Another sports-themed post!

I'll tell you what's wrong with America today. Oh, you didn't ask? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. This is what's wrong. Too many bleeding hearts. No one can stand to feel any pain. Of course, this should only apply at an age or level where the emphasis is placed on competition.

Now that you've scanned the 100-0 story, I will point out that the full-court press was too much. I won't say that shooting 3-pointers is bad, though. It's not like 3-pointers are guaranteed to go in, no matter who you are. In fact, when my basketball team is killing another team, it's usually easy layups that we score the most, and 3-pointers slow us down. They should probably apologize for the full-court press, but they shouldn't forfeit. "Here, we know you'll probably never win a game this year, so we're giving you a forfeit win so you can remember how much we demolished you that much easier."

In 5th grade, I wanted to play baseball. I wasn't any good at hitting things thrown at me at a very fast rate, so I decided I should try Coach Pitch before I played in Little League. You know, where your coach underhands this rubbery, squishy ball, roughly the size of a baseball, as slow as he possibly can so that his team can make contact. One step above tee-ball. My team was made up of boys and girls from 2nd to 6th grade. The 6th grade boy, Seth Collins, I believe, was probably one of the worst players on the team. The 2nd grade boy (can't place his name, but he was the coach's son), was one of the best. Not the best, though. That was my job. That season I hit last (because it was an "everybody bats" format), and I played pitcher, which isn't actually the pitcher, but you stand next to the opposing coach and field all the dinkers the suckies on the other team eke out. I dominated.

The next year, it was time to move on up. The first day of practice, everybody was hurling these hard baseballs (regular baseballs, but they seemed especially hard at the time) as fast as possible to each other. I had a couple of superjocks on my team: Josh Davies (future CVJH basketball star and high school career spent in Juvi), Mike Armstrong (future star pitcher for Timp High), and Kurt Jackson (future Weber State football player). I was pretty intimidated. The first day of practice, I was warming up with neighborhood buddy Allan and I got pegged in the shoulder by an "errant" throw from Josh, who as anybody from Orem knows, is an all-time jerk. I started bawling like a chump. The coach (Josh's dad) comforted me while fighting back laughter, and made Josh give me a half-hearted apology.

A few weeks later, it was our first game at the Orem Elementary fields, and I got up for the first time, struck out in 3 swings, and went straight back, dragging my bat behind me like Charlie Brown, while the sad Charlie Brown Christmas Special music played. I got to the dugout and fought back tears, but that didn't last. I didn't bawl this time, just sat on the end of the bench in my oversized helmet and uncomfortable stirrups and tears trickled down my face.

The season went on, I got better at baseball, still struck out and made errors, but at least I didn't cry anymore. I was probably the 7th or 8th best player on the team. My point? I wasn't that great at baseball, even though I gave it the old college try because my dad thought I would be really good at it (bless his heart). I was much, much better at basketball, and better still at soccer (bragging at this point, I know, but I really was awesome at soccer. Now? I can barely kick). But baseball? I was mediocre at best. When I did make contact, it was a dinker down the line. Once I got a double. But mostly, I was hoping to make contact, because I could usually beat the throw to 1st base, steal around to 3rd, and then advance to home on a wild pitch.

The only sport that you can legitimately not run up the score while still playing hard is football. Run it into the middle a few times, punt. Not basketball. What are you supposed to do, heave the ball up from half-court? Travel intentionally? Just give the other team the ball under the basket until they catch up, and then demolish them again? Just don't FCP--everything else is game. For baseball, what are you supposed to do? Drop a fly ball? Never swing? Soccer is more or less the same as basketball, there's nothing you can do to help the other team without being totally obvious.

I've been on some bad teams, and there's nothing more degrading than when the other team just stops trying. It's like they're saying, "We know we're awesome, we know you suck, so we're just going to mail it in until time runs out." When a team plays hard to the end, they're saying, "We respect you as competitors enough to try for the entire game." Who cares if you're better than me? It's a lesson I need to learn: Don't play with the big boys. BYU intramurals has an awesome system of divisions. I played at a division 2 to 3 level, and I accepted that. Division 1 teams would demolish ours. Division 2 we would be average. Division 3? We made it to the Final 4. That wasn't too shabby, considering there were about 160 teams in the tournament.

If you're 5 years old, "Everybody gets a trophy Day" is awesome. Worthless trophies, ribbons, and certificates mean everything. If you're 15, you need to either give it up or toughen up. Competitive sports were meant to be played at full tilt. At the end of the season, there should be trophies for the champions, nothing for the losers. As long as you played the game clean, no apologies should be necessary.

Why do we feel entitled to be good at everything? Why can't we recognize we're bad at something, and just hang it up? Me, I'm good at computers and math, but I'm awful at art. So I didn't become an art major. Would a college professor apologize for flunking somebody that totally failed their class because they didn't master their material? Of course not. Neither should athletes apologize to the other team when they suck. Play hard, win or lose. Sportsmanship has nothing to do with the score.

So what's sportsmanship? Not being a jerk, pretty much. Don't trash talk. Don't play dirty. Play the game clean, play it hard, be a good teammate, congratulate others for doing it well. Not that hard to understand or do.

Every time my team got demolished, I didn't go home and cry. I just thought "Wow, that was a good team, I hope we don't have to play them again," and moved on with my life.

Most of the people that disagree with everything I say here probably didn't play many sports. I'm not cutthroat-I always played for fun. But there is nothing fun about half-heartedly going through the motions because the other team is bad. I hated showing up to the soccer field and seeing that we were playing some sucky team we were going to destroy. Why? Because the competition wouldn't be as good. It's more satisfying to beat a good team 1-0 than to beat a sucky team 10-0.

That brings me to the infamous game in Orem High intramurals where we beat a team 116-36. This team had Danny Dorr on it, this kid in my neighborhood who hit puberty early and DOMINATED neighborhood games in 7th and 8th grade. I thought he was going to play in the NBA for sure. However, Danny's early growth spurt stopped at 5'8 and he didn't grow past that. So in my senior year, he and his student council buddies who thought they were hilarious, made up an intramural team that was actually pretty decent. We had the best team that year (we won the championship), but they had a winning record, so we were prepared for a good battle. The first half we played out of our minds--every shot going in, no turnovers, tough D. We were up something like 50 to 26 or something, but everything was going in for us. So Danny's team decided to give up the 2nd half. They started hoisting granny shots from halfcourt, sometimes from full-court. Well, what are we supposed to do? They were, in my opinion, defiling the sport by playing that way, so we decided to keep scoring. We let them shoot their grannies, then we hustled down, shot 3's, and passed the ball around so all of our team could get the same amount of shots. I'm proud of that game. Not because we won by so much, not because our stats were awesome (well, maybe a little), but because we played hard the whole time. Did we need to apologize for beating them so badly and forfeit the game? I don't think so.

I think The Covenant School should apologize, but not forfeit. But when they meet again, they should continue to play hard, but ease up on the FCP. Maybe Dallas Academy should switch divisions or start playing elementary teams like Kramer did in his youth karate class. I guess the real question is, why are those 2 schools even playing each other? I blame this on Obama.