Or at least a pause in one. This week I officially resigned my membership with the Chicago Curling Club. I didn't want to but the dues were getting pretty pricey (they work on a graduated scale and for my 3rd year it was going to be $500), we now live a whole lot farther away from Northbrook, and we only have one car. I did the math and figured that I'd probably be able to play in about 10-15 games and I just don't think it's worth $35 - $50 per game. As weird a sport as most people consider it, I will miss it because it was something different to do and I felt like I was just starting to "get it". Hopefully I'll be able to go back to it in a few years when time and money become more plentiful but it has been my experience these last 10 years that free time gets ever more, not less, scarce.
I'd also like to make a comment on the "controversial" call in the Bears game last weekend, so I apologize to you readers that couldn't care less about football. OK, well obviously I'm a Bears fan so there's no way that I can disprove that I have a bias here. However, a lot of random fans and commentators have commented that they had never heard of this rule before. Well I have. In fact, this exact rule has screwed me over on at least half a dozen bets over the last couple years. But usually you don't see it in the end zone. Usually it's on the sidelines; a receiver catches the ball, gets both feet in bounds, then lands 5 feet out of bounds and drops the ball in the process. That's ruled an incomplete pass; and if that one is then so was Johnson's. It's the same rule. It is, however, the most ridiculous manifestation of that rule. Before last Sunday that would have been one of those hypothetical situations someone would have brought up and everyone would have said "pssh, that'll never happen". And I might add that the rule is basically the same as it is in baseball. If a fielder dives for the ball, clearly has it in his mitt, and then in the course of landing the ball comes out it's not a catch. In fact it's not a catch until he takes his other hand and reaches for the ball in his mitt (then it's considered lost in transfer). So imagine a third baseman catches a pop-up bunt with his bare hand, tumbles to the ground, and the ball squirts out as he taps it on the ground. In my opinion, that wouldn't even be controversial that it was called a non-catch. What trips a lot of people up is that on end-zone plays sometimes a player will fumble the ball but it will still be ruled a touchdown because he broke the plane before he fumbled it. In other words, as soon as a player has possession and breaks the plane the play is over. The difference is the word "possession"; in that situation there is no question of possession because it's already been established well before the player reaches the goal line; in the Johnson catch "possession" is not achieved until he completes the catch by maintaining control all the way to the ground.
3 comments:
I've always thought about trying curling, but then the Olympics are over and I forget about it for 4 years. I've never talked to anyone that has played. Can you talk about the difficulty? On TV it looks like something with a difficulty level akin to bowling. (Which is not to say easy, but rather an activity that does not require superior genetics to be even above average like basketball.)
As for the catch, people also like to spout the old fumble rule of 'the ground can't cause a fumble.' But those people are dumb because that presupposes possession. You don't have possession if you catch the ball in the air. You have to come down with it. Simple.
(People are also confused because the refs screw up this call a decent amount of the time too, like in the Super Bowl.)
Illini receiver AJ Jenkins said in an interview before the Northern game:
"One thing Calvin Johnson didn't do, Petrino always says "Quick tuck." If he had done a quick tuck that would have been a catch."
It's definitely like bowling in the following respects: it certainly doesn't require tremendous athleticism, it's relatively easy to get to the point where you're not embarrassing yourself but very hard to get really good at, and by and large most of the people participating are at least as interested in getting drunk (difference being that you get drunk during in bowling but after in curling).
But it's definitely very tricky to consistently throw the right "weight" (the term for how hard or soft you throw it). It's definitely an art form to throw it hard enough to get past the mid-line (called the hog line) but not so hard that you throw it off the sheet. Once you get good at that, then it's just a matter of consistently being able to aim it where you want it to go. But then there's the other half of the game - the strategy - that most people don't think about too much. Sometimes the shot is very apparent, but often it's not and it takes a lot of understanding before you really feel confident in what's going on.
But to answer two questions that everyone asks me (even though you didn't): yes, the stone really does curl, and yes the sweeping really does something (makes the stone travel faster and straighter).
Are you ever going to blog again? We miss you!
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