"Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore/Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus' words mean so much to me as a sports fan. We are living in an age where the big five — baseball, basketball, hockey, football and golf — dominate our attention like the mighty European nations dominated the world in a time when America was an afterthought in foreign affairs.

As humanity quaked at the powers of Europe's big five — Spain, England, France, Russia and Prussia — nobody paid any mind to America, where the outcasts and rejects were working hard to perfect a new world, a new time, a city on the hill.

And so I ask you sports fans, while the big five of sports grow larger, send me your tired and poor, and your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Give me bowling and billiards or pool. Give me ping pong and Texas hold 'em in the wee hours of the morning when only the insomniacs and barflies are awake. For those sports are the homeless, tempest-tossed to me via late night ESPN and ESPN2.

I'll sit on the edge of my seat biting my nails, sweating and wondering if Steve Jaros' first strike will come in the tenth frame to defeat Dave Traber for less money than Donald Trump will use as toilet tissue after a bad meal from Pepe's.

I will sit with furrowed brow and watch F.P. Chao drop the 8-ball in the corner pocket, as he jumps the 6 and the 12 balls to do so. I'll stand jaw dropped, in deafening silence trying to figure out how Phil Ivey just bluffed his way into $125,000 with an eight high.

Give me the announcers that come with these sports, too. I'd much rather hear Joe Nobody try to convince me that ping pong players are, "world class athletes" than hear John Madden's "Boom," "Bam" or "Wham."

When I see all these glorious feats at 2 a.m. because of the fifth chili dog that won't let me sleep, it reminds me that America spawned from the ping pong players, pool sharks, bowlers and card junkies of other nations. If we don't embrace that history, that culture, we aren't anything but frightfully stupid and arrogant.

So the next time you hear about Kobe Bryant's rape trial, or A-Rod's $250 million deal, or Colorado's alleged recruitment orgies, or the NHL's money woes and you're about to lose faith in sports as a whole, remember, Pete Weber's "crotch chop" celebration is out there, redeeming all that is wrong with the wide world of sports.