A Great Athlete

Jay Leno has a band that introduces him. David Letterman does as well. So I deserve a little opening theme music as well. We all do, just because. So while I march onto the stage with my fly unzipped, check out the song “Outsider” from Jimmy Cliff’s excellent new album. Tell me this isn’t perfect for this site:

http://www.last.fm/music/Jimmy+Cliff/_/Outsider

Okay, on with the show.

A guy in Texas was recently kicking A and taking names at a charity bowling event. He’d nailed one strike after another and was one strike away from bowling a perfect game. I love bowling and once scored a perfect game. But then I woke up.

[Insert laugh-track here]

So the guy was on his final turn. The bowling alley descended into a hushed silence. The guy reared back and unleashed a perfect shot (bowl? What’s the term?). The ball exited his hand and glided down the lane, heading straight for the sweet spot in the pins.

And then, the pin-setting machine descended. It covered up the pins at the end of the guy’s lane. The ball bounced off the metal bar and dropped into the gutter. No one in the alley had the slightest idea why this happened.

So the machine grabbed the ten pins, lifted them, and then reset them. The guy repeated his turn. And scored a 7.

When interviewed, the guy was upbeat and walked off the incident. He admitted that he might’ve hit the reset button for his own lane when he intended to reset the adjacent lane. Flashing a small grin, he called the incident “something to talk about, I won’t forget that one.” His final score was 297, a personal best.

Screw Lance Armstrong and screw Alex Rodriguez and screw all the other billion-dollar super-stud superheroes. This is what a true athlete looks like.