The Magazine Editor's Blog: Bound For Arizona, Seeking Inspiration

Will Amazing Grace and Chuck inspire the Cardinals?

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"I plan to quit CSI and train to be the QB for the Cardinals. Yeah, I know Beatty sorta' did that in Heaven Can Wait.

As I head off to Arizona to watch my Cardinals host the NFC Championship Game, I immediately check ESPN.com (nice redesign, by the way) to make sure that, in fact, the Cardinals are actually hosting the NFC Championship Game. I do this every 20 minutes or so, because the idea of the Cardinals hosting the NFC Championship Game is a little bit farfetched, and by "a little bit farfetched" I mean, "What the &%#%$!?" And so I've been thinking about the improbable lately, specifically the improbable in sports, which often puts me in mind of one of my Top 5 favorite sports movies, but especially these days, what with William Petersen leaving CSI.

Mind you, I have never watched CSI, but I've been seeing commercials telling me he's leaving. Anyway, Petersen was one of the stars of a 1987 sports classic called Amazing Grace And Chuck, which if you haven't seen it is just sweetly astounding.

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Winona Ryder and Michael Nesmith attend the premiere of Amazing Grace and Chuck. It later won 17 Oscars.

Here's the IMDB synopsis: "Chuck Murdock is an all American kid living in a sleepy town in Montana. He is the top pitcher of the little league team as well. After taking a tour of a nuclear silo, Chuck decides to quit playing little league until nuclear weapons are disarmed. Boston Celtic Amazing Grace Smith hears about Chuck's exploits, and decides to do the same thing. Amazing then moves to the young boy's town to live. More athletes follow suit as well. The town begins to hate Chuck and his family, and this makes Chuck's father angry. But can one kid's message make the world listen?"

Answer: Yes, yes it can!

Seriously, you gotta watch this movie. Especially if the Cardinals win the NFC Championship Game. Because if they do, folks, it doesn't get any more improbable, or any more sweetly astounding, than that. The football Cardinals franchise, after all, makes the pre-2004 Red Sox look like the 1950s Canadiens. (You like the Canadiens? Read this.)

Now on to my list of THE 27 BEST SPORTS IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW, ACCORDING TO ME. It's a whopper of a ranking, though much less important than another list I keep: BEST UNINTENTIONAL SPORTS MOVIES (Top 3: M*A*S*H, The Running Man, Gladiator).

THE 27 BEST SPORTS IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW, ACCORDING TO ME:

1. NFL¹
2. NBA²
3. College Basketball
4. Yoga
5. NASCAR (Sprint Cup)³
6. Golf (PGA/LPGA)⁴
7. NHL⁵
8. Snowboarding (Superpipe)⁶
9. MLB (Hot Stove League!)⁷
10. Soccer
11. College Hockey
12. Mixed Martial Arts
13. Tennis (WTA/ATP)
14. College football⁸
15. Log Rolling
16. Drag Racing⁹
17. Women's Professional Football
18. Snowmobile Racing
19. Field Target¹⁰
20. Slow marathon running¹¹
21. Fistball¹²
22. Boxing
23. DSRL¹³
24. Bowling
25. Wheelchair Weightlifting¹⁴
26. Women's Professional Basketball (Europe)
27. WNBA

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1. Like I said, "What the &%#%$!?" [By the way, that thing you just read—all those punctuation marks and symbols used to represent a curse word—has a name, several actually, but my favorite is "grawlix."]

2. I am officially an Atlanta Hawks fan. I just wanted to let everyone know.

3. I think this will be one of the most interesting seasons, not only because Jimmie Johnson is going for a record four-stright Cup wins but also because of the effects that the economic downturn will have on this sport.

4. I'm always surprised by how psyched I get when I realize its golf season again. It's one of the shortest offseasons, in the best of ways (at least for fans). Also, some great story lines this year: Tiger Woods coming back, young guns waiting for him, Lorena Ochoa, Michelle Wie earning her card in Q school…

5. Turns out when you watch the Blues they don't actually suck. They're trying hard, battered by injuries and don't really have a stopper. So, given those factors, they're actually spunky losers! And who can't get behind spunky losers?

6. Because these athletes are artists. And because I just like saying "superpipe."

7. I love when the Yankees make themselves into more of a team you wanna see lose. It's good for the sport. Seriously. Now there are two again (Red Sox).

8. I've got Signing Day fever! (Embarrassing, I know.)

9. See Note 3. Also, we've got a cool drag racing story coming up in the next few issues.

10. Because guns don't kill people—people who don't use guns solely for sport kill people.

11. Erin Richardson—one of this sport's burgeoning legends—dropped by our offices, and you know what that gets you: a mention in my list!

12. The name alone grabs your attention, and the game itself is worth a look.

13. As in the Oreo Double Stuff Racing League. Look, they're not even advertisers in The Magazine. I just liked the commercials and would pay some amount of money—not much, but some—to actually be able to watch in person as the Manning brothers and Williams sisters compete to see "who's fastest to twist, lick and dunk their Oreo cookie!" (The company's words, not mine.) Tell me honestly you wouldn't too.

14. I'm just always impressed by the variety of wheelchair sports.

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