The Trials and Tribulations of the not-so-New Bear Icon

Chris and I were at the gym last night and there were a couple of cute cubbish types working their way through the circuit of machines. Still being a little "on" from last weekend's TBRU, I had to remind myself mentally not to stare.

It's something that always happens coming out of a bear run. after being in the bear bubble for a few days you tend to forget that these guys are statistically not likely to play on your team.

The bubble is enticing. Wonderful men, old and new to meet, fun times socializing, kicking youself for not saying hello to the hottie that just walked by, etc. There's food and fun. If I ever decide it's worth it to stay at the hotel, and not drive home, maybe I'll actually drink a little. From what I've been told, that might "loosen me up" so I'll forget to be so worried about my own hang-ups.

Still, it was a good run. The events this year weren't so hot, and I wish i hadn't felt sick and could have stayed in the pool on Friday night. Otherwise, there were good rubbin's from Mikey (profundis), getting to meet Mark from Madison for the first time, hanging with wingman Jim (jrjarrett), and seeing Tony (tonydabear), Paul (citizenpep), and Tony (cubziz) again, among many others.

I tried to keep groups small, and not try to get lost in the big 20 person feasts and such, but some crowds can't be avoided, in the pool area, the hospitality suite, and so forth. I just have to occasionally take a time out and go out for a milkshake every once in a while. It's healthy, sort of.

This weekend did remind me that I need to do better socializing with the locals here, because there's some really good fellas here.

There is something about just being in the lobby and watching all of the guys walk by. I wish it was happening again soon. Not this weekend, but maybe the next - one would need to have time to recover.

Now if the hot guys would just stay in their homes for a few days more.


I took a few pics, mostly at the LJ meetup. Nothing like the party pics others took, but if you want to see, they are HERE

Today two of the best guys to ever play baseball, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. It's a good moment for the sport as lately there hasn't bee a lot of talk about the good guys. In the next few days we'll see one of the people that I think is a bad guy tie, and then pass the all time record for home runs in a career. It's a sad statement that shows that baseball in general doesn't have it's house in order.

Although I'm still happy to go across the USA traveling to ballpark to ballpark, I'm finding that I'm not keeping up with the sport as much as I used to. When I was single it was easy to watch a game on television on some night. It was easier to keep up with the team when I had friends who loved sports.

Heck, to speak to my friend Hans, you had to talk sports. He loves all sports, keeps up with everything and even works for Fox Sports Net these days. It was easy when I played fantasy sports. Now I find it's not a big part of my life. I can talk to coworkers about this and that, and occasionally keep up with their conversations, but I really don't know the players like I used to. I don't know basketball at all, so that's a conversation I stay out of, and the guys in the office are all Cowboys fans, and I really loathe the Cowboys.

Heck I was talking about David Beckham the other day with Hans over email and he though it would be a big deal, and I told him that he's too immersed in sports to see that the USA still doesn't care about soccer, and this does little to change it.

My parents were Cowboy fans too, back in the day. Being from Dallas it just seemed the natural thing to be. Back then it was easy because Tom Landry was the coach and the team was made of solid winners. I remember many Thanksgiving days where we cleared out the dinner table just in time to watch the Cowboys.

When I was about 7 or 8 I was given a Roger Staubach uniform, complete with helmet. I don't remember wearing it for much, and I grew out of it quickly as my weight expanded in those years. Years later I bought a Texans jersey when the new team moved into Houston that is now too big for me. I shouldn't buy football paraphernalia.

Still, football never became my number one sport. The Cowboys got a new asshole of an owner and the Houston Oilers would only break your heart. It wasn't until we moved to Houston that I started watching baseball.

Baseball had a couple of things going for it. One was the slower, methodical game. there was a difference in the way it was played, not a brutal sport by any means, it's slow, paces and leaves time to ponder the what-ifs. What if he threw a slider instead of a fastball, what if he chose to throw to third instead of second. There there were the stories. A good baseball announcer can weave tales of days gone by while still giving you the balls and strikes. It's a dedication to the history of the game that you don't get with other sports that seem to mostly live in the now. Baseball seems to relish in it past.

It's also a sport that you can easily read a book in, or study through and not miss anything because the voices get louder and there's plenty of time for an instant replay.

As I grew older, there was another aspect of the game I enjoyed, the men. In football you don't really get to know most of the players because they are kept in the helmet and pads. You can see the face of a man in baseball, and they seemed accessible. Heck, I've talked to baseball players, even interviewing a few in my brief stint as a sports reporter in college. I think I knew more about them than other athletes because their stories were told every night.

of course, some of them were hot - damed hot. It was worth watching the games to see them come up to bat.

It's been good being an Astros fan for the last several seasons. There were several division championships and good teams. There were players like Nolan Ryan to watch. I got to watch several seasons with two good players, Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, both who played their entire career with the Astros, both who should go to the Hall of Fame (Biggio is a lock, Bagwell more on the bubble) Two players who don't have the questions about steroids that many of their peers do.

Sadly there was also Ken Caminitti, the guy who started with the astros, went to the Padres and became a star for a while, but eventually revealed his steroid use. I found it sad that he eventually died of a heart attack helped along by the steroids, but fueled by his use of cocaine. I met him a couple of times...hot as hell and dumb as an ox.

That's part of losing interest. The Rangers are as they were when my grandfather followed them, awful. It's harder to get interested in it when the astros are only on certain nights here, and it seems like the team is about to go into a rebuilding mold as the older players retire. Chris isn't gung ho, so we don't watch together. this and the sport seems to be making some really bad moves as we all watch Barry Bonds take the other most celebrated record in the sport. Sadly he already has the most homers in a single season, and there's still a cloud over his head.

Football lost me when the Oiler's left, and we went for a few years in Houston without a team, and now it's easy to not care about football fever here. Basketball sucks, and hockey tickets are too expensive. I no longer find myself watching ESPN SportsCenter to keep up with Hans. I'm definitely losing interest in sports, especially when so many new sports are trying to take the spotlight - like mixed martial arts.

It's funny, people think I'm strange for loving baseball, and now I guess I'm becoming one of those baseball fans that loved an era of baseball, that time when you fell in love with it. It seems like the era is ending, I'm doubtful, with current leadership that means the steroids era is ending, but hey, that's their own implosion to deal with. It can't be any worse than the way wrestling and cycling have been handling their drug problems, right?

Still, I like going over to BW3 and playing some trivia and watching the sports here and there. Today, sadly they had NASCAR on, but off in a corner were Ripken and Gwynn (and actually, Tony Gwynn, always a little chubbier than the average player, was hot, too) showed that there were some good guys in sports, and that should be rewarded.