Al Deluise shares the one go-to phrase that you can use to fake your way through any sports-intensive conversation
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I am not a big sports fan. I like the New York Yankees for baseball and the New York Giants for football. Tossing around sports factoids in casual conversation is not my thing. Except for the one year I was in a fantasy football league and could sit in a bar and say, ‘Freaking Aikman throws more interceptions than touchdowns, he’s killing me. Carney gets four field goals and I still lose’. Of course outbursts like that from me would usually cause my friends to turn and say, “Who the hell are you and what have you done with Al?” Of course, they would then add, “Not that we want him back – it would be nice to talk to a guy who knows more than who played Scarlett O’Hara’s little sister in Gone With the Wind.” (It was Ann Rutherford)
This does not mean I don’t like sports, or never played themI just can’t quote stats and say who the Super Bowl MVP was in 1993.
In high school I threw shot put and discus, and played one year of freshman football. I think it was that football experience that put me off team efforts and pushed me toward more individual events such as shot put. For football practice my freshman year we did triple sessions each day. It was hot; I was exhausted all the time, as well fat and out of shape. The freshman did not practice with the varsity team – we were banished to the dust bowl behind the bleachers where crushed beer cans and broken bottles, much like wounded elephants, wandered off to die. After one of these sessions as a friend of mine and I walked back to the field house we both just sat down on the ground to catch our breath. Apparently that action was frowned upon by some of the varsity players who stood watch near the parking lot.
“Hey,” a voice boomed and we could see one of them as he moved towards us, anger apparent on his face, “you assholes get up! You don’t sit down – get up!”
With a reddened face he now stood above us – I barely had the energy to look up at him, sweat and sunlight filled my eyes. My friend, who was not a small guy by any means, pushed himself off the ground, raised his right index finger level with the player’s nose and said, in a very calm and chilling voice, “Fuck you” then sat back down.
My favorite high school football memory, and it wasn’t even something I did.
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Fortunately for me I inadvertently stumbled upon the one phrase that I can use in any sporting situation.
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I did find that sometimes my lack of sports knowledge left me in an awkward position at parties or bars. I have friends who are hockey fans and I’m very much out in the cold when they start talking about the New York Rangers. Fortunately for me I inadvertently stumbled upon the one phrase that I can use in any sporting situation.
I had dated a woman for a while who liked to travel. (I do not like to travel which was one of the many reasons we are no longer together.) Without fail, when she returned from a trip, I would get a t-shirt (along with other gifts) that had the name of the city she had just visited written across the front.
One day, at a party at my friend Tammy’s house, I was wearing a t-shirt that had Boston printed across the front. Almost immediately one of her friends said, “Red Sox suck.” I tried to explain that I wasn’t wearing a Boston Red Sox shirt, but just a shirt that represented the city of Boston, and not the team.
He looked at me for another few seconds then blurted out, “Red Sox suck!” and then turned and walked away.
A few months later I was at another gathering involving Tammy and her friends. As I walked out to my car the same “Red Sox suck” guy called out to me:
“Hey, you’re the Red Sox fan, right?”
Before I could say anything about my shirt just being a shirt he added, “how about that game last night?”
I had no idea what sport he alluded to, let alone what game he was talking about. I had no real answer for him so I said the only thing I could think of:
“I know, right?”
He looked at me for a second, then nodded, smiled, and walked away. It was like he was saying, ‘Yeah, you get it; you know what I’m talking about’.
It was my greatest sports moment. I was one of the guys.
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It was my greatest sports moment. I was one of the guys.
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It wasn’t until later that I realized this magic phrase was not just confined to sports.
It would work anywhere:
Politics
“Did you watch the debate last night?”
“I know, right?”
Religion
“Did you know that Pope Boniface II was the first German Pope but he wasn’t born in Germany?”
“I know, right?”
Science
“Did you know that wave-particle duality states that particles display both wave and particle properties? And that a central concept of quantum mechanics addresses the inability of classical concepts like particle and wave to fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects?”
“I know, right?”
You get the idea.
So far it has worked very well, but I’m sure eventually someone will catch on that I’m not as smart as I appear. With that in mind, if one day if you find yourself in a conversation with me, and I don’t seem to be very attentive and I keep giving the same answers over and over again, it’s not that I don’t want to talk to you.
It’s just that I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.
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(Photo Credit: Associated Press Images)
Worthy post for every one, as most of the people love sports and want to be an expert. This post can surely help such people.
I know, right?