The athlete

I’m far from an athlete; I’m just not the competitive type.  You hear that champions are obsessed with winning.  General Patton said in his famous speech to pre-D Day soldiers, “I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for the man who lost and laughed.” Football coach Vince Lombardi said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” I couldn’t live that way!  Even if I won, I’d be full of dread thinking ahead to the day when I finally lost.

In Grade 3 we had a sports day.  There were seven events, stuff like throwing bean bags into a target bin and doing a broad jump, and every time you succeeded in an event you’d get one of seven coloured ribbons.  When it was over I only got three, and everyone else I saw had at least four!  I cried.

I remember in Grade 7 how they’d let the kids choose their own teams.  Which meant that I always got chosen last. (If I’d just been second-last I wouldn’t have minded.) On one occasion both teams insisted that the other one take me!  Now that’s just mean—they were drunk with power.

I’m not a fan of sports on TV.  You can have the Olympics, though I like seeing local pedlars selling flags of dozens of nations then. (They also do it during the World Cup soccer championship.)

I’m not a huge fan of sports movies either. When an underdog team gets their act together and pull off a last-minute come-from-behind victory, I’m left wondering, “How did the other team feel?” Terence Rafferty, reviewing White Men Can’t Jump in The New Yorker, wrote: “Only two kinds of people usually enjoy sports movies:  children, who like fairy tales, and businessmen, who like motivational lectures.”

My favourite sports movie would be Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham.  It’s about a minor-league baseball team where veteran catcher Kevin Costner is put in charge of Tim Robbins, a pitcher with major-league talent but a remarkable lack of self-awareness.  The story is narrated by Susan Sarandon, an intelligent groupie attracted to both of them. (This was back when actresses over 35 were occasionally cast in sexy roles.) There’s a funny scene where Costner teaches Robbins cliches to say in interviews, like “I’m taking it one day at a time,” and “I want to be good for my team.” There’s also a funny moment when Robbins is dancing with five women at once.  Lots of good dialogue, like when Costner and Robbins are quarrelling and Sarandon says, “Don’t be such guys!”

Some American cities spend a fortune on subsidies for big stadiums to benefit teams that are already huge corporations making millions, ostensibly because it’ll stimulate the local economy.  I think it’s more that they’re afraid if a major-league team leaves town they’ll look small and alienate people who usually don’t care about politics…

Some of the people who hate Bernie Sanders keep saying about him, “He’s not a Democrat!” as if that were the last word.  No matter that at the crucial moment when the Senate voted to invade Iraq, Sanders was a truer Democrat than Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, who both voted yes while he voted no.  It occurred to me that these people view the Democratic Party as a sports team where specific policy positions matter less than obeying the ruling clique.  Real lazy thinking.