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Obama the Sports Guy
Touches Some Bases
of TheColumnists.com
Barack Obama is a pretty smart dude. In Philadelphia recently he chose to ignore the regular political reporters and opted for an eight-minute sit down with Bob Ford, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s fine sports columnist.
You could almost say we can get as good a line on Obama from his comments about sports as any of his set speeches on the stump.
Ford wrote, “So it was just me and Barry O’Bomber yesterday….That was his nickname in high school, because some other people on the basketball team, including the coach on occasion, thought he might have shot the ball a touch too often.”
Obama responded, “I never thought I was taking a bad shot. I thought all of my shots were high-percentage shots.”
Obama said, “Sportswriters are a lot like political writers. They’re good at finding your flaws and advertising them to the entire world.”
Ouch.
He said Philadelphia basketball star, Julius (Dr. J) Erving, was his hero growing up. “I could never quite get the ‘fro (Afro haircut) and I didn’t have his vertical leap, either. But I did have a little finger roll. What I liked was not just what he did on the court, but how he acted off the court. He’s a classy guy.”
He said sports is something people from both sides of the aisle and all sides of the tracks can use as a common language. It’s also where some of the best life lessons are learned.
“I did not always understand what it means to play on a team,” he said. “I used to get into a lot of arguments with my coach, because I had learned on the playground and really wanted to throw behind-the-back passes and take wild shots. He was like Bobby Knight. He wanted chest passes. In retrospect I realized he was right. We ended up winning the championship, and you understand that it’s not about you but about the larger goal.”
Columnist Ford, a shrewd guy, then leveled a series of quickie questions at Obama.
Best sports movie ever?
“Hoosiers.”
Is a walk as good as a hit?
“Yes.”
The DH (designated hitter) ?
“I’m not really into it.”
Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame?
“No, because he bet on baseball. If he had bet on football, I wouldn’t care. But don’t bet on your own game.”
It was his answer to the poser, “Wilt or Russell?” that should have solidified the vote of all right-thinking voters for Barack Hussein Obama come Election Day.
He said, “Russell. I’ve got to say that, and it’s part of the lesson I learned. When I was a kid, I loved Wilt. That was my guy. As I get older, maybe because my game’s more like Russell’s--I can’t score 100 points--I have come to appreciate Russell more.”
Russell was the consummate team player, the greatest winning force in all of sports. Chamberlain was one of the all time great individualist stars.
The Most Dangerous Guy
The Republicans keep bumbling and fumbling when it comes to scoring some hits on Barack Obama. They have been all caught up trying to tie Obama to long ago radical Bill Ayers--a washed-up terrorist in John McCain’s words--when there is so much fertile ground for showing what a bad guy Obama is. They need only dig a little deeper.
Did anybody pay attention to who was having
dinner with O.J. Simpson at that fancy Holly wood restaurant
on the night that Simpson’s wife was murdered? The Republicans
obviously haven’t checked that out.
John Wilkes Booth, the man who murdered Abraham Lincoln, was
a tall, skinny guy. Obama is a tall, skinny guy. Enough said.
President Kennedy was murdered by the misfit Lee Harvey Oswald.
And Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby. Ruby was a Chicago guy.
Obama is a Chicago guy. Hmmm…
If the Republicans were smart enough to check the books Obama
read at Columbia, would anybody be surprised if he read Adolf
Hitler’s “Mein Kampf?” Is a man who read "Mein
Kampf" a person that guys like Joe the Plumber would want
in the White House?
Obama should be put under a microscope to see if his associates
or relatives had roles in the Lindbergh kidnapping; the Black
Sox baseball scandal; the Wall Street collapse of 1929; the great
Chicago fire of 1871; the Mets collapses of the past two seasons.
And did Obama ever cheer for Mike Tyson or get an autograph from
Barry Bonds?
The man is obviously evil incarnate.
The Winner in Ireland--Obama
Somewhere in Ireland is a man who more than a year ago bet 50
euros on Barack Obama at 50-1 odds and has already pocketed his
winnings (about 3,350 dollars). According to the Associated Press,
bookmaker Paddy Power in Dublin last week paid off those who
bet on Obama to win the election even though there was almost
a month to Election Day. The bookmaker put Obama as a 1 to 9
favorite, declared “this race well and truly over”
and shelled out a million euros, about $1.35 million.
A little voice asks, “What if….?"
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo is courtesy of Sen. Barack Obama. This column first posted Oct. 20, 2008.
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