How many times can a man be asked this question in his short turn on this earth? Never enough, is clearly the answer we're looking for. I have spent my entire teen and adult life dancing around this topic. I've yet to find a way to make it work.
"No," I say, with a disarming smile. A hooked eyebrow of mild disapproval is the inevitable response. More smiling on my part. "I'm just not really a sports guy," I explain, knowing full well that this never works. I always delude myself, praying it'll be enough, but no. I'm expected to account for my deviant answer. More smiling; more praying.
There was a time in my dumber, more youthful years that I'd attempt to explain my position on no sports watching. I've learned a thing or two since then. "Let me explain to you why I'm a social pariah, with no interest in watching dudes trample each other over possession of a leather ball." I haven't yet come up with an answer which states my opinion without insulting theirs, but at least I know now to let whoever it is squirm under my haiku-like answer, rather than vice-versa.
My parents loved sports; they tried to get me to watch. They tried for years and years and years. To no avail. Ten minutes of them hollering their heads off at the TV, while some jack-weed announcer gave us a play-by-play of a player scratching his crotch did nothing for me whatsoever. Time and again, we'd try to make this work; time and again, I'd get bored, ask to be excused, and be off to read Cyrano de Bergerac or make Dungeons and Dragons maps; walk down to the pizza parlor with my nerd friends to play Tempest or Defender. I just didn't get it.
And on it went, straight on into adulthood. Ever did I dread that ice-breaker question forever on sports nuts' lips. Ever did I smile and throw out my unforgivable response.
So I spent 35 years of my life in America, a sort of social outcast from the sports fanatic realm. Superbowl Sunday for me was just a chance to steal the beer and hit on the girlfriends of suckers while they shrieked at the game. The world series made as much sense to me as a geometry proof. The Olympics was a world-wide dick-measuring contest brought to you by global conglomerates. And don't get me started on hockey. Ice is not a sporting venue; it's something a bartender puts in your drink, or you put on your eye after you tell a sports nut his favorite player looks like a woos to you.
So after 35 years living in America, I'm now living overseas, as is best for commie faggot lefty America-hating asswads like me (or so all the internet messageboards tell me, anyway). But it's no different here. Sure the sports are different and, according to the people who live here anyway, far superior. I should watch them, they tell me. It's part of our culture, our shared cultural heritage.
I'm now assaulted on all sides by sports which, while frighteningly familiar in their screwiness, due to cultural differences, seem even less approachable to me than American sports. At least the American crap was drilled into me since childhood through parents, teachers and the media, so that I can fake some modicum of understanding. "Yep, those Redsocks sure know their tackles and touchdowns!" That's right, isn't it?
Cricket: Cricket, for god's sake! I can't imagine something less in my realm of understanding. I might as well be watching a game invented by the aliens from Avatar! This game of British invention from the times of the British Empire was exported to their colonies as a way of baffling the subjected natives into submission. "You play this game how?!"
Best I can understand it, it's a lot of guys in white cardigans using half a kayak paddle to wallop a red leather-bound cue ball and run back and forth between some sticks. Due to its innate insanity, cricket is rife with lunatic fans from across the globe, who are as obsessed with the game as Tea Baggers are with Obama's birth certificate. Apparently, the games run from three to five days, each day's game running for six hours. I watched a full thirty minutes of it once at a neighbor's house, and walked away feeling I'd cheated myself out of 20 minutes of my life. The other 10 minutes I spent in my host's john, pleasuring myself.
But as baffling and harebrained a game as it seems to me, at least it's a manly game, right?
To be fair, not all the players look like this. Some of them look downright gay.
Rugby: Rugby, for me, has a lot of affinity with American football. Most Rugby players are probably slobbering and howling for my blood at this statement, but it's true. At least I can understand the idea behind rugby more than I can cricket. That's not saying I'm going to watch it. Semitic Zeus forbid! A whole bunch of massive dudes in cleats and short-shorts tackling each other over an over-sized bit of leather for 80 minutes. I lived in San Francisco, bub. If I wanted to see that, I can attend the Folsom Street Fair.
Yes, if I had to choose between rugby and American Football, I'd choose rugby. Well, if I HAD to choose, I'd rather watch back-to-back reruns of Barney the Dinosaur, but that's neither here nor there.
But given that Rugby only lasts around 80 minutes, while American football games appear to go on for the better part of three fucking hours, I'll take the one that minimizes my time having to endure the entire mess. Another thing rugby has going for it is the rule for viewers. American football requires me to have memorized an encyclopedia of statistics and names to be accepted by rabid fans. Rugby watching seems bent around constant consumption of alcohol and yelling without reason or understanding of what the hell is going on. When I told someone I didn't understand (or care about) the rules of rugby, he smiled and replied: "What's to know, mate? Ya' yell when everyone yells; ya' cry when everyone cries, and above all, never stop drinking." Now who can argue with that? Bring on the Barney reruns!
The funny thing is, I have nothing against sports. Not playing them, anyway. I think it's great to get out and run around, have a bit of fun, drink a cold one on a sunny day, ogle your teammate's girlfriend in her bikini top while you "accidentally" trip him when he's about to score. That's the true sportsman in action. While some viewers of sports do this, the number which don't far outweigh these few. Viewing is the new action; cheering on others is our new self-approval.
But we've relegated our own victories, however slight they may be, our own chance to excel and to be a part of something real, in favor of cheering for someone else's victories and successes, to consume others' victories as if in some way they are actually our own. In the immortal words of the Roman satirist, Juvenal:
"… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses."Juvenal was referring to the Roman Republic's trick of showering the common riff-raff with cheap wheat and gladiator-style "circuses" for them to jeer and whoop and get loaded on bottom-of-the-barrel wine. Roman politicians stole public opinion from a populace by handing them cheap thrills and manufactured triumphs, distractions that would make them happy long enough to vote them back into power.
This well-written editorial piece by Anthony Hubbard says it better than I ever could:
Will the Rugby World Cup affect the election result?
Let the games begin!
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