Matthew Dicks

Gratitude journal: The almost perfect game

Yesterday I was grateful for poker, which I described as the perfect game.

Tonight I am grateful for golf, the almost perfect game. I played today thanks to a spat of unseasonably balmy temperatures, my first time on the links this year. I played well at times, poorly at others and finished with a score of 56, which stinks.

But still, it was golf. In March.

Like poker, golf is competition wrapped in a social milieu. Despite the ongoing battle for first place (or the more important battle to avoid last place), it is also time well spent with friends. It does not place nearly as many intellectual demands upon a player as poker does but adds a layer of physicality that poker does not possess. 

It’s a magnificent game, and I would play everyday if I could.

Here’s the thing that keeps golf from being as perfect as poker:

At the poker table, anyone can win. An inexperienced, stupid player can make a series of good decisions, become uncharacteristically aggressive, or pick up on a tell and win the game. At the poker table, every player, regardless of skill or experience, is a legitimate and persistent threat to the best player at the table.

Golf is very different. I play golf with guys who are in many ways playing an entirely different game than me. They are hitting the ball so much farther and higher and with such greater precision that beating them is a near-impossibility.

While poker provides a relatively level playing field for all players, golf does not. Experience plays an enormous role.

And some guys are just better.

Still, I love the game, despite its imperfection. Thankfully, winning and losing does not matter as much in golf because it lacks the head-to-head combat of poker.

Simply put, you cannot play poker without an opponent.

This is not the case for golf. Opponents are not required to enjoy the game. In many ways, you play every round of golf by yourself while in the midst of three other people and then compare your scores at the end of the round to see who played alone best.

If given the choice, I prefer the cut-throat, head-to-head battles that poker provides, but golf is a close second.

Gratitude journal: Just the right movie for a workout

Most of the elliptical machines that I use at the gym are equipped with televisions. I often spend my 30-45 minutes of cardio listening to podcasts, audiobooks and music, but occasionally, AMC, Spike, FX, or even ABC Family will run just the right movie to watch while working out.

And sometimes that movie will be in just the right spot when I start working out.

Today the movie was Coach Carter, the true story of coach Ken Carter (played by Samuel Jackson) and his decision to bench his undefeated high school basketball team for academic reasons. 

I’d never seen the film, but I’ve seen enough sports movies to understand the formula. 

Sports movies make for an excellent workout.

Even better, I began working out during the last 45 minutes of the film, which features the Dead Poet’s Society moment when the team stands up for their coach, followed by the final game of the team’s season.

Well choreographed, well scored, nail-biting hoops with more dunks, alley-oops and three pointers than in a week of NBA games.   

It could not have been a better moment to step on that elliptical.

The unexpected hazards of golf

I’ve never experienced any serious altercations on the golf course in my five years of playing the game.

I once hit a duck with a golf ball. It toppled over but then righted itself and waddled away.

Another time I came close to throwing a friend into a pond after he laughed at me for embedding my tee shot into the opposite bank.  But I stopped myself just short of grabbing onto him. 

I often encourage my longer-hitting friends to hit their balls into slower moving groups, but they rarely do.  Oftentimes I am reminded that it is not the group in front of us who is slowing play, but a group somewhere ahead of them.

I explain that it’s much easier to hate the people you can see than the people somewhere in the distance. 

Last summer a group of older gentlemen told me about how they had been shouted at by a man playing behind them for their speed of play and threatened to hit his ball onto the green unless they moved off the green immediately.  They hurried their putts and cleared the green as quickly as possible under a flurry of obscenities.

I advised the gentlemen to take an entirely different approach next time this happens.  Whenever I am feeling rushed by a group of golfers behind me, I purposely slow down.  Not a lot, but enough to send a signal that regardless of how many times they stick their hands on their hips, wave their arms in frustration or point in my general direction, they have no power over me.

If someone ever yelled at me to hurry up and began swearing at me, my pace would become absolutely glacial. I explained to the gentlemen that no matter what the lunatic behind you decided to do, it’s always win-win situation for you.   

If he hits his ball onto the green, the odds of him actually hitting you are miniscule.  If he misses, you can pick up his ball, throw it into a pond, and have him banned from the golf course for life.

Hurrah!

If he hits you, you can have him arrested and sue him.

Hurrah! 

Yes, this course of action could result in injury in the event he actually hits you with his ball, but the chances of serious injury are so remote and the benefits are so supremely satisfying that it makes it well worth the risk. 

I thought this was excellent advice, and the older gentlemen actually agreed.  They bemoaned their decision to waver and crumble under the onslaught of the man’s threats and obscenities.  One of the men actually smacked his head and scolded himself for being “such a goddamn chicken.” 

But then I read this story in the Star-Telegram that has caused me to rethink my position and the advice I gave:   

One man was stabbed with a golf club shaft after a brawl broke out when the threesome he was in tried to play through the group in front of them at a course at Eagle Mountain Lake.

Clay Carpenter, 48, of Springtown said he is recovering from a punctured femoral artery and massive blood loss.

"People get in arguments every day on every golf course in America," Carpenter said. "But 99.9 percent of the time no one takes it this far."

Carpenter, who was released from Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital on Sunday, said he might have to have more surgeries and is concerned that he could lose his leg.

I had no idea that you could stab someone with the shaft of a golf club. I’m not entirely sure how one might do this, but it’s good to know.

You never know when you you be facing a golf club-toting lunatic on the eighteenth green and quickly need a weapon.   

Gratitude journal: Unexpected empathy

Tonight I am grateful to my students, who knew better than to tease me or even mention the Super Bowl to me.  Two kids came in offering me a hug, but not another word was spoken about the debacle. 

I overheard one girl telling a small group of kids that it would be unwise to tease me about the Patriots loss, so perhaps there was a bit of fear mixed in with their empathy, but either way, I was grateful for their understanding and compassion on what was honestly a difficult day for me. 

Gratitude journal: Patriots

Tonight I am grateful for the New England Patriots, who are once again heading to the Super Bowl after an emotionally draining game in Foxboro today. 

More than six hours after the game ended, I am finally home and still on edge.

It was an exciting game, but give me a blow out any day. 

This will be the Patriots seventh Super Bowl in franchise history and their fifth in the previous decade.  They have won three NFL titles thus far. 

Impressive to say the least.

When I first became a fan of the Patriots, the team was not a winner.  Games were held in the old Foxboro Stadium, which was little more than a concrete bowl surrounded by a dirt parking lot.  Victories were few and far between, and the playoffs were a rarity indeed.  In 1992, when I was living less than a mile from the stadium, the team went 1-15 and suffered through a locker room sex scandal that caused me to give up my season tickets.

There were more bad times than good during those years, and I suffered through many years of frustration. 

Even when the team went to their first Super Bowl in 1986, they were embarrassed by the Chicago Bears. 

I am extremely fortunate that the franchise has turned around and become one of the most winning teams in NFL history, and I count myself lucky to have been able to attend games on a regular basis for the last three years as a season ticket holder once again and prior to that on a less frequent but fairly consistent basis.

I will never forget the excitement and joy in watching the Patriots win the AFC championship tonight, and I am so grateful to have been there to witness this historic game. 

Underwhelming. No, more than that. Weird.

If this man were the president of my university, I would strongly advise against producing any future video messages. 

This message does not inspire confidence.

It might inspire me to write a poem about a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming freight train.   

Or perhaps to write a short story about a man who suffers from an inability to blink his eyes naturally. 

But it does not convince me that he is the man to lead Penn State out of this recent scandal and into the future. 

The whole thing just looks strange.

Some people aren’t suited for video.  Dr. Rodney A. Erickson would appear to be one of these people.

The inability to convey a message via video does not make him a bad leader.  It’s the decision to post the video after previewing it that makes me question his judgment.  

Defying the odds, the most unlikely delivery ever, and burning Tebow in effigy

Highlights from the Patriots 45-10 victory over the Denver Broncos:

My friend, Eddie, purchased a random ticket for the game while still in Norway and then flew into the US the day before the game.  When he met us in the parking lot to begin our tailgate party, we learned that his seat was directly in front of ours. 

In a stadium that seats over 60,000 people, he managed to purchase the one seat available in our section. 

We hoped it was a sign of things to come.

Friends from California also arrived at the game, via train and taxicab, and texted me from the Patriots Pro Shop asking if we needed anything.  My friend, Shep, had been taunting me about a hat he purchased weeks back, and so I took a photograph of the hat atop his head and asked the girls to buy it for me.  They did, and then somehow we managed to find one another amidst the shanty-town of tents and Easy Ups that filled one of the many parking lots adjacent to the stadium.  

It was the most unlikely delivery ever.  A plane from California to Boston, a train to Mansfield, MA, a taxi to Foxboro, MA, a walk to the Pro Shop, and then a delivery to our tail gate.

And it was well worth it.  The hat rules.

Oddly enough, our friends from Norway saw our friends from California in the South Street train station in Boston but didn’t know each other, so both groups eventually found their way to our tail gate party, where they reunited.

It was one of those strange days.  

There were thankfully few Denver Bronco fans at the game, but I did have a run-in with one after he became enraged over a fellow Patriots fan’s derisive comment about his team allegiance.

“Why would you say something like that to me, man?” he yelled.  “C’mon! I’m a Florida Gators fan, so I like Tebow. Why do you have to hate on me like that?  What’s your problem?”

Clearly this guy had never been to an NFL game before.  If he expected that he was going to be able to dress like an orange and not be berated, he was kidding himself. 

The two guys looked angry and ready to fight (which happens from time to time at game), so I jumped in and explained, “Look, man. This is Massachusetts and we are Patriots fans.  We don’t even like each other.  There’s no way in hell that we are going to like you.”

This caused the people around us to laugh and the situation to diffuse. 

A few minutes later a Christmas tree labeled a Tree-bow was burned in effigy amidst the tents and grills in the parking lot.  Drunken Patriots fans danced around the burning tree, nearly catching themselves on fire in the process.

You never know what is going to happen in an NFL parking lot. 

Cheesy, over-the-top, obnoxious nonsense

How does one possibly explain this?

Is it a Miami thing?   
Or a Miami Heat thing?
Or a Lebron James thing?

I spent some time this morning viewing several other NBA team’s introduction videos (many of them can be found on YouTube), and unlike the Heat’s video, every one that I watched featured highlights from the previous year.  Three-point buzzer beaters, thunderous two-hand jams, behind-the-back passes and the like.

Nothing like this. 

After last year’s media fiasco involving the introduction of LeBron James and Chris Bosh to the Miami Heat fans (below), how could the Miami Heat media relations people actually this intro video was a good idea?

Or maybe it was a good idea. 

Maybe this kind of thing plays well in Miami. 

Oy.

How a fan of Boston sports fell in love with the Yankees

Robert Krulwich writes about how we become fans of the teams that we love.

Based upon the research, it tends to be a love instilled upon us primarily by our fathers. 

This video demonstrates this fact beautifully, if not a little cruelly. 

My father and my step-father were not sports fans.  Neither ever spoke a word about sports to me, nor did either one ever play a single sport with me.

I am an outlier when it comes to the research cited by Krulwich.  My undying love for certain teams came through means other than my fathers.

In general, my love for sports teams tended to be geographic in nature.

The Patriots were the only football team on television each week (when they weren’t blacked out due to poor attendance), so my obsessive infatuation with the team (I’m a season ticket holder) was born from indoctrination based upon exclusivity. 

They were all I had in terms of football, so I loved them with all my soul. 

I also love an underdog, and in the 1970s and 1980s, the Patriots were consistent underdogs.  Even when they were good, they lost. 

My love for the Bruins was similar in nature.  Channel 38 in Boston broadcasted grainy footage of most of the games throughout the 1980s, but in Boston, a love for the Bruins was also expected. 

No, demanded. 

If you were living in the Boston area, it was highly recommended that you root for the Patriots, the Red Sox and the Celtics, but when it came to the Bruins, you had no choice.  Bruins fans are an angry, violent, often drunk bunch of young men. To profess your love for the Rangers or the Red Wings at the time would have risked a genuine beating.

I had no choice but to love the Bruins. 

But Ray Bourque and Cam Neely were playing for the team at the time, so they weren’t too hard to love.   

My love for the Celtics is credited to my mother. She was an insatiable Celtics fan. I would often fall asleep to the sounds of her swearing at the television when things weren’t going well.  My mother lived and died with every basket of the season, and she cried like a baby when they won the championship in 1986. 

You also can’t underestimate the enormity of the Celtics in the Boston area in the 1980s.  The Celtics ruled the sports landscape at the time.  I remember marching in a Memorial Day parade on the same day that the Celtics were playing in a playoff game against the Pistons.  In order to keep us abreast of the score during the game, two students armed with transistor radios were charged with listening to the game and moving through the rows of musicians, relaying updated scores as often as possible.     

There was nothing bigger in the Boston area in the 1980s than the Celtics. Falling in love with them was a no-brainer. 

And then there is my love for New York Yankees, which is credited to my brother.

My brother loved the Boston Red Sox more than anything else in the world. 

I did not like my brother.

Therefore, I liked the Yankees.

Conveniently, the Yankees games were broadcast on Channel 11 out of New York, which I was able to pick up on the UHF band on most nights.  I grew up listening to the late Phil Rizzuto describe the heroics of players like Ron Guidry, Willie Randolph and the great Don Mattingly.

What admittedly started out as spite eventually transformed into pure, unadulterated love.

Has there ever been a better love story?

Young, thin and preferably blond

As a Patriots season ticket holder, I attend almost every home game, so I have become quite familiar with the way in which the game is produced inside Gillette Stadium.  The selection of music, the firing of muskets, the introduction of players, the pregame entertainment, etc.

It’s all very scripted and very predictable.    

Throughout the game, during timeouts and other stoppages in play, the enormous television screens at either end of the field often feature images of fans in the stands.

If you’ve ever been to a live sporting event, you’ve probably seen it before. 

The camera alights upon a group of four young men. They realize that they are onscreen.  It is clear that they are all slightly drunk.  They all wave in the wrong direction.

The camera alights upon an enormous man whose beard makes him look as if he could’ve played for Led Zeppelin.  He grins and offers the camera a lazy thumbs-up.

The camera alights upon a small boy in a Tom Brady jersey eating a hotdog.  He sees himself onscreen and begins jumping up and down, causing me to worry that a hunk of hotdog is about to become lodged in this throat.

These are typical images captured by the Gillette Stadium “Fan Cam” each week.       

At last Sunday’s Patriots game, the camera operators returned several times to an attractive young blond wearing tight jeans and a shirt that exposed her midriff when he arms were in the air.  Each time the camera alighted on her, she was already dancing, smiling and otherwise bouncing about.   

She was the only person who appeared on the screen more than once that day, and she may be the only person to appear more than once on the screen in my three years of season ticket ownership.

I’m not dumb.  I know why this young woman was featured so often onscreen.  She was beautiful, enthusiastic, and dressed in considerably less clothing than most fans.  And at more than half of the fans in the stadium are male. 

But it left me wondering how this made the female fans feel.

For a man to be chosen to appear onscreen, he can weigh 300 pounds and have a beard that reaches down to his waist. 

He can be wearing a saucepan on his head and a clown nose.

He can be covered in silver and blue makeup from head to toe.

A man’s size, weight, age, facial hair or style of dress seems to have no bearing on determining if he will be featured on the big screen. 

But the women who appear on the screen tend to be young, thin and beautiful.

How does this make the rest of the women in the stadium feel? 

I’d like to think that I can imagine how this must make the rest of the women in the stadium feel, but the only thing I know about women with any degree of certainty is that I should never pretend to understand women with any degree of certainty.   

But as the father of a little girl, it does not make me happy. 

I’m not exactly sure why, but it does.