“Sport” responses

14 April 2004 5 Comments

Oh, yeah. It?s heating up. I shall try to respond to the first round of comments to the ?What is a Sport debate.

First to Matt: Take your meds! Gardening is definitely not a sport!

Second to Brian: According to Geoff, ?Hockey – I have come to realize that in order to be a sport, there must be more than one skill involved. Hockey has skating, but also stick-handling, checking, shooting, etc. It has defense, teams, is pointless, and is therefore a sport.?

BTW, Geoff is a real person, not a figment of my imagination as some may have suggested. Geoff Aiken is a middle school teacher and baseball coach. We played 5 seasons together in softball and entertained many in the process. Geoff Aiken, Darryl Neher, Mike Burns, and myself made up the most mentally twisted infield in the history of the game. Our infield chatter was so disturbing that a female umpire actually quit after calling one of our games. I?ve grown up since then. Sort of. Geoff?s claims to fame are he was the ONLY left handed shortstop in the history of the Bloomington adult softball league and he does the funniest Vin Scully impression I?ve ever heard.

Third to Patty: Dear child, where hast thou gone astray? Chess fails on #?s 1,2,3,4, and 9. Pairs skating is JUDGED and that clearly is wrong!!! Geoff denies your request and will harbor scorn in his heart for you for a twenty minute period to be assessed at a later date.

Fourth to Campy: I don?t know what?s worse: the Star devoting space to cards or the Celebrity Poker show on TV. Who cares if the cast of the West Wing can play poker???

Next Post: We?ll deal with the Winter Olympics!

About The Author
Jeff Stanger is an author, talk show host, professional fundraiser, and the answer to several obscure trivia questions. He writes for food and occasionally for spite.

5 Comments »

matt said:

Is any criteria given to “field of play” – ie: is it a sport when it can be played ‘anywhere’?

Baseball – diamond, bases, mound, backstop, etc.
Football – end-zones, side-lines, hash-marks, etc.
Basketball – baskets, key, baseline, time-line, etc.
Hockey – ice, boards, blue-lines, etc.

# 14 April 2004 at 4:25 pm

mark said:

Winter Olympics? No sports here!

All are judged (I including clock timing as a judgement of performance).

# 14 April 2004 at 8:00 pm

Brian said:

Hockey is a sport in the Winter Olympics.

If only curling had defense we might have two “sports” in the Winter Olympics.

# 15 April 2004 at 2:46 pm

patty said:

not all who wander are lost…

# 17 April 2004 at 10:25 am

Geoff said:

Time for my tweny minutes of scorn for the “chess club”. Chess is not a sport. It would be if it were like in History of the World, Part I where people are actually the pieces. Even then there needs to be the possibility of injury. For the record, two guys sitting in Central Park playing chess with the chance of being mugged does not count for a possibility of being injured.

I believe it should be added that anything that can be played while sitting down or with only one hand does not count as a sport.

As to the “field of play” comment, it is only a coincidence that a required field of play is involved. Activities have fields of play too. I think this is just a lame attempt to get Jeff and me to think about adding soccer to the list, which will never happen. You can’t use your hands and short people are good at it.

As to the final post, the “not all who wander are not lost”, I got nothing. I don’t even know what that has to do with this!

# 5 May 2004 at 1:46 pm