What are Sports For?

I am seven, a second-grader on the playground with the other boys. They are talking about basketball, calling out names for themselves. “I’m Rick Barry!” “I’m Kareem!” “I’m Bob Lanier!” I don’t know anything about basketball, so my only choice is to either shout a name already called out, or make one up.

I make one up. “I’m John Apple!” It’s far enough away from Johnny Appleseed, and it seems a good gamble: you take a common name and a common fruit — some player somewhere has to have it, I mean, right?

At first, they listen, bewildered, and then the derision rains down like a volley of half-court shots.

“You’re so stupid, there’s no such player.”

I am called Johnny Appleshit until middle school.

We do not have a television at home. My mother does not care about sports, and uses the radio we do have to listen to the news and classical music. My father doesn’t live with us, and even if he did, I wouldn’t learn about sports from him. Papa grew up in England, and the only game he ever played as a boy was cricket. He is still fond of cricket, and every once in a while, likes to point out that in his day, he was quite the fast bowler.

I don’t know what a fast bowler is, but I’m smart enough to know that bragging about my daddy’s cricketing skills on an American elementary school playground is a hundred times worse than not knowing about basketball.

I don’t care about basketball. I don’t care about football or baseball, the only other sports that matter in a small California town in the mid-1970s. I care about being liked. I care about fitting in. I don’t have the vocabulary to do it.

December 1974. I am in the old ranch house with Uncle Peter and his sons, my teenage cousins Dean and Scott. It is Christmas break. It is sunny and crisp outside; a fire roars in the grate. I sit as close I dare to my cousin Scott on the couch in front of the TV. Scott is an ineffably cool 15.

The Vikings are playing the Rams. The Vikings are winning, which seems to make Scott happy. Something happens — a man drops a ball he was supposed to catch, and the men groan. “Heartbreak,” Uncle Peter says. “He should have had it,” Scott laments.

I take a deep breath, and I ask the question. “What was supposed to happen?” I am so eager to understand this game, to understand these men I worship, but still, I shouldn’t have asked. I shut my eyes tight in embarrassment, waiting for ridicule.

But this is family, not the playground. Scott explains what a wide receiver is, and that the Vikings are now out of downs. He explains a down, and a punt, and yards needed. Uncle Peter helps.

They keep explaining until the game is over. The Vikings win.

“C’mon,” says Scott, “let me show you something outside.” I flush hot with pleasure. We go out on the big lawn, and Scott runs in a straight line, makes a sharp left turn, then turns back towards me, holding his hands as if to catch an invisible football.

“That’s a flag pattern,” he tells me. I nod, remembering the name. I will need it. “So, Hugo, I want you to run that pattern then turn back to me. I’m gonna throw you the ball.”

I nod. I run the pattern. Running is one thing I can do. I am quick. I run the flag, and turn sharply, just in time to get the wind knocked out of me as the ball sails into my stomach. Scott laughs, but encouragingly.

We run it a dozen times. I am hit in the face, my thumb gets bent back, I am close to tears and covered in grass, and finally, yes, I cradle the ball against my chest, tumbling dramatically to the ground.

“Touchdown!” Uncle Peter, Bloody Mary in hand, bellows from the porch. My mother waves. I taste blood in my mouth. I am not sure I’ve ever been happier.  The flag pattern brought me closer to the men who are my heroes, and I’d run it until my legs fell off if necessary.

The next spring, I start reading the sport section every day. I read the recaps, and study the statistics. I may have never watched a full baseball game, but I can tell you about Vida Blue’s earned run average and Rod Carew’s on-base percentage. I know what OJ Simpson averages per carry.

I’m not sure why those numbers matter, but that’s not the point. The point is that these names and numbers are keys, keys that unlock the gates to Boy Land. I am still a dreadful athlete (unless the task involves running fast and far), but I can talk with the boys at recess, ask the right questions, take part in the tiresome, repetitive debates about who’s best or who might win. Tiresome and repetitive, sure, but who cares what we’re talking about? I want to be in and this gets me in.

I do not have favorite players. I don’t have favorite teams. I tell people I like the A’s and the Raiders because they’re nearby and they’re very good; in the mid-1970s, all three Oakland teams (including the Golden State Warriors) win titles. It is a good time to have East Bay allegiances.

Deep down, I don’t care. I have no more loyalty to the local teams than to clubs from New York or Kansas City. I care far more about the intimacy a knowledge of sports can bring, not the games themselves.

As the years go by, I read more and more. Mom gets a TV; I watch sports whenever they’re on. I watch NASCAR. I watch golf. I watch hockey. I watch, listening to the announcers tell stories about what’s happening, taking notes in my head for things I can repeat when I tell my own stories. The driver who crashed in Daytona on the final lap; the golfer who blew the big lead; the hockey player knocked unconscious — I know all their names and I’ll recount what happened as dramatically as I can the next school day.

One day, when I am in eighth grade, two boys come to me in the cafeteria at lunch. They are popular. I am not. It is 1980, and there is no Internet, and besides, these are the sort of boys who would not go to the library to look in the dictionary. They know I know things, and want me to settle a bet: who won the first Super Bowl? One says the Packers, the other says the Raiders.

It is a pity that the boy I like better has the wrong answer. I can’t lie. “The Packers,” I say, and the boy I admire nods ruefully, as if I’m not quite worth tormenting over the truth. The bet’s winner gives me a high five in jubilation, and I walk to class, head held high.

What I cannot play, I can understand. And what I can’t understand doesn’t prevent me from memorizing all the facts and stories popular kids might need to settle an argument.

In high school, I grow into my body. I am less awkward, still shy. In fall 1981, because a pretty cheerleader asks me to, I go to my first football game.

It is Homecoming; the day is cold and overcast, but the stands are full and the band is noisy and the game — the game is riveting. Until this moment, I’ve only seen football on television. In real life this is muddy, this is loud, and because our team is lousy, it features long stretches of tedium punctuated by alternating bursts of hope and disappointment. There is more of the latter, but still, we nearly win. I am gripped.

Afterwards, I stand in a clump of pimply freshman boys as our red and gray clad team leaves the field. I’ve seen these upperclassmen in the halls, but they are so much larger in their pads and cleats. Some are somber, some are angry, a few are joking.

Gene Earsley, our star defensive lineman, has his helmet off, an arm around his girlfriend. She dabs at the blood on his ear and cheek. I see more blood on his jersey and his elbow. He’s bleeding for us, I think sentimentally; he’s bleeding for Carmel.

For the first time in my life, I have a sporting allegiance that’s rooted in conviction rather than an opportunity to make or maintain a connection. (To this day, 40 years later, the annual athletic event in whose outcome I am most emotionally invested is Carmel High’s rivalry game with nearby Pacific Grove.)

I join the JV cross-country team, but quit after one season. The workouts are too painful, and besides, I’m drinking and getting high too often. “You have the makings of a good athlete,” the coach tells me, “but you have to want it.” I shrug. I’m reminded regularly that I don’t live up to my intellectual potential, so failing at sports is not much of an additional blow.

I keep talking about sports, though by the time I’m 15, I’ve learned that it’s more useful to have the right questions than the right answers. Having an encyclopedic knowledge of statistics only impresses the nerdy boys in whose number I no longer wish to be counted. The new trick is to get other people talking about what they already want to talk about. What I know matters less than signaling that I want to know what they think they know.

In college, I go to four football games in four years. I go to one basketball game. I go to many softball games, but only because I have a huge crush on a girl who plays catcher. (To the extent that I have a body type to which I am drawn, I realize it is the stereotypical softball player.)

The pattern is the same in grad school at UCLA, where I make money helping football players pass classes, and the same at the next stage, where I learn a new trick about sports in my life as a college professor. I figure out how effective it is to drop casual sporting references in a lecture, and discover a great trick to make certain struggling students come to see me in office hours.

 I’ll make an outrageous statement as an aside, like “I think Allen Iverson is terribly overrated” in the middle of a talk on the causes of the French Revolution (oh, it’s less of a stretch than you think), and dollars to doughnuts, my office hours will be a madhouse for a week as the curious and the outraged come to challenge the claim. They come to argue sports, but they don’t leave until we’ve talked about their midterm paper.

Sports remain a tool, not a passion. I get married four times and change my allegiances with each union. Wife #2 goes to UCLA, and is passionate about the Bruins. I go with her to football games, wear powder blue, and do the Eight Clap. Wife #4 goes to UCLA’s archrival, USC, and is equally passionate about the Trojans. I go with her to football games, sit on the opposite side of the stadium from where I sat with wife #2, wear red, and sing “Fight On.”  (I spend nearly $2,000 to take Eira to that famous Rose Bowl game in 2006, in which the top-ranked Trojans fall to the Texas Longhorns.  My then-wife cried when USC lost.)

 I am happy when the women I love are happy, sad when they are sad, and always relieved when the game isn’t boring. (I’m usually not relieved.)

Children come. As they grow up, they see sports on TV in passing. They know their mother is fanatical about soccer, and that dad is considerably less gripped. When she is about seven, Heloise asks me to explain the offside rule; I do, and she nods her head. “I want to learn more about soccer so I can talk about it more with mom.”

I grin, but warn her. “Good. Just don’t pretend you like something you don’t.”

By accident, my son discovers Professional Bull Riding shortly after his fourth birthday. (I remember going to the Salinas Rodeo as a boy, with my dad. The roping and riding captivated me in a way other sports didn’t.) David takes to it instantly, demanding to watch “the bulls” almost every time I turn on the TV. I set the DVR to record “the bulls” when they’re on, and we watch weekly.

David can count the eight seconds that a rider must stay on for a bull ride to count. He likes the riders who wear big cowboy hats (some wear helmets), and he likes it when the bulls seem very fierce.

I am grateful that eight seconds is a very short time.

On Thanksgiving afternoon 2016, before heading off to dinner, David and I watch an hour of Professional Bull Riding. We snuggle on the couch; I sneak looks at my phone. The riders are an interesting mix: ol’ boys from places you’d expect, like Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming — and places you wouldn’t, like Brazil. Some ride to eight seconds, some don’t, and whether they do or not, they all flop around like crash-test dummies.

David is rapt. He has a sport he loves, and so I will love it with him for a season. While we watch, I decide that someone should write an article about what it’s like to be a dude from Brazil on the American bull-riding circuit when all you speak is Portuguese, and I wonder if I’d pitch that more to Esquire or Deadspin when they announce (none too soon) the final rider.

It’s J.B Mauney, all in black like a wiry young Johnny Cash, and the announcer says we’re in for a treat, and I think to myself, we’ll see about that, and David claps because JB has a broad grin and a splendid Stetson.

The gate opens, the bull whirls out, and this young acrobat arcs and twists, not a crash test dummy but a dancer, a Baryshnikov on a bull, his free arm moving with a conductor’s steady purpose. The bull is frenzied, and yet the rider is floating, a serene dark angel.

JB Mauney

“Eight!” David has been counting. JB has been counting too, and he dismounts the bull in a glorious parabola, landing perfectly on his feet. The huge animal wheels on him, and the cowboy playfully darts behind a rodeo clown before tossing his hat into the air, raising two exultant fists into the sky.

“Yay!” David cries, raising his fists as well, his grin lighting up the room, and I well up, because my little boy just saw the perfect, and distinguished it from the ordinary. 

My daughter wants to start beach volleyball next year. David will start soccer again in the fall, and perhaps Pop Warner football after that, and the rhythms of practices and games will resume after this long and painful pandemic hiatus.  

Perhaps they will decide they love the games for their own sake. Perhaps they will find different, or merely additional, passions. Either way, they already know that part of being civilized is having a passing acquaintance with what captivates the world around them. They need not adore sports, just as they need not be gripped by politics, but they will pay enough attention to ask the right questions of the most ardent fan.

On repeat while I wrote this is a new single from Canada’s Allison Russell. A former member of Our Native Daughters, the influential Americana band made up entirely of Black and Indigenous female musicians, Russell’s latest album is an eclectic mix of country, jazz, folk, and world music. This track, though, has an upbeat melody and a most welcome steel guitar, and is climbing the Americana/alt country charts.

If you like anyone from Rhiannon Giddings to Dar Williams to Miranda Lambert, you might want to check out Ms. Russell.

Tap tap tappin' on your window screen
Gotta let me in Persephone
Got nowhere to go, but I had to get away from him
My petals are bruised, but I'm still a flower
Come runnin' to you in the violet hour
Put your skinny arms around me, let me taste your skin