Before I begin this column I’d like to take a moment to award February’s A’s Fan of the Month award.  This month’s winner?  None other than Chicago White Sox GM Kenny Williams.  And what did he do to earn this prestigious award?  Just read the following quotes from an Associated Press story:

Prestigious Award-Winning Quote #1 – “He’s an idiot. He’s selfish. That’s why we don’t miss him,” Williams said, responding to a Thomas interview that appeared in The Daily Southtown, a newspaper in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park, Ill.

Prestigious Award-Winning Quote #2 – “We don’t miss him, by the way,” Williams said. “If you go out there and ask any one of my players or staff members, we don’t miss him . . . We don’t miss his attitude. We don’t miss the whining. We don’t miss it. Good riddance. See you later,” he said.

Prestigious Award-Winning Quote #3 – “I’m a general manager and I’m supposed to be above these things. But again, when is enough enough?” he said. “He brought us to this point. So, OK, you want to play this game? You’ve got it. You got it. He’s the Oakland A’s problem right now. … He better stay out of our business. He better stay out of White Sox business.”

Put yourself in Mr. Williams’ position for just a second.  Let’s say that you just happen to know a 6’5”, nearly 300 pound man approaching 500 career homeruns who just happened to sign with a team that is the consensus choice as the team most likely to keep you from reaching your 2nd consecutive World Series.  And let’s say that this large man just happens to have a grudge against you, and that the only thing that may stop him from making good on his desire for vengeance would be a potential lack of motivation.  Would you go out of your way to provide that motivation?  Would you mouth off about things that even Ozzie freaking Guillen wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole?  Kenny Williams would.  And that is why Mr. Kenny Williams is February’s A’s Fan of the Month.

And now, on with the show!

Am I a bandwagoneer?  You bet I am.  The way I see it, it’s so hard to be a winner in this world, requiring such a horrendously rare combination of talent and luck (sometimes one more so than the other, as in the case of Keanu Reeves), that a winner by the mere nature of his victory deserves every fan he can get.  Including me.

The biggest problem that bandwagoneering affords me?  Besides causing me to open every paragraph with a question?  I’m always too late.  It’s as though I’m always sitting at the back of the room when the bandwagon whistle is blown, forcing me to barrel my way forward, toppling chairs, desks, and confused onlookers before me in order to arrive just in time to make a futile leap at the tailgate of the departing bandwagon, miss, and be trampled by the oxen and handcarts trailing behind.  This is why I waited until about six months ago to buy my Marlins cap and didn’t pick up my “Do You Smell What The Rock is Cookin’?” t-shirt until shortly after the release of “Walking Tall.”

My other problem is that my bandwagoneering always seems to quickly devolve from opportunistic glory-sharing to dream-crushing curse.  Apparently I have quite the knack for spotting flash-in-the-pans.  It seems that very time I manage to hop on a bandwagon I have only seconds before the wheels fall off.  It’s for that very reason that basic decency has kept me from ensconcing myself in UT paraphernalia over the last few months;  decency and the fear that my fannish philandering will drive them from a national championship season to a season wallowing in the fallow abyss of unranked oblivion upon my mere donning of a Longhorns hoodie (you know, as opposed to exact same thing happening because their one meaningful player entered the NFL Draft).

Knowing all this makes all the more meaningful the decision I’m making now to jump on more bandwagon.  Yes, it’s a popular one, and yes, I’m definitely hopping on a little late, but fortunately, just this once, there’s no way that my joining the wave can possibly knock it out of commission.  I’m talking, of course, about the most popular bandwagon in town these days: Bashing the Winter Olympics.

Of course I have to lead off by mentioning that the Winters Olympics are boring, there’s no point in watching a sport on twelve-hour tape delay, Americans suck at pretty much every sport therein, and that I basically agree with every single thing said by every single writer who’s written a single word about the Olympics over the last two weeks or so.

And now with that that out of the way, for the benefit of you, the reader, I’d like to try a slightly different tack on this. I hereby introduce my 3 Degrees of Olympic Suckiness.  Pay close attention, and pay particular attention to the fact that virtually every Winter Olympic event can be slotted into one of the three.

#1 – Olympic sports that aren’t, technically speaking, actual sports: This refers to every “sport” in which the winner is determined subjectively by judges instead of objective winning and losing (I’m of course referring primarily to figure skating here, but I’m sure you can think of quite a few more that fall into this category). 

Here’s some truth: sports are defined by competition.  An event in which scores are determined subjectively is not competition, it’s an exhibition.  The mere fact that there are winners and losers does not make it a sport.  Kevin Costner has an Oscar, but he will never have a World Series ring; he may have won something, but his win had nothing to do with sports.  I recognize that figure skaters are athletes, and that what they do requires tremendous talent and determination, but none of that makes figure skating a sport.  The exact same things could be said about professional wrestling, and I’ll bet that roughly the same number of people are capable of doing it at a world-class level (and that, ladies and gentlemen, officially marks the last time you will ever hear anyone pointing about similarities between figure skaters and pro wrestlers), but you will never see rasslin’ in the Olympics.  Why?  Because pro wrestling is not a sport, it’s an exhibition.  And exhibitions have no place in the Olympics.

(And yes, I realize that my mode of thinking would also take gymnastics out of the Summer Olympics.  And no, I don’t care.)

#2 – Olympic sports that, while they may be sports, aren’t Olympic-caliber sports: Say it with me people – curling sucks!  Yes, it’s a competition, and yes, it requires tremendous talent, but so does bowling.  And poker.  And darts.  And speedwalking (which doesn’t technically belong in this list, because, believe it or not, speedwalking is an Olympic sport.  Having discovered this, please never think of it ever again).  There are some sports that should just not be recognized with internationally-prized Olympic medals, and curling is one of them.  Sure, I can’t put my finger on exactly what differentiates an Olympic-caliber sport from one decidedly less so, but do I need to?  Isn’t it all pretty much intuitive?  Yes.  Yes it is.

#3 – Olympic sports that are both actual sports and Olympic-caliber sports, but I still don’t care about them: This third category differentiates from the first two in that I’m not advocating that these events be removed from the Olympics, just saying that people shouldn’t be surprised when no one watches them.  Women’s hockey, for example.  And the biathlon.  And something called a “Nordic Combined,” unless by some lucky chance it turns out to somehow refer to the hunting of a mythical monster as the name clearly connotes.  In fact, the vast majority of Winter Olympic events fall into this category, which may be the biggest reason why the Olympic-bashing bandwagon is so crowded these days. 

So that, to neatly summarize the previous six hundred words, is why the Winter Olympics are lousy.  Can they be fixed?  Danged if I know.  You’ll notice that there really isn’t any clearly-marked “Fixing the Winter Olympics” bandwagon.  I will say, however, that the following Winter Olympic events are wondrous, wondrous things, and should receive as much attention as my digital cable bandwidth is able to provide:

• Bobsled – Slippery track, horrendous speeds, good times.
• Speed skating – See “Bobsled.”
• Skeleton – See “Bobsled” and “Speed skating,” and throw in “headfirst” for good measure.
• Bode Miller choking – we can see this again next year, right?
• Hockey – Say what you will about the Winter Olympics, but they may be the only force on the planet capable of making me care about hockey.

And with that, it’s time for the Big Finish, featuring Number 3 in the Ten Greatest Moments in Athletics History!  Or something like that!

3) Pretty much any Dennis Eckersley save.  But especially the big ones.  Especially the ones topped off by a strikeout.  A third strike to cap off an Eck save was a joy to behold every time, and easily joins the elite cadre of the most memorable images in sports.  It always started with him glaring down at the batter, then continued with him going into that gigantic windup, followed up by a violent delivery and an enormous sweeping leg.  Most pitchers drop their arms after the ball leaves their hand, but in a big moment the Eck-man never would.  Instead he left it up, pointing toward home plate expectantly, holding it there until the umpire called the third strike.  Then that pointed arm would morph into a massive fist-pump accompanied by the biggest open-mouthed smile ever to be dominated by a handlebar moustache.  I imitated that delivery hundreds of times over the course of my childhood, but never approached the joy and energy that Eckersley brought into it.  Look up “Happy Ending” in any Oakland-approved dictionary, and you’ll find Dennis Eckersley pointing and smiling right back at you.

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Languishing here at the tail end of two straight weeks of football oversaturation, my frustration was originally driving me to title this column, “99 Reasons Why WWE’s Royal Rumble is Like a Kajillion Times Better than the Super Bowl.”  Logistical considerations changed my plans, but I’m willing to offer just a sampling here: #82 – No hypocritical prohibition of the figure-four leglock,  #37 – Tom Brady has never won a Royal Rumble, and #16 – Ric Flair.  

Maybe next year.  For now, I’m going to stick with what I said I would do and finish up my list of the Ten Happiest Moments in Athletics History . . . or whatever title it was I ended up settling on (and yes, I am too lazy to go look at my own website to doublecheck this.  That’s just the way I am, and there’s no changing it, so if you’ve got a problem with that maybe it’s best if we just end this right now . . . still here?  Good.  Let’s just move on and pretend this never happened, okay?)

But before I get there, I just want to say a few words about exactly what’s making me so happy these days.  It’s simple, really.  Can you remember another offseason like the one we’re having?  Can you remember a time when the A’s started a season as anything but scrappy underdogs?  A time when you could talk about the team without adding a “But what I’m really worried about is . . .”?  This year’s team will not be perfect, of course, but for the first time in over a decade the A’s are starting a season in which their only glaring, obvious defects are the consistently horrifying trough-style urinals in the bathrooms. (Read the article)

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