Man Up

I'm sure by now you've seen the video of the guy who was trying to catch a foul ball at an Astros game the other night, only to duck out of the way at the last minute and allow the ball to plunk his (now ex-) girlfriend square the forearm. At first this kid tried to play it off as though he lost it in the lights (oldest excuse in baseball), only to later add in another interview that, "I didn't want to get hit in the face with a baseball." Dude, you should have quit while you were behind. While no one would have believed that you lost the ball in the lights (considering you weren't looking up and the lights are aimed at the field and not the stands that argument was pretty much shot to hell before you even finished saying it), most guys still wouldn't have gotten on you too badly. It's part of the code: We won't crap on each other too badly if one of us is humiliated on national television in a situation that could easily have happened to any guy... unless we are collectively given a reason the torment must be extended. Frankly, you were already pressing your luck between the sideways cap, the Chinese symbol hat, huge elastic bracelet and lip ring. Admitting that you deserted your woman to save your own face was not going to make you look any better. In fact, the only way you could have looked worse was if you had a brought a baseball glove to the game and still ducked out of the way. Of course you don't want to get hit in the face with a baseball - nobody would. But sometimes you just take one for the team. Now you have a face with no bruise, but no girlfriend to go along with it.

Now look, I'm not going to sit here and try to come across like I'm sort of super-macho man, because I'm not. I don't really like conflict and if you ask me to look at your engine and tell you what is wrong with it, when I lift the hood I may as well be staring at an exposed human brain. However, the one thing I'm good at are the protection details. Dude, it's not that hard. You just have to do the little things like make sure when the two of you are out, you walk on the street side, so that on the off chance a car jumps the curb it has to go through you to get to her. (Yes, ladies, we actually think like this.) It's the little gestures that go the longest distance. Perhaps the two best pieces of advice I can give you are these: 1. Don't try to catch a baseball with your body. I field like Edward Scissorhands and even I know that's a recipe for disaster and 2. If you can't catch (and clearly you can't) you should I do what I do and save up until you can afford seats that aren't prime foul-ball territory. Take the situation completely out of the equation. This isn't like Fenway where good seats are going to run you $125 apiece. Down at Minute Man Park you can sit behind home plate for $53 and the way the Astros are playing this season I can almost guarantee that they have tickets available. The seats they were in cost $39 each. That means this guy could have spent $28 extra and saved himself what will easily be a lifetime of grief from his friends. Perhaps you could put the money you saved towards a membership on Match.com.

-Here's one from the "Of Course" files: a couple days ago I mentioned how Jets Coach Rex Ryan stole the show on the season debut of Hard Knocks by being loud, cocky and foul-mouthed. So, of course, the very next day Ryan felt compelled (actually, my guess is that the Jets made him feel compelled) to come out and apologize for being so foul-mouthed. This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. I understand that if you are watching a live game on basic broadcast TV sometimes the microphones can get a little too close to the sidelines and pick up coaches swearing. When that happens it probably is necessary to apologize, given that kids could be watching. But when you're on HBO at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday night and there is a parental warning right before the broadcast specifically for language, then I don't think you have anything to apologize for. People can't get offended when there is swearing on a show that warns you there will be a lot of swearing. If people still felt like they should complain then we should just do away with parental warnings, because they obviously aren't effective. Ryan said his mother was actually the one that was most shocked by his language, but I find it hard to believe any woman who has been married to a football coach for 50 years and raised another two would be offended by some swearing. I just hope that this doesn't lead Ryan to tone down his act because he was starting to look like a TV star in the making.