For many of us, Summer means little to our fansmanship. As much as we try to appreciate America’s great past-time, Baseball is too slow and monotonous. We are seeking more than just an old timers’ game; more than five dollar English Leather cologne.

It is supposed to be the fun-time of the year. Many of us get time off of work to visit the world, sit on the beach, party with friends. Most importantly for us bachelors (and non-bachelors if we’re honest) the quadruple B’s are out in full force–blond, bronzed, bikini’d, bodies.

Head out to Avila Beach or Pismo for an hour and you will have plenty of memories by the time you’re done eye-surfing the summatime candy.

But hold on. Just hold up a bit. We don’t want to be creepers now do we? When you took the career job or said I DO, life took a turn for the better. Life was no longer a never-ending scene from Baywatch, and you are no longer David Hasselhoff and his abundantly woodsy chest.

Promiscuity is a bad bad word now, it will cause you to pull a groin or pat on tiger balm morning, mid-day, and night. It is not meant for us mature ones, but for the spry youngsters with a libido the size of Roseanne.

This my friends is no fun, I know. Yesterday I nearly pulled a hamstring on the stationary elliptical. I was trying to both watch ESPN and fake-run at the same time. Sounds easy enough, but nearing thirty, nothing has become easy. The “honey yes, honey of course, honey I will,” sorts of answers, are all that are easy. My life is a tedium glass house, I say no and the world comes crumbling down.

Summatime…

Remember playing ball nine to five on the blacktop with a few friends? It’s seventy five, a clear ardent blue coats the horizon, and the dead day just slumped on your shoulders with not a thing to do. Each one of your pretended for an eight hour period you were MJ, Scottie Pippen, Penny, Shaq, Larry Johnson, Zo, Grant Hill, or Hakeem.

Those were the days. Now, as a tax-paying citizen you’ve grown to resent the group I listed above. As you collect your unemployment from your poor paying teaching gig, your rose colored glasses including your young affair with believing in the impossible have slapped the basement of your life and crumbled into a million little pieces.

Summatime…

Relax, at some point all of us end up washed up. If an epic duo like Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff could never produce anything more than their one-hit album, then trust me, you and I will be forced to scan, fax, make copies, and staple for a living.

But what Summatime foreshadows are feelings of freedom. Despite our limited free time and fading memories of running the black top with skinned knees and soda pop, we all have a place within us that can go there.

Who would of thunk watching men’s professional tennis could excite me like Pam Anderson’s bobbing twins used to? Now as an unemployed man I have the ability to depressingly relive the glory days and bring back the first loves of season: sports, sports, and more sports.

Yes, sports.

Currently, A-Rod is stepping closer and closer to Barry’s all-time home run mark, Tiger is trying to return to form and assume his rightful place as golf’s all-time greatest, and the best living tennis player is still playing at an extremely high level in Roger Federer. Not to mention on Sunday, Jeff Gordon won his 84th NASCAR race, ranking fourth all-time on the list and assuming at forty one, he may go down alongside Richard Petty as the greatest driver in World history.

All this and it’s Summatime. Some things to keep an eye this Summer as you either bum it or find the time in your hectic life to Tivo something. Keep an eye on the Boston Red Sox, who after starting the season 1-9, currrently own the second best record in Baseball and are on pace to be just the ninth team in league history to eclipse 1,000 runs scored in a season.

Watch A-Rod continue his climb to home run greatness, as he sits just thirty four shy of the great Willie Mays mark of 660 at fourth all-time.

The NBA draft on June 23rd is always an intriguing experience. For NBA fans, this not only can shape your future (think Boston in 07′ with the trades of both KG and Ray Ray), but offers a glimpse in the leagues future. This year the popular names are the tweeners, Jimmer Fredette of BYU and Kemba Walker of Uconn, both highly talented but not sure lottery choices as of now.

Normally the draft would be all fun and games. That is if there was not a looming NBA lockout. According to NBA analyst Charles Barkley, the owners are at a “point where they are going to try and break these players unions down.”

Like the NBA’s situation, the NFL lockout has to be the most intriguing situation for sports fans. Most of us wait the two dead  Summer months: June and July, for August when football training camps report and news regarding trades begin to swirl. As of now, both sides remain at a stall and the idea of living without football for many not only kills their Summer, but does away with Sunday beer drinking hoots around the tube. Now Church is the only sad option.

June gloom is definitely upon us. A marshmallow cloud bank over the Pacific does it justice. Not only are we concerned about our lack of freedoms living as grown adults but we also may have to live without two of our favorites next year. In order to keep the faith, now would be a good time watch Baywatch re-runs or finally take up those dance lessons.

If you’re a fan of D-How, I am truly sorry. The guy played the most uninspired game I have ever seen. He looked more like Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum than he did superman, with one bead of sweat glimmering from his reddened cheeks, as he smiled all evening at the half-clad body of Rihanna.

No I am not arguing in favor of Bieber fever to the Magic for D-How to Hollywood. The fever needs to stick to swooning fifteen year old girls with hip thrusts.  While D-How needs to go back to playing basketball with more drive than a uni-cycle. Dwight were you not the first overall pick in 2004, the guy who was supposed to help us forget about our generations great centers– Olajuwan, Ewing, Robinson, Mutumbo, and Shaq?

Yesterday you were far too much of the Afro-American Shawn Bradley. Pathetic.

Which is why Daytona– a “man” compared to the NBA’s “teenager”, shined yesterday. The tenth anniversary of the late great Dale Earnhardt’s death–Nascar’s MJ or Magic–touched me deep, as I reminisced on moments watching the great circle the track, while I hung with my ol’ man.  Those memories felt like yesterday–the flamed grill stinging the eyes with those dancing orange flames, while a beautifully seasoned tri-tip drips juicy fat onto oak wood.  Dad gurgling a Coors, with hash curling from his calloused cracked hands, while my uncles spit slurs at the fine Betty walking toward the beach in a poke-o-dot bikini. When the race began, everyone shuttup and watched. Something about the humming motors, thousands upon thousands of fans, and the various colored flags waving in the smooth wind of Daytona courted their boyhood (courting mine now) with memories of  wood race cars in Boy Scouts, skate boards, and bmx.

The glory of  yesterday reflected from a boy…literally. The victor of the 53rd Daytona 500, was  twenty year old rookie Trevor Bayne. He drove the famed Wood Bros. #21 car, leading them to their first large scale victory in ten years. As always the race was a cautiously safe ride for the first 175 laps, with your classic two by two mini races, and an occasional burst into the breakaway flat.  But it was far from boring. Jonathan Washer, from examiner.com, reported the race as ” [a] race [that] was filled with cautions and caution laps, there were too many two by two racing which made it seem boring for a 500 mile (200 lap) race.” Washer began the treatise as a lover of Nascar, which is why his opinion surprised me.

Or maybe it didn’t. The decline in Nascar’s attendance is not because the sport has become boring or awash with drivers that are “too safe”.  The decline is a derivative of pop cultures desire for athleticism–a highly relative term–considering most of us would not have the strength nor the fortitude to control the wile and torque of a car speeding around a track at 170-190 mph. Our cultures inability to see the competitive nature of Nascar is rooted in our entertainment world–the fact that we are now more of a fashion/hip hop culture that wants to see freakish, circus like movements in the air. We only want the wrecks or the dunks, not the patience of a skilled driver, taking small move after small move till the paramount of the 190th lap. A lap when no holds bar, and it becomes a dog eat dog experience on the race track.  My father’s generation looked at the resiliency of an individual, and judged them by their ability to withstand a sporting obstacle and win, win, win, on the biggest stages. We=beauty. My father=heart.

“The cool”=shoe shiner to my father as well. It did not matter what smile or swagger you had during his era, because it was more about the heart of each competitor. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Jerry West, Joe Joe D, The Big O, and Earnhardt Sr., were not a popular face in and of themselves, they were particles of popularity within the greater face of the sport itself. Basketball, Football, Baseball, Nascar, etc, made them who they were, not the opposite.

Which is why Nascar was where it was at yesterday. The NBA paled in comparison to a sport that still offers a freckle face twenty year old Bayne the opportunity to win on the biggest stage. A pile up on lap twenty nine, involving big names like Brian Vickers, Waltrip, Mark Martin, and Jeff Gordan, not only opened the field for youngsters like Bayne, but proved to the sporting world just how hard these guys compete. They literally risk their lives for the love of a sport, which should hit home for the people who choose to judge life by its quality not by its quantity.

Go ahead, you can have Bieber fever, and I will gladly remain steadfast in Nascar.  And when you leave, do you mind dumping Dwight “Tweedle Dee” Howard into the dumpsters out back? Thanks.

–Luke Johnson