One great thing about living on the West Coast as opposed to the prairies where I grew up is that I don't have to worry so much about parts of my baby freezing and falling off. I certainly would be in some trouble with my wife, and perhaps the local health nurses, if I brought my baby home from a walk with, say, only eight fingers and one ear. Sure that might put him on a path to fame as an artist, but what happens when he flunks kindergarten because he can't count to 10?
Out here, however, winter temperatures still require some dressing up even if it's chilly rain we're battling rather than painful death. Now that I'm flying solo for a lot of my walks with my baby I've learned a universal truth: no matter where or how you put a toque on a baby, it will slide down over his eyes in five seconds or less. Physicists should be working on some sort of theory to explain this phenomenon. Something like the Pom Pom Principle or the Tiny Hoser Paradigm. They could use yarn theory. What's Stephen Hawking up to these days?
On Sunday I was out with my baby when I stopped to lift his toque off of his eyes for the 37th time, finally losing it and resting the brim of the toque comically high up on his brow so that it was barely even touching his head. Four seconds later it was back over his eyes. Enraged, I took off the toque, turned around and threw it over a fence. When I turned back around ANOTHER TOQUE had appeared on his head and was in the process of slipping over his eyes. Creepy.
Why does this remind me of referees? Because referees are blind, bwa ha ha ha!
Sorry referees. I'm mostly only kidding. My first paying job was as a soccer referee. I never gave out any yellow or red cards because I didn't know how to fill out the paperwork.
I watch a lot of basketball and nothing makes me laugh and swear — except possibly watching Steve Nash trying to win with plumbers like Hakim Warrick catching his passes — as much as homer announcers complaining about how their team is getting jobbed. It's gotten so bad that even Mr. Stern has said it's a problem.
Refs aren't actually blind and only a few of them use their power to fix games, gamble on the outcomes and potentially cost superhero Steve Nash an NBA title. Argh! Burn in hell, you crooked sons of. . . . Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, defending referees.
In a recent Sports Illustrated article (published Jan. 17, 2011, not available online) entitled What's Really Behind Home Field Advantage, excerpted from the book Scorecasting, authors Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim argue that the main reason there is a proven home field advantage in nearly every sport is that officials are influenced by responses from the crowd to make calls that favour the home team. And all this time you thought it was the scoreboard telling you when to make NOISE. The article throws out a lot of numbers and uses words like deconstructed, isolate and evidence, so it's conclusions must be plausibly scientific. The authors found that home baseball players drew more walks, home soccer players received fewer cards and home Cleveland Cavaliers fans wanted their money back.
Of course if you give my dad a call he'll gladly explain his reverse-homerism theory in which those fancy-pantses down in the CFL office in Toronto and their crooked referees find ways to screw the hard working Saskatchewan Roughriders even when they're playing at home.
Anyway, the Sports Illustrated article won't shatter your world but it is interesting to see referee homerology spelt out so clearly.
So maybe referees are not blind, just weak-minded.
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