Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficent enough to amuse him
BlAise Pascal
The day when 2020 changed for me was when a co-worker and I walked into a bar near the stage where I was working. The WHO had just announced that Covid-19 was now a world-wide pandemic. The administration was still in denial; Trump had just spent the previous weekend golfing, and insisted that the USA was prepared both medically (“They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful”) and capitalistically (“We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it… it will go away”). I was thankful that I still had a job, and while not drawing any hope from a government I had long given up on, I was hopeful that we would somehow muddle through whatever this was. Also, my Milwaukee Bucks, although in the midst of their first mini-slump of the season, still had the best record in the pro basketball, as well as a puncher’s chance of bringing an NBA title to Wisconsin for the first time in almost 50 years.
I ordered a beer and some food, and my buddy went to play pool. The bar was packed and humming, like there was a din of sonic dissonance or American insolance apparent. We seemed miles away from the now-familiar spectacle of shutdown, social distancing and masks. Still, there was something was in the air. I looked up at the big screen above the bar, and at that moment, watched the world change before my eyes. A news report showed that Tom Hanks had posted on Hank’s Instagram account that both he and his wife contracted Covid-19 while on location in Australia. Up to this point, there had already been approximately 1700 reported cases in the US alone. But, this was the first WOW, the first high-profile Americans to contract it. My eyes widened.
And almost immediately, on a different screen, ESPN pre-empted their programming with a special announcement: the NBA was suspending their season after learning that Rudy Golbert, a Utah Jazz player, had tested postive for coronavirus. Those two news items literally came back-to-back, and just like that, I felt it– shit got real.
I’m pretty sure everyone is familiar with what happened next. As far as the sporting world, the shutdown was the swift falling of dominos. The college conference basketabll tournaments were first going to be played without fans, then were cancelled all together, quickly followed by the entire NCAA tornament. Major league baseball suspended spring training and sent the players home. The NHL left the ice. The XFL, Vince McMahon’s spring football redux, done for the season. NASCAR postponed its races. MLS postponed operations. All the courts, playing fields, race tracks, all shut down.
We are now nearing mid-June, and while a good 40-50% of America is in denial that the shit is still real (states are spiking and new cases and death are reported daily), the sporting activity has been sparce. NASCAR is back, without Confederate flags. Basketball is promising to come back by July in an isolated Disney World extravaganza sure (hoping) to thrill us. Baseball keeps stepping and tripping on its prodigous money belt, as once again the owners and players can’t agree on who should make less money. And the NFL had its college draft, and is carefully tiptoeing into the idea of a training camp. All are operating or planning to operate without fans in the seats. This will be unlike anything we will undoubtedly ever experience again in our lives. The consensus seems to be that citizens of America are dying for anything sport-sy, to happen, to take our minds off the pandemic we stubbornly refuse to try any more to contain, and we watch the brutal bullying of protestors in the streets as if it were some sick and twisted reality game show where the losers are subjected to rubber bullets, tear gas, and… maybe death. It seems surreal. People are fighting for their lives against both the seen and unseen. Sports seems like its just hanging around… waiting. It seems like it was a long time ago….
Losing isn’t always the end, sometimes it becomes the beginning
joseph duffy
Sports for me became a core center of my existence around age 7. Up to that point, I was a kid who liked to ride his bike, did well enough in school, and liked eating cereal while watching cartoons all Saturday. Our school (and town) was too small to have the resources for anything organized for kids younger than 9 years old to participate in. Once you reached that age, then you able to try out for little league baseball in the summer. During my second practice, I was hit in the face with a line drive and got my front tooth knocked out. I was shellshocked after that, the little league equivelent of PTSD. So much for athletic glory. But there was always spectating.
I don’t remember the exact moment, nor the details, of becoming a Green Bay Packers football fan. My older brother had football cards, which I liked scribbling on. That was the extent of my earliest interest. But I do remember paying attention a little to the Packers near the end of their ’72 season. My dad and my brother would have the game on in the living room, and it seemed to have some juice, so I started sitting in. I have vague memories of the Packers getting beat by the Washington Redskins in the playoffs; by then I was smitten. Thus began our long and initially tragic realationship. The next season the Packers won 4 games, and begun a streak of 20 years in which they made the playoffs ONCE in that time (in 1982, a strike-shortened year, forever hampered by the dreaded asterisk). Most seasons, they were just horrid; their games against Tampa Bay, another perennially bad franchise, were dubbed “The Bay of Pigs” by Chris Berman of ESPN. Their play was mediocre at best, and mostly dreadful by rote. My relationship with the Packers those years was less like a love affair, and more like a disappointing marriage neither of us could see our way to quit. Countless sundays I would sit in front of the TV, watching the hapless Pack play marginal football, occasionally showing glimmers of promise, but always falling apart by the end, giving up the winning touchdown, fumbling the ball near the goal line, throwing a horrible interception to seal their fate, and in the process crushing a young boys’ hopes once again. I’d throw the notebook that I’d been tracking the statistics of the game at the TV and, tears welling in my eyes, go into my bedroom and cry out yet another loss.
To make matters worse, because the largest city near our little Wisconsin hamlet was 40 miles north in Duluth, MN, all of the television stations were Minnesota-biased, and the main game on TV was always the dreaded Minnesota Vikings. Because of the blanket coverage, many kids I went to school with were Viking fans, even though they were Wisconsin born and bred. Those years, the Vikings ruled the Central Division, and more often than not, they would beat the shit out of the Packers. The games could be unusually tightly contested (as rivalries often are), but the Vikings were simply always better and almost always won. It got so I dreaded those Sunday Packer-Vikings games, as I would have to drag my deflated ass to school and just get CRUSHED by Vikings fans. Teasing should have been a sport-for-lettering at my school; I became so psychologically damaged by teasing that just the fear of getting mercilessly razzed by my friends catching me holding a girls’ hand (which happened by the way) prompted me to avoid dating until the spring of my senior year of high school.
Undaunted by the failure of the football team, I grew to be a fan of all Wisconsin state pro sports teams. The Milwaukee Bucks won a championship back in ’71 with the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robinson; that, of course, proceeded my fandom by a couple years. My memories on the other hand were of the Bucks losing to the Boston Celtics in the NBA finals. Shortly thereafter, Kareem decided he had enough of frozen Milwaukee winters and, I would guess, the abject racism (Wisconsin then, as well as now, was inherently segregated, and is most recently considered the most segregated state in the United States), and forced a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers. Years followed of the Bucks being good but not good enough, or, good enough to give you hope, but ultimately and always breaking your heart. It’s been 46 years since they’ve played for a championship. I was also a Milwaukee Brewers fan, the team that morphed from the remains of the raggedy-ass Seattle Pilots (Seattle had enough of them after one year). The Brew Crew also sucked most every year of my childhood; we did have an over-the-hill Hank Aaron, who was playing out the string of his homer run record career, and a 19-year old shortstop named Robin Yount (the only start-to-finish Brewer inducted into the Hall of Fame). In 1978, the Brewers started to put together decent teams, helped by free-agency (basketball didn’t have free agency until 1988, and football not until 1993; which seems unreal to imagine, if only by the shear mobility of today’s players). They made it all the way to the World Series in 1982, when they lost to the Cardinals, and… that’s about it, to this day. No World Series now for 38 years.
And not only did I follow pro sports teams that were especially inept, I also played for the St. Croix Eagles high school varsity basketball team. Whoo boy. My junior and senior years: 38 games played, 1 win, 37 losses. We were out-manned and literally outsized in every game we played. My senior year, because I was the tallest starter, I got to play center. I gave up inches and pounds in every single game. I played against dudes who had 5 to 7 inches on me, big thick farm boys with whispy facial hair who beat my ass and ate my lunch everytime. It wasn’t uncommon for us to lose most games by 50 points or more. We once lost a game by 74 points. We were in the Indianhead Conference in those days, and the bus trips were sometimes 3 to 4 hours long; we’d arrive at an enemy gym bus-sick and delirious, playing in poorly lit gyms with screaming locals who wanted their Lumberjacks or Indians or Cardinals or Midgets (yup) to destroy us, and they usually did. In one game against Butternut (the Midgets), we were actually playing a close game on the road. Yours truly hit a shot from the corner to tie the game with 2 seconds left. They called a timeout and we came out of the huddle buzzed; we might have a chance to win this thing! We just had to hold them from moving the ball all the way down the court in two seconds and we had a chance to win it in OT. I’m sure I was thinking about winning this thing in overtime, when they took the ball out of bounds, and some Butternut kid heaved the ball about 80 feet. And banked it in. They win. Bedlam. My legs literally quit me at that moment, and my legless body slumped to the gym floor in horror. I laid there, increduous, for what seemed like a long time. Finally I lifted my head up and through my moist eyes I could see a little kid from Butternut pointing at me. And laughing. Instead of doing the proper thing, and punching the little fuckhead, I got up and trudged my ass once again to the loser’s locker room.
It is said that sports offers youngsters the gift of what is often referred to as “life lessons.” For me, maybe sports was telling me something like, “Hey, kid, don’t bother trying, EVER, because you are always going to be giving up 5-6 inches and 30 pounds to LIFE, and you’ll never win, so don’t waste your time trying.” But I apparently was too dumb to intpret it as that. I never did stop trying; I suppose I felt like the attempt was worth the effort. Whether it be high school basketball, or college (8 years and 5 schools to get my Masters degree), or marriage (2 of them, both failures, except for my two beautiful children), I always tried to give it my best shot and get it right, even if it seemed fruitless or pointless at some juncture. My lesson was humility. It has served me well over the years. So I guess… thanks for beating that into me, sports.
Fast forward to 2020. At first, the shutdown was frustrating. The Bucks were having maybe their best season ever. The Wisconsin Badgers college basketball team had overcome massive odds and a vast talent-gap to surge to a tie in the Big Ten, and were playing their best basketball heading into the tournaments (note: I still feel bad for those seniors, all seniors all over, in situations like sports, scholastic endeavors, graduations, milestones; they don’t get a do-over). The Milwaukee Brewers were in spring training, off the heels of two years of playoff baseball (and nearly making it to the World Series in ’18), and the Green Bay Packers, although being crushed to the turf by the San Francisco 49ers running game in the game before the Super Bowl, had at least made it that far. So there was a lot of promise, all things considered. And then, like the snap of the fingers, it just stopped.
This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.
donald trump
The first thing about the Coivd-19 pandemic that was so mind-boggling to me was that literally NO ONE knew what to make of it. Of course, we had Polio, HIV/AIDS, H1N1 (you wonder how bad H1N1 COULD have been had the administration in 2009 handled it as ham-handed and badly as the current administration has this one, but I digress). But nothing since the Influenza pandemic of 1918 was as similar in its severe and life-changing quality, and has stonewalled the basic machinary of humans living a life in its tracks.
It’s a bit misguiding and telling that the one of the first things I noticed about the pandemic was how it affected sports talk radio, and the sport of “talking about sports.” There is hardly anything useful about sports talk to begin with; it’s mostly premeditated noise to fill the void between the time when the balls (and the puck) are in play. It’s a massive and expensive business, though, the need to have “experts” in their particular sports field offer insights that amount to mostly educated guessing. Only the weatherman guesses more than sports punditry. But I admit that during my drive into work on any given day I would park my auditory senses in sports talk alley to hear various sports talk experts wax rapsodic in between auto parts commericals. I confess that sometimes it’s interesting to me, the specualtion and rumination and hyperbole. But, once we were embroiled in our Covid-19 reality, I quickly realized that these self-confident (mostly) men who could fill the airwaves skillfully with banal sports chatting, were at a complete and utter loss. They had no more a fucking clue than any of us did as to what happened or what was happening or what was to come. Once the sporting field of play fell silient, sports talk devolved into on-air conversations about “shopping for toilet paper”, “the meats I’m grilling this weekend while in isolation”, or “the merits of our interns past and present.” The sports talk pond muddied, as aimless carp kept swimming through their shallow waters in useless circles, until food (in the form of Tom Brady or the NFL draft or”The Last Dance”) was dropped in the water, whereas they attacked with the manic energy of piranha. Sports talk radio (and television) has proven to be mostly banal and useless, and has inadverdtedly hastened my sports apathy. It would have been much more useful to pre-empt all that sports jibber-jabber with useful information relating to things coronavirus that were very real for citizens, like understanding how to manage the overwhelming elements of this pandemic, as opposed to what LeBron had posted on Instagram today, or what happened last night on “Tiger King.” And while I understand that forums like sports talk radio exist to help people “escape” the uber-reality we have been in, there comes a point when we are best served to escape the escape.
Even more topically, the national/international impassioned outrage generated by yet another black citizen brutaly murdered by a white police officers (as if on a loop), has pushed people out of their Coivd isolation (for reasons other than gatting a haircut). It has spurred protests and galvanized and polarized an already frayed-at-the-seams America. It’s obvious that sports, as well, is a reflection of the current strutcture of racial inequity and systemic racism. Most basketball and football teams are organizations that feature predominantly black athletes working for predominently white ownership. The participants of these teams therefore should and have taken an active participation in the ptotests and statements. It seemed odd and maybe telling that, although some prominent athletes were involved first-hand in the protests, many were oddly quiet. A “Black Lives Matter” video featuring a number of current NFL players, lead by MVP and Super Bowl winning QB Pat Mahomes, released by an NFL Creative Producer and apparently initially behind the back of the commissioner, confirmed that black players voices would be heard, and they would damn well sure kneel to support their cause if they wanted to. This is of course in reference to Colin Kapernick, the 49er QB who kneeled during the playing of the national anthem in protest of police violence against black citizens during the 2017 season. This caused an apocalyptic and predictable seizure by both a primarily white fan base and ownership. Roger Goddell, the NFL commissioner and owners’ shield for all things shield, along with everyone else on the wrong side of this moment, chose to view the gesture as an affront against the American Flag, the military and all things ‘MERICA. He succombed to pressure by Trump (who famously called Kapernick and the other peascefully protesting players, “Sons of Bitches”) as well as the owners (many who are known Trump supporters) to police the players rather than support them, and the league has consequently and unsubtly blackballed Kapernick. When we circle back to 2020 and see that the NFL and Goddell have offered condolences to the various black citizens killed by police brutality as well as tepid support of the players and their right to protest this monstrocity of justice, it’s especially important to view this pragmatically and not emotionally. In that statement (and pretty much in step with all the statements by suddenly-woke billion-dollar corporations) they were very careful to not mention police injustice or brutality in their statement. Nor did the NFL statment mention Kapernick. There was a largely collective “F you” from many on social media, A number of players responded, some positively, a few badly (paging Drew Brees?). If there are games this fall I would wholly expect that these owners will have to once again contend with (this time) a much more active and galvanized and unified group of players who will be kneeling in protest even before the first strains of the Star Spangled Banner start to warble through the air in those empy stadiums.
As balls on ball racks around the world began to gather dust, the only meaningful hoops we have been treated to was the not-really-a-documentary “The Last Dance”, or as writer David J. Roth put it,”Michael Jordan Presents Michael Jordan.” So starved, we are, to be entertained in that “pull back the curtain to reveal the real Wizard of Oz” sort of way, it was weirdly very desirable/watcheable in a similar way as “The Tiger King” was. It was, however, silly/happy idolotry to re-live a young Jordan-in-his-prime do some of that mind-blowing shit he did on the court. Has it really been almost 40 years since he hit the shot to beat Georgetown in that national championship game? As far as the current dance goes, basketball on the surface seems to have it the most together, and will most likely leave baseball in its wake. This is actually not surprising, because the NBA has probably the best commissioner of the major sports leagues in Adam Silver, and coherence and leadership starts at the top (which, I offer, exists in its opposite form in terms of our government). The NBA is about to embark on the conclusion of regular play with a tentative July 31. But even basketball, which probably features the greatest collection of visable and vocal black athletes, is at the moment looking at a “hold on a minute” as well, as their players decide how best to make a profound and positive statement against racial injustice and police brutality.
Football gave us (meaning a dehydrated fan base and media) a moment of respite with the NFL draft, three days of seeing NFL executives in team-authorized polo shirts and sweat shirts choosing players while operating not unlike the fanatsy football world, as heads were buried in laptops, praying the wifi doesn’t go out suddenly while making the first pick. Incidentally, the Green Bay Packers provided the prerequisite drama by moving up to pick a QB, ignoring other obvious and pressing needs. Obviously, it reeked of karmic redux, when in 2006, with an aging future Hall-of-Fame QB already on the roster, Packer management took the bold (and crazy dumb and dangerous, according to many) step of alienating their current star QB. And 14 years later, we are backhere again. It certainly energized (i.e. enraged) a fan base, and provoked every paid (and unpaid) NFL pundit to annoint themselves as the mouthpiece of Aaron Rodgers.
Baseball is currently embroiled in a stand-off, as owners and players clinch their money tight in their fists and leverage their participation in something that would lift people’s spirits during the daily metrenome of this virus that continues to proliferate (are we surprised?)) despite the denial of people in Orange County, or Texas, or Florida, or in the White House and so many people who have just decided that they simply are not going to acknowledge the obvious (side note: do you notice we never hear from doctors at the White House breifings anymore?) At the initial contemplation of imagining that baseball games would be played, the earnest study of the various elements that would need to be considered to get baseball players back onto the field and into empty stadiums seemed to focus on the safety of all those indivduals, as well as any and all personal tied to the games being played. But in the way Covid-19 become something a large part of our society decided it could wish away or just ignore, the virus became an afterthought once the two sides, buffered by unions and lawyers, took into consideration the money involved to make this happen. The two sides continue to push proposals back and forth across the table, each seeking to make sure the other doesn’t take a clear advantage over the financials. The most recent volley to the latest serve from the owners is that from MLBPA executive director Tony Clark, who represents the players. “The players are ready for the season. Tell us when and where,” said Clark. Will the owners suddenly set aside their natural inclinations of averice to come to an agreement? Uhhh… ehhh…. undeniably, almost everything that happens in our world (even our health) comes down to capitalism, and that is where, especially, baseball, even in this truncated state, is entrenched. As each day passed, I find myself between “Uhh” and “ehh” and also “ugh”. To be honest, I really don’t give two shits whether they throw the ball out on the field and yell “play ball” or not at this point. My passing interest in baseball was grew gradually over the years, as the massive influx of money, the high ticket prices and ridiculous concession fees, the forever-slanted fairness of its teams lacking the leveling fulcrum of a salary cap, and the emergence, and the subsequent childish denial, of high-tech cheating, all has created a confluence that, for me, has submerged the once-gilded diamond in a stagnant pool of apathy. When billionaires and millionaires can’t even sort out the simple math of how many games to play in order to salvage an already lost season, I’ve already drifted away. Fuck em.
Everyone who is not happy must be shot
john le carre, “the little drummer girl”
The thing with sports, it’s that we fans of all these teams, and of all these athletes who play the games that are on the teams we follow, WE are the owners. Not in the literal sense, of course (note: although you can at opportune times buy useless stock options for the Packers; they give you a certificate and it says you are literally a part owner, though you never get to vote and you never receive a cent of the profits). But fans are also owners in the more cosmic, spiritual way. They own the team in the league of civic pride, and in the most possessive sense. As a fan, your insides glow with pride in good times, and burn with shame in hard times, alternately, and you get pissed when they suck, and euphoric when they excel. And when that team ascends to the mantle of the best, the champions, then you are like a king, like royalty. You are on a pedestal, and for a lot of people, millions and millions actually, they will never get to experience something like that EVER in their own daily personal lives. For most of us, this feeling is as good as it can get. So when your team wins, by approximation, YOU WIN: you look over the land, your heart swells huge and moist, you feel good and you just want to open the damn, let your emotions flow out of you. Emotions are liquid much of the time; many people cry when their team wins, maybe even more than when they lose. I used to cry when my teams lost, so when they finally won, after all the losing I endured as a fan, as a participant in my own truncated sports career, my pride welled up in my eyes. Winning is like a blessing and a cleansing. The feeling wasn’t actually that much different than when I was in the hospital room as my children were born, when the nurse places that tiny exhausted breathing pink miracle in your hands, and you think, I’ll protect you for the rest of my life, but not just your child but also that FEELING, because you just know it is like nothing you ever will feel in that particular way ever again. And being the champion, on the winning side, especially after so long being a loser, or mediocre, or an also-ran, well, it’s just a real beautiful thing, baby–
So maybe we all miss this: the vicarious pursuit of the dream. In 2020, the political arena has become much like sports is (or was), where we root for our particular team, despite the obvious flaws, and we find ourselves invested emotionally in the outcomes. I’m as guilty of anyone. It’s very easy to choose sides in this very polarized America, and it’s even easier to cherry pick flaws on the other side of the aisle. But even though I’m obviously rooting for one certain team (although I’m less than thrilled over who was chosen as the starting quarterback; Biden is like the wily veteran who has lost his ability to throw the deep ball, but can still call a good game (with help) and make all the short throws, but is prone to the dumb mistake at the worst moment), I am trying to take in as much useful information as I can, and consume it in a critical way. It’s like sports has stepped aside to allow all of us to emmerse oursleves in the important things happening now that will critically affect everyone in this moment, and for years to come. I’m reading more news, and listening to more critical dialogue than I have ever in my entire life. Politics and the world around me has temporarily become my Sports. For this moment, and of circumstance and necessity.
I am surprised as anyone who knows me would be when I say that I don’t miss sports. Maybe I’ll get back on board with it once things pick up, but the truth is I don’t think anything is going to be how it was, and that includes how we are entertained in most ways, and that includes sports. But I don’t miss it, honestly. Sports seems very insignificant at the moment. Wearing a mask, maintaining distance… fighting for your life in that very personal space you inhabit, and in the much larger space we must share…. knowing that whole groups of people in this world have been fighting for 400 years, just for basic human rights many of us take for granted… protestors dodging rubber bullets and breathing tear gas that undoubtedly weaken the lungs and fracture a person’s immune system… needing to stay engaged and understanding what’s at stake… people like me, like all of us, comprehending now and daily that people are infected and repressed and bullied sick and are still dying, and have been dying, and still will be dying– that’s really the only game in town.