Waiting for Godot

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Skeebers — 11 Comments ↓

Like most of you, I’m sitting here watching to see how this whole thing plays out. The various sports entities are plunging ahead like they are sure there will be a new season, while the various medical entities are doubting any sports will happen the rest of the year, at the very least.

While those two big wig operations are forging ahead, the players are grumbling about all of it. Some will be opting out of the season, the NFLPA will try to muscle into the decision making process, and the fans will end up taking what we can get.

So far, thirty-one major league baseball guys have opted out of playing this season. Don’t know if any NFL types will take that route. A few maybe, but not many, I would think.

Training Camps are set to open in about three weeks. Which would normally get our juices flowing a bit. But we may have to wait until the camps actually happen for any of us to turn that spigot on.

God’s involvement with humanity is always a lively topic of debate between the believers and the non-believers, but even a believer has to question His motives for continuing to reward Bill Belichick when it’s clear to any reasonably intelligent soul that this guy is undeserving of any breaks in life. And yet, there’s Cam Newton falling into Belichick’s lap like a gift from heaven. This is very depressing. I was looking forward to the coming season just to watch the Patriots go back to being a mediocre franchise, kicked around by just about any team on any given Sunday.

Sigh. I may have to re-evaluate my theological indifference this year. Some things should never be allowed to happen in a fair and just universe.

Posted in Mindless Drivel

Through a Glass Darkly

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Skeebers — 13 Comments ↓

Baseball is starting up again, with plans for a 60 game season. The NBA plans on having playoffs based on teams’ abbreviated records from last year’s interrupted season. Golf is back, fanless for now. And the NFL keeps insisting there will be a full season this year.

Sure, fellas, whatever you say. We’ll be watching something, for sure, but it ain’t going to be anything like a normal season. The healthiest teams are definite contenders in the playoffs, and this year that might be the sole criteria for the final two teams that are still able to field 22 players.

For the next month, we’ll keep our eyes on baseball. If the teams can get through training camp without a constant flow of players testing positive for COVID and heading to the quarantine corner for two or more weeks, maybe football has a chance. But football has twice as many players as a baseball roster, and all bunched together in locker rooms and butting heads on the field.

Color me skeptical.

Posted in FOS Speculation

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Posted on June 11, 2020 by Skeebers

The world has certainly become difficult to cope with this year. Pretty rude, if you ask me. I know you guys rely on me for not much of anything, but it’s getting harder and harder to deliver nothing when everybody seems to want SOMETHING.

We live in a bipolar time now. By day, we hide in our homes from the COVID menace. By night, we gather in huge crowds to protest police brutality. Something’s got to give. Either there will be a big-ass spike in virus infections over the next few weeks, or we’ll discover that medical menace was a tad overblown.

We’re screwed no matter what happens, which is exactly how the media likes us to feel. Doomed. Scared. Helpless and hopeless. Anything to keep the clicks up and the papers selling. We might all be driven to prayer! Egads, how old school.

“New” is all the rage these days. New world order, new virus, new normal. This probably ticks off the advertising/merchandising businesses who have plastered that word on products for years to sell the same junk in a different package and a more upscale price.

Golf is back. Please contain your wild exuberance. Golf is the one sport that doesn’t really need onsite spectators, who are mostly told to shut up while the golfers are playing.

Critical month ahead of us. Baseball’s trying to come back, COVID “scientists” are trying to regain the spotlight, and Black Lives Matter is raging all around the world.

Lord, what a mess.

Posted in Delusional Therapy

For What It’s Worth

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Skeebers

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It’s s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

– Buffalo Springfield

It’s getting harder and harder to squeeze sports into the news cycle these days. Comedy isn’t faring too well, either.

It is a bit bizarre, though, when you see citizens obedient enough to wear COVID masks while ignoring social distancing to commit thievery, assault, and arson. These interludes of mob insanity are beginning to make the future look more like Blade Runner than Star Trek’s gentlemanly United Federation of Planets.

June should be a pivotal month for the sports world. The country is gradually opening up again and if the past few days of close encounters of the weird kind don’t spark a spike in COVID cases, we should soon see just what kind of football season we’ll have this Fall. Full stadiums, partial crowds, or no crowds at all.

As an old guy who can’t get around much anymore, and have no desire to, TV sports is vital to my shrinking world. So I don’t care if there are empty stadiums, as long as the games are being played and broadcast. The crazy people who inhabit stadiums and seem to fascinate the camera boys only urge me, however whimsically, to perhaps take up praying for lost souls. I can definitely live without them crowding into the spotlight of an otherwise entertaining game.

You’ll notice, hopefully, that for purposes of this blog I’m not assigning blame for recent events to democrats, republicans, Trump, ANTIFA, white supremacists or any of the other theories polluting Twitter these days. Just the individual goofballs and reprobates and the actions they have been filmed doing.

Not that that disclaimer will keep the door to Pandora’s Box closed, but it’s at least worth a shot.

Posted in Existential Elbows

Eras Come, Eras Go

Posted on May 18, 2020 by Skeebers

The retirement of Joe Staley closed the books on all the players drafted from the Mike Nolan/Scot McCloughan era. In fact, only two players from those years are still on NFL rosters – Alex Smith and Frank Gore. If Michael Crabtree finds a team sometime this season, it will be a threesome of pre-2010 49er players still employed.

The longest tenured 49er now is, oddly enough, Jimmie Ward. From the 2014 draft class.

Looking at the current roster, there are only three, maybe four guys whom you might expect to still be here ten years from now. Jimmy Garoppolo, George Kittle, Mike McGlinchey, and maybe Nick Bosa. Although the ferocious way Kittle plays might preclude him from having a very long career. Fred Warner might also be a candidate, but linebackers don’t usually have long careers, either.

At least the franchise finally has the QB situation resolved. For twenty years, they had Joe Montana and Steve Young, then a couple years of serviceable play by Jeff Garcia, followed by fifteen years of trotting out one failed candidate after another. You can’t necessarily win a lot of SBs with an elite QB, but having one guarantees your team is at least in the mix each year (see Dan Marino: 0 SBs, 10 playoffs).

Of course this flies in the face of Jed York‘s professed disdain for anything other than SB wins, but it’s possible he’s shelved his arrogance after five years of self-inflicted pitiful teams. At least he’s been quiet lately, so perhaps he’s learned his lesson.

Another new era of players for all of us to form attachments to. Either good or bad.

Tagged with: 49ers, Alex Smith, Dan Marino, Frank Gore, Fred Warner, George Kittle, Jeff Garcia, Jimmie Ward, Jimmy Garoppolo, Joe Montana, Joe Staley, Michael Crabtree, Mike McGlinchey, Mike Nolan, Nick Bosa, Scot McCloughan, Steve Young
Posted in Vacant Observations