Individual vs Team Sports

The two biggest stories of the day have to deal with auto racing and golf, two sports I just don’t follow.

Sure I will watch the back 9 of a major where the scores are close, but I just don’t get into the first 63 holes. And truthfully, I generally only watch the 18th hole of a major on Sunday. I just cannot get into it.

Same goes for auto racing. I may watch the final lap of the Indy 500, but not NASCAR. I just don’t get it. I don’t get the fascination with the sport. It isn’t the “they are driving a car and I can drive a car, so what is the big deal” theory. It just does not entertain me to see the cars go around in circles. Now I hear that the infield at one of these things is about as fun of a time as one can have, but that doesn’t make me want to watch the sport.

Think harder about it, it may be the individual vs team sport idea. I understand that auto racing is far from an individual sport, as is as obvious on the day that Dale Junior leaves his father’s racing team, but in my mind I still see it as an individual sport. It is the one guy driving around the oval.

MJ summed it best last week at the Wacchovia when playing with Tiger (and this is not a direct quote, but more of a paraphrase). “Tiger has a tougher time, because if I was off one night I could rely on my teammates to fill the void.” I see the same with auto racing. If the driver is off his game, the team has no chance. What other sport is so reliant on one individual? In baseball a pitcher who is underperforming can be yanked at any time and in basketball a guy whose shot is not dropping can pass to a hot teammate. A good argument would be for the QB in football, but as the 2001 Ravens showed, you can win without a good QB as long as your D isn’t giving up any points. Along the same lines, it took Peyton Manning years to win the Super Bowl, even though he was the best QB in the league for some time.

So while I respect those who are following The Players Championship and the Dale Jr. saga, they are just not my cup of tea.

==MLB Roundup==
Ken Griffey Jr hit his 569th career HR yesterday to move into 9th all time. While Griffey has one of the sweetest swings in baseball, I still have to say Will Clark has the best swing I have ever seen.

Kudos to hometown hero Todd Helton for taking over the NL batting lead. I know there are a lot of games yet to be played, but it is good to see his name again at the top of the list after his injury plagued year last year (where he still batted .302)

==Chasing The Record==
Bonds was in Denver and hit a screatching shot off the right field wall for a double. That and 2 BB were all he got.

But, Matt Capps recorded his 11th Hold of the season, inching him ever closer to the single-season record of 36 set last year.

==Bicycles==
Floyd Landis has come out to say that the US Anti-Doping Agency offered to go easy on him if he implicated Lance Armstrong. This may turn out to be a huge story, or it may turn out to be Landis trying to deflect some of the bad press off him.

==NBA Playoffs==
Detroit came from behind to defeat the Bulls in Chicago and take an insurmountable 3-0 series lead. The way they are playing now the Pistons should be the odds on favorite to win the title.

==Personal Update==
My softball team lost last night 20-13 thanks in no part to my 5 errors in the field. I was 4-5 at the plate, with 3 singles and a double off the fence, but the errors were the talk of the team at the bar afterwards.

- SEO, TEO