[sic]

Caution: sports post ahead.

The last few Mondays have been weird in that I am no longer found on the couch in front of the TV watching the duration of Monday Night Football. That may seem like no big deal, but I’m talking about a show that’s easily been on of my favorite never-miss television programs for most of my adult life. At least it was until ABC moved the landmark program to ESPN, which is now in its second season of ruining it.

The last time I watched a full broadcast was the Cowboys/Bills game when Dallas managed to somehow pull a 25-24 victory out at the last minute. Exciting stuff. But since then I’ve tuned in only to tune out shortly thereafter, put off by the forgetable booth announcing team as a whole almost as much as I am by ESPN icons Stuart Scott and Chris Berman who’ve both become stock parodies of themselves.

How did my love wane so quickly? Well for one, the show simply lost a lot of its tradition and cachet when it left the network for cable. ESPN may be a sports powerhouse, but “Monday Night Football on ESPN” just doesn’t pack the same historical punch as “Monday Night Football on ABC,” which I began watching as a kid with Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell and Dandy Don Meredith.

Second, it didn’t bring the booth team of Al Michaels and John Madden with it. That duo lateraled to NBC where they steere that ship’s  “Sunday Night Football in America,” which coincidentally  is rapidly becoming the new Monday Night Football.

Third, with the exception of the unexpected excitement of the above-mentioned Cowboys/Bills battle, the games have mostly been the suck. I mean, Patriots/Bengals? Yawn. Giants/Falcons? Feh. Ravens/Steelers? Pffft. Whose idea is it that these are marquee match-ups? And then this past Mondays 49ers/Seahawks dance? Please. It’s embarrassing to see a television franchise being put out to pasture so painfully.

It’s as if ABC and ESPN really don’t give a crap. That they’re taking some sort of perverse joy in felling a champion. I got home this past Monday night and turned on the San Francisco/Seattle game just as it went to halftime. After Berman’s “fastest three minutes” shtick and Stuart Scott showing how badass he is with his left brow cocked and loaded about a foot above his eye, then we’re treated to an endless interview with NASCAR teammates Jimmie Smith and Jeff Gordon speaking from some studio in cliches about how they’re competitors but friends too with the utmost in respect for one another and combined have one goal and that’s to do the best they can for the team irregardless of who crosses the finish line first and blahbity blah blah blahbity blah blahzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

NASCAR!? Seriously ESPN, you barely will give three minutes to an NFL weekend wrap-up but you’ll let these two perpetual left-turners blab on and on and on and on about themselves and the cars they drive? You’re trying to make me turn it off, aren’t you!?
And in answer, with Gordon in mid-drone about needing to put together a good race in order to top his bestest buddy Jimmie I switched off to the infinitely enjoyable HGTV.  Never to return? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Pardon me while I take a moment celebrate my Raiders. Last week Oakland finally snapped what had become an 11-game losing streak by beating the Cleveland Browns 26-24. This week they topped Miami 35-17 for their first back-to-back victories since I don’t know when. They looked like an actual football team! Receiver Jerry Porter actually played like he cared what people thought!

Granted the Browns and the Dolphins aren’t top-shelf opponentry but two wins is two wins.

Yeah, baby!

Thanks to my friend Michael, Susan and I got to go with him to see the Dodgers beat the Washington Nationals 4-3 tonight from some mighty fine field seats: Section 11, Row L, Seats 1, 2 and 3 to be exact. It was very exciting stuff with Jeff Kent getting his 362nd career homerun (moving him ahead of Joe DiMaggio on the all-time list)  and their ace closer Takashi Saito (above) coming in for the top of the ninth to put the Nats down 1-2-3 and preserve the victory for his 36th save off the season.

It was my first time being in attendance at a Dodger win in I can’t remember how many years.

Look what I found on an old buried computer disk (click to quadruplify):

It’s not just every day or just anyone who gets to sit in the Dodgers dugout with Congressman Xavier Becerra and his three wonderful daughters. But before you go thinking I was some political insider or something even more dubious, rest assured my only claims to fame was that I was friends at the time with a fellow L.A. Zoo docent named Laure McNulty who was full-time nanny to Becerra’s girls and since the trio of tots spent a lot of time at the zoo that summer I got to know them and subsequently their high-powered dad and mom well enough to have the honor of accepting their invitation to be the guests of the Dodgers for the June 21, 2002, game, which included pre-game field (and obviously dugout) access before settling in to a luxury suite on the first base side.

It was a dream come true and I’d thought this image, snapped by Laure was long gone.

I’m gonna do something different and take the high road when it comes to Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s all-time 755 homeruns. Having made my peace that it’s going to happen within the next few days, when that moment finally comes I’m going to shut the hell up, acknowledge it for the lifetime achievement it is and move on. Juiced or not, you don’t get to that pinnacle without talent and staying power.

Make no mistake, I am soooooooo glad he went homerless when he and the Giants were in town last week, but not simply out of Dodger pride. For damn sure I was downright surly in not wanting our rival’s ‘roid riddled rudeboy to send anything sailing out of my park and into the record books, and I’m glad he left still one shy of tying the record not just because of a “not in our house” mindset, but of because of how ugly the L.A. faithful in the house that night would’ve reacted. It would’ve been nasty — like Philadelphia Eagles fans nasty — and all the booing and trash talk and garbage thrown onto the field and middle fingers and insults and fist fights and ejections and arrests would have been captured on camera and played and replayed around the world and forever more that’s how we would’ve been seen.

So it was a huge relief on two fronts when the Giants’ marquee player went away empty. Reeeeeejected!  But all the Dodgers did was postpone the inevitable. When the Bonds hit No. 755 in San Diego a day or two later and joined Aaron at the top of the mountain, I shrugged. I think most everyone did. Just turned the page. And aside from the fanfare that’ll splash across the media when he hits his next one I’ll turn that page, too.

Thankfully the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez makes that pretty easy to do. Just this weekend at 32 he became the youngest player in the history of the game to reach the 500-homerun milestone. If he continues to average an annual homerun total in the upper 30s as he has in his first 13 seasons, we could see him catching Barry’s number seven or eight year down the road.  Even if his output ridiculously drops to somewhere around 25 more four-baggers a season, when he reaches Bonds’ age of 43 he’ll have 775, which will probably be in the neighborhood of where Bonds’ll be when he retires.

Click to quadruplize, of course

I don’t fancy myself a sports reporter, and I certainly try not to kick a person when they’re down, but in regards to the game Susan and I walked to and from last night things were going relatively well for Dodger pitcher Mark Hendrickson and his team through the fifth inning (picture above) even though by the end of it they were down 2-1 to the Atlanta Braves. That was when manager Grady Little decided to yank his starter and bring to the mound some middle reliever named Brett Tomko to start the sixth. A third of that inning later Tomko got the hook having pitched as if he was getting a little $umthin’ $umthin’ under-the-table from the Braves: the first three batters he faced got hits. And before Tomko’s mess could be cleaned up the Braves ended up adding a couple more runs, ultimately winning by a score of 5-2. The Dodgers did manage to bring some life back to the party by putting two men on and the tying run at the plate in the form of pinch hitter Olmedo Saenz with two out in the bottom of the ninth, but Saenz struck out. Game over. Feh. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Pretty much everything else that afternoon went according to plan — with the exception of the bars that we found closed during our walk. My friend Stephen had called with advanced warning that Barragan’s was taking the day off, so we were prepared for no margaritas. But arriving outside the Silver Lake Lounge we had no clue that place was shuttered as well. What the hell’s up with that!? You’d think this was a holiday or something!

Fortunately our timing was such that the No. 4 bus was approaching while we were shaking our heads in front of the Silver Lake Lounge so we decided to decrease our output by boarding it to Echo Park where we were relieved to find the Gold Room open for business like true patriots and stepped inside its dark confines where a couple regulars kindly slid down a stool so Susan and I could sit and enjoy our $3 Newcastle drafts and soak up a bit of the local flavor of the cool cave as Mexico and Venezuala battled for soccer supremacy on the flatscreen TV off my left shoulder.

Adjourning the Gold Room we headed east on Sunset passing Barragan’s with disdain then crossed Douglas before making our way to Sunset’s north side where we escaped the heat by entering the Shortstop bar nondescript except fora sidewalk placard out front touting its Dodger home game-special $1.50 Pabst Blue Ribbon drafts. Inside with pints in tow we learned of free barbeque for the taking outside the back door.

With a tasty beer in one hand and an equally tasty burger fresh off the grill in the other, for a fleeting moment — actually several of them — I thought about not leaving My New Favorite Bar’s uncrowded corner in the pool table room. But like the 56,000 others in attendance and the (632 who didn’t drive) we had a game to get to and so undaunted and duly fortified we proceeded up the hilliest section of the trek, past all the cars piled up at the gate with occupants waiting to pay their $15 until we were at last standing sheened in sweat in the shade above Section 10 of the Top Deck, just in time for “God Bless America” and the National Anthem followed by a flyover from a massive and loud C-17 transport:

Afterward, we stayed put in our seats for the fireworks that were a far cry better than our last July 4 at Dodger Stadium. That pyrotechnical display in 2005 was shut down early on and unceremoniously after two small fires erupted in foliage near the launching site. Thankfully no nearby brush was harmed in the making of this year’s extravaganza and the finale was delightful — and the walk home was a special treat if you like strolling through smoke-filled streets of a simulated warzone of firecrackers, bottle rockets, the occasional M80 and regular series of sky-high starbursts and booms that rivaled the scope and sound of some we’d seen at the stadium.

It was almost enough to make me want to grab Susan and dive into the Shortstop for cover (and more beer) as we passed it on the walk back home, but not quite.

A Flickr photoset of pix from the walk, the bus, the bars, the booze, and the game can be viewed here.

A year ago today we were up in Troy, Montana enjoying an old-fashioned smalltown Independence Day parade and later an afternoon backyard barbeque by Susan’s Uncle Jim followed later by an awesome fireworks display launched from a park beside the Kootenai River (click to enlarge)…

that we watched from the front yard of Susan’s grandma’s house as if we were right underneath the light bombs bursting in air. Best Fourth of July Ever!

To celebrate this time around, we’ll be setting out at a leisurely pace around 4 p.m. for the two-mile walk to the Dodgers house from ours. And as it’s going to be exceptionally hot, we will be strategically stopping midway at Barragan’s in Echo Park for margaritas.

Though it will be decidedly cooler on the walk home I think a post-game/pyrotechnic display beer at Shortstop may be in order as well. Especially if the Dodgers beat the Braves. Which they will, of course. And the Padres will lose meaning the Dodgers will take over sole posession of first place in the NL West.

Pre-game item checklist:

• Transistor radio (tuned to KFWB 980)
• Compact binoculars
• Camera
• Tickets

The one thing I can’t locate at the moment is my Dodger cap and I — gasp! — have the sinking suspicion I may have sent it to Goodwill during a past closet purge, dammit! I just don’t see how I could do something so blasphemous so in the meantime I’ll have to go into full search mode.

Marathonfoto.com is the organization that stations photogs at points along the course to grab pix of every participant as they pass by. That’s a lotta lotta shutter clicks. So far, according to its website, identification of only 39% of all the images taken has been completed, which means there might be some more of me later (such as me trotting the last 10 yards to the finish line), but in the meantime, here’s a collage of the captures they got of me in somewhat chronological order from before the start (without hat) to just after the 26 mile mark (clickable to slightly enlarge):

While my faves are the second one and the last one, I particularly like that I was captured pointing and shooting my cam in the seventh one as well.

And by the way… that ain’t no peace sign I’m flashing in some of the snaps above, that’s a two as in dual as in duathlete, which is what I was on this day hell yeah.

UPDATED (03.08): Looks like there were plenty more snaps where those first nine came from. Twenty-four to be exact. Here’s a new composite of thumbs (embiggenable if clicked):

I won’t verbatim the post I just tossed up on Blogging.la. I’ll leave it at I’m better than this time yesterday, but still recovering from some odd repercussions my body’s experiencing. So while that continues (hopefully at a diminishing level), allow me to point you to the Flickr photoset of images from the day’s events.

As in six hours, thirty minutes and 36 seconds. That’s how long it took for me to walk the 26.2 miles from the start to the finish of the marathon today. Don’t do the math because I already did, and that time translates into a 14.9-minute mile, meaning I was finally wonderously able to rock a long overdue a four-mph pace — and that’s after barreling over the bike tour course in 70 minutes, getting back up to downtown, changing clothes, and hopping the Red Line to Universal City (where on route I was interviewed by a writer for the Daily News so I’ll be checking to see if my name’s in print in that paper tomorrow).

Obviously there’s a lot more to say(and more than 100 snaps to upload to Flickr, but my legs don’t work and my body’s tweaking around with my core temperture and the clattering chills are payback for the pain I put it through, so other than me throwing down a double thumbs up for my accomplishment and satisfactory physical condition, any report in-depth of otherwise will have to wait.