gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Underage Smacktalkers

I'm in a pretty competitive Yahoo! fantasy basketball league (which I won last year), and we just drafted our teams on Sunday night.

I lucked out, getting first pick overall (LeBron James, of course), but I'm quite happy with the rest of my roster too.

The same cannot be said for my brother-in-law Rob, who didn't prerank enough players and ended up with "Dallas' equivalent of Darrick Martin" on his bench.

His team is called the Overpaid Smacktalkers. To cheer him up, I had my daughters (ages 3 & 5) record the arena announcement of his starting roster. Have a listen:

MP3 (1.5 Mb)

Here's his roster:

• Baron Davis (GS - PG)
• Kobe Bryant (LAL - SG)
• Vince Carter (NJ - SG,SF)
• Antawn Jamison (was - SF,PF)
• Al Harrington (Ind - SF,PF)
• Troy Murphy (GS - PF)
• Shaquille O'Neal (Mia - C)
• P.J. Brown (Chi - PF,C)
• Sam Cassell (LAC - PG)
• Ben Gordon (Chi - PG, SG)
• Derek Fisher (Uta - PG)
• Jumaine Jones (Pho - SF)
• Michael Finley (SA - SG,SF)
• Anthony Johnson (Dal - PG)

Cute, huh? Well, I think so. I got the idea when the three-year-old was looking at my fantasy basketball magazine, asking the names of the people in the pictures. I told her, and she repeated them with what I thought was remarkable clarity.

So I got out my minidisc recorder and had her repeat the names. The five-year-old wanted in, of course, and repeated the names too. The remarkable thing is that she's never been to a sporting event, and has never heard an arena announcer (e.g. Herbie Kuhn, above, introducing "Your Torontooooooooooooo RAP-Tors!"). Yet my little girl hammed up each name just like they do - it must come with the microphone.

I cleaned it up a little in Sound Forge, and there you have it. Uncle Robbie and I are probably the only ones who find this amusing. Unless Jumaine Jones checks my blog...