Sports in Hell Read online

  Also by Rick Reilly

  Hate Mail from Cheerleaders

  Shanks for Nothing

  Who’s Your Caddy?

  Slo-Mo!

  Missing Links

  Life of Reilly

  For Geno, the Rolls-Royce of buddies

  You can sum up this sport in two words: You never know.

  —Lou Duva, boxing trainer

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: The Rules

  1 World Sauna Championships

  2 Ferret Legging

  3 Bull Poker

  4 The Three-Mile Golf Hole

  5 Rock Paper Scissors

  6 Women’s Pro Football

  7 Chess Boxing

  8 Drinking Games

  9 Zorbing

  10 Baseball

  11 Nude Bicycling

  12 Jarts

  13 Homeless Soccer

  Conclusion: The Winner

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a lot of smart people to let a dumb guy write a whole book about stupid sports. For instance, how could I have experienced the utter exhaustion of playing a three-mile golf hole straight down a mountain full of explosives without the help of Ryan Klassen and Joel Haley? How would I have entered the world of illegal Jarts throwing without the aid of Jeff Balta? How would I have risked my walnuts in ferret legging without the three women at the Richmond Ferret Rescue League—Rita Jackson, Marlene Blackman, and Meagan J. Rhoten? (Please write me back, Spazz.) Without Kat Byles, I wouldn’t have had a clue about how to cover a homeless soccer game. Without Ossi Arvela, I’d have had a stroke trying to figure out how to compete in the World Sauna Championships. Without a hand from Graham Walker, I’d have been stumped at the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships. I shudder to think what would have happened to me at Angola State Penitentiary without Angie Norwood, Gary Young, and Warden Burl Cain. Or Jody Taylor of the (now squashed) SoCal Scorpions women’s pro football team. (Yes, Jody, the doctors think some of my vertebrae will grow back.) Thanks, too, to Danitra Alomia at the World Beer Pong Championships. Hope you get that Budweiser smell out of your hair. And cheers to London’s Tim Woolgar, who not only explained chess boxing to me (it took hours), but then starred in it. And thanks to the best agent a man could have, Janet Pawson of Headline Media in New York, her trusty sidekick Michelle (Wood) Hall, Bill (Liam’s Dad) Thomas at Doubleday, who went along with the madness, and Melissa Danaczko, who had to make sense of it all. Lastly, warehouses full of thanks go to the gorgeous and patient and ingenious researcher/organizer/travel agent TLC (The Lovely Cynthia), who made the idea of traipsing all around the world looking for stupidity seem like a brilliant idea.

  Introduction: The Rules

  Sportswriting can be about as tough as fur boxers. I’ve spooned the strawberries and cream at Wimbledon, slurped the mint juleps at the Kentucky Derby, sneezed into the azaleas at the Masters. I’ve sat on leather pressroom couches in front of glorious big screens from Dubai to Del Mar while pages of athletes’ quotes were hand-delivered to me. I’ve been courtside at the Final Four and on the field for the Super Bowl and nearly had Mary Lou Retton land her famous 10s at the 1984 Olympics on my foot. I’ve covered all the sports everybody aches to attend.

  Do you know how BORING that gets?

  After thirty-one years of covering crap like that, I wanted to try covering some sports that were completely new, totally obscure, and mind-warpingly … dumb. The dumber, the better. I wanted to see if I could search the planet and find the single stupidest idea for sporting competition the world had ever devised. The thrill of victory, the forehead slap of “Why do you people DO this?” My motto was: If your sport is really moronic and witless, I’m the guy to write about it.

  So, accompanied by my curvy girlfriend, Cynthia Puchniarz—aka TLC (The Lovely Cynthia)—a former Glendale, California, high school teacher, former Miss Teen California, and current research wizard, I set out in January of 2006 to do it. But first, over many, many tequilas, we decided on some ground rules:

  It had to be an actual sport. Meaning: It had to be something people actually tried to win, something people cared about it, something open to anybody. There are dozens of Try to Fly Off the End of the Pier contests, bagsful of Who Can Come Up with the Dumbest Craft to Sail the Dry River regattas. Pah! It had to be dumb to everybody but those who played it. In fact, our rule of thumb was: If you would get punched if you told a guy his sport was stupid, it qualified.

  It couldn’t be stupid for the sake of being stupid. For instance, the World Shin Kicking Championships, which involves two combatants, their hands on each other’s shoulders, kicking each other very hard in the shins. Seemed to have real stupidity potential. But then we saw this quote, from a shin-kicking official, who was trying to get shin kicking into the 2012 Olympics: “There’s no need for dope tests—if anything, stupidity is encouraged.” That nixed it. You can’t KNOW your sport is stupid.

  It couldn’t exist mainly as tourist bait. It couldn’t scream out, “Yes, this is a dumb sport and that’s why the boys in marketing invented it, so YOU would come and spend all your euros!” The British are just awful about this. Take bog snorkeling, in which one dives into a disgusting muck-filled trench and swims 120 yards, with the proviso that one can’t pull one’s head out of the water. Besides, when one does come out, one finds one still in Mid Wales, so one just keeps swimming. Or cheese rolling, which involves letting a giant Double Gloucester cheese wheel roll down a hill, triggering a hundred or so drunk twenty-two-year-olds—falling ass-over-Guinness—in an attempt to be the first one across the line after it. In 2008, eighteen of the fifty contestants were injured.

  You know what I say?

  Good.

  We had to actually watch people do it. There have been some wonderfully spackle-brained sports that no longer exist. Take the World Housekeeping Championships, for instance. Held at the Opryland Hotel, it was started in the 1970s by seventeen hotels in the Nashville area to promote pride in maid service. The maids fought to the last mint to see who could win titles in: Blindfolded Bed Making, Pillow Stuffing, and Slalom, which featured two-person teams pushing brooms to steer soaps and other amenities through an obstacle course of “wet floor” signs. How great is that? All that was missing was the Knocking Loudest at 6:07 A.M. While Ignoring the Do Not Disturb Sign competition.

  It couldn’t even be slightly famous. For instance, one sport I was dying to cover at first was noodling, which is the art of catching fish with your bare hands—the perfect solution for those fed up with the high cost of poles and worms. This was right up Dumb Drive. Noodlers have even been known to die doing it. We made plans to shadow a noodler—any noodler—in the big yearly noodling tournament in Oklahoma. The first guy we asked, a plumber, told TLC: “Nah, I’m hooked up with Discovery Channel this year.” Then we tried a randomly toothed boat mechanic. “Sure,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind a crew from National Geographic along.” The last guy—I think he was a professional drifter—spat out, “Sorry, I got a guy from Time.” We decided to wait for the musical.

  I didn’t want to die covering it. This eliminated buzkashi, which is exactly like polo except instead of a small wooden ball you use the bloody corpse of a recently beheaded calf. Fun at parties! It’s the national sport of Afghanistan. Teams of men on horseback using ropes try to drag a calf carcass—into which sand has been pounded—back to the winning circle while hundreds of other horsemen try to keep him from doing it, often with whips, for days at a time. Magnificently dumb. But I just couldn’t see my kids having to tell people, “Dad died in Kabul when three buzkashists mistook him for a headless goat.”

  I couldn’t have already covered it. For instance: lawn mower racing, which remains the only mo
tor sport in the world where you can watch the pack go by, go get a bratwurst and a Pabst, and be back in time for the next pass. I liked it, though, if only for the names they give their rigs: “Sodzilla,” “The Lawn Ranger,” and “The Yankee Clipper.” And I’d already investigated blimp racing, although there was only one blimp in the sky at the time, and that was the one I was driving: the Goodyear Blimp. If you ever want to do it, don’t. They redline at fifteen miles per hour and there is no bathroom. Which is why if you happened to be at the Indianapolis Colts–Baltimore Ravens exhibition game a few years back, I’d like to apologize. Those were not summer showers.

  It had to at least resemble a sport. This left out Extreme Ironing (which I did on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange anyway, just for the photo), the Air Guitar Championships, and Shotgun Golf, in which one advances a golf ball by means of a shotgun blast. That turned out to be entirely made up and passed off as real by the late Hunter S. Thompson. Hate to be a caddy for it.

  Anyway, off we went. It would take us three and a half years, eight countries, and about 373 Red Roof Inns before our quest was complete. We found thirteen sports that we believe can outstupid anything a committee of Dennis Rodman, John Daly, and Courtney Love could come up with. The things I did, the interviews I conducted, and the sentences I found myself writing actually reduced my IQ. So much so that after I finally turned the manuscript in, all I could think to say was: “How ’bout them Cowboys!”

  1

  World Sauna Championships

  OK, kids, today’s activity is to go down to your local Pizza Hut, have them set the oven for 261 degrees, and insert your entire body into it. The tips of your ears start to ignite. The backs of your arms scream. Your throat feels like somebody stuck a tiki torch down it. Your lips are bitten by large, unseen raccoons. You vow to move to Alaska. And you haven’t even hit thirty seconds.

  Now do it for ten minutes or more and you have an idea of what it’s like to compete in quite possibly the world’s dumbest sport—the World Sauna Championships.

  I know. I entered.

  • • •

  These are the 9th Annual World Sauna Championships in Heinola, Finland, a Heidi-esque little lake-riddled town 140 kilometers north of Helsinki. I’ve covered a lot of thrilling athletic endeavors, but never men sitting in small rooms and sweating. What other championships does the world have? Napping? Barcalounging? Standing in Front of the Fridge?

  Announcer: And now Struhdler leans in for the leftover tuna—nope! No! He switches to the fudge!

  As we drove up, my mind reeled at what kind of things competitors in the World Sauna Championships say to sportswriters afterward in the locker room. “I just got hot. What can I say?”

  I went over the rules. Simple. Competing in “six-person heats”—said without irony—the field of eighty-four men (including me) and eighteen women battle to see whose skin can boil last. You may wear only bathing suits that go eight inches down the leg and absolutely nothing else. (Women can wear one-piece bathing suits.) You can wipe sweat from your face, but not your body. You cannot cover your ears. You may not lean over too far. You get one warning, then you’re out. Ambulances will be standing by. Good luck!

  I wondered if sauna sitting has trash-talking like other sports. For instance, what if I came into my heat on the first day with a lit Winston and a cup of coffee? Maybe look at the other five guys and go, “Hey, when are they gonna turn this bitch on?” Start knocking on the window and yelling, “Let’s get some heat in here! You want us to catch our deaths?” Maybe look at the crotch of the guy next to me and go, “That’s weird. I thought COLD caused shrinkage.” Or maybe wait outside the sauna while six other guys are about to go in and hand them a half-baked ziti. “Hey, would you mind taking this in there? I’ve got a potluck in, like, twenty minutes.”

  In her research, TLC discovered that there was an Australian gambling site that has set the odds. Three-time defending champ Timmo (the Great) Kaukonen is a 2.15-to-1 favorite. I was listed at 101-to-1.

  As if.

  First of all, nobody but a Finn has ever won the World Sauna Championships. In fact, nobody but a Finn has ever been in the six-man finals. There are 5.2 million Finns and 3 million saunas. Legend has it most Finns are born in saunas. To a Finn, a sauna is a holy place. Then again, so is Hell.

  Secondly, I wouldn’t bet on me at 1,000,001 to one. At that point, I had saunaed five times in my life. I had about as much chance as a slice of Neopolitan ice cream. But the gambling site makes me realize how easy it would be for Timmo the Great to tank. All he’d have to do is bet on his chief rival (a young guy named Markku with a Charlie Chan fu), get down to the final two and then immediately bolt, so that Markku the Fu would win. He’d just have to make it look real. You’d hate to have the official go, “Uh, Timmo, do you mind waiting until we turn the sauna on first?”

  By the time we arrived, Heinola was in full steam. This is a national event, televised no less, and the bars were already bubbling with insaunity. In one sidewalk bar about six guys, smashed already, with white-and-green painted faces and Viking horns, carried satchels full of reindeer powderhorn (To help your horn stay stiff! the sign on the pouch says. Don’t leave in mouth too long.) and had bows of birch tied to their belts. Finns take them into the sauna and slap themselves on the back to increase circulation.

  “We cheer for Redneck and Ironback,” one face-painter named Samu yelled lustily. “One will be champion!” Saunists have nicknames? Who knew? What would my sauna nickname be? Babyback?

  Samu was amazingly plastered for 11 A.M. “You are going in?” he slobbered at me, flabbergasted. “Look, I am Finnish and even I won’t go in there!” Then he began hanging all over TLC, asking her what she does. “I’m a teacher,” she said. He was right up in her face, two inches from it, wilting her eyelashes with his Finlandia breath, and said, “I’m a drunk.”

  Nooooooo.

  At the registration table, they asked me to remove my shirt and then scrawl “82” on each of my biceps in Magic Marker, my competitor’s number. I found out I was in a heat with the Tiger Woods of saunists, three-time champ Timmo the Great, the favorite. And that’s when—as if on cue—his giant sauna-company-sponsored mobile home, complete with a sauna inside it, pulled up. The man even travels in a sauna.

  Honey, I’m going down to the 7-Eleven for some milk and a shvitz. You want anything?

  Timmo the Great waded through some autograph seekers (no joke) and arrived at the registration table carrying a quart of water. His skin is a kind of permanent cherry, and shiny hard, like a newly painted model car. He has long blond hair (turns out it protects the ears) and he’s stout, stocky, maybe slightly pudgy. He is thin-lipped (also a very good trait for a saunist—Angelina Jolie would be awful at this). Timmo’s pulse gets up to 200 bpm when he competes and he actually does train aerobically for this, riding the bike a lot and running. Have absolutely no idea why. He is also very quiet. You don’t want to be a person who needs a lot of movement. You have to be happy to be just sitting, especially while your very organs boil inside you.

  In short, he’s the world’s most famous saunist. He probably has his own signature-model back-birch-bow swatter.

  With the help of an interpreter, I interviewed him.

  Me: How much time have you been spending in the sauna lately?

  Timmo the Great: Off and on, all day and night, about twenty sessions a day.

  Me: Oh, my God! At what temperature?

  Timmo the Great: Lately, it’s been at about 140°C [or 284°F].

  Me: Oh, good Christ! Do you drink a lot of water coming into the competition or what?

  Timmo the Great: Oh, yes, about ten liters a day [2.6 gallons] the last three days. (He smiles at my reaction.) You, too, I’m sure, yes?

  Me: Do you count beer?

  Timmo the Great: No.

  I was so screwed.

  Because I was one of the first Americans to ever have entered the WSC, I did some very small interviews
myself. There were all kinds of TV crews here—Ukraine, Germany, Sweden, and Russia. Variously, I pretended that I thought the competitors were running the sauna, or that it was a hot-tub competition, or that I had been training for this by eating jalapeños. I had brought along my six-eight shock-white-haired basketball buddy from Wisconsin, Bill “Thor” Pearson, who chimed in helpfully every now and then as though he was my publicist. “Rick does not have access to a sauna,” Thor confided to one reporter. “So he’s just been doing really, really long stretches at room temperature.”

  They nodded earnestly.

  There were all kinds of odd entrants. A Japanese teen idol singer was there, name of Kazumi Morohoshi, and he was followed everywhere by his manager, his agent, his coach, some fans, and a Japanese TV crew. His odds were a ridiculous 13-to-1. I would have bet my last saunamobile against him. He was skinny and pale and much too pretty to suffer like my man Timmo.

  The only other American entered was software designer Rick Ellis, formerly of the Soviet Union, who was so into this that he’d built his own sauna at his home in upstate New York. “I even considered putting $2,000 down on myself, but I couldn’t figure out how.” He said he’s been training at 110°C (230°F) and had made it sixteen minutes once. His wife looked at him ruefully and shook her head. He turned to her, exasperated, “What?”

  Suddenly, it was time for the heats to begin, and over 500 sauna fans took their places in the open-air theater. On stage were two hexagonal glass-faced saunas and two giant viewing screens. The gladiators for the opening heat were trotted out, all soaking wet from their freezing pre-heat showers. Ominously, a little man opened the door to the sauna and the six marched ruefully in, like drumsticks into a fryer. The fans chanted wildly. Sauna cheers? The mind reels: