Two Months In

Reflecting on two months of non-sports watching as we enter a new year altogether/all together.

It's clear to me at this point that my world was compressed by the amount of attention I paid to sports. I had fun with it, to be sure, but I'm not sure that I can claim balance the way things used to be. Maybe that's something I can find later on when and if I return to the games.

For now, the world seems more spacious and interesting without the constant concern of wins and losses. It's interesting to think of how this shift in my overall attention has manifested in my personality. I'm sure I'm the least qualified to assess things, but I would like to think that I am a calmer, more interesting version of my old self. 

If I'm being honest, this exercise has not been a perfect effort so far. On Sundays you can easily catch me accessing Boston.com by accident, where the score of the Patriots game is not hard to see. There isn't much A-Level sports news (at least insofar as Boston teams are concerned) that I have not been able to simply distill from a potent mixture of Facebook posts, Twitter declarations, and local news. It's not something I am proud of, and perhaps this time of resolutions will encourage me to redouble my efforts. 

It shouldn't be hard to do so thanks to one of the most special christmas gifts I have ever gotten. My wife Lori, knowing about the next challenge on my list, gave me a gorgeous classical guitar. It's got nylon strings, which I had been taking about for a long time. I've been strumming away on it for a week now, and am really looking forward to building on what I already know.

For now, fire, friends and food are calling, so I will leave you with one of the driving thoughts behind both The Off-Season and New Years Eve, long my favorite holiday;

It's never a great idea to take anything you cherish for granted. Try, instead, to present and aware of the moment you are in.

I wish you and yours a happy, healthy, and hearty 2014.

I Can Juggle

I mean, I'm not hitting the road with a vaudeville act or anything, but I can throw three things back and forth in circles in front of me and keep them from falling down for a bit. Occasionally, I can even decide to stop on my own before anything goes wrong. In my mind, that means I can juggle.

The most exciting part of this for me is the fact that I actually understand how to do it. Before, whenever I would see someone juggling, my mind couldn't even process what was happening. It felt like I was a different kind of person, not imbued with the ability to perform the task I was witnessing. I was resigned to my status as a non-juggler, and I had no ambition to change it.

I think it's a great idea to attempt to identify and break down those types of self-imposed barriers, though. It's one of the the things about The Off-Season I am most excited about. Theres a type of self confidence that comes from doing the thing you thought you couldn't do that you just don't get from anywhere else. It's an interesting change of pace from the random ego-gambling that comes from rooting for (and against) people who are playing a game you have nothing to do with. Winning that kind of a bet sure feels great, but even that feeling is a bit hollow at the end of the day.

So, having reached a point where I feel reasonably honest in saying that can, in fact, juggle (I even tried different sized items with some success!) it is now time to pick the next task. Once again, it's a skill that many, many of you have and may think little of, but I'm excited to take it on. I'm going to try to learn how to sing a song while accompanying myself on guitar.

I'm not starting from scratch on this. I have a few things going for me that should make this a fairly easy process. I can sing pretty well, and have been doing it for years. That shouldn't be a problem at all. I also know a good number of chords, and can get from one to the other with some facility. I can even recreate the progression of U2's The Fly to the point that you might recognize it. I can also sing that song very well, but combining those two skills currently lies beyond my field of comprehension. It baffles me that anyone can make their minds work in two different ways like that, despite my many friends who can do it with ease. So that's the challenge.

You might think I would be using The Fly to begin, but that song simply isn't good enough to be the one thing I can play for people. Instead, I am going to be working with an old favorite that my father used to sing to me when I was small. It's called "Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod" and it's based on a cute children's' story. There are likely many versions of this tune, but I'm going to be attempting to cover the one done by The Brothers Four on their album Cross Country Concert. If you like things that are great, go download it now.

And wish me luck!

I Miss The Celtics

Of the four teams that represent my town, three are legitimate title contenders at the moment. The Patriots will have Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and a home playoff game, the Bruins lost a great Stanley Cup series last year, and the Red Sox will open the season as defending Champs. Only the Celtics are a team in transition, not expected to do anything. At least this was the case when The Off-Season began back in October.

It would stand to reason, then, that I would most miss watching the contenders try to win it all. It would make sense if the hardest part of this "sports refusiasm", as I am calling it, was missing the better teams play their respective sports at the highest level, bringing honor to my town, and glory to me in some small, stupid way. But that has not been the case. I miss the Celtics. 

I miss the questions about who can take over, and what the personality of the next championship team will be. I miss hearing about the rookie that starts to play lock down defense, or the new center that starts gobbling up offensive rebounds. You start hearing about those things, and slowly the picture starts to come together. A trade here, and a free agent there, and the answers start outnumbering the questions. You start to be able to play against anyone on to good night. Eventually, a leader emerges, and the team starts to gel. Now you are running people out of the gym on occasion, and beating all the teams you are supposed to. Before long, you look around and start to say, "Our guys can play with anyone." No one can beat you at home anymore. From there, all it takes is a few lucky bounces and you are champs again.

Or maybe it's basketball that I really miss. It's always been my favorite sport to watch. I love the way a good team can work the opposition out of what they want to do. They use set, prescribed formations and rhythm to try and break down the other guys. Whenever and wherever the breakdown occurs, that's where you attack. Everybody has to be ready at all times to pounce when the opportunity comes. That's best exemplified by the fast break, like the Showtime Lakers, or the great Celtic teams used to run. The ball would never even touch the floor. That's Jazz. That's Improv Comedy. That's any great connection between artists. 

And it's fun to watch.

Revelations

I have a dear friend who truly loathes the very existence of professional sports. To his mind, the time we spend (to say nothing of the money) taking about and following professional sports is an absolute waste. And worse, it distracts us from important issues that deserve our time and attention.

For years, I had no idea that he felt this way. In fact, a lot of our friendship was founded on, or based on talking about sports. He comes from a big sports town and I had rooted for and against some of the teams from that city in the past. I simply assumed that, being from that area, he was in to it, and he made no suggestion that he wasn't. Meeting groups of his friends from back home did little to change that perception, as many of them we're very happy to discuss just about any sports topic you pleased. Though it was far from the only topic we ever discussed, there is little argument that sports greased the skids for us in the journey from acquaintances to lifetime friends.

After he moved back home, I would occasionally write to him when one of his local teams was playing a big game. It's one of my favorite parts of being a sports fan. I see a game between two teams, two cities, promoted and I am instantly thinking about friends and family members in the areas of those teams. Sometimes I will reach out to them, maybe before, or after the game. The whole process makes my far flung scattering of family and friends seem closer. But, anytime I reached out to this particular friend, no response would come. No big deal, as our friendship was far more involved than these one way exchanges, but still, it seemed odd.

Eventually we talked it through and he admitted his disdain for pro sports. I can see his point. Even before The Off-Season began I knew that he could name senators, world leaders, and other political figures and their accomplishments the way I could recall big moments in sports. I'm sure there are many people out there who can do both with ease, but it seems my ability to multi-focus is limited.

This leaves me asking a very big question during The Off-Season. After you consider the power it has to build friendships, and connect us as a society, and after you factor in the distraction it offers us, and the absurd money, and questionable treatment of athletes of all ages, if you add it all up is "Sports", as a cultural force, good or bad?

The list of major pro sports scandals is a long and familiar one, so I won't bother dredging it all up. We would be fools to think that scandals will ever stop. Former athletes seem to meet with tragic endings more frequently than child stars. In many ways, I think that is what they really are, child stars. They gain wealth, celebrity and validation for doing something they have done since they were just kids. When the ability is gone, which comes early in a life relatively speaking, they must share that feeling a child star has as they struggle to recreate themselves. Unfortunately, in both cases, if it's gone, it's just gone. Who wouldn't have trouble adjusting to that?

It's easy to ignore the machine that pro sports is while you are watching the highlights. It's easy to just think about the cities that the teams are representing. And even as I write all this, I miss that dearly. But when next October rolls around, it may be very difficult for me to jump back in with both feet.

Jacobye Ellsbury

I’ve seen the headlines. I know that history has repeated itself. Jacoby will be wearing pinstripes and stealing bases in the Bronx next year. It’s a great time to be disengaged from the sports world. It’s a great example of how the sports media industry takes advantage of the emotions of the fans to stay in business.

I used to be a dedicated EEI (the only local sports radio station back in the 90’s) listener. At work, in the car, at home, I was tuned in all the time. At some point I realized that basically listening to people argue all day every day wasn’t a very good idea. I weened myself off and really have never gone back. My enjoyment of sports went up almost immediately without having to worry about rival fans calling in to rub in a loss. Somehow, my ego was less on the line and I was able to just appreciate what happened on the field. What a relief.

The truth is that most people who follow the Sox closely have been braced for this for a couple of years already. Truthfully, this couldn’t have worked better for the Sox as they were able to squeeze one more title out of Ells before he beat a path out of town. He racked up more DL loyalty points than just about anyone over the last 7 years, and there was little chance Ben and the front office was going to commit long term again to him. Not with some intriguing talent waiting in the wings and the financial freedom to get someone else if that talent doesn’t pan out. Much as I hate to think in terms of contracts as opposed to talent on the field, the Sox are likely better off without him.

None of that will stop writers and talk show hosts from wailing away about it today and all winter long. Even in to next year, you’ll hear the story of how he spurned Boston and chose the hated Yankees. They’ll feature the angriest of fans calling in to complain about it and spit at the NY fans on the air. They’ll draw the parallels to the parade of Sox that have headed south in the past to cash in and win titles. It always happens, and it seems that it always will.

The thing is, the dynamic has changed ever since 04. Since then the Sox are up 3-1 in championships, and have arguable run their ship better. At the end of last season there sin’t a baseball fan on the planet who would have said that the Yanks were in better shape than Boston. Seems to me, Jacoby simply went for the money. Hard to argue with that.

Any fan who can’t see all that might need to take a step back and look at the larger view.