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Today a woman at the library asked for my name. I told her it is Sammy Swordfish.
“Sammy Sworddish?” she asked.
“No. Sammy Swordface. What’s a Sword Dish?”
“Did you say Sammy Sportface?”
“Yes, I am Sammy Sportface.”
“I’ve heard about you. You’re the crackpot who writes those horrible blogs.”
“That’s Sammy Swordfish,” I said.
A similar misunderstanding went down a few months ago. I called the local pizza joint to order a large pepperoni with extra cheese and sausage and ham and swiss and swordfish gave my name and told them I’d stop by in thirty minutes to pick it up.
The person who took the order wrote down Charles Barkley, which kind of sounds like Sammy Sportface. Since then the workers had been texting their friends all giddy to meet Charles Barkley at the meat-lovers pizza joint. Hundreds showed up waving “Sir Charles” banners.
When I arrived, they asked me if I was Charles Barkley. I told them I wasn’t. I told them I was Sammy Sportface.
“Ah, it’s frickin’ Sammy Swordfish,” one kid said. “He ain’t no Charles Barkley. What a scam. He’s just some portly nobody dude picking up a large pie packed high with swordfish. I’ve read Swordfish’s blogs and they suck.”
This story gets meatier. The real Charles Barkley has gained a reputation for an awkward and ineffective golf swing. I’ve sent videos of my swing to friends and they’ve said it’s eerily similar to Barkley’s butt uglier.
The consensus view is my swing looks as unathletic, absurd, and abysmal as Barkley’s minus his rhinoceros rump; my rump is more pig-like. This slightly offends me, but not very much. Golf is for goofballs and gorillas.
Where Barkley and I converge is in the trajectory of our professional careers. Barkley and I have become giants of the media establishment.
In body type, we’re also comparable. We’re both more than a little overweight. The way our minds work is also disturbingly similar. We’re both blowhards and don’t shut up. We both say things to rile people up. Most of what we say either a) doesn’t make sense or b) isn’t true or c) is insincere. Neither of us is a role model and never will be.
The only redeeming quality we share is our encyclopedic basketball acumen. We’re keen observers of the game, legendary hoops pundits up there with Hubie Brown. Barkley blows smoke about the NBA on TNT. On the Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog, I fire rambling, tedious, and irrelevant missives about Rudyface nuking our city championship run in eighth grade.
As players, we were also similar. A voracious rebounder he was; not as prolific nor as tenacious as Swordfish, but solid. His thighs are Colorado mountain boulders; mine are wider than Texas. His melon is shiny and glistens and so does my hiney.
He thinks he’s good-looking; I know I’m good-looking. Imagine Katie Holmes in her prime and Jim Belushi with a touch of Tom Selleck without the stache and John Madden with the pot belly.
Is it possible we’re related? Are we clones? Do we share the same X and Y chromosomes? Are we both male and female? If so, that would explain a lot.
They say there’s someone else on this Earth who is pretty much a carbon copy of someone else on this planet. For me, it’s Sir Charles Barkley. In the spirit of camaraderie, today I reached out to Barkley to ask if he knew about me, the guy on this Earth exactly like him.
“You ain’t like me,” he said. “You’re Sammy Swordfish. And I hate swordfish. Swordfish will never be no role model.”
“Ease up, Chuck. I’m Sammy Sportface.”
“Shut up, Swordfish. You ain’t no role model either.”
Author Profile
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
Sammy Sportface Has a Vision -- Check It Out
Sammy Sportface -- The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog -- Facebook Page
