Sports: the opiate of the masses? Especially the masses of middle-aged, overweight, and out-of-shape males?

It doesn't matter.

I like sports regardless of the deep sociological and metaphysical implications...

And I like sports despite being a poor athlete myself.
I like recreational sports, and I especially like spectator sports.

	These interests, along with my love of analysis and the joy I get from performing, led me, inexorably, to sportscasting. From 1989 - 93, I was "Doc Palmer", the radio voice of the London Tigers, a AA minor-league baseball team in London, Ontario. CHRW-FM, the UWO campus radio station broadcast about 20 of their games each season.  Then in the summers of 1999 and 2000, I did play-by-play on CHRW-FM  and for Rogers Community Television for the London Werewolves of the Frontier League, an independent minor baseball league.  In August, 1999, the London Free Press did a big feature on my broadcasting.   Click here to read it.
It is really fun meeting the players and coaches, learning more about the game of baseball, and having access to so much more information than I had when I was just a bleacher-spectator. And I love trashing clichéd notions such as "RBIs are a good measure of a player's contribution to the team's winning percentage." I thought my foray into the exploration of career alternatives (I was invited to apply for an announcing job with the AAA Ottawa Lynx, but declined) ended when the London Tigers left town. But then the Werewolves came to town. And who knows if or when I'll take another visit to Fantasy Island ....

Also in the realm of baseball, for four years I ran the JAckPAC on the internet: the Jim Acker Pitch-Alike Contest. It involved predicting which pitcher would give up the most home runs per 9 innings pitched, and still get at least 80 innings pitched at the major-league level during the season.

Speaking of pitchers,  my cousin's son, Jared Moon, was a Spring '97 high draft pick pitcher for the Dodgers. He pitched for the Yakima Bears in 1997 and the Great Falls Dodgers in 1998. His 1998 season wasn't particularly good, because he had developed a serious shoulder injury near the end of that season and which kept him out of action for the entire 1999 season. But before his injury, his fastball was in the upper 80s, which is pretty good for a 19-year old. Unfortunately, his shoulder never really healed to the point that he was able to pitch again professionally; fortunately, part of his signing bonus involved massive amounts for a scholarship to attend university.

"But what about other sports?"
you might ask (if you have masochistic tendencies).

• Football: I played in 7th grade and was awful, so I became waterboy and charted plays the next two years. I played some intramural football as an undergrad, and I actually played in a game with Jesse Jackson on the Midway in Chicago one Sunday afternoon when we attended the same seminary. For many years I regularly made predictions about the outcomes of NFL games, but eventually I was forced to the realization that I'm not much (if any) better than the major handicappers.
  
• Hockey: Believe it or not, despite my very poor skating ability, I went out for the freshman hockey team at Carleton College (a small school in Minnesota). I never got into any games, but I did manage to run into some of our own players during practices. I was also one of the founding members of the Imperial Hockey League, an intramural sport at Carleton College. We played no-lift recreational hockey, but because I couldn't skate very well, I was goalie. At UWO, a bunch of economists used to get together once a week to play hockey at midnight or so. It was pretty fun until some people started taking it too seriously and their testosterone took over. So I quit.
  
• Golf: I typically win the prize for being the "Minimum-Average-Cost" golfer. I consider it a good day if fewer than four groups ask if they can play through or if I lose fewer than four golfballs.
  
• Auto-racing: My dad used to love it. We went to local stock car races frequently and to Indy twice. These days, my children, granddaughters, and I like the Enduros at the Delaware International Speedway (just outside London, Ontario).
  I was stopped for speeding once, but didn't get a ticket. Does that count?
  
• Curling: I've never tried it, but it looks pretty interesting on tv. It probably needs cheerleaders and more body contact to really catch on.
  
• Basketball: I used to enjoy playing some pick-up games on a weekly basis with some colleagues. Percentage from the floor, 10%; FT%, 30% on a good day. What fascinates me is how the sport can generate so much revenue. I don't much like watching it.

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August 11, 2001