Saturday, May 23, 2009

Talking about sports

My favorite author Erica Orloff once blogged about making up different excuses just not to tell people what she does for a living when in a room full of strangers.

She said it takes a lot of work explaining what she does if she tells people she's a writer than it does if she tells them she's does something else.

I relate to her completely as I encounter that same situation every once in a while. People, for some reason, tend to ask a lot of questions when they find out you're a writer. When you write about sports, that makes them doubly inquisitive.

I don't mind them thinking how cool it is covering big sporting events and then reporting them later on the big newspaper with a by-line to boot. But I swear there are people out there who challenge me with what they know about sports and then compare it with how much – or how little – I know about my supposed field of expertise.

Off hand they ask you about Pacquiao. His next fight. Cotto. Mosley. Mayweather Jr. The NBA playoffs. PBA. London Olympics. Laos SEA Games. Major League Baseball. Federer. Tiger Woods. It makes a great deal of conversation fodder when in a party among strangers. My close friends hardly ask me anything about sports when I'm with them.

Unlike her, though, I haven't gotten around to tell people I'm someone else although there are plenty of times I wish I tell them am a short-order cook instead of a sportswriter.

I got to thinking about this because Pacquiao once again redeemed the country by demolishing yet another A-list foe in Briton Ricky Hatton.

Everything has been said about the spectacular 2nd round KO win. But when the topic comes up in a gathering, it most likely get the attention of everybody in the room. Including the women in the crowd.

Suddenly it became very fashionable to know about sports. So here are my advise to people who want to brush up on their ``sports smarts.''

1.The best pound-for-pound boxer in the world only means the most successful fighter across the board who normally competes with the lightweight to welterweight categories.

2.Pacquiao doesn't own a single title belt outside of the WBO welterweight crown he wrested from Hatton. WBO is second-rate compared to the more prestigious WBA, WBC and IBF, which nowadays are dismissed as just ``alphabet titles'' because the real big fights are those that command big pay-per-view buys – like that of Pacquiao's.

3.Tiger Woods is generally acknowledged as the greatest who ever played golf. There are four majors in golf: US Masters, PGA Tour, British Open and US Open where Kevin Costner's character in Tin Cup competed.

4.Federer is just three Grand Slam titles away of beating Pete Sampras' 14 titles. There are four Grand Slam events: French Open, Wimbledon, US Open and Australian Open. There is only one Filipino who won a Grand Slam (Nino Alcantara who won doubles in the Australian Open juniors early this year).

5.Deuce in tennis means a tied score after 40-all. Ace means a serve that wasn't returned. In baseball ace means the top pitcher for a team. In golf, ace means hole-in-one.

6.A baseball game is played on a diamond which is sometimes called a ballpark. The one who throws the ball is called the pitcher, while the person who holds the bat is, well, the batter, while the catcher is the guy with a grill mask behind him. There are nine players per team in a single game of baseball. A single game is normally made up of nine innings.

7.There are 90 minutes in a soccer game or football. Football, and not basketball, is the most popular game in the world. David Beckham plays right midfield and is usually the guy who runs the play similar to a pointguard in basketball. Eleven players are in the field at any given game including the guy who man the goal who is called the goalie.

8.The Philippines has not won a single gold medal in the Olympics but we had two silvers before. Neighbors like Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysian, Indonesia and even Singapore each have a gold medal already.

9.A perfect game in bowling means scoring 300 pinfalls – not points – which means he or she had 12 (not 10) strikes in a single line. Paeng Nepomuceno is a Hall-of-Famer in the sport and has four other Guinness Book of Records for his achievements. He's a lefty.

10.Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times and is found to have lung capacity double to that of an average person.

Given the chance, I'd rather leave the game analysis to the guy next to me, and reserve mine for the day's story quota.

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