"That dyke can throw"

As Patches O'Houlihan said in Dodgeball, softball girls can throw... while wearing plenty of eye make up.

ESPN has been showing many of the USA Softball Bound 4 Beijing tour, exhibitions for the national team to partake before the Olympics. I think its sad that it's come to this. I don't mean the games themselves, but rather the KFC sponsorship and the challenges baseball and softball have to face for being an Olympic sport. While both sports are played by few countries (I doubt England has a great baseball team), the sport reminds me of the goodwill exhibitions Major League Baseball used to do. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig would go to Japan with a team of all stars to showcase baseball to other parts of the world. Now, we have the Oakland A's playing the Boston Red Sox in Japan or the Dodgers playing in China. There is a slightly good chance a player could be on one of the teams and also a native of this country. Something you don't see in the NFL.

It amazes me that the NFL actually thinks people care about the NFL in Europe. NFL Europe failed, because no one went to those games, even with really low beer prices. Despite the sell out in London for the regular season game, chances are tickets were bought on the basis of the novelty of an NFL game. There cannot be that large of a demand to have an NFL expansion to Europe.

I'm not saying that no one in England knows a thing about the NFL or even the NBA. For those who watched such British sitcoms in the early 1990's such as Keeping Up Appearances, the character Onslow was seen every few episodes wearing a Green Bay Packers t-shirt, even though the only football he was watching was English Premier. Even the paperboy in the show was seen wearing an Orlando Magic t-shirt.

But the fact remains that few sports that were created or developed in America are in the Olympics. Basketball is getting competitive and if baseball and softball was given a better chance they could help create more competition from the Latin American and Asian countries. Who knows maybe someday it can be as competitive as the hockey teams in the Olympics.

I chose the Cat Osterman photo because... well, she is pretty hot and the official softball player of Sal Fasano's 401K.