The Rookies

Vagina dentata? YEAH I SAID IT.

Hello, gang. Sorry I haven’t been around the last couple of days. To make up for it, I’m slaughtering a scared cow. (That is the expression, right?)

That picture of Rick Reilly should tell you…

…that it’s on like motherfucking Tron, Donkey Kong, beer bongs, and sarongs. (I’m not really sure what a sarong is, though.)

Let’s wade into Reilly’s latest tide of shit.

And I do mean shit.

Gas jockey, book-packer, flower boy, bank teller, lawn-mower, 7-Eleven clerk — I’ve been all of these.

Could you go back, Formerly Popular Populist Columnist?

So it’s never lost on me that I won career lotto with sportswriter.

It’s never lost on us, either. Your career lotto is just like the real one, except no one buys your shit and there are no minorities involved. (We’ll get back to this.)

Especially when I’m on a five-week stretch like this one: U.S. Open, Wimbledon, Tour de France and British Open.

I have a million dollars for whoever revokes this smarmy douchesack’s passport.

But a new book, The 100 Sporting Events You Must See Live, by Robert Tuchman, plus SportsCenter’s current series Fan Feast, got me thinking. Being so old my ears still hurt from the Big Bang and having seen nearly every sporting event twice, what would be my list of must-see live events? Glad I asked.

I’m not. And this column already has more plugs than your love life.

I hate you.

10. Home Run Derby — Better than the All-Star Game because it’s never ended in a tie. Besides, it’s everything real baseball is not. Guys swing at every pitch. Every third ball is a souvenir. And you don’t have to wait 45 seconds while Nomar Garciaparra re-Velcros his entire uniform between pitches.

Nope, glorified bastardization of the game. You’re 0-for-1. And, Nomar Garciaparra jokes? What is this, 1999?

Also, CPC (that’s Colored Person Count, in language “older than the Big Bang DUR HUR” might understand): Ryan Howard and Prince Fielder.

9. Iditarod — Whenever somebody tells me the Iditarod is cruel to dogs, I answer, “I agree, the dogs left at home.” You should hear them howl when they’re not picked for the team.

If Rick Reilly and PETA got in a fight, it would be the single stupidest beef in human existence not involving Spencer Pratt. God, are you listening?

This is the hardest event to watch.

Because it’s dog racing in Alaska? Never would’ve thought.

I once had to bribe an ex-Vietnam pilot to fly me to a rest stop in the middle of nowhere, where we landed in a half-plowed field and were picked up by an Inuit on a snowmobile pulling a sled.

Look at you, Hot Shit Reilly.

Try to be in Nome at the end. One bar almost always has a ladies’ arm wrestling contest. Trust me, you’d lose.

This is supposed to appeal to who, A-Rod?

CPC: Was Balto black? I think not.

8. Ryder Cup — Where else can you witness multimillionaires nearly hurling over three-foot gimmes with nothing more at stake than pride and some very ugly shirts?

The Tavistock Cup, which is in Florida, and actually doesn’t have a valuable or recognizable trophy? Maybe that, penis-brain?

Unlike other golf tournaments, every shot matters every day, for better or worse.

That’s right: Other tournaments have shots that don’t determine whether golfers make more or less money, retain PGA TOUR membership, or keep viewers intrigued BECAUSE RICK REILLY SAID SO. 0-for-3.

CPC: Tiger Woods, Ryan Howard, and Prince Fielder.

7. Yankees vs. Red Sox at Fenway — There’s no better place in baseball than Fenway, which is like playing in your grandmother’s attic.

Why would you fucking want to play fucking baseball in your fucking grandmother’s fucking attic?

The Green Monster isn’t an architect’s precious quirk; it was the only way to shoehorn the place onto the available land.

I.M. Reilly, everyone.

And Fenway is filled with people who don’t need giant clapping hands on the scoreboard to know when to cheer.

Them, and 13,000 twentysomethings wearing pink hats.

CPC: Neither the Yankees or Red Sox have black players, unless CC Sabathia’s actually human and not a baseball-playing rhinoceros. David Ortiz doesn’t count, because he sucks.

6. America’s Cup

If you are under the age of 35 and you would like to see America’s Cup at some point in your life, do society a favor and cry into your chablis while listening to Animal Collective in your dorm at Yale.

Because, frankly, there’s only one of you and your name is Thornton Honeywell IV or some shit, and Rick Reilly seems to understand your plight.

You need a good Chris-Craft to see it, but if you can’t bum a seat on one, who cares?

Ah, yacht troubles. Such populist writing.

The pub scene alone is priceless. Endlessly thirsty crew members, billionaires in dorky captain’s hats, diamond-dripping cougars, all elbowing each other out at the bar. Bring an extra liver.

You want us to go see a sporting event for the drunkenness, money, and hot bitches? Have you ever fucking heard of college football?

CPC: Come on, black people can’t swim.

5. Tour de France — Like trying to get to 20 Super Bowls in 23 days, but worth it.

Except for the being in France part.

Pick a climbing stage, bring friends and a bike, ride the course in the morning before the race (you’re allowed), have lunch in a hamlet atop some exquisite Alp, watch the heart-skipping finish, have a bottle of Bordeaux, spend the night, bike down in the morning. Rinse and repeat.

I assume you’ll be rinsing the stench of privilege off with some shiraz.

CPC: Uh, no.

4. North Carolina vs. Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium — Fans pulling the hair of Tar Heels players as they inbound the ball; students camping out for months in K-Ville for tix; the hilarious chants from the Crazies, who once yelled at Grant Hill’s parents, “One more kid!”; public school vs. private; an electricity that makes the Final Four and its corporate crowd seem like a three-day seminar on bunions.

See the next generation of Hansbrough v. Paulus! Watch a bunch of future lawyers and doctors try to pretend they’re at real state schools and interfere with players like fucking asswipes! Listen to Rick Reilly’s thoughts verbalized! Bunion joke!

CPC: Affirmative action nets about four, I think.

3. Wimbledon — There’s nothing in America within a par-5 of it.

Because when I think of tennis, I make fucking golf references.

It’s a Windsor Castle garden party with grunting.

Neither one of these things is remotely interesting.

It’s queens and cobblers, cheek to cheek, over grounds so huge it would take you and your Toro a month to mow.

Queens, plural, really? And next to cobblers? So Wimbledon’s a Village People reunion?

It’s a phantasmagoria of colo — greens and purples and yellows — and that’s just Bud Collins’ pants.

I think he might mean Colon Blow.

CPC: The Williams Sisters.

2. Kentucky Derby — My life’s aspiration was to be Damon Runyon, and the Derby is as close as I’ll get.

For once, I agree.

With its wooden stands, elegant barns, men in seersucker suits and women in hats you could land an F-14 on, it’s 1927 everywhere you look.

Minus, of course, the reference to the F-14, the streaking parties in the infield, the Arabs being allowed in America, and Jessica Simpson’s existence.

Don’t miss the fillies the day before in the Kentucky Oaks or the Barnstable Brown Gala or the awful race-day breakfast at Wagner’s Pharmacy, across from Gate 3. If you hear a tip there, book it, because everyone around you is a trainer, an owner or a groom.

You would subject yourself to an awful breakfast for a fucking tip from a bunch of headstrong horse-heads? Suit yourself; I’m going to IHOP like someone without his own dick in his anus.

CPC: Big Brown doesn’t count, right?

1. Masters — Sneak into the clubhouse for the peach cobbler and steal into the Eisenhower Cabin, where some paintings are actually by Eisenhower.

And who WOULDN’T want to see paintings from ol’ Ike, huh!?

Do the par-3 tourney Wednesday and Arnie’s first tee shot Thursday; see the droop-shouldered cut players driving out Magnolia Lane Friday, Amen Corner Saturday and golf history Sunday.

I guess you mean the cut players aren’t driving out Amen Corner Saturday and golf history Sunday, but if you didn’t fucking blow at parallelism, I wouldn’t have to guess.

Because Augusta already has most of the money printed in America, it has not sold out an inch.

Nope, no sir. No women, no minorities. Not selling out.

There are no ads, just flowers.

Gay.

No luxury boxes, just $1.50 egg salad sandwiches.

Gayer.

Timeless.

Actively seeking NAMBLA membership.

CPC: Tiger Woods cannot count twice.

So, what do we have?

• Baseball that isn’t baseball, sailing, cycling, horse racing, tennis, golf (twice!), two of the most overhyped and overrated rivalries in sport, and fucking dog racing in Alaska.
• No NBA. No NFL. No NHL. No college football. No chance of seeing the most popular and exciting sports currently going.
• About seven African-Americans on the whole list, unless you count the porters Reilly probably has following him around with his copy of The New Yorker.
• A list that reads like the sporting interests of a retiree whose only concerns are straightening the doilies for today’s bridge game and not missing the Showcase Showdown on “The Price is Right.”

In trying to go against the grain, Reilly churned out the sort of pandering-to-the-aristocracy blather that would embarrass the cast of “General Hospital.”

Go fix your computer with a Big Bertha.

XOXO,

piniellaspinata