A nutty sports fanatic

They call us “sports nuts” for a reason.

I use the term “us”, not in some way of making sure my pronoun choices are correct, but because, clearly, I am nuts about sports.

I used to get mad at Mother Nature because she kept dumping snow on the baseball playing fields of Billings, defying my overwhelming need to get in a game or two with my neighborhood buddies.

OK, ya got me ... we may have been the inventors of snow baseball, driven by this invisible but powerful force drove “us” to innovate. Painting the baseball orange seemed like a great idea.

But it didn’t work as at planned.

Those snowflakes tended to hang out together when they landed and the ball would plop into a foot deep carpeting of white stuff and just disappear. We didn’t have homing beacons at that time, at least nothing any of “us” could afford.

Mother Nature infinity, neighborhood kids zero. But it would always, eventually swing in our favor.

Same thing, even more powerful happened in the fall. The first time a leaf fell off a tree that signaled the arrival of football season, even if it was June and the leaf departed the tree because of a windstorm.

Bottom line in all this is it’s definitely “not nice to defy Mother Nature”, nor is it a good idea to interfere with forces you don’t understand like sports nuts wanting to play a game.

Now, decades later, the urge in me to take in a sports contest is just as strong. Instead of Mother Nature, guys and girls my age tend to battle the forces of gravity and time.

Not even the best scientists on the planet have found a way to beat those forces.

And you will notice I said “take in” instead of “play” when it comes to quenching my sports thirsts. Nope. Not even Mother Nature, her insidious boyfriend Father Time nor their cousin Gravity can stop the force within me and billions more of us from lusting after the sport of the season.

I could still run down a football field and crash into someone, but it would likely involve an ambulance ride and be the result of me taking a wrong turn off Highway 200 and ending up on a green surface.

But I digress.

I am writing this column as a means of keeping my fellow junkies informed and hopefully satisfied. It is my goal to cover as many sports played by the seven schools I now report on as is possible.

I am one. One with the sports universe, one with this insane dream, and one “nut job” of a sports fanatic.

As the term “fanatic” implies, I am a maniac of a fan.

It will also be my goal to provide Sanders and Mineral County fans with as much information as I can about their local teams.

To accomplish this task, I need your help.

And in many cases “your” means coaches and sports administrators at area schools, the overwhelming number of which are already extremely helpful in providing me and other sources with statistics (the sports fan’s ultimate source of info) on their team’s games throughout the season.

And while it may actually be impossible to get to the magical 100% coverage zenith, I will do my best to try as hard as I can.

Send me your scores, your stats, your “huddled” football, volleyball, basketball, wrestling, track, tennis, golf, softball and tennis players yearning to be recognized.

Together, we can make this the best darn sports section around. “Big Red” (my Dodge Ram 1500) will continue to pile up the miles between Noxon and now Alberton, scratching and clawing for sports data. Yes, I will wipe away the tears of the gas pump experience and travel on.

If all I have is a score, I will include it in a regional wrap-up in this column.

The alternative would be to look out your window someday and see that pathetic old guy with orange baseballs and blinking lights on a football cursing the sky and fist-bumping imaginary “fans”.

It would not be a pretty sight!