Indianapolis 500

Last weekend was the running of the Indianapolis 500...I guess.

It was a big deal for me when I was a kid. Back then it wasn't on TV then. We listened to it on the radio.

The broadcast featured a lot of engine sounds plus the narrators' descriptions ("The two lead cars are into Turn 1 racing side by side"). It must have been exciting. We kept the program on the entire race, which must have been about four hours.

I recall the sad day when Bill Vikovich was killed. I believe that he had won the previous two races. I could look it up on Wikipedia, but in this context the details of his racing career are less important than this fact: I loved Bill even though I never met him. I loved him because he was a winner and a risk taker. Then his car crashed. He was dead (whatever that meant to an 10-year-old kid). I was devastated.

And that's the point: I was more connected to someone I never met--someone who didn't know me or even know I existed--than I was about the fate of my neighbors. To me, that's one of the huge downsides of spectatorism: It takes us from our real lives and connects us with fantasies and images.

Who won this year's Indianpolis 500? Were records set? Was anyone hurt or killed? None of it matters to me. But I know this: I spent the four hours of the race (or however long it takes now) on things closer to home.

Sports Fantasy

I once read that--just before falling asleep--many guys imagine themselves making a big play in a sporting competition: hitting a homer, shooting the winning basket, blocking the puck as time runs out.

In truth, I don't know if guys--or women--do this. I'd be too embarrassed to ask. But I will confess that I used to invent such fantasies myself. Much more interesting than counting sheep.

Reflexively, the other night I put myself into one of those situations. I believe I was trying to strike out a hitter and win the game. Then I caught myself. Was I rolling out the mental movie simply to get a quick fix? Was it the same thing as watching a real athletic competition?

As I think I've said in an earlier post, I'm not against participating in sports, but only watching sports to get a vicarious thrill. Did "watching" myself hurl 95 mph fastballs fall into the spectator category?

I could argue it either way. But to error on the side of safety, I stopped the fantasy. I did have other options besides the sports scenario, but I don't feel it's appropriate to discuss them here in this G-rated blog.

A Biographical Fix

My eye fell upon a Yahoo! headline: "Gone too fast." I clicked on the link and discovered that the story was about Diego Corrales, a former boxing champion who had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Mr. Corrales was 29.

I wanted to read about his life and death, but I wondered if I was just trying to get a sports hit. After all, boxing is one of the most ancient and universal contests. In another post, I mentioned our family's tradition--back in the 1950s--of watching Saturday Night Fights on a tiny black and white screen. (Howard Cosell might have beeen on the announcing team.)

Back to the story of Mr. Corrales: Uncertain whether to read it or not, I solicited the opinion of my wife. It's not just that she's smarter or more ethical than me. Because she's never had a sports watching addiction, her opinion counts for something. She said: "Reading about a man's life is different from reading an account of a sporting event. You may read the piece."

The story, by Kevin Iole, includes the following three paragraphs:

"Only two years earlier in the Mandalay Bay Events Center, Corrales was the victor in a brawl with Jose Luis Castillo in a lightweight title unification match that was unsurpassed in boxing history for its savagery.

"But what made the fight so memorable was its sensational and unexpected ending. With his left eye closed, his face a grotesque lump of welts, Corrales dragged himself from the mat after a pair of 10th-round knockdowns to rally and stop Castillo.

"It was his finest moment, one of the finest in boxing history."

I'm going to confess: Those 91 words gave me a jolt. If it had been a shot of heroin and not a dose of reportage, I'd have been sky high.

Does this make my wife wrong? No. How could she understand the feelings of an addict. I have learned my lesson. Sports biography is a forbidden genre. Maybe I'll find a dramatic story about the death of a jazz musician or a teacher or a farmer...

Tour de Perth

A few weeks ago a professional bike tour zoomed through Point Reyes Station, the village where I work. People lined the main street to cheer the riders on.

This morning, motivated by a stomach bulge that I discovered while looking at myself in the mirror, I dusted off my bike,
and started pedaling up Perch, a street that runs past our property and up to the Inverness watershed about a mile away. My wife and I walk up the hill, which in places has a 7% grade. We regularly see young cyclists chatting as they effortlessly pass us. Those kids, of course, aren't carrying an excess 20 pounds, my "handicap."

Half-way up the hill, I had serious doubts about the enterprise. The phrase "quit now" flashed on the scoreboard inside my head. But recalling that the riders in the Tour de France tame mountains three times as steep as Perth, I pushed on. My desperate breathing at first distracted me from the pain, then frightened me. The phrase "heart attack" replaced "quit now."

That was an upsetting thought, because if I collapsed, my family couldn't even say "He died doing what he loved." What I love is typing, not sweating." Nevertheless, I was determined to reach the top of the hill. And somehow I did. I'm sure it was a record run: the slowest time ever.

At the top, no crowd applauded.There was no yellow jacket for me to don. But I felt the kind of joy that, I'm certain, is closer to what the pro riders feel than what is felt by the folks at the side of the road cheering them on.

Spectator Sports and Death

Why have I come to reject spectatorism? Here's why:

Say that my team--the 49ers--needs to move the ball one inch to score the winning touchtown. There's time on the clock for just one more play. I'm feeling all the tension in the world. The players break the huddle and move into position.

I'm breathing hard, but what does any of this have to do with me? I'm not on the field; my ability to block or run or throw or catch won't be tested. I didn't decide on the play nor choose the players to carry out the strategy. I am sitting at home. My "activity" is limited to watching, plus eating and drinking.

All the real work, all the passion, all the joy belongs to the players on the field. Nothing I do, say, think will make any difference as to the outcome. My role is pure passivity.

How different that is from a thousand things I could be engaged in: learning a new tune on my saxophone, sharpening my juggling skills, drawing a cartoon, puzzling out an algebraic equation, figuring out how to stop the drip in my bathtub, planning a vacation, taking my wife's hand. A thousand things? Closer to an infinite number of thing.

To my way of thinking: passivity is death; activity is life. I choose life.

To Everything There Is a Season

Tomorrow is The Kentucky Derby. I didn't want to know it, but promotion everywhere. I'd have to be blind and deaf to avoid the hoopla. Even if I couldn't see and hear, the sponsors of the race would probably beam the news to me via ESP.

But while thinking about "Derby Day" I suddenly noticed that time seems different now that I am mostly cut off from sporting news.

When I was an active sports addict, I allowed the sporting industry to label time for me: March Madness, Boys of Summer, Super Bowl Sunday, Monday Night Football, the Memorial Five Hundred. I'm old enough to remember "Saturday Night Fights."

Without sports filling up my calendar, I find myself wondering: What day is this? What month?

Before the advent of big business spectatorship, the passing scene was defined differently. According to Ecclesiastes 3:
To everything there is a season
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill,
And a time to heal;
A time to break down,
And a time to build up;
A time to weep,
And a time to laugh

The list goes on, but I promise you that verse never mentions basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey, football, or boxing. The focus is on the activities that have direct meaning for ordinary people like you and like me.

Spousal Warning

When I came into the living room early this morning, I noticed the morning newspaper which lay on a table. Roberta shouted, "Don't look at the front page!"

I averted my eyes and never did see the offending article. Had some major sports figure been arrested or killed? Were the San Francisco Forty-niners finally going to get a new stadium? Did the Golden State Warriors win the playoff series and advance to the next level?

Now it's late at night. I am slightly curious about the sports news that I didn't learn about. Would it compromise my journey to ask my wife what horror she had saved me from?

The answer to that question can't be found in the rule book, because there is no rule book for breaking a sporting addiction. A person simply must look deep inside.

I think I'll go to bed.