M.O.D. Are You Out There?

Hello friends,

My name is Stan. I'll be contributing here from time to time. That is, I'll be here until the kind proprietors of this site realize that they've made a huge mistake, which I'm guessing will be shortly after I start talking about tennis. A bit about me: I blog irregularly here and I'm the co-host of a fortnightly sports trivia night in New York. My rooting interests: Giants(SF), Niners, Warriors, Sharks, Reading F.C., the Dillon Panthers, Teen Wolf. I'll try to keep the blatant homerism to a minimum, though, as nobody really likes the Giants (I know) and cause everyone assumes that people from the Bay Area are all smug and superior (Well. Yeah.).

I mention my rooting interests for this reason--I'm now the only writer on this site whose baseball team is wildly out of playoff contention. And I mean... they recently finished a five game winning streak and found themselves 16.5 games back. Mediocrity, thy time has come. So what does a sports fan do in August when his/her baseball team is a sweaty pile of shit? It's a good question, I'm glad you asked.

1) Holy crap, it's kids with curveballs! (Image, right: Taipei Personality) I hope everyone caught Thursday's barnburner between Chinese Taipei and Japan. This was some seriously ballsy extra-inning baseball, including one Taiwanese kid (not the guy pictured at right, cause dude, they don't all look alike, okay?) ringing up two strikeouts in the bottom of the eighth, stranding the winning run at third. Of course, they'd end up losing the game, but it's hard to feel bad for Taipei. They're like the Yankees of this shit. Except that, in a more literal and accurate way, the Americans are the Yankees of this shit. But it's okay to feel bad for the Americans when they lose. Because they're white.

2) FOOTBALL. Were you aware! Football starts in two weeks! OMG FOOTBALL. Football football football football football.

3) The US Open begins on Monday. This is my favorite of all the tennis grand slams. For one thing, it gives Andy Roddick and James Blake home court advantage, so they can choke on their own terms. For another, it just feels so distinctly American. Wimbledon has tradition, we have cat calls. The French has clay, we have traditional American hardcourts. And the Australian... at least our toilet water flows clockwise, like God intended.

Of course, in the time it took me to introduce myself, the Giants won another two games. Maybe the season isn't lost after all!

I'll be crying in the shower if anyone needs me.