I’m back with another Press box Podcast after spending a week on the DL with what has been diagnosed as a kidney stone. This has been hell week for me. I would not even wish this on a Kansas Jayhawk fan. Here’s the bad thing about kidney stone stories from friends and co-workers…they all end the same…in pain.
Last Tuesday, I woke up a 2:30 with a sharp back pain and thought it was a muscle spasm since the day before I played racquetball, then lifted weights and did stomach crunches at night. I’ve been hard core with my New Year’s Resolution and thought perhaps I overdid it.
Three hours or working on sports reports for our Missourinet affiliates and nausea sent me to the ER later that morning where they told me I probably did just hurt my back and I was dehydrated. So, four liters of fluid later and great pain medicine I was sent home to heal up…but the pain never went away. It took another trip to my family doctor who had enough sense to order a CAT scan which revealed my little 5mm friend.
Anyway, a trip to a specialist is lined up, but while I was lying on the couch for six days I was stewing over sports stories that just irked the more and more I thought about it.
So on this week’s podcast
I need to re-hash the Mark McGwire Fauxpology. This is an absolute joke. What’s even more of a joke is the way St. Louis Cardinals gave him a loud standing ovation at the Winter Warm Up in St. Louis while moments before that they booed Jack Clark for speaking out against McGwire. Hello fans…don’t you remember in 1998 while we were all falling in love in baseball and McGwire and Sosa and we led to believe the power surge was because of juiced baseballs, we were being duped…like a bunch of fools!
Yet, you cheer the man who doesn’t have the guts to give the Maris family their father’s record back for hitting 61 home runs in a season naturally. I discuss this in further detail with Manny Haley, who contributes to the Missourinet and spoke with Jack Clark about the McGwire apology.
Alright, onto other stuff that really ticked me off while I was popping pain pills. This stupid idea of having the Pro Bowl the week before the Super Bowl. I have to admit I don’t really watch the game anyway, but this gives me another reason not to. C’mon David Garrard is the starting AFC quarterback. Typically when you have the two Super Bowl teams sending reps, you have seven or eight players from those teams playing in the Pro Bowl…that’s 15% of the roster. If I’m going to watch the Pro Bowl I at least want to see guys like Peyton Manning and Drew Brees.
Finally, there is a story floating around about the idea of having a live tiger at Mizzou football games next year. Not sure how intimidating that is for the opposing team unless you pull off a gladiator move and let it loose, but I came inches away from the live tiger at a Memphis basketball game…pretty cool being separated by something that could chew me up in five minutes by just a pane of glass.
