America’s Cup veteran just now realizing sailing is lame

VALENCIA, SPAIN — Ed Baird has spent the last 40 years of his life preparing to race in the Super Bowl of sailing, the America’s Cup. Throughout the many years training in his hometown of St. Petersburg, FL and working as a part of New Zealand’s 1995 championship team, he never took a moment to reflect upon what it was he was actually doing.

This year Baird got a heavy dose of instant perspective. Late last week “some local hussy” mistook him for a waiter at an Italian seafood restaurant when told that he was a part of team Alinghi, the Cup’s current defending champions. This most recent humiliation, at the hands of what he now realizes is the daintiest of sports, was the final straw – it left him in a cold, dark place.

“I took a look at myself in the mirror the next morning and absolutely lost it. Look at what I’m wearing right now – could I possibly cram another anchor on any article of clothing? Do you know how hard it is to get laid doing this? I’d probably be accepted into priesthood right now. And when I learned that the race was being broadcast on Versus I knew we were just a total joke. It did wonders for hockey, right? F$@! me… sailing is totally gay.”

Mr. Baird’s life-long devotion to moving large, wooden objects through water began on a boating vacation at the age of eight; he caught the couple anchored next door having sex on the bow of their Pearson 30. Subsequently choosing to sail rather than partake in other traditional mating rituals such as playing the guitar, Baird began the journey toward his tragic, sexless fate in earnest between the years of 1983 and 1988 – the year the United States’ team Stars & Stripes, skippered by Dennis Conner, lost the cup for the first time since the event started in 1852, and the year that same U.S. team sailed to a dramatic victory to regain control of the cup, respectively.

“I don’t know if it was patriotism or just the drama of the situation, but I didn’t get that this was probably a one-time thing. Dennis Conner looked so cool up there running the show – I just got sucked in. But the truth is, he wasn’t cool at all. He was just some homo driving a boat.”

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Any chance Baird had of enjoying average to above-average sexual frequency was quashed after the 1992 release of the motion picture Wind starring Matthew Modine and Jennifer Grey. Inspired by the 1988 America’s Cup race, it thrust sailing into the mainstream for a brief moment, dooming Baird with the false confidence that he was using his short time on earth to pursue noble work.

But little flashes of doubt began to enter his mind when he realized that he was surrounded by douchebag billionaires, swanning around yacht clubs with their Sperry loafers and Polo sweaters tied softly around their slack, Godless shoulders. It was a rude awakening after years of commitment – that his life’s work was watched and admired primarily by rich, pretentious nancy-boys.

It’s not just the time wasted that weighs heavily on his mind, but the opportunities lost as well. Right after graduation from college, for example, he was offered an investment banking job by an older gentleman to whom he was giving sailing lessons – a fellow named Morgan Stanley. Told by his parents to pursue his passion for what turned out to be one of the lamest sports in the world, he declined.

“I’d probably be loaded right now, and would be getting a piece of ‘the strange’ every other night. Instead, my weather-beaten face looks like a saddle bag and I dress like the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island.”

In an effort to warn young would-be sailors around the world, Baird recently completed a hastily and angrily written memoir detailing every wrong turn. This cautionary tale is tentatively entitled, “Super Bowl of Sailing? More Like World Series of Sucking Ass: My Life Unwittingly in the Closet,” and is being shopped to potential publishers. Additionally, a speaking tour is currently scheduled for coastal elementary schools throughout North America.