In Praise of Winter Weekends and Football

We begin our winter weekend with a movie, “A Beautiful Mind,” a good film, though not spectacular. If this is the best thing out of Hollywood this year, then your home movies may be Oscar contenders.

“Let me get this straight,” I say on the way home. “She slept with her professor?”

“Things were different back then,” my wife says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Coeds were tramps.”

“She married him and stuck by him,” my wife says, as if that’s some sort of virtue.

On the couch at home, we watch a pre-Super Bowl salute, two days before the game, featuring a young entertainer by the name of Ja Rule.

Like a lot of rappers, Mr. Rule sometimes forsakes a nice melody in favor of a grinding, pulsating rhythm. He also appears to spit into the microphone. A lot. Needless to say, he’s very popular.

“We should form a rap band,” I told a friend recently.

“Why?”

“So maybe we’d understand,” I say.

Sheryl Crow follows, and frankly she doesn’t sound so hot either; her voice is kind of weak, although she has the advantage of looking like this cheerleader I knew in college.

My wife and I speculate about why Crow sounds so bad. Could be the sound system. Or the beery crowd, screaming at her from behind the stage. But bad this night she is. Needless to say, she’s very popular.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that, for the rest of eternity, parents will sit on couches and discuss the poor quality of their children’s favorite performers.

That said, I also believe that when popular culture aims only at the tastes of 12-year-olds, everyone suffers. Even the 12-year-olds.

“Sting’s on next,” my wife says.

“Thank God,” I say.

It’s February already, a time of Super Bowls and important auditions.

At the ball field, the girls line up like a chorus line.

“My name’s Olivia,” a fifth-grader says.

“Olivia, have you ever played softball before?” one of the coaches asks.

“This is my first year,” Olivia says pleasantly enough.

They are among the finest things about Southern California, these Saturdays in February that are toasty enough for baseball, yet with snow lacing the nearby San Gabriels. In a town full of set designers, I dare you to find a more breathtaking backdrop.

And in a town of auditions, I dare you to find one more riveting than this one: 70 girls trying out in front of a handful of coaches, some of them outside for the first time since Halloween.

“There’s a lot of talent out here,” I tell Bill, my assistant coach.

“Where?” asks Coach Bill.

“Everywhere,” I say.

“Oh, now I see,” he says.

Three at a time, the girls parade before the coaches, who ask them inane questions like how long they’ve studied the art of softball and what position they like to play.

“I like to play shortstop and outfield,” a girl tells the coaches.

“You ever pitch?” I ask.

“Aren’t you listening?” another coach complains. “She just said she plays outfield and shortstop.”

“So shoot me,” I say.

“Yeah, shoot him,” Coach Bill urges.

And with that, the three young players trot out to take some grounders.

Lord, remember trotting out to the infield for the first time each spring, the sun on your face, your glove smelling like a dead animal from being in the garage all winter? Me neither. But I’ll bet it was nice.

“That one, she looks like a 3,” Coach Bill says, marking his rating sheet.

“Or a 2?” I say.

“A 2 or a 3,” he says.

“How about a 1?” I say.

“I was going to say 1,” Coach Bill says.

Coach Bill and I have been coaching together for five years now. When we talk, it sounds like an old Rowan and Martin routine. I feed him slow, easy straight lines. He knocks ‘em out of the park.

“Coach Bob is looking good out there,” I say about our new league commissioner, a handsome man in a damp T-shirt.

“Implants,” Coach Bill says.

We cap the weekend by preparing for something called the Super Bowl. In grocery stores, customers stock up on food as if the world is about to end. For many Americans, it’s the biggest food orgy of the year.

Turns out to be a great game, too. You may have heard about it. To recap: Guy kicks a field goal with seven seconds left. The world goes nuts, basically.

“What a game,” everybody at our friends’ Super Bowl party says.

“Who could’ve predicted this?” says my buddy Mark.

As always, the person to win the Super Bowl pool is the one who knows the least about football. In fact, our winner, Christine, reportedly left the Super Bowl party to go next door and take a bubble bath. When she learns she’s won the pool, she gets out of the bubble bath and returns to claim her prize. How some network missed covering this, I’ll never know.

“Who was playing again?” Christine asks when she collects her 150 bucks.

See? My theory is that in 36 Super Bowls, no one who knows anything about football has ever won the pot. It’s virtually unprovable, but so are most of my theories.

“It’s Summerall’s last game,” someone says of the veteran play-by-play announcer.

Jack Buck. Ray Scott. Keith Jackson. Sports announcers don’t peak till they’re at least 60 and can remain first rate another decade or two.

Vin Scully. Chick Hearn. Harry Caray. So they make a few more mistakes when they hit 70. Who cares? They’re comfortable as a pair of mink galoshes.

On Super Bowl Sunday, the playing field may belong to the young and swift. Let the microphones belong to the wise and the mature.

And let these winter weekends go on forever.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.