Being right all the time nice thing

What's it like working in the sports department of a newspaper? The best comparison would be to say that it's like being on "The McLaughlin Group," only there isn't a crazy man to yell at us, and I'm always right.

At least, that's how the rest of the staff should see it by this point.

Yeah, there are the standard sports arguments - whether or not the Arizona Cardinals should be reclassified as a "semi pro" team - but the best ones are for those nonsports topics, which I like to call "real life."

Just look at a few recent arguments, and you tell me how these other guys I work with - I think they're named Ross, Nick and... the rest of them; I'll just call them "staff" to be safe - could possibly disagree with me.

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-- Issue No. 1: What's the most romantic language?

I argue French, because it's certainly not Russian - no woman ever swooned to one of Boris Yeltsin's speeches.

The staff counters with Spanish, which is to be expected, because people only speak two languages in Yuma, and Spanish is certainly more exotic than English, which is incapable of getting more romantic than "Can I get change for a dollar, Miss Topless Dancer?"

Winner: Me. What could be more romantic than hearing someone say a le vu mon-swa vu le vu, which means, "My parents won't be back for a few hours?"

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-- Issue No. 2: Which is the better system of measurement, ours or the Metric System?

Really, how tough is it to remember things like "16 ounces in a pound," "5,280 feet in a mile," and "My Hummer gets six blocks to the gallon?"

Some in the staff, the ones who fell in with that awful "liberal media," say that the metric system is easier to use. The Metric system was invented by the French ... err, I mean the Freedom ... and uses weird terms like "centimeter," "liter," "bushel" and "Hog's head."

Winner: Me, in a landslide. Just because the rest of the world uses the Metric system - which caused confused foreigners at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics to misread highway signs and end up in Manhattan, where they had to pay $2,500 a month for a ground-floor studio apartment with lead paint and no heat - doesn't mean we have to cave in to peer pressure. The American system is always right; if we made mistakes, we'd be Canadians, the same people who traded Wayne Gretzky and have $2 coins.

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-- Issue No. 3: When talking about the United States, what exactly constitutes "The South?"

The staff says Florida is different than states like Arkansas and Mississippi, and, just as California cannot be lumped in with "the Southwest" or "the Pacific Northwest" or "normal states, where pretending you are a killer robot from the future does not mean you have the political experience necessary to be governor," Florida deserves its own separate category.

I say that if you fought for the South, you are part of the South, and Florida fought for the South during the Civil War. I'm not 100 percent sure of this, but in the heat of an argument, sometimes you just don't have time to make sure you are factually correct.

Winner: Me. Florida had to fight for the South, right? If memory serves me correctly, Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address in Orlando, Fla., and then was captured by Walt Disney, turned into a robot - but not the kind that kills people, so he couldn't become governor of California - and made to recite his speech over and over again at the Epcot Center.

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-- Issue No. 4: What is the best Sylvester Stallone movie?

For the Italian Stallion, it's a no-brainer: Rocky IV, in which Rocky saves the world from nuclear war. That's the one where the eight-foot tall Soviet, Ivan Drago - who combines the pure evil of Stalin, the looks of Brezhnev and boxing ability of Rasputin - kills Apollo Creed in the ring, and then Rocky travels to Russia, where he wins over the crowd and eventually draws a standing applause from someone who looks a lot like Gorbachev.

After winning, Rocky then makes some speech to the Russians that goes something like, "If youze can applaud me ... 'den I been thinkin' ... maybe youze and us ain't so diff'rent." Most historical scholars point to this as a key moment in the Cold War, the equal of the Cuban Missile Crisis in magnitude, but way more entertaining.

I'll be honest, I really didn't pay attention to what the staff had to say here, though I think it was something about having to do work or some excuse like that. The point is, my record in office arguments is still unblemished, and I'll be ready for more tomorrow.

It's fun being right all the time.

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Rich Polikoff is a sports writer and

page designer for The Sun.

E-mail rpolikoff@yumasun.com

Phone 539-6882