Straight Into Darkness

I don't know what happened with me and sports.

When I was very young, around eight to twelve, I used to watch almost all the Chicago Cubs' baseball games. I wasn't a Cub fan, mind you. I rooted against them, partly because my dad and mom did so, partly because most everyone I knew was a Cub fan and I got so tired of their excuses for not winning.

But I did watch almost every game broadcast on WGN-TV from probably 1973-1977. My folks and I even kept a homemade scorecard for each game, listing players, what they did each at bat, inning by inning scores, substitutions, etc. My friend Tim and I used to do mock broadcasts of games into my old style portable tape recorder. I had a whiffleball league that played almost every day in my backyard and most of us kept records of our home runs; some of us even did doubles and triples.

In the winter, when baseball was over, I played basketball on the playgrounds after school, went over on Saturday mornings when they opened the gym, and when it was really cold I just shot my Nerf basketball into the nets I had set up in our washroom. When I think back I don't know how my poor mom tolerated it. The constant noise of my feet pounding the floor as I played the roles of Pete Maravich, Jon Havlicek, Rick Barry, Elvin Hayes and countless other NBA stars, the intrusion of the puffball into her laundry, the cat and dog food, their water dishes. Sometimes a couple friends would come inside and play with me, and I can only imagine how she must have longed for a moment's peace at those times. Again, I kept "score" of my faux league on sheets of spiral notebook paper, and did a running play by play commentary in the grand style of Pat Sommerall and Hot Rod Hundley. Life was good.

I went out for basketball in middle school but seldom got into the games. I was skinny, fairly short and not all that fleet of foot. I was a good shot, but seldom shot the ball. I played so rarely that when I did I was a bit mesmerized by the crowd and the lights and whatever dubious spotlight they threw upon me, so I tended to dribble a bit and pass off. Story of my life, I guess.

By the time eighth grade rolled around, I had gained weight but not much else. I was still slow, still a good shot but not muscular enough to do any rebounding nor fast enough to be very good at defense. I could shoot the daylights out of free throws, but if no one fouled me I wasn't much of a threat.

I decided not to go out my freshmen year of high school. I had endured three years of two hour after school practices that left me just as exhausted as the starters yet I saw little or no benefit. It was obvious by now that I was never going to be anything more than a benchwarmer; the coach even told me as much. So all my vaunted shooting skills were for naught, as were all my dreams of becoming an NBA star. The DNA just wasn't going to cooperate with this fantasy.

In between middle school and high school, I played in an intramural league set up by the new high school coach. I had gained weight (my fat Elvis period) and was probably even slower than before, but overall I didn't do too badly. I had a much better coach, and in this league I actually got to play. I never liked being "skins" of course because my expanding waistline was visible in all its glory, but I did have fun during that summer. And between my seventh and eighth grade, after I was too old for Little League, I played on a pony league baseball team that my dad helped coach (just as he had my Little League team). For some reason I didn't perform all that well in this league. Maybe it was the fact that my interest was waning, or maybe it was just my weight gain. For whatever reason, I don't recall much of that season other than striking out a lot and the guys that we played being huge compared to us.

I think it was around this time that I started turning away from sports. I'm not quite sure why. I remember watching the old "Son of Frankenstein" movie on WGN TV after viewing an old "Star Trek" episode and something was reignited inside of me. I had always loved fantasy and horror films as a young (under eight) kid, and while I never really rejected or grew away from them, for about four years sports really became my obsession above all else. Maybe it was my growing realization that I just didn't have the physical necessities to really make much of an impact in the sports world coupled with the coincidental proximity of the shows I mentioned. Whatever it was, I could feel myself being drawn further and further back into my old interests and further away from my newer ones. I stopped keeping score of games, and suddenly it wasn't all that big a deal if I missed watching one. I still followed sports pretty regularly, but as time went on it was more because my folks still did than because I was really passionate about it.

I did play three years of high school baseball. The first year (sophomore) I never started but at least there was a "B" game wherein all the benchwarmers got to strut their stuff, or what passed for stuff. I usually played first base, being somewhat tall, thin (again) and left handed. My junior year I joined the starting squad but I still wasn't all that good. I had a good glove at first but didn't pack much of a punch at the plate. My senior year my hitting got a bit better and I'm sure my on base percentage was high when you factored in all my walks and "hit by pitches". I guess they never did learn how to pitch to lefties. We did well my senior year; I believe we finished second in the conference and I really feel like I contributed to that effort a certain amount.

I didn't go out for sports when I went to college in 1982, but I took part in an intramural basketball league during my freshman year (1982-1983). I did OK, more or less following the pattern I had set up earlier in my basketball "career"; good shot, little "d" and no boards. Most of the guys I played with and against were better and faster than I was, but I enjoyed myself anyway. It was something to do.

That pretty much completed my active participation in sports. I think the intramural league was dismantled after that year, and the following year (my junior year) I developed some health problems that probably would have made me sit out any seasons anyway. And as I grew older I realized that academics needed to be my real focus; at least they had the CHANCE of getting me somewhere. Sports was a dead end road for me. Sure, I could have continued playing for the sheer joy of it, but that had faded away considerably.

I watched basketball and baseball at home with my folks, again, mostly because they liked it. I didn't mind, but I just had lost that special connection I had previously. I found myself not really caring much who won or lost. As that old Tom Petty tune went, "...then one day the feeling just died...went straight into darkness...".

Maybe it was just the fact that I knew I wasn't "going anywhere" with sports, or maybe it was the resurgence of my interest in fantasy. But somehow I suspect the reason runs deeper than that. I think it has something to do with the whole sports mindset, the "winners and losers" mentality. I was losing out in a way, to the stronger, bigger guys my age, and I didn't really want to base my entire self image on whether I was able to jump high or run fast anymore. Since I obviously couldn't, I wanted to concentrate on the things that I COULD do, like write and perform well academically. That's not an ego trip; it's just mental survival.

And the older I get, the worse my estrangement from the earlier wonders of sports becomes. I think it's great to enjoy sports and have a team to root for. It hearkens back to simpler days when everything wasn't morally ambiguous and there were just "good guys and bad guys" and you got behind the good guys. But I just think a lot of people are taking it all too seriously. I mean, it's great if your team wins but ultimately, you didn't really have a damned thing to do with it, particularly if you weren't physically present at the game to add whatever psychological boost cheering adds to the game. Basically you sat home and prayed for your team to win and they either did or didn't without any real input from you. And yet so many people just wrap their entire worlds around whether a group of complete strangers (and most likely, millionaires to boot) are able to win at a game which itself doesn't really mean anything. No countries are disarmed as a result, no hungry children are fed, no diseases cured. Without meaning to sound flippant, sports is really no more important than taking your dog for a walk or doing a crossword puzzle, except for the huge sums of money involved.

I can hear you saying, "wow, this guy is so obvious. He's bitter because he blew it in sports and now he has to tear down everyone who still enjoys them." But I'm not, really. I'm just trying to find out what happened to me and sports, and try to not feel guilty about basically abandoning something that used to give me such joy. Where once I was intensely engaged in all aspects of the game, who was playing, what type of offense and defense they had, who was injured, what reserve players they had, hell, even their official statistics, now I barely know who's playing for what team and where anyone is in the standings. It's sad to lose a passion, and when it happens I think it's only natural to wonder why.

I guess there are other, more obvious, possible reasons. The players are all filthy rich, most of them seem spoiled and/or decadent, and team loyalty is rapidly fading as a concept. Rosters change so often you can't ever get to feel any sort of personal connection to the teams you are rooting for. And like every other form of mass entertainment, sports seems to be just another way to sell millions of dollars of product via advertising.

And when you can't find any joy at competing yourself and you don't have any interest in watching others play, that's pretty much game, set and match for your interest in sports. It's over.

Did the times change or did I? Probably a bit of both, I would guess. I just thought about all this last week while everyone I knew at work seemed to be caught in a fever for the Super Bowl. People wore Bears jerseys and blue and orange shoes and socks, brought in treats shaped like bears and hung signs and broadcast pro Bears messages over the intercom. It made me wish I could have joined in in the enthusiasm, but I just can't. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore, and I hate it. But I can't fake a passion. It's either there or it's not.

And despite all my great memories, of Rose and Bench and Morgan circa 1975, of Abdul Jabbar upsetting the Celtics back in 1974, of Adrian Dantley leading Notre Dame to victory over the great UCLA, of a thousand nail biters and donnybrooks, of some wonderful shared memories with my folks, that passion, that drive and sense of joy, just isn't there for me anymore.

And I miss it.