Denial

A-Rod getting ready for his next "exam"

Hoo-boy! Here in the land of SoulSlam we all get to "dogpile on the rabbit" as a bulldog in a turtleneck used to say. Except it's not Bugs Bunny, it's Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez, aka A-Rod, aka "The Minotaur", aka "JUICER".

Giving credit where credit is due, the Miami New Times has broken a story that provides details about the fact that A-Rod was the alleged recipient of PEDs from Dr. Anthony Bosch and his Biogenesis clinic in South Florida. Explosive stuff.

A-Rod has denied it through his PR flacks, and hired a giant of a lawyer just in case I guess.

"The news report about a purported relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Anthony Bosch are not true," Rodriguez said in a statement issued by a publicist. "He was not Mr. Bosch's patient, he was never treated by him and he was never advised by him. The purported documents referenced in the story — at least as they relate to Alex Rodriguez — are not legitimate."

The underlines are mine. Take what you will from them. They are words of obfuscation in my opinion.

Bottom line: A-Rod is done. He will never get in HOF. And I am absolutely 100% sure the Yankees would like to see him disappear. Too bad they still owe him $115MM or so...

I think Sevendust says it best

No Doubt...

...this was a foul!

Nice shorts, guys!

And the Result Is...

Won 56-51. Broke their 1-3-1 trap for the most part. If we had hit all easy lay-ups we might have scored 70-75 points.

A little break and back at it Friday.

Basketball

The Yin and The Yang

That just about sums up my hoops team. Case(s) in point:

Tuesday we travel to a BC town to play the team we beat in Championship game last season as 5th graders. Team is close in record to us. They are up by 12 at halftime, and get as far as 16 point up in 3rd quarter. But we keep playing. And playing. Win by 2. Another fun evening for the Ridgewood faithful. But I will say this; they were best team we played all season. Final score 52-50.

Friday night we play a game that's 1-9. Bad sloppy team. And we played them bad and sloppy. We get W, but we had trouble putting them away. As I explained to the boys; we will end up playing a bad sloppy team in 1st round of any playoffs. And all it takes is a little luck on their side and we are done. That would be un-pretty.

So Sunday is a home game vs. the aforementioned Ridgewood team. We see what we got. Looks like they lost again last night...so that may take some thunder away but we still have to get W to show everyone who the undisputed is.

A Simple Tutorial for Referees in Ringwood

My First Technical

This is not the ref. This guy is pro!

We go to Ringwood for a game. Ringwood has a rep for homer refs.

I guess when the refs blew the first possession call and SoulSlam made them aware they messed up was where it all got started. Then when they blew another possession call (it's pretty easy, team 1, team 2, team 1, team 2) they looked at me funny.

It seemed that a ref (with 80's hair) was trying to get my best player out of the game, with two sketchy fouls, including a charge that wasn't. Then he calls the kid for a travel on a made layup. I don't argue a travel, he probably took 3 steps. But a couple of minutes later one of their players took 5 (if I drew a diagram from where he started and where he finished Lebron James would take 3.5) steps with the ball on his hip and didn't get called I kind of started in...at that point my Asst. Coach asked the ref if he "lived down the street". We get warned.

So game resumes...with about 2 minutes to go we are up 31-28. They inbound, I press with one guard. The kid dribbles with 2 hands for 3 steps and no call!!!! The opposing coach called a T/O...I look at ref and motion with two hands and say he can't do that!

T!!!!

So they get two free throws... ref lines the kid on wrong basket. We say "wrong basket" I think he wanted to call another T. He gets red-faced. Kid makes second shot after air-balling first. Now they get the ball back...but wait, the refs aren't sure where they get ball. I say down under basket in corner. What are they going to do...I'm trying to be helpful.

Ringwood inbounds ball and we immediately get our hands on it too and force a possession....ref #2 looks longingly at 80's ref....wait, wait, wait.... BLUE ball (me). They wanted to give that ball so bad to Ringwood, you should have seen their faces. Priceless. We scored 2 more times to win 35-29.

Terrible refs, not carded (you can tell by patches on striped shirt)...I am having my league rep blacklist these guys.

On Another Note

Got some frantic texts last night from people in our basketball program - "Scoreboard having issues!". Besides everything else I also fix the scoreboard. Somebody's gotta...

I had planned on replacing the basketball nets this morning anyway; the guy who runs basketball (who is a good friend of mine) may be the cheapest human on the planet. At the beginning of the season I told him to go get some nets as the old ones were falling apart. He came back with some cheap-charlies that are falling apart. So i went and got the good stuff. Like it should.

Fixed all that needed to be fixed before games start at 9AM...lots of wide-eyed coaches showing up...no idea what to do or anything else, but hey thanks for the help. I stopped down in the afternoon to check on things after I took the Sons of SoulSlam to the hitting cages for some work. While sitting at our awesome scorer's table (we don't scrimp) the coach on one side (who is more like a head lineup writer, BTW his kid plays hoops for me) came over and the exchange went like this:

HIM: "can I ask you something"
ME: "Sure"
HIM: "how do you get the parents on the side to stop coaching from the sidelines?"
ME: "I thought that's what all of you do!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

I then went on to tell him that at my first practice every season I tell the kids that if they want to listen to mommy & daddy and not me, then they should go play on mommy & daddy's team. Easy.

Oil Change

I sold my baseball van a couple of months back...now driving a 2005 Chevy Tahoe. Needed an oil change today. So we go to Pep Boys, get the goods and get to work. Done like Gomer. Smooth ride. I like.

1/3

Today my travel team played it's 10th game...that's 1/3 of the regular season (in two leagues). Won a big one against a team we haven't played well against in past. Final was 54-31. I love when the opposing coach has no idea what to do, say or think.

AWESOME!

Can't count our chickens though. Gotta keep up the pressure and make a run for the ages. We play three games Monday through Sunday. All winnable. We see what we are.

Rice Therapy

My iPhone is sitting in a bag of Uncle Ben's. I have a fogged up lens on my camera and I'm trying to draw the moisture out.

All my picture look like close-ups of Meryl Streep.

Hoops Jedis

My travel team (6th grade boys) has started the season at 6-0. That matches our wins total from last season (which included a forfeit). Not always pretty. Not always smooth. But they come from behind, they come from all sides.

Face the toughest opponent of early season tonight. Went 1-1 against them last year. I know we can't go undefeated in a 30 game schedule, but I can dream...

Poundage Removal

Remember my newyearsresolution about losing some weight. AKA: Pounds. Baggage. Kilos. Etc?

Week 1 is done. I lost 5 of the aforementioned monstrosities. My willpower is like iron. I am ready for this.

Anyway, a freind of mine at the J-O-B (we'll call him Dan) said he brought low-sodium tuna today. Now I'm no scientist, but doesn't tuna come from the ocean? How the hell do you make that low-sodium?

Tattoo Nightmare

Rex really should have gone on Ink Master for a nicer tat. This looks like some ink you get down on the docks....I don't think Nunez and Peck would have given it high marks.

Is she Tebowing? Weird.

2013 - Holy Crap!

It's 2013. The Mayans were wrong, the doomsday preacher somewhere in the middle of the US was wrong, heck...Nostradamus was wrong.

So now were a full two days in. Time flies, Jedis!

Here's to a good one. Better than last. SoulSlam's resolution(s):

Lose some weight

Exercise

Lighten up

Be the best dad and husband I can

I'm a Simple Man.