Dear dimwit on the phone

A friend and I used to play each other in paper football every day during Chemistry class in high school and, after a long period of such games, we decided to have a "Super Bowl". I won the game but I'm no closer to being a Super Bowl champion than any of these teams are "National Champions" when they beat six other shit squads in a shit tournament no one cares about.

And I make it a point to let them know that. Kindly, of course. Wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

 

An instant classic that should be preserved for posterity. I humbly bow before such greatness.

 

As do I. Fantastic work.

 

B.. b.. but ... he's heading off to Japan later this summer with his sensei to learn about Japanese culture. How 'bout a feature on that?

 

That's almost what this tournament was — a "World" Series with every team being from the Midwest.

Oh, and this team is "No. 1 in the nation." I checked out what it takes to be in the rankings. Basically, the more USSSA tournaments you play in (translation, the more entry fee money you pay), the higher your ranking.

Sad thing is there are people that buy into this and think this is something of huge significance. And there are youth sports organizations more than happy to suck every dollar out of these people that they can.

 

A baseball title awarded by a softball association? And not even real softball, but slow pitch? Or am I the only one who finds this unusual?

 

It's the United States Specialty Sports Association — they offer tournaments in different sports. I was checking out their website _ basically, they have tournaments all around the country that they call "World" Series and the way you qualify is play in a USSSA state tournament and then cough up another entry fee to play in the World Series.

 

Works for me. Different organization than I was thinking of, or it had a name change. Either way, as so many have said, yet another group crowning paper "world champions."

 

They sanction baseball tournaments for 5-and-under teams. Unbelievable.

 

Name change, basically because it started sanctioning fast-pitch and baseball. "Specialty Sports" is just a contrived way to keep the USSSA acronym.

 

Not that organizations like that are at all uncommon, but I marvel at the efficiency with which the USSSA convinces parents and traveling teams to write huge checks to play in their tournaments. And they have some sort of scam/deal where they also provide the insurance for these tournaments at a huge markup.

 

Oh, just had an absolute doozy of an email.

So, a little background first. One of our towns has a pretty big race in it called the Blessing of the Fleet Road Race. It's a 10-mile event where people can run or walk and it usually attracts about 4,000 total entrants.

As some of you know, I was recently on my honeymoon and, as such, couldn't cover the event myself like I have the last three years. Still, my coworker did a bang up job covering the race and when I came back, I formatted well over 1,600 names of the top runners and over 600 of the top walkers to be published.

Well, apparently, this was not good enough for the first place walker. She feels we didn't do a good enough job showcasing the walking portion of the event, even though no other paper in the entire state does so.

She also took offense with a column one of the news girls wrote about her experience walking the event because "She admits she ran at points and this is not allowed!".

I told the lady, quite nicely, that I agree with her about how it's not fair that people entered in the walk portion of the race ran instead and tried to explain to her why we didn't have more coverage of the walking event (We usually do).

I explained to her how I was on my honeymoon, how my coworker not only had to cover the race, he had to shoot it from the pace car and interview the top athletes. She responded with this...

"Wow you certainly have dropped the ball...full of excuses...I am sorry I do not agree with you on any of this! I crossed the finish line before any of the runners!
It's just a way for you to defend your lack of photos and coverage of the walk. As I have stated on many occasions-walkers are out there and covering the same distance as the runners-we are sometimes out there longer. Show us the same respect. For that matter, why put pictures of runners in when it was stated that the walk was going to be covered on Friday?
You are extremely defensive on this. I do not frown on walkers running in this -it's against the rules! Yes her coverage and human interest portion of the article was good journalism but again she RAN! She was not honest! If she is suppose to be such an athlete then enter the run!
Talk to someone who really experiences the walk portion...there were quite a number who did WALK and did not break into a RUN!
-Crybaby who can't run"

I then wrote a very long angry email back but deleted it and responded with this....

"Well, we're clearly not going to agree on anything related to this subject.
With that being said, congratulations on winning the walking portion of the Blessing of Fleet Road Race.
I'm sorry our coverage of the event wasn't to your liking. If you could show us any other newspaper and/or publication in the area, state or anywhere really that did a better job (Heck, if you could show me one that even mentioned there was a walk and even did more than a bare minimum mention that a race took place), please feel free to send me a copy so that we can see what our competitors did and see ways in which we can improve in the future.
Our mailing address is XXXXXX, XXXX, XXX. Have a nice day."