The Masters: Making Us Wish Upon A Star

Simply The Best is a weekly column by Scott Peiser that takes the most important things in the world and pronounces who or what is “The Best.” Be sure to vote for your favorite nominees, and tell Scott in the comments how incredibly wrong he is about his own selection.

The Masters coverage is just rubbing it all in our face. By us, I of course mean people who love playing golf. There is no other tournament that insists on showing us the beautiful ponds, landscaping, and weather than this one. Meanwhile, it was finally nice enough to get on the course in my town, and, while I was pretty impressed with the condition for this time of year, it was thousands of times worse than Augusta. I guess I should have seen this coming when I was charged just $13 to play nine. Golf is a funny thing. We watch basketball, baseball, or football games for entertainment. Those games show us athletes doing things us losers could never imagine doing. On the other hand, we sit in front of the television to watch golf just to imagine how amazing it would be to play the sport daily on the best courses in the world.

Any golfer knows this feeling. It hits us when we see Tiger hit a six iron 200 yards to within five feet of the hole that we would do anything to do what he does. Sure, we are all jealous when we see Lebron jump five feet over the rim. We say “wow, I wish I could do that.” But golf is the only sport that fans truly mean that they “wish they could do that.” There is no golfer in his right mind that doesn’t wish they could play Augusta National four times in four days! Of course, the Masters coverage just likes to make fun of us “normies” by showing us every angle one of the greatest golf courses in the world. Golfers everywhere consequently watch and make their wish.  

The Awards

Best Team of the Week

Nominees:

-          St. Louis Cardinals

-          Cleveland Cavaliers

-          St. Louis Blues

-          Portland Trail Blazers

Hello St. Louis. You’re welcome for giving you respect you have always wanted. Giving this weekly award to the Cavs would have been too easy. I am sticking in the NBA, however, and awarding the Trail Blazers. With four straight wins, Portland has secured a 50-win season and, most likely, the fourth or fifth seed in the playoffs. This four game win streak came against some very good competition including the Spurs and Lakers. The other nominations did not do quite enough to take down Portland.

Best Hockey Video Game (Before 2005)

Nominees:

-          NHL 94 (Sega Genesis)

-          NHL 99 (N64)

-          Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey

-          NHL Hitz (XBOX)

With this award, I made sure to do whatever I could to avoid criticism. In the more recent simulation games, I have only played the 2K series so I cannot morally put NHL 09 on the list even though I hear it is great. In any case, the award goes to NHL 94. Any game from 93 to 98 was incredible. They were absolutely perfect games. Sure, there were ways to exploit the game, but for some reason didn’t you just not feel as bad as you do now? Taking the puck around the net only to then come out in front to shoot in the far corner was cheating at its best. I still felt great about it. There was also no better feeling then connecting on a perfect one-timer. A close second goes to NHL Hitz. I realize Gretzky had the amazing Fox Trak-esqe streaks but NHL Hitz was the perfect arcade game. What other game can you have a lightning bolt literally set you on fire, and then have the goalie turn into a brick wall?

Best Major Fantasy Sports Site

Nominees:

-          ESPN

-          Yahoo

-          CBS Sports

-          Fox Sports

There is always the big question when you get that invite to join a fantasy league, “what site are you using?” I pick Yahoo because, like it or not, people know Yahoo. So, for intense keeper and $1,000 entry fee leagues maybe this isn’t for you. Still, for the majority of fantasy players, Yahoo is such a common site that everyone knows what they are doing, and everyone has an id already. ESPN has more features it seems, but there’s just too much happening. They try to squeeze so much information into each page that it is tough for me to understand what I am looking at. CBS seems to have a lot of advantages, but, holy crap is this thing confusing. It usually takes me at least a minute or two to find out how to look at my team. I will give CBS props for having the most useful communication feature by allowing for a chat room while looking at the scoreboard. ESPN does this too, but it doesn’t work for me half the time. This is clearly a biased opinion because I am most used to Yahoo’s interface, but it seems like the majority of fantasy players have at least used Yahoo a few times. Oh yea, Fox Sports was on the list just because I couldn’t think of another major site. Nobody uses Fox Sports.

Best Sport To Waste Away Watching

Nominees:

-          Basketball

-          Football

-          Golf

-          Baseball

I pick golf here, but I realize people may be outraged by this selection and exclaim that football is the clear winner. Here’s the logic behind the selection. Basketball is good, but only for one time of the year. The first weekend of March Madness is the only time where wasting a day watching basketball doesn’t make you feel like a bum. Even that seems to always be a disappointment. Baseball is fine as well, but there are 162 games so there is no logical reason why you have to park in front of the TV to watch the game on April 12. Football seems like the right choice, but I’ll argue that without fantasy football the majority of those who think this would quickly change their mind. This brings us to golf. The Masters was the perfect example of why people who play golf will sit for hours on end to watch a tournament. Why is it the best? I give you two reasons. First, it is a great sport to relax to. At no time will you be stressed or complaining about referees. In golf, you just look at the scenery and marvel in the greatness. Second, there is the absolute perfect answer when your wife or whoever else complains that you haven’t moved in eight hours, “I’m picking up tips!” That’s right, you are always learning about how you can make yourself better. Of course, this is total bullshit, and you are probably worse off by taking 20 minutes to line up a putt and pretending you can read a green correctly.

That’s all folks! Thanks for joining me on this journey and tune in next week for another batch of awards.