Exposing Myself

As this blog grows in readership (y’all don’t comment so much, but thousands of you show up every week)...

And our enemies list of sports blogs grows (yes, I’m looking at you, With Leather, and you, Deadspin– and you both know what you did)...

Well, it is going to get harder and harder to keep certain unsavory, Greg Lemond-like aspects of our childhood, well, secret.

Some things are bound to come up.

And if we have learned anything from the news (and no, we have not, and neither have you), it is this…

It is not the crime that gets you killed. It is the cover up.

So, in the interest of outing myself before someone like The Truth does, here is the first of many shameful sports secrets about myself:

I was a Junior Putter of America.

Also, following a cash payment of $10 for my membership card, a Professional Putter of America, which meant that I could play in adult tournaments that were, I shit you not, televised in the early days of ESPN.

What in the hell, you might ask, is a Junior Putter? Basically, it was (is?) Little League for miniature golf players, though we would become highly offended and agitated if you called it that.

(Why did I go for this instead of, you know, Little League? One year of failing to catch the ball, mostly because I do not have binocular vision or much in the way of depth perception, was more than enough. It also did not help that I was cowardly, slow, weak, and puny. Moving on.)

You see, we did not play miniature golf, with its clown face animals, unreliable chute holes, and revolving fan blades.

Such things were garish.

Uncouth.

Beneath us.

No, we were Sport Putters.

Sport Putting means stroking the ball just so, with back and front spins, or aiming for arcane sight lines or marks, so that you could get just the right kind of bank shot. So you are more or less playing pool, but with a putter.

You also had to "read" the green, which is to say, know when the concrete under the felt or Astroturf (but mostly felt) sagged, buckled, or tilted. The YouTube clip at the top of this entry gives you the gist, complete with intimidating towel snaps.

If you are very good at this, you get holes in one routinely, so that your score is at least in the low ‘30s, and maybe even down to the rare but possible 18. (My low: 25 in practice, 27 in competition.)

Yes, there were teams, and jerseys, and I was a team captain in 4-on-4 match plays where 20 to 30 people would follow two tweener boys around as if we were Palmer and Nicklaus, only, you know, really, really not.

It also meant winning trophies where the figure on the trophy is putting, which is to say, looking like he is grabbing his junk and squeezing it for all he is worth.

I got good enough at this to make All Star teams.

Win tournaments.

Go, on three separate occasions, to the National Championships in Memphis, TN and Richmond, VA.

In my final year, I placed in the top 20 in the nation of all 15-year-olds in stroke play.

It even got me to second base as a 15-year-old, with a real live girl, who was somehow struck by my Tiger-esque death stare of concentration and sport putting honed ass.

Anyway, now that this is out of the bag, we can all go back to the business of this blog, secure in the knowledge that those bastards over at Arrowhead Addict can not wreak any more havoc on me and my family with their blackmail schemes.

Oh, and if you doubt my skills, we will settle this in the only way it can really be settled – for the early ‘80s high stakes wager of a buck a stroke at Philadelphia #1, Course #2.

You just name the time, and I’ll bring my steel centered special putting balls, golden PPA embossed blade (I called him "Excalibur"), 25 year old trick shot memories, extraordinarily dated smack talk, and a great deal of pain – almost all of it self-inflicted.

Bring it.