There are some sports where you must begin with the proper announcer. Madden is one of those. Watching a football game is just not the same without Madden 'doing color'. The guy on Mad apes him the best. But satire is not as good as the real thing.

I mean, Madden will use a virtual magic marker on the screen during the play by play to demonstrate how a play went down, how the QB screwed up or what the right guard was doing to cause the fumble or whatever.

But you can be like me and know nothing of what football is all about and still appreciate Madden. I really have seen him take a picture of the entire field and magic mark the entire end zone and tell you how important it is for the offense to catch the football somewhere in that 'end zone' or 'M' zone in order to win the football game. I mean the guy could do a play by play for third graders and all the viewers would be rapt by Maddens wonderkind. You really have to see it to believe it.

Golf is not the same without Johnny Miller doing the play by play. Some twenty five year old rookie will be scoping out a a nineteen foot putt in front of millionaires and millions of viewers on a Sunday while trailing by one stroke to Michelson and Miller will say things like:

It really doesn't do anything does it Bill? I mean its straight in. I mean a professional should make that putt 18 out of 20 times.  Ah, look at that, he pulled it...never had a chance. ....

Or Johnny will go into his late afternoon commentary, every late afternoon commentary, while some forty year old veteran with 6 PGA titles over twenty years while eying a ten foot up hill putt on a path that has been trodded on with $400 cleats over the last eight hours with this gem:

Furick is looking left on this Ben, I don't think he is taking into consideration the shadow. You know when it gets late, the grain of the green changes. It goes against the shadow Ben and I do not  think Furick is taking that into consideration. (The ball lips out on the left side of the hole) See, he just didn't take the grain into consideration.

Miller will talk about things like cross over sliced seven irons. Or some such. I do not know what the hell he is talking about. But I am sure Miller knows what he is talking about.

The Tiger came out to play at Bay Hill yesterday. Eight months ago he took a vacation do to a knee injury that had plagued him for years. It was his third surgery on that joint that he has abused for at least two decades. The way he snaps a driver or a fairway iron is incredible.

Miller will sigh when Tiger ends up in the forest with a drive. Boy he really shanked that.  Or Miller might comment on a fairway shot: What the hell is he looking at?  Of course the ball rolls within five feet of the hole and Miller is stunned. Miller really runs out of words with Tiger.
Tiger is to Miller as Favre is to Madden.  Tiger can actually dumify Miller.

Obey sent me a link to my favorite movies: time lapse photos of different vegetables growing in a garden or on a farm. I just love watching that miracle.

Slo mo takes of the Tiger swinging at a golf ball are something to behold. I mean it is magic on the screen.

Tiger won his 66th PGA approved tournaments (he has won over a dozen other tournaments as a pro that were 'not approved') and now he trails Jack Nicholas and Sam Sneed for the highest number of tournaments won over a life time. He is 33 years old.

And it is not just the number of wins. It is how he wins. Yesterday, after the sun had set and one spectator said you could not see the hole on the 18th standing on the perimeter of the green, Tiger scopes out 17 footer. From behind the ball. From behind the hole looking at the ball. From the left side and the right side. 

He is playing, it is Sunday, he is tied for the lead and the ratings at 6:45 CDT are three or four times the normal for the game of golf, hell for the time period. I mean this is prime time on Sunday. Thousands upon thousands of people are present. Huddling around the stands, in the stands, around the green. Thousands who are so far away in the twilight that they cannot even see him but they can look at huge screens for millionaires erected throughout the course for this tournament named after Palmer.  And Tiger makes contact with the ball and in real time it is traveling slowly across the green. As the ball reaches the point where it is two feet from the hole, Tiger starts backing up. Like the entire scene is choreographed in some Fred Astaire film from the thirties where everyone knows the extras have practiced and rehearsed twenty times before the scene is filmed.

Tiger backs up and is dancing in reverse and he slowly begins stooping over in this dance of his and begins to raise his fist. The photographers are shooting in the dark, flash, flash, flash...The ball falls in the hole and the fist of the Tiger is pumping and the knee that has seen more knives than a normal turkey on Thanksgiving is raised three feet into the air. The body of the greatest golfer who ever lived is gyrating.

He runs for the man who carries his bag and grabs him in total exultation over what has just occurred.  The man whom he almost hit with an iron when he misfired into a bunker on the 16th while doing one of the Tiger chants. HA There are eight, maybe ten camera angles of all of this.

And this brings the question to the fore. Why do I give one Goddamn (blessses himself) about this? I mean this is a man who declined an invitation to some event, an invitation made by the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES after his Third Amateur Open Win, because he had not been invited after his Second.  After all, how could President Clinton not understand that he, Woods,  was the single greatest man on the planet?

In other words: I am the greatest man in golf, in the history of golf, how could you all not know this?  All this at the time when the Tiger had not won one professional tournament.

This is a guy who adored his father, who was primarily of African American descent and yet who made it clear that he was not 'black' because to say so would be to denigrate his  matrilineal heritage .  The Tiger never commented on one political issue or candidate. With one exception.  He admitted, much to the consternation of the white millionaires who sponsor him, that he is in awe of President Obama because of his mixed race.

But very few people would disagree with the 20 year old's self assessment NOW. They showed a normal schedule for a day in the life of Ubermench and it went something like this:

6:00AM to 7:30 AM:  Lift weights

7:30 Am to 10:30AM:  Hit golf balls. Hit golf balls off the tees, on the fairway.....

10:30Am to 11:30 AM: Play a quick nine holes. Running around in a cart. He just does not do the normal 9 of course. He will throw a few balls into the rough, under trees...and then hit them.

The rest is irrelevant. He finishes at six at night.  

You know myth is a fun subject. And watching the Tiger it is so easy to understand where all these gods came from. We have this Christian notion of some all kowing, all seeing god who always was and always will be.

Most gods are not like that at all. Zeus had a beginning and will have an end.

Some Norse Gods died in battle for chrissakes. (Blesses himself)  Osiris died, impregnated Isis his sister after the tragedy and rules in Hell while serving as a constellation (Orion).

FDR is a god in American Mythology. A devil to idiots like George Will. A saint to Old Democrats like myself. But a god nonetheless.

All gods are not immortal. Millionaires will always be with us, and the Tiger tapes will be played centuries from now.