Can you handle the truth?
The sudden retirement of Ricky Williams has left fans of the Miami Dolphins feeling angry and cheated. Dan Le Batard of The Miami Herald offers some perspective:
“If a man in any other line of work gets rich, gets happy and retires from a job he no longer enjoys, we either salute him for his good fortune or envy him for removing shackles we can’t. There are many people booing Williams right now who would leap at the opportunity to quit their jobs with millions at 27 to go roam.”
Williams was reached in Asia via cellphone by Le Batard on Sunday night and said his motive was simple: “I’m going in search of the truth. Everything I’m doing in my life now is about finding the truth. Football isn’t part of the truth for me anymore.”
Some serious hazards
It was a round of golf Andre Tolme will never forget, one that he finished with an eagle – but with a 506 for the hole and a 12,170 on his final scorecard.
And he still almost was par for the course.
The course: Mongolia. As in the entire country. Tolme, 35, a civil engineer from New Hampshire, divided its length into 18 holes measuring up to 196,000 yards long.
It took Tolme nine months to complete the 1,234-mile layout – over a terrain once ruled by Genghis Kahn – with an estimated par of 11,880.
Using only a three-iron, traveling in a Jeep with a local guide, he lost 509 golf balls and spent much of his time battling the elements – relentless heat and strong winds – and fending off bubonic plague-carrying marmots.
Why did Tolme do it? “Because I wanted to,” he told the Associated Press.
Dead serious
HBO presented a feature Saturday on the history of cutmen in boxing and profiled Joe Souza, who has worked his magic in Arturo Gatti’s corner. Asked why he loves his job, Souza remarked, “I guess I have a passion for blood. My lifelong dream was to be a mortician.”
He lost this pitched battle
John Kerry has nothing on George W. Bush when it comes to throwing first pitches. Whereas Bush fired a strike from the mound before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series, Kerry threw wildly from the grass in front of the mound before Sunday’s Red Sox-Yankees game. But wrote Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe: “Still, Kerry had better stuff than Yankee starter Jose Contreras, who yielded six runs in the first two innings” of a game in which the Red Sox prevailed, 9-6.