As Jeff Spicoli would say, these scooter riders are totally sick, dude

It was a little past 9 a.m. Saturday at Anthem Hills Skatepark, and the North American Pro Scooter Championships were running a little behind schedule. So a man got on the microphone and tried to kick the pro scooter riders into gear.

The man on the microphone was a big man. He did not look extreme, though. He did not have tattoos that I could see, or earrings, which you see a lot at the X Games. He looked more like a former ballplayer.

But he did not look like Phil Rizzuto, the Hall of Fame shortstop and broadcaster whose nickname was “Scooter” — not for the way he rode one but for how he ran the bases. Had it been The Scooter on the microphone, he probably would have just had all these kids choose up sides.

It turned out the man on the microphone was a former ballplayer. Thomas Ealy was selected by the San Francisco Giants in the 30th round of the 1985 major league baseball amateur draft out of Chaparral High. Ealy made it as far as Double-A Shreveport; when he was at Class-A Clinton, one of his teammates was Matt Williams.

Tom Ealy has a 13-year-old son named Miles who is an excellent scooter rider.

It wasn’t a matter of not being able to hit a curveball, Tom Ealy said. Miles just wasn’t that interested in baseball.

He’s way more interested in riding his scooter.

That’s just the way it is with today’s kids. A lot of today’s kids would rather ride scooters than play baseball and other team sports.

No, you can’t advance to hallowed Williamsport, Pa., on the pro scooter tour and play against the Taiwanese. But I will say this about riding a scooter: It sure looks like fun, and you can’t strike out with the bases loaded.

It looks a little easier than hitting a curveball, at least until you get good at it like Miles Ealy, and like some of these pro scooter hotshots with their endorsement deals who were on hand at Anthem Skatepark.

After you get good at it and start doing tricks and stunts, it mostly looks like a new way to scrape one’s elbow or chip one’s tooth. But at least everybody wears a helmet.

I’m told freestyle scooter riding is the youngest of the extreme sidewalk sports. Skateboards and BMX bicycles came first. Then came Jeff Spicoli and Mr. Hand, and then came modern scooters.

Bulky metal framed scooters, made by companies such as Radio Flyer, had been around a long time. But it’s hard to perform tricks and get big air on something manufactured by the Radio Flyer company.

(I once got big air while riding in a Radio Flyer wagon. I skinned an elbow and chipped a tooth. But it was darn near impossible to get big air on your little sister’s Playskool scooter with the four wheels and the yellow spotted seat.)

So around 2000, the first modern lightweight scooters began to be manufactured. Deck, handlebars, forks, wheels, brakes, pegs, headset. Lots of chromoly, I’m told. Very lightweight.

I met this young man named Jeremy Beau before the pros starting doing tricks on their little lightweight scooters that can cost as little as $100, although it costs a lot more to trick them out to where you can do eight tailwhips, which is what Jeremy Beau is known for.

A tailwhip is when you spin the deck on your scooter around real fast with your feet. Catching whips is sick off ramps. Legit. Not sketchy.

Catching eight tailwhips is totally sick, and it’s the record. Jeremy Beau is 19, from Murrieta, Calif., a student at Palomar College. The cool thing about doing tailwhips, he said, is they don’t require teammates.

Beau said he used to play team sports, but quickly tired of waiting for a teammate to pass the ball, or to block for him, or to introduce him to Amanda Whurlitzer. In scooter riding, you don’t have to choose up sides, and you can ride all day if you want, which is better than playing video games.

There’s also a lot of creativity involved.

As Jeremy Beau said before flying through the air and testing the bounds of creativity at the skatepark, “This is all me.”

Here’s another thing about doing eight tailwhips at once: Were you to do something like that in the team sports, you would have a coach, and he’d probably get on you for showboating.

From what I could tell on Saturday, showboating not only is tolerated in competitive scooter riding, it’s encouraged. And when you fall on your keister or chip a tooth while trying to do a buttercup across the pyramid, or a deck grab to an inward bri, or a pogo pivot 180, the other riders will help you up, if you need helping up, and they genuinely feel sorry for you.

Or they will say you really knocked your dome on that flip, and you got up, and you weren’t even fazed. And that was totally sick, dude.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.