Adoration is not a commodity

February 10, 2011


Let’s talk for a second about what’s expected of us when something great happens to someone we know.

For background, I present Mike Greenberg, co-host of Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio.

Greenberg, who tends to take offense at everything, wondered aloud why, after Green Bay’s Super Bowl win, Brett Favre hadn’t bothered to call and offer congratulations, specifically to Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

To which I wonder aloud, “Why should he?”

Why does a player need to call his former team to offer congratulations? He had nothing to do with this current incarnation. He has no connection other than a playing history. With that argument in mind, why didn’t Ron Jaworski call Aaron Rodgers? Or Mark Chmura? Sterling Sharpe?

When you win the Super Bowl, or the World Series, or the NBA Finals, or any individual sporting event, there are certain expectations when it comes to congratulations. You get a call from dignitaries, and from the commissioner, and from friends you haven’t talked to in years and will never talk to again.

The problem: when it becomes expected, it no longer means anything.

If I suddenly turn around and win the French Open, I expect a call from the President. If I don’t get it, I’ll be disappointed.

“Why didn’t he call me?”

Because he didn’t HAVE to. Support and joy don’t need to be VOICED to be TRUE. And relationships don’t need to be conjured in the name of success.

Brett Favre didn’t say “congrats” because he didn’t want to. He doesn’t have a relationship with Aaron Rodgers. He played for a division rival last season. He feels wronged. He is his own person. It doesn’t matter why.

Let’s stop pretending like adoration is a commodity.

Tags: Annoyances, Football, Sports |

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46 lines, 13 rules

December 10, 2010


46 lines.

13 rules.

Two words. “Basket Ball.”

And now, one price: 4.3 Million Dollars.

Dr. James Naismith’s original rules of basketball. Two pieces of paper that any basketball fan would love to see. Two pieces of paper that, to quote the illustrious Indiana Jones, SHOULD BE IN A MUSEUM. Or, at the least, featured in the abomination that most call the Basketball Hall of Fame.

$4.3 Million.

To think, this aged typewritten document, pinned to the wall of a YMCA 119 years ago, scribbled on by Dr. Naismith himself and left unframed for its entire existence – unframed and equally unprotected! – gave birth to the game I love. A billion dollar industry. A sport played worldwide. A defining point in modern American culture.

$4.3 Million.

What a number.

And get this: it was purchased by a couple of U of K donors. Not by a former or current professional basketball player or coach – people who owe their entire fortunes to those two sheets of paper.

You can’t tell me someone like Michael Jordan or Shaquille O’Neal wasn’t interested. Because I know one thing. If I was a billionaire, I’d be right there. I’d have paid $4.3 Million.

For 46 lines? 13 rules? For the seed that created my favorite distraction?

Hell. I’d have paid a lot more.

Tags: Basketball, Sports |

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There is no greater sports star than the sports star I become … in my head.

August 11, 2010


There is no greater sports star than the sports star I become in my head.

In a vacuum, with no one forcing me to adjust for defense or change my direction, I am a scrappy hitter. I am a freaky consistent jump shooter. I am a Gold Glove defender.

I am Ichiro Suzuki. I am Oscar Robertson. I am Ozzie Smith.

My swing is true. I don’t hit home runs, but I do the little things that win games, despite the fact that I’m not actually playing games, relying only on a glorified batting practice to show off my amazingly consistent wares. My flow is sweet, my follow-through fluid, my confidence at its high; every shot snaps the bottom of the net, every juke and every fake – each one as fake as its name – unstoppable, every twist and turn like a gibbon effortlessly climbing a zoo cage.

Of course, I know the truth. I know what happened the last time I played one-on-one, the “one” itself betraying the number of points I was able to score in two combined games. I know what happened the first three times I saw a slow pitch softball this summer, how the breeze off my bat kept the outfielders cool, how even the mosquitoes kept away from me lest I miss the ball and knock them into the back fence.

It’s such childish bull, really. We’re supposed to grow out of it, right? We’re supposed to understand our place and buck up and admit that we’re not made for sports and that we’d do a lot better if we just stopped playing and started worrying about Brett Favre or some other tabloid sports crap.

That’s not how it is, though. Not for me. Not for any sports fan, regardless of talent.

We all want to imagine that we’re the best. Even if we know, without a doubt, that we have no chance in making it that far.

I don’t play sports to win. I play them to dream. To have fun. To taunt my friends. To imagine that I’m actually on a real field. That I’m actually a real athlete.

Because, on my own, with all of the quirks that come with a home court, or with the guiding hand of a friendly pitcher, I can pretend that the talent is real.

Without defense, I am All World. There is no greater player. No one can match the effort and skill and talent of the sports star I become. In my mind.

Tags: Baseball, Basketball, Sports |

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Go ahead – kick us while we’re down

July 12, 2010


The NBA Game Time Courside app looks fantastic. I’m already excited for the season to begin, and I’d be lying if I said part of it wasn’t because I want to see this app in action.

But, you guys, come on. Can’t we throw an off-season placeholder up there until the season begins?

Do we have to be reminded of this game?

That’s cold, man.

You’ve got to change it. Celtics Nation implores you.

Tags: Basketball, Boston Celtics, Sports, Technology |

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Why I Watch

June 17, 2010


It was Game Five of the NBA Finals. The series was tied at two games a piece, and the Lakers were making a run. Then, this play.

It was the single greatest play I’ve seen during these playoffs, and I was convinced that, with momentum, the Celtics had just cinched up a championship.

Two days later, it all came crashing down.

At some point during the Celtics’ demoralizing Game Six defeat this past Tuesday – around the time I had stopped watching in order to wash the dishes, run to the store for a frozen pizza, and drink a beer in smoldering frustration, my confidence crashing and doubt setting in after only two quarters of play – Kerrie asked me a simple question.

“Why do you watch sports?”

My answer: “I don’t know.”

The real answer, of course, is that we’re entertained by sports. We watch people do things we’re not able to do, performing on the highest level possible. And if we subscribe to the notion of home-town success, we probably claim allegiance to certain sports teams by proximity alone; when they win, the city wins.

The draw, though, becomes more than just entertainment – especially when you develop a fanatical connection to a team. I say “fanatical” because that’s what being a fan means. I say “fantatical” also, not because it’s negative, but because it’s totally enveloping – it turns the process of watching sports into a process of being part of the team.

Sports fans are no different than those who refuse to miss a favorite television show, who buy an author’s books the second they come out, or who spend over $50 on a concert ticket. They find solace in someone else’s success, and take personally their failures.

We root because we care. We care because we’re human.

This time around, it’s different for me. The Celtics are playing on borrowed time. They weren’t supposed to make it past the Cavaliers. Or the Magic. And they certainly weren’t supposed to be a game away from winning it all. They were left for dead, too old to compete, too banged up to make a splash, a shadow of their 2008 season.

But they did it. They beat the Cavs in six. They beat the Magic in six. And now, despite a monster setback in Tuesday’s game, they still sit just one game away from being champions.

For those of us who followed them from the beginning of the playoffs, each round has been an improbable lesson in faith and hard work, and though we all know that this last round is as improbable as any, we’ll still feel the sting if the C’s go down.

No matter what, tonight is the last day of the NBA season. No matter what, one team is going to walk out of the Staples Center a champion.

No matter what, this is it. Game Seven, NBA Finals, featuring the two biggest franchises – and the biggest rivalry – in the history of the league.

And, no matter what, I’ll be filled with emotion: the exact emotion, though, may not be understood until after the game is finished, be it frustration and disbelief or joy and pride.

I can’t help it. It’s why I watch sports.

Tags: Basketball, Boston Celtics, Sports, Television |

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England for the non-English.

June 12, 2010


“There are many beautiful things about being an American fan of World Cup soccer—foremost among them is ignorance. The community in which you were raised did not gather around the television set every four years for a solid, breathless month. The U.S. has never won. You have not been indoctrinated into unwanted yet inescapable tribal allegiances by your soccer-crazed countrymen. You are an amateur, in the purest sense of the word. So when the World Cup comes around, you can pick whatever team you like best and root for them without shame or fear or reprisal—you can spend the month in paradise.”
-Sean Wilsey, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup

This year, I feel like a traitor.

Four years ago, I didn’t. Because no one cared about soccer. No one cared about the world’s biggest game, so I could watch England stumble through the tournament like a toddler in new shoes in the relative comfort of my own home and know that I wasn’t performing some great act of terrorism, the black and white screen of our portable television reflecting a team allegiance, not a nation’s allegiance.

This year, though, it’s different.

This year, ESPN’s pushing World Cup ratings. Which means creating conflict. Which means overhyping matches that should be one-sided blow-outs in the name of promoting a rivalry that, really, for the most part, ended two centuries ago when the United States grew some balls and won a few wars.

Ask anyone. They think USA vs. England is a real match. They think the people who put USA’s odds of winning at 17% are just haters. HAY-TAHS, even.

They think this because the sports media is fighting hard to make World Cup soccer relevant. They’re duped by two examples of not-so-recent United States Brand™ upsets: the 1950 World Cup win over England and the 1980 Olympic hockey win over USSR. Two random occurrences, happening thirty years apart, and OH WOW, hey, this match is 30 years later too so there’s totally a correlation.

YOU GUYS. ONE OF THOSE ISN’T EVEN SOCCER.

So I know I’ll be rooting for England in silence. Not because I hate my country. Not because I hope the United States loses. Not because I am a bitter self-hating American that wants to champion contrarian irony.

No. It’s because I’ve followed England’s national team ever since a 2000 trip to England, because soccer is England’s sport, because I don’t believe in being tied to location when it comes to supporting sports teams, and because, really, there’s nothing forcing me NOT to support “the enemy.”

So I’m reminded of that quote above, from Sean Wilsey in the foreword of his wonderful collection, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup. A quote I quoted and stuck to four years ago – one I used to justify my position, though, really, my position doesn’t deserve to be justified at all.

Go England. And Go United States.

But not until this match is over.

Tags: Soccer, Sports |

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Rajon Rondo is my hero

May 4, 2010


Most of us who call themselves part of Celtics Nation have been holding our breath as we await what’s been universally determined to be an easy series win for the Cavaliers.

The fact is, Celtics fans haven’t had a lot to be happy about this season. Doc Rivers continues to undercoach, Rasheed Wallace decided to only play half of the season, and our three Hall of Fame locks are beginning to look old. I mean really old. Keeper of the Crypt old.

So I continue to hold my breath. I don’t want to jinx this, you guys, and I truly believe that, if I say something with any kind of braggadocio, I’m going to screw things up; that LeBron will make a point to score 50 a game and, after dunking over the head of Kendrick Perkins, point to the camera and say “YOU THINK YOUR CELTICS ARE SOMETHING SPECIAL, COREY VILHAUER IN SIOUX FALLS SOUTH DAKOTA?”

“DO YOU?”

I do. But I won’t say it too loud. Except to remind everyone that, when ‘Sheed’s put out to pasture, when the “Big Three” are sizing their bronze plaques, when Doc Rivers is announcing games on TNT and we’re all left wondering where our championship aspirations drifted off to, we’ll still have Rajon Rondo.

I can’t stop watching it. Over. And over. And over again.

My hero.

Tags: Basketball, Boston Celtics, Sports |

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