Hoopfesters’ Clever Moniker In His Honor Ok With Clark

Just like billionaire Seahawks owner Paul Allen, I have become a paunchy middle-aged sports baron.

I won’t beg taxpayers to buy me a stadium, either.

My guys are happy to duke it out on the flesh-scraping pavement of Spokane’s downtown streets.

Imagine my thrill to discover that four young athletes named their Hoopfest basketball team in honor of me.

I was prouder than Dennis Rodman with a new nipple ring - until I heard what that name was: Doug Clarks A Moron.

“We figured we couldn’t get away with any swear words,” says Chad Williams, one of the perpetrators. “But we were surprised we got away with it anyway.”

Well, I’ll be slam-dunked.

Doug Clarks A Moron battles for Hoopfest glory this weekend in bracket 82. Teams in that division must average 22 years old with adult recreation league experience. They must be about 6 feet 1 inch in height.

I spent a couple of hours last Sunday morning watching Doug Clarks A Moron practice at Comstock Park on the South Hill.

They’re pretty good. The team has played together in six Hoopfests (under different names, naturally), taking second place in their division three times.

Williams thought I might take offense at their latest moniker, but I couldn’t be more thrilled. What tickles me most is to see that four young men read the paper.

All the demographic surveys suggest that many of today’s TV-addicted young people can barely read the cooking instructions on a can of soup, let alone my newsprint rantings.

Not the Doug Clarks A Morons.

These are literate guys. They even know that there should be an apostrophe between the “K” and the “S” in Clarks. Chad says they didn’t have enough boxes to print the grammatically correct team name on the Hoopfest form.

It was a Hoopfest column I wrote last year that put me on their flagrant foul list.

I stepped up to the line on behalf of The Great White Hype, the first team ever bounced out of Hoopfest.

A court monitor disqualified the Hype players for being too tall. They weren’t. But by the time the ousted athletes could prove it, it was too late to stick them back into the fast moving tournament.

My guys, playing as Godfather’s Pizza, were steamed at me because they knew the Hypesters were no angels.

During a heated game with them last year, says Chad, a Hype hothead chucked a ball hard at one of his Godfather’s teammates. Then he yelled an obscenity at the monitor.

The shrimpy monitor should have immediately benched the jerk. Or shot him with a tranquilizer dart.

He instead waited until after the game and then used the trumped up height charge to disqualify the entire Hype squad when they weren’t around to defend themselves.

Tempers often flare like solar eruptions during competitive sports. In Hoopfest, a firm, competent monitor can make the difference between having a ball or having a brawl.

The trouble is that with the massive nature of Hoopfest - an incredible 17,763 players on 4,524 teams - there can’t possibly be enough quality monitors to go around.

A few basketball-impaired clods are bound to find their way into the system.

But let’s not dwell on the negative. The good news is that Doug Clarks A Moron is ready to shoot for the gold.

I’m buying them some custom T-shirts so they’ll stand out.

Scorching me this way is so much more clever than the usual pedestrian nasty letter to the editor.

But there’s a danger in naming your team Doug Clarks A Moron. Too wordy. It’s bound to be abbreviated.

I can almost hear the crowd as it encourages my lads onward and upward:

“Go Morons, go!”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo