Going down memory lane at the Post-Intelligencer

From Gary Payton nearly kicking my butt in 1996 to Sue Bird actually doing it 11 years later in a game of H-O-R-S-E.

One question…why was I wearing a watch?

BEND, Ore. - This is the third installment from my 26 years as a sportswriter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which published its last newspaper on March 17th, 2009.

I’ll end the weeklong look back tomorrow at the best newspaper in Seattle history, the one that beat the Times in everything but profit margin, where I think we were pretty much blown out by Frank Blethen’s newspaper, as evidenced by our closure and the fact that the Times is still around today.

I’m kidding about thinking we routinely beat the Times; I actually respected everyone who worked there and still have three good friends - Glenn Nelson, Bud Withers and John Peoples - who were sportswriters at the Times.

I liked being the underdog at the P-I, it fit me to a tee as a Coug. We fought like we were the heavyweights in town and threw a bunch of jabs before being knocked out in the end.

Speaking of losing battles, somewhere along the way it occurred to me that I could beat Sue Bird in a game of H-O-R-S-E. I knew I couldn’t beat her in a game of one-on-one, but H-O-R-S-E?

Come on! After all, I scored seven points my senior season at Redmond High in 1973-74. I didn’t average 7 points a game - that’s all I scored all year.

This will sound crazy because if I was really the shooter I thought I was, I would have played more than I did, but to this day, I can still shoot the damn ball. I swear to you it’s true.

I’m not sure why Bird, a future Hall of Famer, agreed to a game of H-O-R-S-E with me in 2007. And after the way it turned out, I kind of wish she hadn’t.

Here’s the column I wrote about it under the headline:

IT WAS OVER IN FIVE LETTERS - L-O-S-E-R

No one thought I had a shot against Storm guard Sue Bird in a game of H-O-R-S-E.

“You couldn’t beat a horse in a game of H-O-R-S-E,” said one friend.

She’s a professional basketball player,” said another.

“You don’t have a chance,” said Jimmy Quigg, one of the guys who practices with the Storm.

“You’re gonna get kill’t,” said the Go 2 Wife.

The thing is, they were right, all of them, every one of them. Bird won H-O-R-S-E to nothing. I was blanked, crushed, humiliated. I couldn’t even get an H on her, and never once forced her to make a shot because I kept missing.

“I’m not supposed to get a letter. I’m a professional,” Bird said after the game, which may have lasted 10 minutes, maybe 12, probably eight.

This was an expected outcome in everyone’s mind but one. I realize that Bird’s a WNBA All-Star, and I’m a washed-up hack nearly twice her age, but we weren’t playing a game of one-on-one, just a little game of H-O-R-S-E.

I had a carefully thought-out game plan. I checked the Storm statistics for the first time in my life Tuesday morning and noticed that Bird has been struggling with her threes of late.

She’s gone 3-for-16 from beyond the arc in her past four games, and long-range shooting is my only strength. Granted, she had people guarding her, but it still seemed like a sound strategy to put her at least 20 feet from the basket and hope she bricked ‘em like she has been in the games.

I practiced in the driveway, shooting 25-footers and swishing some of them, rimming the rest, a few bounding into the waiting paws of the Go 2 Pup.

The final shot gave me hope - a long one with a bad angle from the beauty bark, launched over a stone wall and a Yao Ming maple into the basket, good night everybody, thanks for coming.

It’s funny how delusional you can get, even when sober. Before leaving the house, I truly thought I was going to beat Sue Bird and not only beat her but beat her bad. In those moments, of which I have many, the Cougars also go to the Rose Bowl and win the national championship.

Reality could smack me in the face with a 2-by-4 and I wouldn’t feel it, but there’s precedence to think this way. Gary Payton once mopped the floor with me in a game of one-on-one, but I still managed to score on a left-handed layup and wasn’t skunked like I was Tuesday.

Sports psychologists stress the importance of sticking to a pregame routine so I threw on some Coug gear and drank a beer. I should have had several.

The game was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. after Storm practice and a team meeting. The players convened at 1:30, which gave me plenty of time to warm up -- maybe too much time; the meeting didn’t end until 2:15, and my arm felt like Jeff Weaver’s after hucking up what must have been a hundred NBA 3-pointers.

“She was sitting in there letting you wear yourself out,” said Chris Campbell, my one and only supporter. Campbell’s brother, Steve, was supposed to be rooting for me but showed up in a Bird jersey, so I knew that was out.

I’m also second-guessing our use of the WNBA ball. It’s smaller and lighter than an NBA ball. I can palm it, and I don’t have big hands. It’s orange and white; if you haven’t seen it at a game, think Sea World at the end of a seal’s nose.

The WNBA ball allowed me to go farther out than usual, but Bird obviously had more practice with it. (Let’s be honest -- we could have used soccer balls, volleyballs, ping pong balls, tennis balls, and she still would have shut me out.

We could have played S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-I-F-R-A-G-I-L -I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-S and it wouldn’t have mattered.

As Bird arrived from practice, I was hoisting from points unknown and draining enough of them to get her attention.

“You were making ‘em deep in warm-ups,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, maybe you did practice and have some tricks.’ “

But like the mental midget who can stripe it on the driving range until he gets to the course, I couldn’t find the hoop when it counted. I tried everything. I even told myself, ‘Come on, Jim, you’re a Coug!” And sure enough, I Apple Cupped the game away.

Bird was not only better but smarter. She knows that guys who like to throw up threes have a tendency to short-arm shots from close range. An assortment of 10- to 15-footers put me in an H-O-R hole in a hurry.

I can’t remember how she got S on me, but E was a killer, coming from the left wing, a 20-footer that I usually make in my sleep; the problem being, I was awake, missed it twice and that was that.

A gracious winner, Bird didn’t rub it in. She joked that she had been nervous all morning. As the result of yet another losing bet, I will donate $200 to one of Bird’s favorite charities -- the Sonics and Storm Foundation.

Embarrassed yes, but enlightened too -- when it comes to the WNBA, I stand corrected.