NOW THAT THE PLAYOFFS ARE upon us, the basketball and hockey seasons have commenced, Super Bowl XL arrives in February, and baseball’s Opening Day is just 17 weeks away, it is time for me to make a public disclosure, to confess the truth, and emerge from the closet, as it were:
I am not especially interested in sports!
This is not to say that I dislike games in principle, or that I harbor subversive theories about the sociology of sport: you know, that the glorification of football is the first step toward universal fascism, etc. Not at all.
If I may say so, I was a reasonably competent athlete in my day. I was a competitive swimmer for years, a better-than-average softball/baseball player (good hitter, so-so fielder), competent on the tennis court, and played football for the Sidwell Friends School in Washington (“Kill, Quakers, Kill!”). The trophy I won as Best Athlete at Georgetown Prep Camp in 1961 still sits atop my dresser and, as my wife likes to say, seems to symbolize the zenith of her husband’s achievements in life.
But even in those days when I played games fairly regularly, took gym at school, and followed the late, lamented Washington Senators (see Casual, April 11), I found the business of watching others in action, well, slightly tedious. I can still remember excitedly tuning in to Senators games on television in the late 1950s, and retiring in boredom by the fifth or sixth inning. I may well be the only living Villanova graduate who never saw the Wildcats playing basketball.
Please note that my indifference to sports–“not especially interested”–is carefully qualified. My son attends a Division III school, and I have enjoyed watching a few football games between scholar-athletes not destined for the NFL. I am usually good for one, maybe two, baseball games per season. I have watched, with mild enjoyment, televised portions of Wimbledon, dressage events, the Henley Regatta, Test Match cricket, boxing, the Kentucky Derby, and the World Cup.
I attended track and archery events at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the 1971 U.S. Open at the Merion Golf Club, and once witnessed a race at the Talladega Speedway in Alabama. I spent 20 minutes or so at the 1980 Kentucky-Alabama football game so that I could tell my grandchildren I had gazed upon the person of Paul “Bear” Bryant. The list goes on.
But I confess that if I never saw another sports event in my life, I would survive. Particularly on television. Professional football–with its break-dancing players, preening coaches, and incessant yack from an army of announcers–leaves me cold. So, for similarly aesthetic reasons, does professional basketball. And if there is anything more ponderous than Major League Baseball–pitchers winding up, batters readjusting their stances and underwear, managers strolling to the mound–it is listening to expert analysis of these activities.
How to explain it? To some degree, I suppose, it’s a question of upbringing. The New York Times Magazine used to have a feature (unintentionally comic) called “About Men,” in which males would write brief, deeply felt essays about themselves. A startling percentage of them seemed to involve running across an old mitt in the attic, and growing teary-eyed at the memory of playing catch with Dad, now deceased; or shooting baskets with a brother who later overdosed on heroin. My father was not only too old and short-sighted to play catch successfully with me, but was even more bigoted on the subject of sports. He looked upon baseball as a boy’s game played by grown men, and–romanticizing the University of Pennsylvania teams of the 1920s–thought pro football was unseemly.
I have inherited few of my father’s prejudices, especially about politics, but this one seems to have rubbed off. Still, I live and work in the real world, and when two or three fellows are gathered together, making small talk at receptions, or on an elevator, the subject of sports is often unavoidable. Fortunately, sports information is equally unavoidable, and reading the paper, you have to make an effort to miss the score of yesterday’s game, or the status of coaches, or the names of those players currently suspended, or fined for assault, or on trial for rape, or accused of taking steroids.
Then again, there are phrases you can cheerily repeat when conversation lags, or faces turn inquiringly in your direction: “Those [fill in the blank] were awesome yesterday,” “[Fill in the blank] isn’t emphasizing the fundamentals,” “The [fill in the blank] have got a running game but no passing game.”
These will give you the credibility you require under the circumstances, maintain friendly workplace relations, and allow you to participate with a smile while thinking about Suzanne Farrell or the Winslow Homer show at the National Gallery.
– Philip Terzian
