This is covered ground for many of you but today seems the perfect day to stomp this terra once again. I used to be a sports junkie. I competed in fantasy leagues, could name each team, in their division, in the four majors (baseball, basketball, hockey and football). I would watch whatever was on, and went to great lengths to watch "my" teams. I hadn't gotten completely lost in the sports dork forest - I couldn't tell you who played 2nd base for the Dodgers in 1978 and what his OBP was that year - but I was at least average knowledgeable. I didn't watch the news, I watched "Sportscenter". A pretty sizable portion of my life revolved around the games being played and those who played them.
And I loved it: Cheering for the Bills through four Super Bowl losses (Shane Conlan was Penn State buddy so it made sense for me to root for the only team on which someone I actually knew played); "Showtime" with the Lakers (read "When the Game Was Ours" and see the documentary Bird and Magic: A Courtship of Rivals); Tommy and all the great Dodger teams of the 80s and 90s; and The Great One coming to L.A.. It was great fun and those memories - and the joy of sharing them with all my friends and family - are not tarnished by my current feelings.
There were many things that I loved. There is the appreciation and astonishment of watching people at the peak of their immense talent - Magic playing all five spots and scoring 42 points in the NBA finals or Reggie's three home runs on three pitches in the '77 World Series, damn him anyway. There is the tiny thrill of even the moments that happened all the time - Gretzky setting up behind the net or Worthy turning to face the basket and lowering his head. There are the moments and plays that meant little or nothing but still made you marvel and shout - Richard Dent flying like Superman over a defender to just flatten some poor running back or Ken Caminiti holding the ball at third until it seemed impossible he could get the runner at first and then making that cannon throw that just dropped your jaw. There is that amazing shared experience you get being at a game in the crowd, united by the knowledge that it is unique and special, and that something magical might happen. As I wax poetic of my love of these sports you might at this point wonder what happened to make me turn away from it all. It wasn't a moment or specific incident, just a slow inexorable build of distaste, disgust and disappointment.
I noticed that a good portion of my sports time was spent being annoyed, frustrated and even outraged by what I was seeing and hearing. The scandals, the fights over money, the players acting like jerks all seemed to overwhelm the fun and the appreciation and created a general malaise that clouded the joy I used to get from it. But there were some specific issues that really started to piss me off:
- millionaires suspending their sports to argue over how to divide up the next billion while the fans were being priced out of any hope of actually going to a game
- spoiled brat superstars unable to recognize how incredibly fortunate they were to be able to get rich playing a game
- fans thinking buying a ticket gave them the right of judgment and, worse, participation
- a media that focused almost exclusively on the bad, the scandalous, and the horrible, giving time to drug addicts, criminals and punks instead of the majority of the athletes who were actually humble, appreciative, upstanding members of their communities
- and the complete lack of understanding by so many involved that none of it - the TV, the endorsements, the media circus, the billions of dollars - would be possible without the game itself and the fans who watch.
So I hung it up. And the amazing thing was, it wasn't even hard. I missed some stuff - the Sportscenter anchors who had become my morning coffee buddies, the camaraderie that sprang from all the sports talk - but not for long. I found other accompaniments for my coffee and other things to talk about with my friends. The things I had really loved that I describe above are still out there, all of them. You just have to look a little harder. I watch soccer and rugby, go to minor league baseball games, try to figure out the rules for hurling and lacrosse, and support local high school and college teams. And yes, I get as much volleyball in my life as can get my hands on. The media used to have a chokehold on what we could see and what we were supposed to think of it, but thanks to whatever you are using to read this, you can see and think whatever you want.
So now I get most of the things I love without most of the things that I don't. It was a pretty simple choice, really.
Beautifully written post. I have often felt when I watched a game with you that I learned more about whatever sport it was than I knew existed, and I know Tim has the same experience when watching with you. So I have profited from the time you spent with sports. On the other hand, now you have time for Rachel.
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