MILWAUKEE — It's spring and it's time to celebrate the six-month hibernation of your parka.
Go outside and lay out.
Grab a brew at the Terrace.
Make a trip to Miller Park for an open roof baseball game.
The suddenly pleasant weather also means it is time for that most dreaded of seasonal traditions: spring cleaning.
Rather than actually making an effort to rake enough debris from my bedroom to actually see the floor or remove the approximately 3 inches of dust residing on my ceiling fan, I'll instead turn my attention to the sports world and take out some of trash.
Sitting in Miller Park right now, it is exceedingly clear that first and foremost the contemporary Milwaukee Brewer uniforms simply need to go the way of the dodo. Everybody loves the retro Brewer logo. The current script-over-a-baseball logo is quite possibly the most boring thing to happen in sports since televised Scrabble tournaments (don't look for it on ESPN2). They simply are no longer fit for a team that is on top of the division. While we're in Milwaukee, let's toss that wimpy politically correct platform that Bernie Brewer slides into Lake Michigan and bring back the keg. Without it, Bernie's slide takes a backseat to most McDonald's FunLands.
Moving on to football and video games, let's throw Pac-Man to Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde. By Pac-Man, of course I'm referring to Adam "Pac-Man" Jones, who yesterday filed an appeal to his yearlong NFL suspension. Just last week, Jones took out a full-page newspaper ad to apologize for his actions. At one point he wrote, "In the past few weeks, I have learned a lifetime of lessons." Apparently he didn't learn the lesson about taking your medicine or else he would simply accept the punishment and turn the negative into a positive by returning to West Virginia to finish his degree.
Staying in the realm of gaming, overly complex sports games like Madden and any MLB title are also ripe to be discarded and replaced with the simple addictiveness from the day of yore. There really should be only three sports titles allowed on the interactive gaming market: "Tecmo Super Bowl," "NBA Jam" and "Ken Griffey's Winning Run."
The next sporting item to make its way to Mount Trashmore would have to be the dregs of the mascot world. Included on this dung heap are Herky the Hawkeye (both his hideous football and lack-of-effort basketball incarnations), UW-Green Bay's Phlash the Phoenix (Herky-esque), Florida A&M's Rattlesnake (UGLY!), the Rice University Owl (looks like Predator), George Mason's Oscar the Grouch look-alike, Cal-Santa Cruz's Banana Slug (as awful as it sounds), Purdue Pete (just creepy), Harvard's John Harvard (leprosy not appreciated) and every professional mascot in existence with one or two exceptions. The Philly Phanatic, Ragnar and Billy the Marlin are safe — it's unfortunate, but Bernie can kiss his mustache goodbye if the keg slide doesn't return.
Regarding the Stanford tree? He can stay just as an example to all that somehow, someway, life can in fact be worse.
Sports musicians would be next on the list. I'd say it's time to remove all the musical talent of athletes, but there obviously isn't any in the first place. From Carl Lewis' butchery of the national anthem to Shaq's lyrical misery to Ron Artest's K-Fed-esque rapping, professional athletes need to stay away from any recording except instructional videos.
Speaking of which, it's time to finally do away with that tired old Tom Emanski, whose defensive drill tapes have been running since TV, it seems, was invented, featuring Fred McGriff (now retired) seemingly in his rookie year. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that hell features back-to-back-to-back viewings of this commercial, much like ESPN did back in the mid-'90s late night.
Is it too much to ask Mr. Emanski to find a new group of capable young baseball players and grab a mid-tier MLB star (like Magglio Ordonez) to endorse it?
Lastly: Thunderstix. They gotta go.
Well, that looks like enough spring cleaning for one year.
Dave McGrath is a senior majoring in English and journalism and hasn't seen his bedroom floor since sophomore year. If you have some more suggestions for sports-themed spring cleaning, you can reach him at [email protected].
