Washed Weekly: Crowd Pops
Sports audio and dads riding coasters.
Welcome to Washed Weekly — a weekly newsletter that will feature original columns, quick reads, exclusive product drops, and an offering of some of the best content we’ve created throughout the week that was. Read it, enjoy it, and pass it on to anyone you think will enjoy it, too. You can also check out the Washed network of podcasts.
Best Sports Sounds
by Dillon
Once upon a time, the boys and I did a “best sounds” draft on Circling Back, which included zero parameters, so all sounds were on the table. It might tell you a little bit about me to know that all of my picks were sports related.
So when Yordan Alvaraez pissed on this homerun ball in Anaheim and it sounded like something from the Looney Tunes, it got my juices going all over again.
What’s going on here? I’ve never heard that sound from a wooden baseball bat, or from anywhere else other than my tube television in 1st grade.
It usually sounds more like this:
Pee peed on it. Hands down, the crack of a wooden baseball bat in the hands of someone with some bat speed is one of, if not THE, best sounds in all of sports. There are some other good ones, too.
Hockey Goal Off the Post
This one was influenced by the guy who sits next to me and is from Upstate New York (hockey guy). I would have otherwise missed it, most likely. A clapper off the post followed by a crowd pop will excite even the non-hockey guy.
Baseball Spikes on Pavement
Once you advance beyond little league baseball, metal spikes are in play. I still remember walking up to the pony league fields (where the baseball scene in ‘Dazed and Confused’ was filmed btw) and feeling like I was a big league ball player from the metal on pavement crunch sound of my spikes.
Big Hit Crowd Pop
A general big play crowd pop belongs on this list on its own merit, but the crowd pop from a big hit combines a typical crowd pop with some “ooooohs” as a ball carrier was just split in fucking half and murdered on live television. Let this 1996 video of Texas DB Bryant Westbrook sending a Notre Dame running back straight to hell demonstrate what I mean.
Football pornography.
Pop of Catcher’s Mitt
Before the lumber arrives, pitchers and catchers are first to report for spring training, and that means a lot of this:
Leather hitting leather at 90+ MPH sounds sick, it turns out.
Swish
Imagine for a second you’re on a blacktop in southeast Austin on a fall day in 2018 and Dave is showcasing his famous Cloud 9 shot for the boys and any passersby who were lucky enough to stop and catch a glimpse of greatness. It might sound a little something like this:
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Honorable mention to chain netting, depending on which side of the tracks you’re from.
Buzzer Beater
Loud crowd noise in the closing seconds, followed by the silence of anticipation as the ball leaves the hand, then a buzzer, then a louder crowd pop as the ball goes in. That’s the stuff, man.
What did I miss?
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It’s Friday night and both kids have been asleep for an hour. My wife is reading a book in the other room, and I have no desire to start a new show despite the fact that there are many to choose from.
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Am I Too Washed For Amusement Parks?
by Dave
What if I don’t have it in me anymore? It’s a hot summer day in Texas, and I’ve been in line for 25 minutes. My son and his buddy are making fart noises and bumping into the people in front of us. We scale 80 steps to get to the top only for me to realize that chapter of my life is closed. What if I’m no longer the coaster head adrenaline junky I once was?
As a suburban Dallas kid, I had the season pass to Six Flags and Wet & Wild, the water park across the street that was eventually purchased and renamed Hurricane Harbor. It was peak childhood. We didn’t care that the line to get into the park was 45 minutes long, we wanted to ride the world’s largest wooden rollercoaster, dammit. We had no fear. Literally, our shirts said “No Fear” on them. But we also were 12, and our brains were nowhere near close to being fully developed. What about now? The brain is formed. Into what? Who knows? But it’s definitely formed.
A quick trip down to San Antonio’s JW Marriott took me back to that old familiar place: standing in line, the sun baking my left shoulder as my right is covered by an equally hot tandem tube, and my swimsuit is dripping a steady stream of lazy river water onto the wooden deck below. With my son seated in the front and me in the back, we shot down the first drop of one of the water park’s most sought-after attractions. It felt good to be back. A little dump of adrenaline both from the slide and from me immediately wondering whether my 5-year-old was too little to be doing this. He was fine! That first turn down the tube, though. It had a little more juice than I expected, and that was the problem. What does it mean if a mid-tiered waterslide at a family resort, one that my kindergartener can ride, was making me grip the handles on the tube a little tighter?
Soft. Washed. Cooked.
It’s not a middle-aged man’s game. They don’t build these places with dads in mind. We’re just there to chaperone and avoid whiplash. We’ll pay for the Lemon Chills, generic chicken strips, and the Ice Cream of the Future. Is a guy like me still built to go 12 rounds with loops, 15 story drops, and 4 Gs of vertical maximum force with a 3.8 second launch acceleration? If you had asked me earlier, I would have said, “absolutely,” but now that I type it out- yikes. You can’t get a little butterfly in your tummy from a tandem tube waterslide and expect the Texas Giant or the Titan to treat you like anything less than a bitch.
I’m still a few years away from prime coaster’n with my sons, so I’ve got some time. I refuse to be the dad hunched over a trashcan as his son pretends not to know him. If he’s going to lose respect for me, let it be in the end-of-year kids vs. parents baseball game.
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Could be classified as a sport sound, but the sound of the ole f1 v10s was music to my ears. Look that shit up, cuh
As a fellow dad of young kids, I too fear I’m washed for the amusement park. I LOVED roller coasters as a kid im just not sure my body or brain are up to the G’s and loops anymore