08 Jun Sport(s)
I’ve never really thought of myself as a sports guy (and when I say ‘sports’ I mean ‘sport’, for those of you Across the Pond). That’s what I tell myself, Gentle Reader(s), but the evidence might possibly seem to indicate otherwise. When I were but a wee lad I was into baseball—I bought (if not collected) baseball cards, had a bat and a glove, and wore a jacket decorated with team emblems. New Orleans had no major league sports to root for (or ridicule) in those days, and I became a default Cubs fan when my grandfather took me to a game at Wrigley Field in 1967. At some point in the later ‘60s I became enamored of drag racing. I have no recollection of how this puzzling development came to pass, but I compulsively drew tiny pencil renderings of rail dragsters in my school notebooks and had a subscription to a couple of motorsports magazines. Big Daddy Don Garlits—the Swamp Rat, King of the Drag Racers—was my hero. I successfully badgered my mum into driving out to LaPlace Drag Strip on a couple of occasions to attend races, at one of which I met Big Daddy in the flesh. He was eminently approachable, discussed the particulars of mixing nitromethane fuel with Inky Mum, and autographed a photo of himself performing a flaming burnout in his signature innovation—the rear-engine dragster. This sacred heirloom was framed and now resides in a place of honor behind the bar at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge.
As I grew into a surly teenager I became progressively dismissive of sport(s). Regardless, I was somehow compelled to join my junior high school softball team, for which I served as catcher. We had no equipment and no field, and our uniforms, such as they were, consisted solely of purple jerseys with a random number and ‘WRIGHT’ (for Sophie B. Wright) sewn on the back. These fetid garments were passed down from class to class and were made from some heavy weight synthetic fabric wholly inappropriate for athletic use in a swampy climate such as that of New Orleans. Throughout the season of my final year at Sophie B. Wright I was not allowed to bat, until the final game. When the coach unexpectedly called me up I got a hit and scored a run and therefore ended up with a 1.000 batting average. At the end-of-term awards ceremony I was presented with a trophy for this singular achievement, much to my embarrassment and to the incredulous fury of my long-suffering teammates.
My high school was even more pathetic in terms of team athletics. Like Sophie B. Wright, Benjamin Franklin Senior High had no sports facilities whatsoever. All games were played off-site, and our ‘home’ field for football was a couple of miles away at a semi-derelict complex adjacent to the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board headquarters. The school regularly had ‘spirit’ rallies intended to boost team morale—occasions that were utilized by my friends and myself to sneak off and smoke weed down on the batture. The student body was informally organized into tribes of ‘jocks’ and ‘stoners,’ of which I was a card-carrying member of the latter. By this time New Orleans had welcomed the Saints to its collective bosom as the civic secular religion. They were reliably dreadful, which made it all the easier to be disdainful of competitive athletics in general.
Shortly after turning 20 I relocated to New Mexico—a state unencumbered, then as now, by major league sports of any species. As is typical in such situations, college athletics served to fill the void and even though I was a student at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque you could not have paid me to care less. I never attended a UNM sporting event and never considered doing so. But the nut don’t fall far from the tree and eventually my childhood affinity for baseball began to reassert itself. I became interested in the local Triple A franchise, the Albuquerque Dukes. The Dukes’ stadium was nearby and tickets and beer were cheap. I started paying attention to the Cubs again and that has lead me to where I am today.
Where am I today? As I mentioned up top, I don’t consider myself a sport(s) guy, but as I sit here composing this missive I am switching back and forth between a Cubs/Tigers game and a UEFA fixture between España and Portugal. In recent years I have become an English Premier League fan, with Liverpool as my team of choice. I watch and/or listen to pretty much all 162 Cubs games in the regular season and the Indy 500 is a never-miss occasion on Memorial Day weekend. I watch the occasional Sunday afternoon drag meets aired on Fox and I even watch a few football (as opposed to futbol) games in the post-season. Does this mean that I’m dwelling in the land of denial? Am I actually a delusional self-loathing sport(s) guy?
I’m probably not qualified to weigh in with an objective judgement on that weighty topic, but I will clarify that I do not own any team-branded athletic wear other than a Cubs cap that I bought in Chicago over 20 years ago, and a couple of Albuquerque Isotopes (the AAA successor team to the Dukes) hats that I wear while riding my bike. Le Buzz gifted me a Hiroshima Carp baseball cap that he picked up while visiting the Land of the Rising Sun a few years back. I love it when the Cubs or Liverpool win, but when they lose I just sigh and get on with whatever else I am doing, as I’m always doing something else when I watch sports on TV. I have crossed the threshold of an actual sports bar no more than a couple of times in my life and on both occasions I could not get out fast enough.
Okay—I figure that, yeah, I’m into it, just not that into it. I don’t scream at the television set or take any of it personally or very seriously. These things are called games and that indicates to me that they’re supposed to be fun. When they cease being fun, well something ain’t right.
A former employer of mine was/is a fervent Boston Red Sox fan. When people would inquire of his business partner as to how this individual was doing the partner would ruefully reply ‘Just look in the sports pages.’ Up until 2004 at least (the year that the Red Sox won the World Series after an 86-year drought) this individual suffered under a near crippling complex of frustration and inferiority. He felt bullied—personally bullied—by the New York Yankees, every player who had ever played for the team and by New York City in general. Bill Buckner’s legendary defensive blunder in the 10th inning of Game Six of the 1986 World Series was a permanently scarring event for this individual. I’m not exaggerating. I do not want to be this guy.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Gentle Reader(s), I occasionally hold forth on matters of the sporting life in these pages. I enjoy writing about sport(s) now and then. Liverpool are Premier League champions, which is very cool, and I while I enjoy watching the fixtures I draw the line at waking before dawn to catch the live broadcasts. The replays will do just fine, thank you. I’m thrilled that Mo Salah has another championship medal and a Golden Boot trophy to add to his collection. I’m very relieved that Mo and Virgil van Dijk have inked new contracts with the Reds, and I was sorry to see Trent Alexander-Arnold depart for Real Madrid. When Liverpool clinched the championship I was very happy… for the team. Not me. I’m not on the team, or on the game or Anfield staff or in the front office. I’m just a long distance fan, nothing more, and I enjoy watching the fixtures. That’s it.
The Cubs are having a great season, which is also very cool. They’ve got some great talent and manager Craig Counsell really seems to be coming into his own. Watching Pete Crow-Armstrong is particularly enjoyable—I get the feeling that he’s the real deal, a superstar in the making. Closer Daniel Palencia can sizzle the fastballs in there regularly at 102 mph and he’s fun to watch. My enthusiasm for the Cubs is tempered somewhat by the feeling that I’m not quite sure about the notion of the team as winners. Yes, they won it all in 2016, and the idea back then was that the squad was going to follow in the footsteps of the formerly hard-luck Red Sox and establish themselves as a legacy championship team. That didn’t happen and after a few years the suits ran out of patience, fired manager Joe Maddon, broke the team down and sold off the assets. I don’t necessarily look forward to the Cubs as serious post-season contenders—it just seems unrealistic and I’d be just as happy to root for whatever other National League team makes it into October. Less stressful. Is that weird?
Perhaps it comes down to this: I’m thinking that genuine sports fandom requires a certain degree of irrational exuberance which I am incapable of summoning forth. I’m strictly an observer, not a participant. Like Andy Warhol, I like to watch.
