[Vision2020] Foul-Weather Friend

[Tom Hansen]

>From the "Life of Reilly" column (by Rick Reilly) of this week's Sports
Illustrated -

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Foul-Weather Friend 
By Rick Reilly

I like warm beer and hairy-legged women. I drive a car so small, you could
park it in the glove compartment of a Hummer. I enjoy funny brown cigarettes
in the loo. 

That's because, as of now, I am officially a European. 

I have turned European because I'm bloody sick of the U.S. getting the
haggis stomped out of it by the Euros in these Ryder Cup golf matches. 

Every two years the Euros dye their hair and smoke their cigars and get
drunk and wave their blue Euro flags and beat us like Dickens' orphans, then
sing songs shoulder-to-shoulder and laugh and dance on the clubhouse roof
and wave their private parts in our general direction. 

No more. I'm a Euro now. Changed my passport and everything. I like real
football now, not fat guys in helmets. I no longer see the point in regular
dental checkups. I tan by 40-watt bulbs. I eat tatties and neeps in my flat
and see what's on the telly. Ooh, brilliant! It's Bean! 

I'd been considering turning Euro for a few years now, but on Monday, when
the American team was announced for next month's Ryder Cup in Ireland, it
ripped me knittin', as we say down at the pub. 

Have you seen the U.S. team? It has all the intimidation power of the
Liechtenstein navy. It would have a hard time beating the Winnetka Country
Club ladies' B team. It's the single worst squad we've ever taken to a Ryder
Cup, and that's saying something, considering the last batch got pummeled
181Ú2-91Ú2. 

"We'll definitely be the underdog," Phil Mickelson says. "You lose four of
the last five Cups, you're the underdog." 

This outfit would be the underdog to a stiff breeze. Or do Brett Wetterich,
Zach Johnson, J.J. Henry and Vaughn Taylor make your timbers shiver? It
sounds like somebody's Webelos troop. None of those four have ever played in
a Ryder Cup before. Three of them missed the cut at last week's PGA, and
Henry finished 41st. 

Wetterich has missed five cuts in his last eight starts. You look at him and
think, Was he my waiter at Olive Garden last night? If he wasn't, he will be
soon. 

Won't Tiger be psyched to be paired with him? 

That's the other thing: Tiger. He's the No. 1 player in the world by a light
year, the Golfing Gladiator. Until he goes to Ryder Cups, and then he
suddenly becomes Dead Man Walking. 

He mopes around like a husband in couples therapy, only he talks to his
partner less. It may be the only thing he sucks at. His Ryder record is
7-11-2, and no wonder. He wasn't wired for team play. He trusts nobody. Why
should he buddy up with people he's been trained to swallow in two bites or
less? The hangman doesn't play on the prison softball team. Lions don't room
with lambs. 

Yet every two years all the U.S. players seem to take their Stepford cue
from Woods. They all play as though they have to put their shirts back in
the boxes when they're done. Of the 12 guys on this year's team, nine have a
losing Ryder record or no record at all. You know who's got a great Ryder
Cup record on the U.S. team? Tom Lehman (5-3-2), Corey Pavin (8-5) and Loren
Roberts (3-1). Only problem is, they're the coaches! 

This thing needs a readjust. We've lost seven of the last 10. Can't they at
least give us Canada? 

Only eight players on the American team are in the Top 50 in the world. The
Euros have 10, and they've still got two captain's picks left. They have the
same group of partyers that has been popping U.S. corks for 10 years now:
Olazábal, García, Harrington, probably Westwood and Clarke. Nothing changes
every two years except the site of the execution. 

They'll outplay us and outguzzle us and outwhoop us, and at the end, while
the American players are slinking back to their jets, the Euros will be swan
diving off the TV tower into a swimming pool full of Guinness. 

And I'll be there with me straw. 

I'm them now. I've joined the champagne-swilling side. I'm more European
than pay toilets. I wear kneesocks with sandals and drink Beaujolais at 10
a.m. and never read a newspaper that doesn't have a naked girl in it. And if
you don't like it, you can bugger off. 

Wait. Excuse me? You say all true Euros love Monty? 

O.K., forget the whole thing.

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Remember Rick Reilly's article two weeks ago titled "You Make the Call"?
http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2006-August/033799.html

There were 25,982 responses (posted to Sports Illustrated), and here are the
results.
Pitch to the slugger: 60% 
Walk the slugger and pitch to the frail kid: 40%

It is refreshing to know that most people do care.

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If I wanted to overhear every tedious scrap of brain static rattling around
in your head, I'd read your blog."

- Bill Maher