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Sand Sweep- Always love to stumble upon a new sport. It is exciting and broadens a person’s scope in life. Well, might be flirting with the line of demarcation regarding the sport I’m about to introduce to you, so why don’t we just pretend. Did you ever play pretend when you were a child? I’m still a child and am still pretending. So come along with me and at the end of the subject matter ask yourself if the following is a sport, or is it just pretend.

Oh, what a lovely day it was down at the beach last week. The bulk of the tourists had returned to the Central Valley, the tide was refreshingly low and the late morning sun was deleting the chill in the air. As I reveled in the glory of the day I noticed a group of about five locals sweeping the sand with their geiger counter-looking equipment and I became intrigued. We’ve all seen people “hunting” the sand in this manner before but I was wondering if it could be construed as a sport or not.

For the uninitiated, the sand sweepers use a device that looks similar to a weed-eater and they oscillate it left to right and right to left, looking to pick up a signal that perhaps there are fortunes beneath the sand grains. They wear headphones that the signals are transmitted to. Those large earmuffs are akin to the headphones the pro athletes wear as they exit the buses upon arrival at their sporting venues. You know, the ones they wear so they don’t have to hear the questions columnists are about to ask them!

Once the bounty beneath the sand is detected the sand sweeper then uses a scoop to try to locate the riches. The item used to scoop the sand looks like a pooper-scooper that is used in one’s backyard. I’m sure that on occasion the treasure lifted from the sand may certainly turn out to be dog doo, especially if that dog had ingested any type of metallic substance which would transmit a signal. It could be from a tiny battery, an earring, a nose stud, a hearing aid, tinsel from the Xmas tree, that leftover pot sticker you had wrapped in tin foil and left too close to the edge of the counter.

So, here’s how this sand sweeping activity could be considered, or become, a sport. You advertise for ten “sweepers” to show up at the beach on a Monday morning after a holiday weekend that brought the Valley people to the area. You give the sweepers bibs with numbers. They are allotted 60 minutes to comb and sweep to their heart’s delight and he or she that scoops items totaling the most value is the winner and receives a doubloon authenticated by Johnny Depp.

I mean, if you really think about it, this sport could just explode like the Ironman Triathlon or the Pike’s Peak Race or the South County Eucalyptus Sniffing Contest. It could go global! And the event organizer could quit his real job and make a gazillion dollars.

Just pretending!

Potpourri- An extraordinary facial resemblance between Dallas Maverick future NBA Hall-Of-Famer Dirk Nowitzki and legendary actor Donald Sutherland. Could somebody please put a sock in LaVar Ball’s big mouth…make that a basketball as it would certainly fit!

Carson, Calif. is having more luck than Eagles’ quarterback Carson Wentz as the LA Chargers have won four games in a row at Carson’s StubHub Center stadium and Carson Wentz, the leading NFL MVP candidate just, sadly, had his season end with a torn ACL.

Update: Avenal boxer Jose Ramirez will face Amir Imam at New York’s fabled Madison Square Garden in March 2018 for the World Boxing Council junior welterweight world title. Determination and perseverance have paid off for former Cal Poly basketball player David Nwaba as he currently comes off the bench for the Chicago Bulls and infuses instant energy.

The New York Yankees now possess the current version of “Murderer’s Row” as they just added Giancarlo Stanton’s home run bat to go along with the prowess of “go-yard” sluggers Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. And the Angels won the sweepstakes for Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani to finally, and mercifully, give Mike Trout some much-needed help.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good year.

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