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Really the Top 10 Greatest Athletes of All-Time (plus one)
Is it just BuckBokai or does this get a chuckle out of other sports viewers as well? We’re talking here about the propensity for hyperbole-addicted commentators and writers to quickly place that season/game/play they’ve just witnessed among the pantheon of “all-time greats.”
Seriously, existentially, think about how silly an accolade like “the greatest right-handed post-season relief pitcher of all-time” is: Even if you ignore the absence of modern-style relief pitching before Joe Page in 1947 and the wider opportunity for earning such a reputation thanks to Selig Era extra playoff series, the truth is that “all-time” in this context becomes a time period measuring 266 or 147 or 134 years long depending on when you personally date the origin of baseball.
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The Ball Game, chapter one
“Chapter one…” –Woody Allen, Manhattan
About a month ago, this writer answered a call for submissions for sports fiction from a book publisher which may or may not have been in Minneapolis.
The ad requested novella-length works about young people succeeding in sports for the 12- to 14-year-old market; despite the fact that the call was for stories about “baseball, football, basketball, soccer, etc.,” this old curmudgeon decided simply to feed his obsession for tlachtli and give ‘em something they weren’t expecting.
The following represents my submission and would be chapter one in such a book. “The Ball Game” is a story – based on a true story, honestly! – that BuckBokai’s been obsessed with for years and is willing to write in any format, really.
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Tlachtli, the animated Norwegian version
Admittedly, this clip is apropos of nearly nothing outside of Buck Bokai’s obsession with the Mesoamerican Ball Game. I mean, there’s really nothing science-fictiony about this clip from “Road to El Dorado.” Except for maybe the myriad laws of physics casually shattered like the proverbial glass goblin. And the sentient horse. And the curvaceous figure cut by Chel, utterly gravity-defying even by cartoon movie standards. And the general treatment given to Native American cultures in mainstream Hollywood flicks in general.
So maybe Buck Bokai can pass this off as science-fiction. Just to make it a tad more alien (at least to approximately 99.71% of the human population), here’s the Norwegian version. In any case, enjoy this surely very loose interpretation of tlachtli.
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