Serious Athletes

There was a great editorial in the WSJ today. Read the whole article here.

You Cannot Be That Serious About Sports

"There's a guy I sometimes play pickup basketball with, I'm pretty sure he hates my guts. I don't think I've done anything to insult him, other than playing pitiful basketball. He doesn't know my name. But every time I touch the ball, he shoots me with a scalding death glare—a clear, non-verbal command that if I don't unload the rock as fast as possible to another, more skillful player, he is going to walk over to the side of the court, grab an aluminum chair and thwap me over the back of the head.

I try to block out his disapproval, but I can't. I fear him more than my boss. I don't want him to get the best of me, but he is beginning to inhibit my ability to enjoy a sport I play for fitness and amusement.

He is a Serious Guy.

Everybody who plays a sport for fun has encountered a Serious Guy (or a Serious Girl). A Serious Guy turns 3-on-3 into a curse-filled nightmare. A Serious Guy makes backyard badminton feel like tax preparation, and elevates meaningless Wiffle ball into Game 7. A Serious Guy groans when you swing and miss. A Serious Guy can't believe you sliced that Titleist into the woods. A Serious Guy just smashed a volley into your face.

You don't even have to be playing with a Serious Guy to upset one. A Serious Guy will howl if you hit a ball into his court, or scream if you impede his $12,000 time-trial bike. A Serious Guy won't let your kid play in his playground game, because, you know, it's Serious.

A Serious Guy wants to win. He has no mercy or sense of humor or sense of proportion. A Serious Guy joins the kiddie soccer game at a family picnic, and blasts a 30-footer past a toddler. A Serious Guy calls three-second violations in Nerf hoops. Late at night, a Serious Guy sends out crazy 2,000-word emails about defensive breakdowns during the football game. The touch football game.

.....
[Best part of the article here:]

An aside: it's OK to be a Serious Guy in a solo sporting endeavor. If you are training for the Masochist Type-A Self-Improvement Divorcee Challenge, in which you must run a ultra-marathon, do a 200-mile donkey ride, and carry a flaming pile of logs and middle-aged ennui to the top of a mountain, that's fine. You want to weigh your breakfast, shave your forearms, use the word "epic" a lot and bore the office about your pre-dawn workout regimen, that's a personal choice.
....."

Discuss....

That is funny shit. I may have to actually pick up a copy of the WSJ for the first time in a long time.

But what happened to the disappearing Jim Rome video about Angry Softball Guy?

Mike wrote:That is funny shit. I may have to actually pick up a copy of the WSJ for the first time in a long time. But what happened to the disappearing Jim Rome video about Angry Softball Guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMfqbR8Ujlk

cride wrote: The serious guy/gal attitude should be reserved to individual sports, since their negative attitude shouldn't bother anyone else. I just hope I don't have some psycho serious douche/bitch climbing behind me when I'm soloing up a some 5.2 rated climb at turtle pace.

Ha ha, you're lucky. There are plenty of Serious Climbers out there (trust me, I'm an expert) and Gay's description of a guy throwing a folding chair isn't too far off the mark from things I've seen at the crag. But yeah, you won't have to worry about passing the ball ASAP, but you better not short rope me...err, I mean a Serious Climber!

But climbing isn't a sport. Its not supposed to be fun. Its life.

Good stuff... I guess this is why I only get eye rolling when talking with partners about when to leave climbing... "How 'bout 3:30(a.m.), we’ll get good temps and 3 more pitches in. It will be just light enough for us to climb after we do the hike and warm up!"

R&I did a funny series about VSC (very serious climbers) a few years back.

Im a closet Serious Guy type climber. If I could maintain climbing partnerships and that attitude I would. Till the day they invent a gadget that dishes out slack and can keep up with the rigors or a hangdog session, I'll continue to be courteous.

Spencer Anderson wrote:R&I did a funny series about VSC (very serious climbers) a few years back.

That's the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this thread. That was a brilliant article.

The article prompts a number of questions from a middle-aged Noob:

1) Can I claim credit for a full extra grade (say increase a 10a to an 11a) because I carried my middle-aged ennui up a route?

2) Do I understand correctly that I’m allowed to angrily toss my bouldering pad after repeatedly falling of a problem in Joe’s Valley in July, when there’s no one else within a 10 mile radius of me? (If a pad falls in a forest …)

3) If one were to thrust one’s hand in the air and dance a hornpipe on top of a boulder upon successfully sending a long term project, does that make one a “Serious Guy”? Or just a dork? (Purely hypothetical question, of course.)

4) How can you brag to office mates about a predawn workout when: a) the workout began at 7:45 a.m.; b) you work out (pun intended) of your house and don’t have office mates; and c) the closest thing you have to office-mates live in Jersey and think that campusing means studying sociology in a park like setting during a 7 year interlude between living with parents?

5) Am I poisoning the happy-go-lucky, recreational sport atmosphere when I emphatically insist that my belayer not wave at passing girls with his brake hand? Does the answer depend on whether he’s using a Gri-Gri?

Advice on these important matters would be greatly welcome.

The real question is why are you a climber wasting your time playing a ball game? Surely there must be some way for you to get a better climbing oriented workout in.

Wow that was pretty harsh, I'll admit that I used to play racquet ball occasionally. I pretty much sucked at it but the guy I played with knew that I was only there for the workout so we had fun with it. At that time the company I worked for had an unwritten policy that anyone who went to the YMCA for a lunch time workout could take an extra 30 minutes. I went most every day as did a lot of other guys. They all played basketball I usually ran the track or swam along with pullups. When the guy asked me about playing R-ball I wasn't that interested at first but he said he was willing to just play for fun usually we didn't even keep score but I knew it was 20 to 1 most of the time.

Really if the douche bag is that uptight about it why bother? Best of luck to you.

You're going to let them get away with calling climbing a SPORT?

However, the "serious guy" thing is all too true.

Shoot, all this time I thought climbing was about exploring, pioneering, and adventuring in the wild.

I thought it was a way of getting in touch, literally, with the bones of the planet.

This is why I don't consider climbing in a gym to be climbing, just a kind of foreplay for climbing.

Your degree sounds fairly interesting, John L.