FINE! Thanks to an insistant email, I figure it’s about time to update this puppy. I can’t promise it’ll be long or interesting, but I suppose I have a few months to cover. It usually seems that the things I feel are interesting bore people, but the things that are “normal” for me that I take for granted (Such as “uncle stories”), people find intriguing. (much <3, Jen – I blogrolled you, btw)
Let’s see…well, the school season for soccer has come and gone. I lost a few decent players, but I still had a strong core and I got a few good younger players. I figured the team would miss the talented few that I lost, but the depth ought to make up for it. Judging by our record, I’d say it did. We finished 12-3-3, which is an improvement on last year. Me being me, I still can’t help but think we should have done better. We ended up tying a team twice that kicked our asses last year, but we had them on the ropes…we just couldn’t finish them off. We also lost the very last game of the year, against a bad team that was missing their starting keeper. I don’t know what to say – I’d have bet $100 we’d win that game, but they played their best game all year, and we sucked up the field. The game ended 2-1, but I know it should have been 5-1 in our favor.
The older girls finished their season as well. They started out poorly, but managed to finish out 2nd in their section, so they made the playoffs. For some reason, they were listed as the home team versus their playoff opponent – North Allegheny. NA played us last year, coincidentally, and they smacked us around. Thing is, the game was to be played this year…at North Allegheny. Through a fluke in the schedule, they were listed as a possible site for playoff games, and they just “happened” to be selected to host our team. They also had a turf field, of which they were very used to playing upon. Our team? Not so much. So congrats girls – we’re the home team, but we get to play NA AT NA, and on their turf in front of THEIR fans. What a crock of shit. The game was actually close, though, and was tied at the half. We had a few defensive miscues, and couldn’t finish our shots, so the game ended 3-1, North Allegheny.
After a game like that, the girls are obviously disheartened. Some were choking back emotion, some were just pissed off. Some of the bench players felt bad for the others, but would obviously get over it. This is the time for a coach to step in, say something inspirational, and put a cap on the season. Amy just cried. I’m not the overly emotional type (except if I see a team win the Stanley Cup – fuck you, it’s special to me), so I kind of cringed. Instead of letting the team know how well they did, and how prould she was, she kinda sniffled and said, “Yeah….um…*sniff* it’s rough….wow…um…”
After the game, I ran into a few parents and was social, since I like most of them. I lost track of the bus, but finally found it and got on. I saw Amy with her sunglasses on, sitting in a seat staring forward. I started to put my stuff on the seat next to me and I heard a loud *ssSSNFFFGUWUMPGHhh!* That was the sound of Amy suddenly letting loose an unchecked sniffle that she obviously had building for a bit. I ignored it, as I really didn’t know what to say. Later on in the ride, she turned to me and thanked me for helping out this season…and then informed me that she won’t be returning next year.
No, I didn’t jump for joy, mutter “thank god,” or moonwalk. I kept calm and asked, “are you sure?” See, it’s not that I necessarily want her gone. Well, maybe a little. I honestly didn’t feel any animosity towards her – I felt bad for her. However, I want her position. She assured me she was done, and so did her assistant coach Mike. His daughter is graduating this year, so he wanted to take time next year to be able to watch his 10th grade son play soccer.
So far, I have yet to let the Athletic Director know that I’m interested in it. This is for a few reasons – I don’t want to look overly eager, and I don’t think it’d be kosher to start nosing around for it before Amy actually makes her official announcement at the banquet (the 19th). I’m also trying not to get my hopes up too much, but I have to admit that I’ll be upset if I don’t get it. I’d like to think my past involvement and track record should help my case, but I’m not a teacher at that school. This means that I’m not part of the union, and the union makes sure they get first choice. I don’t know of anyone who would actually step forward to take it, and I’m hoping if someone wants to coach that badly, they’ll realize that maybe they had better coach middle school before stepping into a varsity coaching position. I know that I wouldn’t have been able to coach varsity 3 years ago without having a MAJOR learning curve to climb, but I feel I’m ready to give it a shot. We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.
In other soccer news, I’ll soon be playing indoor again. We moved to a co-ed league, since that sounded more fun to me. The guy making the team let me know we needed a few women, and since the age range is 16+, I recruited a few of the seniors. I got Liz, who’s a solid defensive player, and who I’ve dubbed “the little ball of hate.” She’s really short, and gets really pissy when she plays. I can identify..not with the height, but with her attitude on the field. I also recruited one of the captains, who happened to shatter the school goal scoring record over her varsity career. She finished with something like 112 goals, which is just nuts. When you figure on having only 20 games per year for 4 years, you have to average over a goal per game. This is soccer, not basketball, so that’s a pretty rough pace – especially when your first 2 years are your freshman and sophmore years. You have to battle against players much bigger than you, not to mention beat out older girls on your team for playing time. She led the team in scoring every year, though, so obviously she’s a special type of talent. Great girl, polite, coachable, and loves the game. I hate to admit it, but she’s better than me – even if my ankle was 100%. She’ll know for sure whether she can play or not, but having her, Liz, me, AND Amy on the same team ought to be interesting, if nothing else. And no – my ankle isn’t 100% yet, and is starting to look like it may never be. I’m going to either learn how to tape it correctly, or give this fucking ankle brace another test run. So far, it cuts off my circulation and cramps up my foot.
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I got a call from my buddy Parker (we share a first name, so we go by last names with each other) about playing pick-up football. At the time, my ankle was healing nicely (I tweaked it since then) and I thought it’d be fun. I showed up at the park and saw only 5 people, counting me. Oh well – we threw the ball back and forth a bit. It was just me, Parker, Pat (mutual friend from back in my Wal*Mart days 10 years ago), Parker’s cousin, and some guy named Art. We were still fucking around when this guy comes wandering down to the field from over the hill. Right away, this guy seemed…off. He started loudly speaking, and asked if we needed a 6th to get a game going. Me being me, I both love to play and I love a good story. This guy seemed like he’d provide one. He started going off on a tangent as he was coming our way about wearing Brian Minto’s jacket, and waving a stuffed plush toy at us. Brian Minto is a local-area boxer, and I barely knew of him. I have no idea why this crackhead brought that up. I use the word crackhead not to literally say that he does crack, although I wouldn’t count it out. He just seemed very random, sketchy, and abnormal, so the term crackhead has a wide range of use as far as I’m concerned.
Anyways, he started waving the doll around and informed us that it was “Wario” – Mario’s evil nemesis from Super Mario Brothers. He went on about that fucking toy for a good minute or so, while we all looked at each other. I was grinning, since this seemed like fun, and he wasn’t going to be on my team - I had Pat and Art. This guy was dressed in a polo shirt, with courderoy pants on, but that didn’t seem to bother him. We shrugged and got ready to kick off.
Right away, this guy’s mouth was running. He started loudly proclaiming how good he was, and that he was a former punter from Mars High School. Let me note that this guy was in his mid 30’s, and since I coach at their rival school, i was not impressed. That, and he couldn’t catch a pass to save his life. He then decided that since his teammates weren’t throwing correctly, he’d need to save the day at QB. Every incomplete pass he threw was someone else’s fault, and he felt the need to talk trash every play. I knew that with Parker in that huddle, things might get interesting. He usually isn’t afraid to set someone straight, and we were all playing a friendly game. This guy talked as if this were a playoff game. Don’t get me wrong, i play to win, but at the same time i can sit back and laugh if Parker burns me on a play. If I think I can jump for an interception but will probably knock into someone hard, I’ll back off. It just wasn’t THAT competitive, in our eyes. This guy felt otherwise.
After I made a few TD’s and interceptions, he started to focus his talk towards me. “Yeah, you bring that shit in here next time. I got your number! I played for Mars and this is how we bring it, baby! All day, every day!” This was usually muttered to presumably himself, right after throwing an incomplete pass. He also started pretending he was Peyton Manning, and started calling audibles at the line of scrimmage. I looked at Parker’s cousin and saw him staring in disbelief. Keep in mind, they didn’t actually huddle, so this guy’s teammates had no idea what the fuck he was doing. As I stood ready to play defensive back, he started calling out, “Yellow! Yellow! 42! 42!” I looked down at this point at my bright yellow shirt, and somehow made the startling leap of logic to realize that he was going to throw to my guy. Since there were only 2 receivers anyhow, it was usually a 50-50 chance of that, so it wasn’t like I was ever caught napping. Of course, he threw it deep to my guy and for an incompletion. As I trotted back to the line, I asked Parker’s cousin if this guy really thought we were so stupid as to not figure out his “code.” He laughed and said that they never discussed this in a huddle, so apparently he figured his teammates would figure it out, but we wouldn’t. At this point, Parker had started to let the guy know he needed to relax a bit. Cracky would say, “Oh yeah, I know..” and then walk away while muttering, “I ain’t gonna relax, i’m bringing this shit cause that’s how we play this game!” He apparently didn’t think anyone else could hear him.
After I made another interception, Cracky realized that I needed to be covered by the best player on the field – himself. “Ok, looks like I better take over on this guy since we ain’t getting it done! I’ll show you how we play in my hood!” Keep in mind, Butler’s population was 15,121 as of 2000. This ain’t Compton. Anyhow, he lined up across from me.
Now, when we play defense, we give a buffer of about 5 yards or so, then run backwards for a bit with our eyes on the player. We then turn and match the WR as best we can, and hope the ball can be deflected or picked off. This guy, however, decided to change that a bit. As my QB was saying “Set!”, I looked across and saw the crackhead lined up 3 feet in front of me. Ok…a bit close, but whatever. He outweighed me by about 30 lbs, so I figured I’d just burn by him. As Art said “hut!” I started forward. This guy reached out and grabbed my shirt, and clung for dear life.
I should stop at this point and better define my sports personality. I tend to turn into a little ball of hate, myself, especially when either fucked with or when some ass decides to cheap shot me. I also can’t stand to be restrained by somene, in any sort of way. I tend to kind of stop thinking, and violently react. In the past, this trait has caused me to get a soccer game forfeited, land me in a hockey penalty box, and punch someone repeatedly as they were wearing a goalie face mask. Seeing as this game was mostly friendly, except for this one crackhead who had been steadily getting on my nerves for the past 20 minutes, I took more exception than usual.
As the guy clung to my shirt, I attempted to cut around him. Cracky decided that he was going to stop me by trying to wrestle me to the ground. At this point, i snapped. I knocked his arm away, yelled something like, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” and did a 180 past him. As I was travelling past him, i was still facing him. At this point, I threw out a punch to this guy’s neck. I then grabbed him as I was moving past him, planted my feet, and dragged him with me, over my thigh, and towards the ground. As he was travelling down, I put my other hand on his back and added a push to make sure he hit it hard. He did. I half thought about punching him while this was going on, but I just stood over him. When he hit, he kind of crumpled up and I think he hurt his leg in the process.
He responded while on the ground, “Well now what’s that all about?”
“That’s for trying to rip my damn shirt off.”
”I didn’t rip your shirt off!”
“Not for lack of trying. The last time someone tried to do that to me, I bought her dinner first.”
“Well I don’t know why you need to be doing that! I was just playing defense!”
Parker stepped in and informed the guy that playing defense doesn’t mean draping yourself over someone and trying to wrestle them to the ground. I was still pissed, but kinda pleased with myself. This guy had it coming, and I’m not the type to just let someone toss me around. I must have a sign on my back that says, “Please fuck with me!” because I get minor stuff like that all the time in sports. In soccer, I tend to be pretty fast and decent, so older, fatter, slower players like to clutch and grab. This guy, however, went way overboard.
He got up slowly, dusted himself off, and muttered a half-assed apology. I shrugged, and we played a few more minutes. After one incomplete, I had to walk near him on my way back to our huddle. He held out a hand and said, “Hey, sorry about that. I was just playing defense, you know?” I didn’t turn around, but I gave a brief hand shake as I kept walking and muttered something like, “No problem.” As I kept going, I heard his trademark muttering, “I’m not sorry! I’ll bring that shit all day! That’s how we play this game, baby…” I shook my head and laughed.
Soon after, we decided to break up the game – Pat had to go, and me, Parker and his cousin were going to go to another place to play with more people. The crackhead gathered up his(?) jacket, his Wario doll, and melted away into the woods. We have no idea why – Parker thought he went in there to go lie down and lick his wounds. Pat left but loudly proclaimed me as “the man” as I did what they were secretly wishing they had done. I almost feel bad, but that guy was a dick – screw him.
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I realize this is getting long, so I’ll briefly touch on a few more things. I’ve been running hot and cold in poker. I recently played a tourney and won 3rd, which was good for $520. Too bad I was staked for it (it was out of my usual buy-in ballpark)so I ended up having to give a solid portion of it to my backer. You’d think that’d tide me over for a while, but I went on tilt after losing a few too many el-cheapo games. My total winnings still outweighed the amount I donked away at the low-limit games, but I hate losing no matter what the stakes are. Even after still being up about $60, I got fed up after busting out of yet another tournament in 5th place. Top 4 got paid, so that always hurts. I ended up banning myself (poker sites have an option that you can cut yourself off if you feel you have a gambling problem) for a week, as I was too disgusted with poker and knew that I was in no mood to handle any more losing. That’s the way this game is – the losses you take always seem to outweigh the wins. You always remember that heart-breaking hand, but become fuzzy on the details of a winning hand. I can still remember my losing hand from the Omaha Hi-low tourney that I played in Vegas ($150 buy-in, I had a 9922 and hit a J924 board. The river was a 5, which gave the pot to the 2 crackheads playing A3xx and A36x. One had a straight and tied for the low, one had a higher straight and tied the low. I had 3 of a kind twice over, but that doesn’t count for shit against a straight. Goodbye me.) Can I remember any winning hand from any tourney I’ve ever won? Nope. Anyhow, I’ll be allowed to play this coming thursday again, so hopefully my luck will change. After the week off, as well as going outside to hack shit apart with a machete, I’ll hopefully have it all out of my system.
There’s some major drama going down involving my uncles (Steve and Tommy), credit card fraud, and an upcoming lawsuit. I don’t really want to go into all that much detail. I never really talk about the major things in life – just the superficial things. I may touch upon it more later on, but it’s getting ugly.
Oh, I wrecked my car. Nothing TOO major, but going through a barb wire fence on bad tires tends to make a little damage. I now need to replace my left blinker and right passenger mirror. I’ll stop here, as this is already way too long. I guess that’s what I get for waiting months to update it.
