This One's For Pops

Nickel-Dimer [nik-uhl dahym-er]
-adjective

1. Basketball. Descriptor for an unwarranted foul. Popularized by college basketball broadcaster Bill Raftery.

2. General Vagrancy. Term used to denote an extremely attractive woman with an unattractive friend.

Before I begin I owe no small thanks to several folks who helped get this tiny, tiny blog off the ground. First off is my good friend Kiloh(not his actual name), who pushed me to find some way to do what I enjoy doing, which is writing. Thanks for the nudge in the right direction. Second is Drano(actual name) who, after four days of Vegas sleep and having watched 40 hours of basketball over a long weekend, openly remarked "look at the little nickel-dimer" as an attractive woman and her unattractive friend passed us on the casino floor at Planet Hollywood. This blog derives its name from that unplanned moment of genius(well, genius mixed with assholery), and for that I am grateful.

This inaugural post of TND, however, is dedicated to someone else...a man I never met.

I am a St. Louis Cardinal fan and Kentucky Wildcat fan by birthright--along with my brother, I am the third generation of fans on both my maternal and paternal side. Due to this lineage I have been able to see both of my favorite teams win Championships, something that I realize not every fan gets to experience. I am grateful for this rooting lineage, and thus the initial post is dedicated to my maternal grandfather, who passed away 6 years previous to my birth. A man I'm sure I would have called "Pops."

Pops was a die-hard fan of both my teams--he used to sit and keep score of UK basketball games while listening to Cawood Ledford on the radio, then keep the scorecard and review them year to year. Like me, he loved the statistics around the game as much as the game itself, which is presumably how he fell in love with baseball and the Cardinals. He was a man desperate for sons, and the fates gave him three daughters whom he adored.

Several years ago I came across a letter he had written to his mother during WWII. I was very surprised to learn that his writing voice and style was almost exactly like my own. Pops loved to entertain, and that is the ultimately the purpose of this blog--to entertain those who happen to stop by for a bit. That's what we're going to be about, and hopefully in the most ridiculously sophomoric way possibe. We'll hopefully have some friends stop by and lend their thoughts as well, and I'll try to keep the juvenile humor to a maximum.

So this one's for you, Pops. I hope the rest of the posts make you proud.

Sorry about the dick jokes.