New Scaratings

This is your chance to tell everyone what a great athlete you once were. Brag and boast to your heart's content. Even exaggerate if you want. (Heck, who would know...?) Even though you guys and gals, who post here, are extremely brainy, I don't think that means you don't have any brawn. Flex those muscles, if you still can, and tell us about it.

(I need to say that I have invited RHINO to kick this new thread off, with tales of the unstoppable RHINO on the rugby field. Please give him a chance to post something, before you other super stars, from years gone by, jump in with newspaper headlines about your touchdown run that won the state championship for your high school, or other stuff like that. Hold back for a moment and allow RHINO start us off.)

_________________
"The game is afoot."

_________________

/```\
(o\_!_/o)

_________________
liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

Once were? This still active professional athlete takes umbrage to this as he still competes at the professional level several times a year.

I can give you four, though none of them are as great as, say, holding a track record at a college, Mr. Cloudy.

1) Getting the tip off over someone 1.5 feet taller than me in a game.
2) Getting ejected and banned from playing after threatening to kill a referee who fouled me out intentionally (with no one around) in less than 1 minute on the clock in a big game.
3) Later, though fatter, beating one of the best Vandy b-ball players 1-1

And number 4 is my anti-great moment, but great in a bad way:

4) Playing basketball with Tim and Tim's father, and realizing that lack of play, an additional 50 pounds, and general slowing of reflexes had turned me into a scrub who shouldn't even play a pickup game. Haven't played basketball since.

IMHO bowling is definitly a sport. Years ago I won a first place team trophy in a mixed league where most of us were bowling just for fun and socializing and to meet girls. The championship playoff was with a team (the best team in the league) against which we had never won a game. All of us bowled over our heads and we won all 3.

Congratulations on your 300. All bowlers know how very impressive that is.

_________________
"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

Of course the real humor is that this is the exact, unedited wording that apparently got Cloudy so wonderfully complimentary and genuinely admiring of my athletic feats of yesteryear:

"I wanted to believe I got the name because I was an unstoppable behemoth. I really got it because I was grey-skinned, short-sighted, and couldn't change direction without taking 20 yards to do so."

Perhaps he also wishes to be such a nice sycophantic proponent of the presidencies of those who say: "I wanted to believe I could be president. I really couldn't get elected to dogcatcher"

Maybe he also has posters on the wall of singers who say: "I wanted to believe I could issue a number 1 single. I really got called "Caruso" because I sing like the guy from NCIS".

Or more germanely, he could be ever so sincerely appreciative of a writer who says: "I wanted to believe I got called Shakespeare because I was a literary genius. I really got it because I was an illiterate buffoon who couldn't hold a javelin steady".

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Here is the "unstoppable behemoth" in action... (Not only was he "unstoppable", he is still also very modest.) RHINO never ran around anybody, never passed the ball back, and never was fast enough to sprint past the opposition. He didn't need to. He just lowered his shoulder and bowled them over. Hell, this was rugby... No pads, no "real" helmets, nothing, but one man's bones and flesh crashing into another man's.

"The unstoppable behemoth" in action... Don't get in his way... Here comes RHINO...!



...................... "Get out of my way sucker. I don't want to hurt you."

_________________
"The game is afoot."

LilJol, of course bowling is a sport, and one of my favorites, even though I suck at it. I like bowling much better than golf. When you are bowling and screw up, it gives you the ball back to try again. When you screw up at golf, you have to hunt all over the damn place to find where your ball went. Most of the time you never find the God damn golf ball. If that's not bad enough, you have to take some kind of stroke penalty, and then have to buy a new golf ball.

p.s. I might add that you never have to worry about the weather, or getting struck by lightning while bowling.



p.s. I Googled how much golf ball replacements might cost. The Titlist Pro V1x 12 ball box could cost you as much as $58.00. Hell, that's more than four bucks every time you drive one into the pond, or other strange places, where no one dares to go.

p.p.s. I am ashamed of myself for delaying this part of my reply to LilJol about the fact that he has bowled a perfect 300 on a sanctioned game. This is an accomplishment that very few will ever achieve. My hat is off to you my friend.

p.p.p.s. LilJol, somehow I vaguely remember some TV program from the 1960's called something like "Bowling for Dollars". Is it too late to get you entered...? (Damn I Googled it, and came up with nothing. So it looks like I'm remembering something that never existed. If so, that's great! LilJol, I think this is a TV program that the whole world awaits, and you could be the first million dollar winner...!)

_________________
"The game is afoot."

Ummm....
To "google" something, you actually need to type it into the search field for Google, Cloudy.
You can't just yell "Bowling for Dollars!" at your monitor and expect good results.
Bowling for Dollars is most assuredly going to be googleable. It ran in multiple cities for at least twenty years or so in some of them I'm sure.
The height of excitement in the life of my great aunt Maxine was being a "Pin Pal" for the syndicated version in Cincy in the early to mid-70s.
I suppose it could be worse. At least she didn't have any stories about telling Bob Eubanks the strangest place she's "made whoopie".

I remember Bowling for Dollars. God I am old enough to remember bowling at the last two alleys in Chicago that had pin boys.

_________________
"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

English really IS hard for you isn't it?

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Hell, where did I goof up...?

p.s. I never played rugby, but I think I could have hit the "unstoppable behemoth" hard enough that he would have coughed the ball up. Once I picked up his fumble, I would have been off to the races, and I never would have needed to pass the ball back. Nobody would ever have caught me. I was damn fast, whatever sport I played.

_________________
"The game is afoot."

Uh gee I dunno - maybe by not knowing what "I wanted to....but really" means?



I'm a fat cripple now and only my left side works, but feel free to try it any time. I'm only 90 miles away. I'll pay your gas money.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

I'm no athlete, but my college's fencing club was so desperate for fencers that they put me on foil and trotted me out for meets when they they had to. Probably the highlight of my brief career as a collegiate fencer was going out as a sacrificial lamb against someone from the University of North Carolina, which actually had one of the better teams in the East at that time. I had caught the flu the night before, and had consumed nothing but some orange juice, a dry English muffin and Benadryl that morning. To the surprise of all (myself included) I actually beat him in our match. Good thing they weren't doing drug testing then, although I'm not sure they'd consider Benedryl "performance-enhancing."

Of course there was also the time I broke my collarbone playing a game of touch football. I'm not sure which of the two is more impressive.

_________________
Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

RHINO, I am now more decrepit than you, plus I am probably a lot older. I seriously doubt that I could challenge you on the Rugby field these days. I'll tell you what... I may be wrong, but I once heard that Rugby players had a half time tradition of rolling a key of beer on the field, and drinking as much of it as they could, before the second half began. If I am right, I will gladly go Mano-a-mano with you on this aspect of the game. (I've had a lot of practice, when it comes to beer drinking.)



p.s. Just 90 miles away, where the heck are you?

_________________
"The game is afoot."

Okay, I guess I need to brag...

As a pitcher for the Lake Delta Little League Tigers, I once struck out 13 batters in a six inning game. No, this is not one of CLOUDY's silly jokes. I actually did.

Yep, we won.

p.s. I'm guessing the year was 1958 or 1959, so who cares now...?

_________________
"The game is afoot."

I have a patch from the American Bowling Congress that states "I Beat My Coach". I can't remember if my coach was any good or not, though. It's been a long time since I was 10.

I was Clarksburg, WV's Putt-Putt champion when I was 12. That windmill was a breeze...pun intended.

I had on unassisted triple play in Little League as a centerfielder the same year as the Putt-putt title.

And I have caught seven different state citation species of fish here in West "By God" Virginia, along with one in PA, one in VT, and one saltwater species off the coast of VA Beach.

Very proud of that bowling patch.

when I used to play Slo-Pitch I maimed a couple of pitchers with my line drives up the middle ..they no longer sing baritone

unfortunately..in this league, the pitcher delivered to his own teammates..which made me rather unpopular

Believe it or not , I was a sprinter in High School and I placed in the Chicago Public High School City Finals in my Junior and Senior years. I never set any records that I can remember.

Pfft! My personal best is 326, and that was with only half the pins on the lane!

_________________
/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

I played softball for one season in the early to mid 90s. I was starting running to fat at the time, but still in at least somewhat recognizable shape from lifting. On my very first bat the opposing team looked at me, took very deep positions and I managed a blooper single past third.

I think it was four games before I got another hit (which like the first was by sheer luck), and I retired the same year with the eye-popping D-league softball lifetime average of .092. Bat and ball games are not my forte.

When I tried bowling it went similarly. I bowl(ed - never tried it left handed) backhand and straight - keeping my palm towards me and aiming straight at the head pin. No spin at all and certainly no curve. First time ever? Strike. Average? 79. I did join the work bowling/drinking league a couple of years as it was handicap-based and some teams like to have a good start. I got my average up to 116, but still managed to win the Horse's Ass trophy (it was the gold figure of an equine rear end on a plinth) for lowest average at the banquet. Team finished second though - their "rope in a dope" strategy had some success.

I am, I assume understandably enough, somewhat reluctant to share my actual successes such as they are. My rugby career was reasonable but no great shakes - low to mid club level at best. A decent scrum worker at number 1 (blind side prop for those unfamiliar with numbers) and pretty good tackler but as the real reason for the name (Cloudy take note here) suggests, I was a bit too slow and clumsy to be even a passable scoring threat - not that number 1's often do much scoring. The one claim to athletic fame I do have is that as a teenager I was a competitive junior bodybuilder (my usual joke about being 210lbs of solid muscle but just weighing 280 is based on fact!). Never won anything worth mentioning but I was 4th at a big competition once at 16 and actually signed an autographed ticket for one guy who was convinced I was going to make it really big one day. He was right (the 280 part is also factual) - but not in the way he thought.....

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

The last time I pitched in softball it was the top of the first inning on a 96-degree afternoon around 1990. By the time we got to bat, we were down 23 runs.

-- RWM

_________________
"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

I have a standing life-time batting average of .500 in softball.

I'm 1-2.

Played only once, showed up late. First time at bat I struck out. Second time I actually hit the ball, and everyone was so stunned they didn't think it to first base in time. The next hitter was out at first and the inning was over. Never went up to bat again that game, and haven't played since.

But, I still think a batting average of .500 for someone who grew up in a country without the sport isn't half bad.

I can understand why softball never caught on on Dagobah. It must be expensive to replace all those balls lost to the swamps

_________________
/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?