I’m not big on sports.
Not much interested in any
activity that involves a ball of any kind.
Only “sport” I ever really had
much enthusiasm for was boxing. Notice I put that word in
quotation marks.
But, you know, when I was a kid,
in school, I played a little basketball.
I wasn’t very good. But it was fun, and there’s no down side to a young teenage
boy in having pretty teenage girls go
crazy cheering his name just for throwing a ball though a hoop. Hell, you’d
think I was curing cancer out there.
Thanks, but I have to walk my dog.
Some guys could really play
well.
I remember one kid in
particular, Black kid named Wells. That kid once sank a left-handed hook
shot from the free throw line with two
of us all over him. Fuck! I couldn’t
believe it. You can’t argue with that kind of skill. You just have to give the
devil his due.
“Hey, man,” I said when that
shot swished through the bucket, “GREAT fuckin’ shot.”
Offered him my palm and he gave
me some skin.
It was cool.
But it didn’t go over very well
with my coach.
“He’s kicking our ass out there and
you’re congratulating him?”
I didn’t see the problem.
In an earlier game, I was
assigned to go man to man on a kid who’d just made an excellent jump shot from
the corner. When I got out on the floor, I said to him, “I hope you enjoyed
making that shot, daddy-o. It’s the last fuckin’ shot you’re gonna make
tonight.” Turned out to be a true
prediction. Of course, I fouled out in the course of making it come true.
See, he could shoot from the floor, but he couldn’t hit a free throw with a
hammer.
Anyway, it was perfectly fine to
talk shit to an opposing player, but it was utterly frowned on to salute him.
That didn’t feel right to me.
Maybe that’s when I took notice
of the fans.
C'mon, guys, get a life.
Most people in the stands
applauded every time something went in favor of their own team, and cat-called
every time something went in favor of the other team. When a ref called, say,
out of bounds against their guy, the ref was blind. Didn’t matter if that
player had dribbled halfway to the locker-room, it was a “bad call” because it
went against them. Whether it was true or accurate didn’t matter one little
bit.
On the other hand, one of their
own guys could whack an opposing shooter with a meat cleaver and they’d still
claim the shooter was charging. Foul!? What? Get some glasses, Ref? How much
they payin’ you, Ref? And so on.
What I figured out was this:
most people in the stands weren’t there because they loved basketball.
They didn’t even like
basketball.
In fact, they didn’t give a
flying fuck about basketball.
They just wanted to win.
Didn’t matter how they won, or
why they won. It didn’t matter how well their team played. If it was an
accident, or a fluke, or if they cheated their asses off and got away with it,
none of that mattered as long as they won. They were living vicariously off
that victory the way a vampire lives off your blood, without ever putting out
any the effort or taking any of the risk, themselves. I quickly grew to despise the fans, and I quit
playing, cheerleaders notwithstanding. The fans ruined it for me. Win or lose,
I never felt clean.
I can’t help noticing that politics
is that way for most people, too.
On any
issue, they pick a side and become emotionally invested in “winning.” Doesn’t
matter one little bit what’s true, or right or fair. It doesn’t matter how they win or why they
win, as long as they win.
Elections are the same way. You
pick the Democrat team or the Republican team, and your team is always right,
the other team is always wrong. If the Devil himself ran as a Democrat against
Jesus running as a Republican, then every Democrat would be in the Devil’s
corner. They’d point out that Jesus was
a dirty hippy, never worked a day in his life, that there’s some real
controversy about his birth, that he associated with prostitutes and other
low-life’s, that he was an alcoholic who turned water into wine, and that he
was a scofflaw who had defied proper authority on occasions to numerous to count.
I don’t mean to pick on the
Democrats in particular, but lately, I do have a good reason to be cross with
them: they’re forcing me to say something good about Republicans.
When George W. Bush was
President, the Republicans praised his unconstitutional crap, and the
Democrats, very rightly, condemned him for it.
I didn’t think it was possible to have a worse president than George W.
Bush. But then Obama got into office. He out-Bushed Bush at every turn, taking
Bush’s worst policies farther than the eye could see, and inventing a few of
his own that were equally nasty or nastier.
The Republicans praised Obama
when he did what Bush did – though they criticized Obama for not going far
enough. The Democrats, on the other hand fell mute. Seems that when a Democrat
does unconstitutional crap, the Democrats are fine with it. It’s only when
Republicans do it that the Democrats get all offended and sanctimonious.
When I criticized George Bush
for lying, for doing other unlawful things, Democrats called me a patriot. When
I criticized Obama for doing the same things – or worse – Democrats called me a
racist.
I have to give the Republicans
this much: they're consistent in their repugnant values. And none of them ever
said I hated Bush just because he was White.
Republicans.
Democrats.
They’re not out there campaigning because they
love America, because they prize liberty and justice.
They don’t even like liberty and
justice.
In fact, they don’t really give
a flying fuck about liberty and justice.
They just want to win.
It can be
an accident, a fluke or because they cheat their asses off and don’t get
caught. As long as they win.
So I don’t play that game
anymore, either.
The fans ruined it for me.
And it doesn’t feel clean.
SJ
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