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The Flip Side of What's Right About Sports 
by Rick
Reilly
Posted: Tue August 4, 1998
We here at
the Malevolent Order of Grumps take issue with
What's Right About
Sports. We demand equal time. Therefore, we present, What's Wrong
about
Sports.
The Tour de Syringe.
Pat Riley
tells
his players not to help guys
up.
Perverted jocks, insane coaches and punch-happy assistants.
(And that's just at Notre
Dame.)
Kirby Puckett isn't playing anymore. Albert Belle
is.
Salary-cap rules that are more confusing than Father's Day
at Shawn Kemp's
house.
The $4.50 Coke.
Logos on golfers' chests, hats, sleeves, shirt backs,
gloves, watches, belts, back pockets and pants cuffs. Why
not just get it over with, fellas, and walk down the
fairway wearing sandwich
boards?
Sportswriters still print the ugliness that
belches from the bigoted brain of a washed-up, no-trick
pony like Reggie
White.
Scoreboard dot
races.
Geezer boxing gives us the first generation of fighters who
are restricted to soft foods
before
fights.
Loving sports because it's about character, but hearing
only about
money.
The 47 uniforms of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Sorry, just
can't see Joe DiMaggio before a game saying, "Let's
see. What am I in the mood for today? Teal or
purple?"
Grrrrrrrratuitously grrrrrrrrowling NNNNNNNNBA
arrrrrrrrena
annnnnnnnouncers!
If you accidentally sign for a higher golf score than you
shot, you get disqualified. Stupidest rule in
sports.
In the NBA you can call timeout while falling out of bounds
with the ball. Second-stupidest rule in
sports.
Too many concussions in football. Too few in
soccer.
Those annoying
Star
Wars sound effects that Fox blares in the nanosecond between
the moment the guy is tackled and the
instant
replay.
All those NBA refs who phony up airline expense reports but
never heard of
traveling.
Evander Holyfield running yellow from Lennox
Lewis.
The way the Jerrys are setting up this poor chump Tim Floyd
to fall on the p.r.
grenade.
Signature catchphrases. Hey, Howie Hairspray, just because
you holler, "See ya in Glocca Morra!" after every
homer doesn't make you Vin
Scully.
The tofu hot dog at 3Com
Stadium.
Tough-guy hockey analyst Barry Melrose. Hey, Barry, David
Cassidy called. He wants his hair
back.
Blue
Chip magazine's rankings of the top 100 third-grade football
prospects.
Let me get this straight: We're bulldozing
real vintage ballparks like Tiger Stadium and Fenway Park to
put up
fake vintage
ballparks?
Gout-riddled, tire-middled 60-year-old managers wear
uniforms.
Zambonis aren't allowed on the ice during the pairs
competition.
Cal Ripken Jr. doesn't miss a day of work for 16 years,
makes an error every other Fourth of July and gets ripped
for it.
Two thirds of the major league teams come to spring
training now with no possible chance to win the
pennant.
The Dawg Pound is coming
back.
Your 10-year-old can't find out if Mark
McGwire hit a homer for all the
hair-replacement ads,
penile-enlargement ads and "private lingerie
modeling" ads in the morning sports
pages.
One-hundred-forty-mile-an-hour serves that leave us with
one-rally-an-hour
tennis.
Artistic
merit.
The belly-button-high, straight-down-the-chute National
League
"ball."
The two-hour traffic jams to have your picture taken at the
top of Mount
Everest.
Pete Rose isn't in. Phil Rizzuto
is.
And, of course, the modern scourge of mankind
...
the Gatorade
bath.
Read SI's list of What's Right About Sports, or see what other CNNSI.com users had to say.
Past Editions of Life of Reilly
Issue date: August 10, 1998
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