it than Peter Bodo. Maybe I should give it a shot.

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1It's natural to me, at least. Then again, I've been known to put myself through the Socratic method with me.

2Ever notice how my paragraphs tend to be short? Telltale sign of a newspaper writer.

3The Challenger and Futures circuits, FYI.

4I actually did try this for a while. I did not enjoy it.

5We're actually at the point where it's better to watch football on television than in person. This is part of the reason football is the top sport in the country. It's also part of why tennis will never be more than a niche sport in the United States.

I, Sportswriter

I've been a writer almost as long as I can remember. I wasn't producing anything profound by any stretch; some of my earliest work involved creating stories for the Hot Wheels cars that I spent many an hour racing¹ in my room. My love of sports does stretch back as far as I can remember².

I had also established that I wanted to be a journalist at a young age. One project in seventh grade involved picking a career and doing research for it, including shadowing a person of that particular occupation for a day. I followed a reporter at the Sun Newspapers and just thoroughly enjoyed it.

So when I told people I wanted to be a reporter, many of them connected this desire to my love of sports and asked if I wanted to be a sports writer. I scoffed and sneered that I wanted to be a real journalist³. I told those people I wanted to report on things that matter.

How, then, did I get here? I'm officially a semi-professional sports journalist and am currently in talks to run MAC Report Online, as well as an incredible opportunity I'm not going to fully discuss at this time.

What I really wanted to be was a political reporter. What better, to follow the movers and shakers around and tell the world what they were doing⁴? I would be contributing to the democratic process, ensuring an informed electorate. I actually believed this.

So I set out with that goal in mind. I was able to land the statehouse reporter position at The Post, and I did a lot of work that I was proud of. I produced copy that was compared favorably to similar work at major metro dailies. I was doing what I had dreamed of, and I was good at it⁵.

That pretty much ended when I left The Post. I couldn't go back, and when I finally could, I found that I didn't want to. I wrote my column for Speakeasy for a couple years, and it was fun, but it was more an exercise in self-indulgence than anything else.

I finally left Speakeasy when I got tired of its terrible management⁶, and my public outlet for writing, save my blog, went with it. I had my poetry- always have- but that has always been a largely private endeavor. I never really stopped writing, but I felt like I needed an outlet. However, I had become disillusioned with the journalism industry and felt my life going in another direction, so I wasn't sure what to do.

Allow me to rewind a bit. I signed up for the newly-revamped Bobcat Attack forum in early 2005, just as the Ohio basketball team was starting on the run that ended with a MAC tournament championship and a thrilling date with Florida in the NCAA tournament. While I had always been an insanely close follower of sports, my knowledge of them was quite superficial.

Through the forum, I became connected with other fans. I started signing up for other fora and connecting with more people. As I did, I acquired more knowledge. Through these connections, I happened upon The Mid-Majority and Fire Joe Morgan.

While it may seem crazy, I credit these sites with opening my eyes⁷. Through FJM, I learned of sabermetrics⁸, which has been invaluable in fantasy baseball⁹. More importantly, Mid-Majority, and its spin-off site, Basketball State, turned me on to tempo-free stats.

I won't bore you with the specifics, but it's an entirely new, different, and superior method of using statistics to evaluate player performance on the basketball court¹⁰. I saw the value in these stats early on and jumped on them.

One of the other fora I'm a member of is the Buffalo fan site, UBFan. One Buffalo fan, Tim, runs a blog, Hoops Junkie. In January 2007, he decided he was going to go on vacation and needed a couple people to man the ship while he was gone. I figured, hey, why not? So I asked if I could give it a go, and he agreed. And it was fun, so I asked him if I could make more contributions to the site every so often. Apparently, he liked what I wrote¹¹, and he said that was cool.

So I was doing that for a bit, and Dave Ruthenburg, who runs MAC Report Online¹², said Tim sometimes contributed to the site and saw I was writing for HJ as well and wanted to use a couple of my articles on his site. Would that be OK? Yeah, sure. Eventually, he said I was free to submit anything for the site that I felt would be appropriate.

So I was doing writing for Hoops Junkie and MAC Report Online, based solely off of my passion for MAC basketball and writing. I was employing my skills with tempo-free stats¹³, which had grown a considerable amount. I shot off an email this winter to Dave, who had recently moved to Oklahoma, a far cry from MAC land. I asked him if he needed any help covering the tournament. He said yes. I suddenly found myself with a media credential for the MAC tournament.

I ended up covering most of the tournament. I did two of the four games in the first and quarterfinal rounds, plus both semifinals and the finals. It was a blast, and I took in every minute. I even set up a Twitter account for MRO and gained a lot of followers. It was a big hit. The 12-hour days, while tiring, didn't faze me at all.

During the tournament, Dave flew in from OK and we spent most of the latter part of the week sitting next to each other. At some point, he asked me if I would be interested in running the site next year, as he felt like like I was doing good work and he needed someone closer to the ground.

So I went, essentially, from random idiot on a message board to what looks to be the editor of a respected site, as well as the undisclosed opportunity, which I'm actually more excited about, and will explain later. As I joked to Whelliston in Cleveland, I'm a lesser, regional version of him¹⁴.

That took a lot longer to write than I anticipated. Sorry. Still, it's kind of extraordinary journey. I kind of feel bad for people that want to be actual sports writers. I just consider this a hobby that has taken me on a great ride. Don't know where it's going to take me next, but I'm excited to see.

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1 I had tournaments with full brackets and seedings and everything. I even had a rankings system. This was serious business. Acquiring a new Hot Wheels (not a crappy Mattel) was a big deal; I had to see where it fit in in the ranking system, how good of a car it was. I was aware that races were probably influenced as much by the unequal strength of the arms I used to race the cars and that I favored some cars, especially Ferraris, over others, but I didn't care.

2 I remember my first baseball game at the old Municipal Stadium. The Indians were playing the Red Sox, and Mike Greenwell hit a foul ball off the roof of that gigantic stadium. I don't remember how old I was. Maybe four. I do not remember my first basketball game; apparently I saw Kareem Abdul-Jabbar play. My first football game was a Monday Night Football affair in which Bernie Kosar beat Steve Young.

3 I felt that sports reporters weren't taken seriously in the journalism community. I have not been fully disabused of that notion.

4 I was certainly inspired by All the President's Men, but I had already established my intentions to become a journalist before reading it or seeing the movie.

5 If you really want to read my old work, Google "Jeffrey Fitzwater" or search for that in The Post's archives (if they work). You can also ask me and I'll do the searching for you. I'm just that nice.

6 And getting the "Most Improved" award from a first-quarter editor that clearly hadn't even read me before just felt like a slap in the face. I'm not bragging, but I was the site's biggest draw when I was there. At least pretend like you know what you're doing when you're my editor.

7 I should also say that they are/were run by terribly nice people. When FJM decided to hang it up, I sent them all emails to tell them my gratitude for the site, and they graciously wrote back. I have also had the pleasure to hang with Kyle Whelliston, the proprietor of Mid-Majority, on a number of occasions. Great guy.

8 I love, LOVE, the fact that Tufts University actually has a class on this.

9 Since employing these stats when drafting my team, I'm much more successful than I ever was before. It really works! I'm making $30,000 a month working from home! Call now!

10 As Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey said in Michael Lewis' fantastic piece in the New York Times: "Someone created the box score, and he should be shot."

11 I just went back and looked at my first entry on the site, and it's terrible. Boy howdy.

12 The #1 site for Mid-American Conference news! Really.

13 Established sports writers are notoriously slow to adapt to new ways of thinking, especially when it comes to statistics. So, in a way, I'm still kind of on the cutting edge and have even been recognized as such, which is pretty cool.

14 He started Mid-Majority out of love for mid-major basketball. He traveled to games, used the site to chronicle his travels, and ended up as a writer for ESPN and Basketball Times. Now he travels all around the country, is kind of a rock star, and has a lot going for him.

The Weather Was Fantastic, Too

If you know me at least a little, you ought to know that I intend on joining the Peace Corps once my time at Ohio University is over.

There are a couple reasons for this. First and foremost, I believe the plan God has for me on Earth involves serving my fellow man. I believe it is something I am to make my life of, and I believe God has shown me this way, to get away from everything and devote myself to helping others.

I truly enjoy helping others. I have never gotten tired of it when I do it. I always learn something important and meaningful, and it fulfills me. Lastly, Peace Corps offers a great chance for adventure and travel, two things am I very much in favor of.

Even though I work, I try to take advantage of volunteering opportunities as they come along. For example, I spent spring break two weeks ago in Miami, Florida, volunteering at the Miami Rescue Mission,

The Mission is dedicated to helping the homeless. They have a program for people to help them get clean¹, get education they may need, help them get employment and a place to live, and help them build a relationship with Christ. It also opens its doors at night for dinner for the people on the streets and offers free showers a couple times a week as well.

In talking with some of the men² in the program, it was extraordinary to hear their stories. Where they had been, what they've done, and where they are now. It was exciting to listen to these men talking about how God had entered their lives and was working to change them in profound ways.

To be sure, the work wasn't easy, but the reward was greater than the work put in. In the short week I was there, I built connections with some of the men there. Most people have their own conceptions about the homeless. My own thoughts, sadly, were mostly formed by TV. I imagined dour, dispirited people that were borderline hostile with others. This could not have been further from the truth. There was an amazing spirit of positivity, hope, and optimism. They weren't letting themselves get down because of what they had been through. They were excited about where they were going. One slogan I saw was, "We may be homeless, but we are not helpless."

It amazes me, what people can pull themselves up from, given a little help. No man is an island, right? People have to take ownership of their situation³, but if they do and there is a person willing to give a hand, they can go places. It truly never is too late.

I may share some actual stories, but not now. I just wanted to reiterate the power I feel of God's love and the love we have for each other, how powerful that it is. It was awesome, and it's the kind of thing I truly cannot wait to do on a more permanent basis.

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1 Many homeless people have a drug addiction. I realize this is far from a groundbreaking statement, but it's striking how big of a problem is truly is.

2 They have separate programs for men and women. Obviously, I worked with the men.

3 Provided that they are able. Some people are not and need that much more help and love.

A Broken Heart Isn't Always a Tragedy

I grew up loving "Peanuts." I just really enjoyed the characters. I sort of related to Charlie Brown's toiling fruitlessly on the baseball diamond, I liked how Linus would wax philosophical between sucking his thumb, it cracked me up how Marcie called Peppermint Patty "sir," and I admired Schroder's Beethoven-wannabe piano chops.

More than anything else, I loved Snoopy. I thought he was the coolest dog ever. He hunted the Red Baron on his Sopwith Camel, he stalked the desert as a vulture, paraded around as a penguin, and excelled at baseball. Even with his amazing talents, he was still very much a dog: He was Charlie's loyal friend¹, he loved to get the blanket, and he would sometimes curl up with Charlie at night when he went to bed. For all of his losing characteristic, I still thought Charlie Brown had the best life of them all because he still had Snoopy.

As I've written before, I love dogs. I think they're the perfect non-human companion. You know movies like "My Dog Skip"? I never really dug them, but I envied the relationship between the boy and the dog, his closest friend. What else could a boy really want? I was jealous of the people that had that.

Our family had a dog, and I loved her very much. However, she wasn't "my" dog. I always felt that distinction. I always wanted my dog, one that came to me first and considered me his true friend. Because I enjoyed "Peanuts" so, I wanted to get a male beagle and name him Snoopy.

I tend to fight loneliness in my little corner of Athens², and I have more than once wanted to have a canine friend to live with me. What really held me back was money; I didn't feel that I had enough of it to properly support a furry pal. I certainly had the desire and willingness.

My hand was somewhat forced when a coworker said she found a dog chained to her front porch one day. It was a beagle, and she was trying to find a home for it. It essentially came down to me or taking the dog to the pound³. I figured I might as well give it a try. The dog- a girl, as it turned out- was either a stray or abandoned. We figured she was a couple years old and had been taken care of for at least some period of time⁴.

So I picked her up and brought her back to my place. She didn't have any tags or any sign of ownership save for a collar on her neck. There was no way to tell if she had been fixed or had her shots. We didn't know her name, and she was going to be mine, so I named her Lucy⁵.

And she was an absolute sweetheart. She loved to give face kisses and hop in my lap and just chill. She's also an absolute fireball: It was nearly impossible to get her to calm down and relax. I know young dogs have a lot of energy, but she did not take well to being inside. And being inside alone? She couldn't handle it. She would start freaking out within five seconds. And no matter how little time I spent outside without her, as soon as she came back in, she would leap on me and look at me with a "I didn't think you'd come back!" mood in her eyes⁶.

When I was getting ready for bed, though, she sensed it and would wait for me on my bed. This was, in every sense of the word, a dream come true for me. I have very little experience sleeping with another person in bed with me⁷, so to have a dog curled up beside me was very special. I always wanted to have a dog that wanted to sleep on the bed with me. I just thought it would be the coolest thing ever, and it pretty much was.

The main problem was when Steve and I left for work for the day. She absolutely tore the apartment apart. My DVD remote, various boxes, some of my bedding... it was all destroyed. She somehow managed to open up my book bag and shred some of the contents inside. I had a couple razors in there, so that was a scary moment.

She lives to be outside. I don't think she ever willingly went back in; we always had to guide her through the door. She was an outside dog for sure.

And it was that, really, that was the tipping point. I really liked Lucy, but she was just too much. Because she was older, she was harder to try to train, and I didn't think she would ever be an indoor dog. We weren't going to be around during the day enough to let her outside so that she would not turn the apartment into a fallout zone.

It really broke my heart. Lucy, as I said, is an absolute sweetheart, which made it that much harder to let go, but I had to. It was ultimately the best thing for both of us. Thankfully, a rescue organization was able to find a home for her. I've been told she's in Canada(!) now, which is really the perfect place for her. I miss her, but I know she's happy.

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1 Even while tormenting him the way only a dog can.

2 Especially lately, when it seems like none of my friends are single.

3 Taking a dog to the pound in Athens is tantamount to a death sentence.

4 One sign: Her nails were trimmed.

5 Yes, Lucy Van Pelt.

6 It led me to believe that she was abandoned. She never seemed to figure out that, yes, I was going to come back.

7 No, I'm not counting the times I shared a bed with my sister when we stayed in hotels.

Now That's What I'm Talking About

Before this utter nonsense of snow and temperatures in the 40s, we had the first legitimately beautiful day of the year Sunday in Athens. The mercury reached the low 70s, there was just the slightest bit of wind, the clouds were sparse but pretty enough, and the air just felt so fresh.

Naturally, I played tennis. The weekend marked the first time since the shoulder injury that I hit the court, and it just felt really good to be back out there, like I had returned home. I pray I don't have to leave it again.

Also, I walked around and played in the cherry blossoms along the Hocking. They are in full bloom now, vivid white flowers bursting from the twisted limbs of that unique tree. Some of the petals were wobbling gently to the ground; they fell on and around me. It was easy to just close my eyes, breathe, and feel.

For those precious few moments, I was able to find and hold onto a true sense of happiness.

And That'll End That

Crap.

Well, that unofficially ends the Spurs dynasty. It was a great run; four titles in eight years is better than one would realistically hope for at the beginning, and there were a couple genuinely great teams in there as well. Still, it's going to be pretty depressing watching Timmeh fruitlessly try to carry this damaged, washed-up team through the playoffs.

Buford, things need to change. Starting this offseason. The team as it is built now is not good enough to win. You have enough left of Duncan to make another run, but he needs more than what he has now.

I suppose it's time to go into full-blown spite Cleveland mode now that I don't need LeBron for fantasy purposes. I also must root against the Lakers. The Rapist must not win.

Have Cake, Will Eat

Anyone who knows me at least a little knows I spend the vast majority of my time single. And, once upon a time¹, it's something I whined a lot about. I sort of got suckered in by seeing romance on TV and movies, sadly. I felt like I was missing out on the human experience by not having a girl to do things hand-in-hand with.

Oh, but I had a plan. I was going to go to college, meet my wife, get married, and start life from there. It was beautiful, simple, and guaranteed to work. As you can likely ascertain, that did not happen. I'm sure the 18-year-old version of myself would have considered this a failure at life. The current version does not share that opinion.

If anything, I've grown accustomed to, and perhaps even come to expect, the single life. At heart, I'm an independent person. I want to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I don't want to have to account for my whereabouts with someone else or have to worry about another person's schedule or opinion when figuring out what I want to do².

When you're in a relationship, the primary price you pay is your freedom³. I've had it for so long, I don't know what I would do without it. That would be a huge adjustment for me. I'm an American, right? Am I not supposed to cherish freedom? Freedom and guns? A subset of that is the expectations. You're expected to "check in" every so often, whether you want to or not. I bristle at that.

I've always wondered why so many people end up pairing off. I find it hard (if not impossible) to believe everyone is happy in a marriage/lifetime relationship. Why do it? Tax benefit? Societal pressure? Fear of living alone? Child rearing? I don't know. Maybe I'll ask the next miserable-looking couple I see⁴.

I'm at that age where more and more friends are getting married. This scares the crap out of me. Are you people all insane? What is wrong with you? My best friend has been married for more than a year and a half now. I don't know how his head has stayed attached to his neck. Someone very prominent in my life recently intimated to me his/her future husband/wife is his/her current boy/girlfriend. My first thought? "No! This can't be! I'm not ready for this!" How do you people do it?

I've yet to have an actual adult relationship, so maybe I have it all wrong. I've had flings- more than I thought I would- and I won't deny they were fun. Perhaps I enjoy the thrill of something new. Maybe when it comes down to it, I'm terrified of a committed relationship and I subconsciously pick girls I know it can't work with or I sabotage it. I don't know, but it's an interesting theory.

I've gotten used to my life as it is. If anything, a girl coming along for the first time annoys me more than anything else. This is for a couple reasons: 1. I expect things to fail. 2. It messes up my routine, such as it is. Suddenly, I have to start thinking about that other person. I have to try talking to them⁵, which means I have to start putting other things around it. It's annoying, but I feel like I have to at least try⁶. I mean, hey, there's a girl, and I'm interested... something good might happen, right? Right? So then I find annoyed at the girl for being the reason I'm changing things up. Of course, she's completely innocent in the matter and never did anything wrong to deserve such feelings. As a result, I get even more annoyed at myself for being annoyed. It's a nice little circle.

In other words, I don't want to try, except I do. And I want things to change, but stay exactly to same. That's not asking too much.

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1 High school. I have no idea why anyone put up with me back then; I was insufferable.

2 Like last summer when I went to Cincy for three days to see the tennis tournament. I didn't tell anyone. I just went. That's freedom you can't buy.

3 But considering how few people choose to be single for life, it must be worth it. Still, I find that a bit crazy.

4 I could launch a full sociological study at the Athens County Fair alone.

5 But not too much! And not too enthusiastically! It's beyond stupid.

6 Otherwise, I have cousins thinking I'm gay.