Once upon a time, I was a bright-eyed youth...
I'm four years old, and I'm having a glorious time at Milwaukee County Stadium. I have my baseball glove with me because I just know I will snare a foul ball this time. Too bad I always end up storing my salted-in-the-shell peanuts in my glove...
I'm seven years old, and I'm listening to a Badger football game on the radio with my Dad. They're losing to Ball State. I don't really know much about college football (a college called Ball?), but if Dad finds it important, it probably is. Too bad his alma mater has such a terrible football team. Dad hopes the new coach, Barry Alvarez, will fix things. I hope when I get to college my football team will be better...
I'm nine years old, and I'm spending one of many summers running around the field by my house with a football, pretending to be Packers' quarterback Don Majkowski. That fall I watch on television as he crumples to the ground against the Bengals. Someone named Brett Favre comes into the game. He completes his first pass to himself for a seven-yard loss. We're doomed. But this Favre guy (Farve? Favor?) leads a dramatic comeback. Maybe this will work out after all...
I'm ten years old, and I'm on my grade school basketball team. I'm no Michael Jordan. In fact, I'm horrible--I only score one basket the whole season. I develop some modest skills over the next three years, but that's not what really matters. I put up with all the tough practices and the coach's yelling at me because I just love to play...
I'm 21 years old, and I still love sports, but I'm worried. I fear my awe at tape-measure home runs and 98 mph fastballs has forever vanished, replaced by skepticism. Are they using steroids? Will baseball ever be the same? How can these peanuts possibly be salted the shell?
I guess my Dad steered me in the right direction-I still spend my Saturdays rooting on the Badgers. It's nice that UW now beats up on teams far greater than Ball State. I wish I could always watch college football with the innocence of a seven-year-old who cheers for a team just because his father does. But between that Saturday in 1990 and today, college football went commercial. Now the most important letters aren't simply W's and L's-it's BCS, and the most important green has dead presidents on it, not hash marks. It's just not the same, although I try to pretend.
Although my basketball glory days came to an end with my unfortunate tryout for my freshman high school basketball team, I still follow the NBA. I liked it a lot more when players kept the physical play on the court and out of the stands. Fighting in sports is really something that should exist only in hockey. Too bad there isn't a professional hockey league this year because owners and players can't agree on how many millions are enough.
It all would seem to be enough to make this cynic throw up his hands in disgust, and forsake sports as a lost cause... but then an autumn Sunday rolls around, and Brett Favre is still on the television, 201 weeks and counting, and all my worries fade away. Favre cuts through the clutter in sports--the commercialization and conglomeration, the ESPN hype, the cheating, the fighting, the me-first attitudes--and he reminds us of what the essence of any sport is, what it was for us when we played and watched as children: It's the sheer joy of athletic competition. Sure Favre is well paid, but I think he'd play for free, just to play.
Depending on where you grew up, you probably have someone other than Favre in your mind's eye that takes you back to your carefree sports halcyon days. But so long as there are these people in the sports world, this spirit will continue to survive no matter how bleak things appear.
I'm 21, and Favre throws another touchdown pass and runs around the field joyously. My childhood memories wash over me. When it comes to sports, I guess I will always be forever young.
mtworringer@wisc.edu.
