Oh, I am the wrong person to be talking to all of you about this, but here we are. Tomorrow is yet another themed day for us here at The Toast, for we live in exciting and themed times. The theme will be sports. [pauses for response]
We will have writing about football and cheerleading and golf and baseball from some tremendously lovely writers. There are more sports than that, one supposes, but we have only one day and can’t do everything.
We all do need to get outdoors more often; this site is going to turn into a rest home for the bookish and reserved if we are not careful.
Please feel profoundly free to send us your favorite sports-based poetry and memoirs and drawings. Have you ever played a sport? Be specific.
Perhaps you love sports, and cannot get enough of them. Perhaps you like them just fine but can get enough quite easily. Perhaps, like me, you prefer sitting quietly to watching women fling javelins about and leap over walls, or whatever else sports entail. This is fine. We all have our crosses to bear. Friday will come soon enough, and with it the end of Sports Day.
We will have a manga day, perhaps, at some point in the future to offset things.
In the meantime, please enjoy this Tumblr of Just Dude Things.
[Image via Wikimedia Commons]
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MANGA DAY MANGA DAY WHAT HMMM
no shit I am pretty sure I had a dream about posting this very comment in this very thread and then someone yelled at me for “pitching” things in comments and not actually pitching them ever and also for derailing sports day to start organizing MANGA DAY.
but ohhhh my goddddd did I ever tell you I personally rewatch all of Neon Genesis Evangelion once a year for the past 10 years.
You rewatch Eva??? And your mind doesn’t explode??
My husband and I rewatch the following on an occasional cycle that varies from 9 months to 18 months:
-Cowboy Bebop
-Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
-Samurai Champloo (this is just me)
Yes it is my annual 15 hours of intensive psychotherapy.
Have you seen the recent movie OVAs or whatever? They’re still really intense.
On the flipside, I like the abbreviated summaries of Eva on youtube. Shinji’s a whiner.
Yes! It’s neat, they look great, I like the idea behind it. I think it’s maybe a little dumbed-down/more action-oriented but that’s fine. ACTUALLY after seeing Pacific Rim I was thinking a lot about how American audiences would generally react to a male lead as passive/avoidant as Shinji.
You’re a braver woman than I, I’m pretty sure rewatching Evangelion that often would make me need psychotherapy.
FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: BROTHERHOOD IS THE GREATEST AND BEST.
It really is. I love the Armstrong family in particular.
Does horse sport count? I have no poetry about it and only drawings of horses, but I did ride for a living for quite a long time.
For a living?? Ahh! Tell me EVERYTHING
I was always a horsey child, got my first pony for my 9th birthday and never grew out of it. I did my riding and teaching exams during my gap year before university, then worked as a riding instructor and competed for a stud for about 5 years after I graduated, at which point I had a car crash, the whiplash aggravated a previously broken neck and decided I needed a job I could do from a wheelchair if I wasn’t so lucky next time I fell on my head! These days I have a tedious grownup job but I teach at weekends, and still compete for the stud at a professional level, if not full time. I’ve got three horses now, one I’ve had for 25 years, one I bought from the stud when she retired from competition (she was my main ride and I have her name tattooed on my ribcage) and I’ve got a youngster who I will get round to breaking in as soon as my currently broken ribs are mended. Riding for a living was totally my vocation, I wish it paid enough to support a sensible lifestyle and weren’t so physically risky. I used to take them in for breaking in and also rehab problem ponies (as I’m short enough to ride the little ones) which I loved doing, but you get to a certain age and can’t be falling off and getting squashed all the time.
“A previously broken neck.”
That is all.
I didn’t notice when it happened! I figured that since I’d gotten up and was moving and not paralysed it was just stiff. Then a few years later I had x-rays when the whiplash in the car crash was worse than expected, and they said ‘um, why didn’t you tell us you’d broken your neck?’ and I thought ‘oh, that makes sense, I did land on the back of my head that time’. Then I thought about changing careers, having clearly used up at least one of my nine lives.
SPORTS! SPORTS! SPORTS! SPORTS! SPOOOOOORTS!
As a slavering football fan who is counting the hours to the first Skins game of the season: I am excited.
Also, for the record: the ‘Skins name is awful and racist and should have been changed years ago, and I await the day when I can buy their merchandise and support the team I love and grew up with without perpetuating racist dickery in the process. (A DC politician suggest the team be renamed “The Redtails”, for the Tuskeegee Airmen, which I think would be incredible.)
It wouldn’t take much modification to change “Hail to the Redskins” to “Hail to the Redtails” either.. which was legitimately one of the objections I’ve seen come up to changing the name. “But what about HTTR?!?!”
Yes! Precisely! Plus “The Redtails” as a name would make George Preston Marshall spin in his grave, the racist fuck.
We could very well put together a post on “the comment section for every article suggesting that the Redskins change their name, forever.” God knows I’ve seen the discussion hashed out on reddit and wapo 80 million times.
I loved that suggestion, and also they already HAVE a logo with just a fancy R, and there is just no reason for Dan Snyder to be such a dick except that it is very possible that being a dick is the only thing that gets Dan Snyder out of bed in the morning.
“it is very possible that being a dick is the only thing that gets Dan Snyder out of bed in the morning.”
Truer words, my friend. (seriously why does he have to be such a dick)
too bad I won’t be reading the Toast tomorrow then
I’M JUST KIDDING, as if I wouldn’t be here. Thanks to the disproportionately large numbers of Irish & Scottish-descended folks in my town, we have both a men’s and a women’s rugby team, although by & large Americans don’t seem to care for rugby (insert Giles’ quote about American football & strapping on 40 pounds of body armor).
Rugby does wonderful things for a man’s calves.
I’ll be in my bunk.
Re: calves: My mom and I have enjoyed many an NFL matchup watching men with extremely toned butts strut around in tight uniform pants that lovingly outline every straining curve. Oh yes. ::inserts “tight end” joke::
When is Firefly Day?
The shorts that the men wear are so amazing on their muscular thighs!
…
This might be why I ended up marrying a lock/2nd row.
p.s. I’m very interested to see if and how rugby grows in the states now that it’s in the Olympics! (Rugby 7s that is.) Although right now all signs point to women’s rugby not getting as much love as men’s rugby, which angers me so, so much. We have a better shot of winning a medal in women’s rugby then in men’s rugby! grrrrrr. Although the men’s team is starting to pick up hardware on the international level..
I couldn’t care less about sports but I will still read The Toast because I can’t not read The Toast.
This is as sporty as I’ve ever gotten:
so… hypnotic…
I’m trying to think of sports stories, but I was shite at sports so I only have kind of second hand ones!
however I must say I enjoy theme days! well done, The Toast.
Hmm. Well, I’m still high on the glory that was VC Andrews Day, so I trust that tomorrow’s posts will good enough to amuse even a non-Sports Person like myself.
SPORTS DAY! SPORTS DAY! SPORTS DAY! My best Sports story is, “That time almost everyone (but not me!) did mushrooms before the first Cleveland Browns game of the preseason.” It starts like this: “I can hear people screaming about Mohamed Massaquoi’s concussion before I even get out of my car.”
Please write that story up and submit it for publication, because I am dying to hear it. My best sports story is “how my brother’s obsession with Washington DC’s NFL team got him through fifteen months of boredom and frustration on base in Iraq”. My whole family is Skins fans, and they had a Godawful season that year. But Dad faithfully recorded every iota of coverage, pregame to postgame, and sent it over in his care packages.
Oh my god, that’s a perfect sports story! I love how sustaining someone’s love for a sports team can be. The Browns might be a godawful football team, but loving them has made a lot of other awful things slightly more bearable.
And having a common interest as a family gives us an excuse to talk to each other. I can’t tell you the number of texts that go back and forth during Sunday afternoons, or the number of times we’ve planned to get together to watch the game. Oh, oh, another great story! I live in Baltimore (Ravens are my #2 team), and I was riding the bus and sitting across from a guy- normally we’d never cross paths or interact, but within a few minutes we were yakking away about whether trading Anquan Boldin was a good idea or not. It was great.
I would subscribe to this single-issue newsletter TO THE EXTREME
Best sports story: the time the Arizona Cardinals hazed the rookies by making them all sing “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” to me in the hall outside of their locker room.
Please write about this.
All of the NFC East/ “eff the Cowboys” stories, please.
Everything Megan Rapinoe, please.
Yes to any USWNT coverage.
SPORTS. I see you do not have hockey on your list. I have many thoughts on hockey and other sports, including but not limited to
1) how to be a lady sports fan that appreciates both the sport being played and the fine, fine gentlemen (or ladies!) playing it
2) what to do if your favorite team has a truly problematic player on it
3) how to be gracious when your team wins
4) who not to drunk-Facebook when your team loses and you are very, very sad
Since you guys are SO GREAT maybe I will share these thoughts tomorrow in the comments. I hope there are lots of hilarious cartoons, also.
2) what to do if your favorite team has a truly problematic player on it
YES. This is the kind of sports thing that I would love to see more discussion on. Like, I love football, but football players (including players on my preferred team!) occasionally do some really, really fucked up stuff and football itself has a culture that tends to emphasize some of the most reprehensible aspects of “masculinity.” How do you reconcile your love of a sport with the culture it facilitates? How do you parse your love of a team when its players are involved in some suspect activities (particularly when your team has known sexual assaulters on it)? How do you thoughtfully challenge something without everyone yelling at you for being such a buzzkill?
Yes! Why does “being a real fan” so often include things like accepting bad behavior from athletes, participating in a culture that looks for ways to specifically undermine female fans through test of knowledge (“authenticity”), sitting through endless commercials that demean women, tolerating aggression as a natural extension of fan participation, being pandered to through “sport for LADIES” clubs…etc. Oooh I’ll save it for tomorrow but let’s meet back here and RAIL.
Yes yes, I would like to be in on this discussion too! I also think there are some interesting parallels to be drawn between sports fandom and tech/nerd fandom, particularly in regard to women as fans (the “authenticity” test strikes me very strongly, in particular). And there’s the fact that I love and cheer for a sport (football) that is intentionally male-only all through its ranks, to the extent that having a trained animal play is more frequently mentioned as a possibility than having a woman play. I wish someone smarter than me would talk about that.
HOCKEY.
DO IT
All, and I truly mean ALL of your topics are very important to me as a fellow sports fan (footie hooligans, activate), although, 4 could be expanded to drunk-voicemail (LOL old) as well. The rambling message of shame will not be forgotten, even after a much more successful subsequent season.
Could I also suggest a 5) what to do if you are normally quiet and reserved and bookish and scared of people but turn into a LOUD SHOUTY THING WHEN SPORTS ARE HAPPENING?!??!!!!
Sports and I have A VERY COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP.
I played t-ball from age 3, competitive swimming from age 9 (continued through high school), played on various softball leagues, basketball for junior high and city league, and had very brief run-ins with figure skating, dance, and soccer – but as soon as I went off to college, I stopped being active. I was happy to get away from my uber-jock father’s expectations. He coached a lot of my team sports as a kid. It was not fun times.
I was the chubby girl who was never fast enough and just wanted to have fun, but constantly reminded that I wasn’t holding my own – that I was subpar. I’d get sick before swim meets and form migraines before every softball game. I didn’t even realize it was anxiety – I just perceived myself as weak.
I’ve had to do a lot of learning and unlearning about health and fitness over the years. I loathe sports in many ways, but I grew up with them and they are a part of my past and my memories.
I am a big Sports Watcher. Well, soccer watcher. And also Olympics and sometimes I remember to watch skiing on Eurosport.
My heart belongs to football (soccer. But really football). Just, really and truly.
This odd-numbered summer is killing me. Thank god it’s almost over.
I am bad at sports (except I am kind of ok at badminton) but I am unhealthily obsessed with Kentucky Basketball and can enjoy all the other, inferior sports, particularly in their various postseasons. Looking forward to sports day!
YEEEEAAAHHHH
I’ll see y’all in the tailgate
I do not sports (my boyfriend and I like to yell at each other about SPORTS and our SPORTS JORTS any time the topic comes up), but I’ll try and gain some sports knowledge the way I learn anything else, through reading about the experiences of others.
Seriously, though–call me when manga day happens. I could write an essay about Kimi wa Pet or about the horrible, horrible abusive qualities of the relationships in Hot Gimmick!
I have SO MANY hockey stories, including the time my dad gave away my NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TICKETS right before they WON IN OVERTIME AT HOME for the first time SINCE I WAS BORN. Ahem. This will be a deathbed conversation.
Sports yay!
I am excited for this! As a kid I played up to three different sports in a given year, but never got particularly good at any of them after sheer size was no longer good enough. Now I am mostly a soccer fan and a newly minted social league softball player.
Just brainstorming right now sports intersect with so many things: the relationship with my dad – who spent hours reading books about soccer so my local league would have enough coaches, who I pretend to like football for- the times a man has straight out denied a fact I mention about a sport is correct, the strange combination of crippling doubt in my ability and euphoric celebration when I do something right even playing low stress softball.
The Dad Feelings, right! My dad was always my baseball coach in the all-boys Little League. At the time it felt like a cruel punishment (why am I on this teeeeaaaam?!), but now I get it. He told me a few years ago that it was a way to spend time with me but also to show me “not to take any crap from boys who think they are better than you.”
Oh, man, I love sports.
and, yeah, there are many problematic things about sports which I would love to see addressed from a toasty perspective. but I cannot help but get engrossed on a near-visceral level watching the combination of strategy and brute force that sports entail.
I was watching the end of the Yankees game the other day with my husband and as soon as Robertson got the last guy out with the bases loaded, I involuntarily raised by fists into Steve Holt position and let out a gruntish “YES.” meanwhile he is thinking “thank god it’s over we can make dinner now.”
Beach volleyball! Can we discuss how fun it is and how this summer is the first summer I finally feel comfortable playing in a bikini even though I do not have some idealized “bikini body” and it’s actually quite comfortable if you can be un-self-conscious about it although this is very hard and how awesome Misty May and Kerri are and how infuriating it is that one the winningest teams in any sport ever with scads of Olympic gold medals *still* get asked about what it’s like to play in a bikini (see above) and have approximately 50% of the photos taken of them be close-ups of their bikini-clad butts as they do their block signals???
As a woman and newer sports fan the Sports Internet is a bit daunting, so I look forward to the Toast perspective! I want to read thoughtful things about sports that will hopefully help me explain (to myself, I guess, since who else cares) why the Nats bring me so much joy, even in the middle of this godforsaken season, even though I am not remotely sporty myself and have never been interested in other sports or teams.
I play for and manage an unprofessional baseball team, I could write so many words about baseball. Not enough notice! I’m gonna do it anyway, sports day comes but once a…whenever you want some athletic entertainment in your life.
Just Dude Things though, oh my god
I would love some discussion of disability sports. I know basically nothing about them, but I found the paralympics last year really engaging. The wheelchair rugby in particular was mesmerising.
…I might have to write a thing.
NO HOCKEY?!
oh right cuz hockey day is a whole separate thing
OBVIOUSLY!
If you really love sports did you know you can vote for sportswoman of the year? So cool… http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/vote-for-sports…
Has someone alerted Bryan Goldberg?
I freaking love sports! This is so awesome.
Has someone alerted Bryan Goldberg?
I freaking love sports! This is so awesome.
The Dad Feelings, right! My dad was always my baseball coach in the all-boys Little League. At the time it felt like a cruel punishment (why am I on this teeeeaaaam?!), but now I get it. He told me a few years ago that it was a way to spend time with me but also to show me "not to take any crap from boys who think they are better than you."
SPORTS! They are fun to watch in person and on the tv, not so much the doing though.
the most sporty thing I’ve ever done is join an adult kickball league( I know ). But it’s a lot of fun with the right people. We’re in last place scoring wise but #1 in drinking and having fun. Also we had shirts made that just say “SPORTS!”
SPORTS! Will there be any basketball?
I am not that into sports as well but I love reading poetry, sports-related or not. JUST DUDE THINGS is awesome as heck, by the way. Thanks!