Season Openers…

The NBA tipped off its new season on Thursday.  Exciting subplots include Shaquille O’Neal and Lebron James joining forces to try and bring Cleveland it’s first excitement since the Cayahoga River caught on fire in 1969, and Kobe Bryant trying to play the rest of the league by himself.  I wonder if he could hold his own against five other players for at least a quarter.  I’m fairly certain he stays awake at night wondering the same thing.  And I’m sad that Yao Ming will be out for the season with a fracture in his foot, which means we will be deprived of one of the few pro athletes who can speak in proverbs and confound the media with high brow humor.

Based on my opening stanza you would be surprised to know that I’m working on being less sarcastic these days, it’s just that the NBA makes it awfully tough.  I tried really hard last spring to follow the entire playoffs, but I petered out in the conference finals.  If you watch enough NBA action you begin to realize the cost benefit analysis of only watching the last five minutes.  If its a blowout, that means by the end nobody is playing defense and you will see more unbridled action, dunks, three pointers, and behind the back passes from the scrubs.  If its close, you just saved yourself an hour and a half and still get to see the climax.  Its not the players fault really, they are so talented that they make the spectacular look mundane.  It is hard to be surprised by anything they do, no matter how in defiance of basic physics it is.

So how do we stay interested in sports like basketball, where an exhausting long professional season  (which can last 8 months including the playoffs) often produces very little drama until the bitter end?

We turn the TV off and we play, that’s how.

This is not a team photo of the Chicago Bulls, although I’m sure it took you a minute to figure that out.  It is Chicago’s other basketball squad of distinction, Eckhart Park.  Formed in the 90s on Chicago’s near West side, Eckhart Park produced a staggering number of professionals over the years…writers, journalists, filmmakers, and designers that is.  That’s right, the basketball part was for fun.

Every Saturday morning around 11 a.m. a co-ed group of slightly hungover, slightly asleep, slightly athletic, but definitely motivated friends would gather at a Chicago city parks and recreation center, and dust off the wood panel floor.  Half-hearted stretching was accompanied by coffee, Gatorade and attempts at memory recovery from late Friday nights.  Only a few people laced up real basketball shoes, the rest wore a collection of colorful running sneakers, indoor soccer shoes, the occasional pair of dress shoes, and there was one size 16 pair of the canvas Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars.

For uniforms people wore an assortment of cut-off jean shorts, sweatpants, corduroys, t-shirts with logos of bands nobody had ever heard of before, and mismatched socks.  If this cadre walked off a bus and into a gym they would not strike fear into the hearts of their opponent, they would probably be handed some juice and cookies and be told to wait until it was time to get back on the bus again.  These were athletes who were expressing their inner creative souls through sport, not their ability to hit free throws.

Then the ball would arrive, and the shoot around began, and people started to shake off the dust of sitting in front of their computers all week, writing, editing, and designing.  If you were to simply hear the gym scene it would sound a bit like a construction site, with the repetitive clanking of metal as the ball struggled to find the smooth net.  Teams were diplomatically chosen, evened out based on experience.  Talents ranged from high school benchwarmers like me to people who had never touched a basketball before.  Indeed one of the more unique qualities of the Eckhart Park experience was that many of the participants had never played organized basketball, or sports for that matter.  It was a place where an adult could join and actually learn a new game without feeling self conscious.  At a very basic level it was simply a game amongst friends, where people were actually equally trying to win, and make sure that everyone on the team got a shot at succeeding.

And so the play would commence with a pass, and a few dribbles, and a first miss, and maybe a rebound and layup.  Eventually the unique energies of so many people who made a living by expressing their creative tendencies would take over.  The surly radio producer Starlee would start launching three pointers from her tiny, compact frame, a routine that would reward her with the nickname “shark.”  Joe, the graying alt rocker with tight cutoff shorts and a headband would turn an uncontested layup into a twirling behind the back, reverse layup, as if he had just evaded a 7 footer trying to block him.  Dave, a gentle giant PhD, would dribble, making it to half court in four enormous steps, and pass the ball to Gary, one of the best low post players, despite being under 5 feet tall.  And so it went.

The game was often not pretty, yet brilliant and intricate in its way.  Long, meandering sequences could roam from one end of the court to the other featuring fumbled passes, unintentional steals, high arching shots off the top of the backboard, tumbling rebounds, layups that completely missed the hoop, and finally a basket and an exhale.  It could easily take a half hour to finish a game to 5.  But in the bubble of our game, details like time, who scored, who won and who lost, were quickly lost in the simple joy of running around with a group of friends.

Eckhart park was not an exclusive affair, players could bring the occasional friend, but the longer the game progressed, the more protective they became of it.  My entry into the game was a little awkward as I had played quite a bit throughout my life.  My high school highlights were spectacular, but not in the way one might want.  They included being yelled at by the coach one game, “don’t shoot, that’s not why I put you in!,” or being caught at the end of the bench with a deck of playing cards, or my favorite, almost fainting during warmups for a playoff game because I had given blood a few hours before.  Convinced I wasn’t going to get in a game of magnitude, I decided to join in the school blood drive, and then hours later, after a chocolate and kool-aid binge attempt to get my blood sugar up, I almost fainted when I was put in at the end of a blowout.  So despite my pedigree, I was acceptable in the Eckhart Park philosophy  because I was a bit of a misfit.

The real fear was that one dark Saturday morning the Eckhart anti-christ would come and destroy the sensitive equilibrium of playing a sport hard enough to sweat, but not so hard as to stand out.  There were players from time to time who would join and not quite get or embrace the concept.  Victor, a bodybuilder with sharp elbows, wandered into the game one Saturday.  A literal bull in a china shop, he would essentially ignore the other physically inferior mortals on this team and take on the opponent himself, often knocking people around like bowling pins.   His reign lasted longer than anyone would have liked because none of us wanted confrontation.   Victor was an adult incarnation of our most tormenting grade school bully.  Finally a few of us cornered him one Saturday and explained he wasn’t welcome anymore. He circled the court a few times, looking menacingly at us, and then disappeared.

There were many sideplots to the co-ed affair, indeed a whole dating scene evolved out of the game.  People met at basketball, started dating, quietly at first, and eventually the group might notice the pair making eyes, or trying to be on the same team, or making an effort to get the object of their desire the ball, and cheer them on when they scored.

The most notable success story was that of Ed, the incredibly private medical worker who nobody had any real details on, and Elizabeth, a single mom and lawyer.  The pair started quietly dating after meeting at Eckhart Park.  It took a year before any of us realized that Elizabeth was always giving the carless Ed a lift home.  Shortly after we figured it out, they got married.

There were also couples who arrived at the game intact and over the course of their playing years broke up, creating an awkward dynamic.  Both my friend Jason and I endured heartbreak with basketball regulars.  He was forced to alternate Saturday’s with his ex so they wouldn’t cross paths.  After a post break-up run in with a former girlfriend at basketball, which included a memorably tearful gym exit and sprint to the city bus, she merely disappeared from the game until I moved away, rejoining shortly after she confirmed I was no longer in Chicago.

Other types of collaborations also came out of the game.  While stretching, waiting to substitute in, and sharing water bottles, people got to talking, and the results were impressive.  Found magazine was born in part through Eckhart Park, as were many This American Life Stories, magazine articles, investigative reports, books and even film documentaries.  A literary agent who now represents a few of the Eckhart Park stars likens that basketball game to a famous Sex Pistols gig in Manchester, England that the bands Joy Division, the Smiths and the Buzzcocks were all at before they made it big.

As an adult, I owe many of my closest work and personal connections to Saturday morning basketball.  Now living in New York, many of my friends and associates here are people I threw a bounce pass too, or stole the ball from.  Between 2003-and today almost half of the basketball crowd migrated to New York, setting up a sort of Chicago diaspora.  Recently we decided to reconvene and start a new incarnation of the game at a Brooklyn church gym.  It will never be the same as the original, but the spirit is there.

When I catch a few minutes of an NBA game now, I smile, and am glad I don’t really feel the urge to stay and watch, that it doesn’t mean all that much to me.  Just think if long ago, on a rainy Chicago afternoon, a group of creative people had decided to sit inside and watch basketball on the television instead of get out and play the sport themselves, despite their athletic shortcomings.  The world would have been deprived of some wonderful talents and creations.

PS- We’re  Playing Basketball…

From the Vault

Haaavard November 10, 2007

In honor of college football season, I thought I’d dust this off.  It was originally run on Sports Illustrated’s website

 Between the Red Sox‘s season-saving victory over Cleveland, the annual Head of Charles Regatta and the Bikram Yoga regional championships (no, this is not a joke), Saturday was heaven on earth for any Boston sports fan. But the most historic event took place with very little fanfare. That’s right, Harvard and Princeton battled for the 100th time on the gridiron.

I was on hand for the big event and asked everyone I could find — from coeds to old timers — about the significance of the game and most returned my question with a chuckle. Others gave me an empty look and returned to smoking cigars and fixing their VERITAS lapel pins. Needless to say, this wasn’t exactly Ohio State-Michigan.

One exception was Harvard junior Blake Brown, who was flipping burgers and drinking beers with 30 other members of the H-Club, a school sponsored tailgate organization. Brown apologizes for the low turnout. “It’s 12:30 on Saturday, and most students are sleeping or doing homework. We’re trying to not be those kids.”

On the bright side, Brown says the beer was paid for by the University. ” Harvard paid for this whole tailgate. Our tuition is finally doing something for us.”

All told there are just over 100 people gearing up for the game in the tailgate area. I move over to the Princeton side to see if the Tigers are any more ferocious. Pete Allen and Collin Anderson greet me and recount their hijinks from last night.

“We went up to Cambridge and walked through their territory last night. All I can say is go big or go home.”

Pete and Collin are decked in bright orange shirts, orange foam No. 1 fingers and bright orange hunting hats. They look like construction cones. These two friends try to muster a few taunts, calling Harvard fans “lackluster,” and telling them to “Warm up the bus, it’s a long way back to Cambridge.”

But they say the reason they came to the game is to convene with the notable Princeton community. “You’ll get people here who graduated eighty years ago,” Allen says.

Harvard alum Bill Temby is not quite that old, but he did graduate from Harvard just after World War II. “I’ve been to every Yale game since 1946 except for two.”

Temby is loyal to Harvard football in part because it has maintained the spirit of collegiate sports. “These are people who will graduate, take their place in life, not a whole lot different than if they hadn’t played football.”

As I make my way into the 30,000 seat coliseum that is Harvard Stadium, I am struck by two things. First, how can a school with an endowment of around $30 billion have a football stadium with no actual seats, just concrete slabs? Second, how did I buy a ticket to a football game and wind up at a Brooks Brothers fashion shoot?

At just about any other college football stadium, the crowd would be a sea of beer stained sweatshirts and windbreakers. At Harvard, gameday apparel consists of bow ties, tweed blazers and khakis. I sit down in front of a guy named Sumner and a few rows down from a Kennedy (I wasn’t sure which one, but the woman in the row behind me wouldn’t shut up about it). The three gentlemen in front of me are decked out in cardigans and nibble on Ben and Jerry’s ice cream bars. One of them yells at friend who passes in a suit and tie, “You look dapper. You know this isn’t a political fundraiser.”

Laughter ensues, but if I did not know better, I would say that is exactly what is going on here. Much of the crowd is wearing nametags with their graduation year and the years of any legacies they may have produced. Firm handshakes and million dollar smiles abound.

As I watch Harvard‘s lone baton twirler spin and drop her baton for the fifth time, I have to smile. Yes, she’s had more drops than the Crimson receivers, but she’s out there because she wants to be. Nobody gave her or anyone on the field a scholarship to be here. Student athletes do not go to Harvard or Princeton for football, and maybe that is partly why the game is fun. Everybody is an amateur, including the fans. It is competitive, but it’s just a game.

In this century old rivalry the prevailing attitude is that life will go on, which is a good thing when you consider who is in the crowd. If these powerful Ivies got too worked up about a little football game, stock markets might crash, politicians fall, and who knows what other catastrophes would hit. Yes, the world can rest easy tonight knowing that a good natured football game happened this weekend, and few will remember.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/web/COM1060144/2/index.htm

The Hardman effect

The Center of the Universe

Walking home last night around 1 a.m., a siren started blaring, followed by euphoric screaming and a loud rhythmic thumping coming from the thousands of bars from Wall Street to the Bronx.  The beat was fists pounding on tables, the reason, the Yankees had just pulled out another extra inning win, scoring in the 13th inning to beat the LA Angels.  

I smiled at the excitement, but I was not surprised, for two reasons.

The Yankees always seem to find a way to win.

And, more importantly, I’m in town.

Statistics make the baseball world go round, in fact some dedicate their entire careers to pouring over batting averages and E.R.A’s.  And then there are some more obscure winning indicators, like where is Hardman when the World Series starts.

Fact: in 2004 the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in almost a century.  I was in Boston at the time.

Also Fact: in 2005 the Chicago White Sox won their first World Series in almost a century.  I was there, in Chicago, for the month of October.  

In 2006, exhausted from my World Series success, I took a break and lived in Peru, thankfully avoiding a boring St. Louis Cardinals win.

But I was back again in 2007, a second Red Sox World Series triumph was presided upon by none other than…ME!    I was in Boston for the month of October.

I spent 2008 in Sri Lanka, which, certainly no coincidence, was one of the more successful years for the national Cricket team (close enough).  

And now I’m back again, it’s October, World Series time, and if you are a betting person, you are wise to note that I am squarely in New York.

Hasta la Victoria Siempre!

Well…he did it.  

It wasn’t pretty…but he did it.  Diego did it.

 

This from a B. Aires paper.  Some photos and videos…

http://www.ole.clarin.com/notas/2009/10/15/seleccion/02019160.html

I myself watched the game at New York’s soccer haven, Nevada Smith’s, with a couple hundred Argentinos and probably two good natured Uruguayos .

Here’s a little video I took after the late winning goal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMuv9WJrJcI

Suerte…

Judgement Day

Maradona’s Lament

Today is the last day of qualifying for next summer’s World Cup in South Africa.  Most of the expected guests have already booked their place in the tournament, including the dominant, Brazil, Germany, Italy, and the perennial qualifier Team USA.  But there is one glaring omission from the list. Argentina, which plays some of the most beautiful football in the world, and features the game’s premier player, Lionel Messi, has waited until the 11th hour to take care of business.  The Argentines sit in 4th place in their South American qualifying group, and tonight they travel across the Rio Plate to neighboring Uruguay, who sit just below them in the 5th spot.  

Argentina normally has long since assured its spot in the finals by this stage of the World Cup process.  So what’s different this time? Well…many conjecture it has something to do with iconic player Diego Maradona, the star of Argentina’s last World Cup championship team.  In 1986 he led the team to glory in Mexico City, and solidified his place as one of the greatest, dribbling around the entire England team to score, and most notorious, using the “hand of god” to score a fake header, of all time.  

Since a decade of masterful international football for his country and professionally in Spain and Italy, Diego retired at the age of 37 and took a bit of a different path.  He tried his hand at a few diversions including cocaine addiction, obesity, popular TV show host, and politics(he befriended Castro and Chavez and led anti-Bush rallies)

But Argentina likes a good redemption story, especially when it comes to its celebrities and its football teams, and if you belong to both categories, you are, indeed, closer to god.  If Evita had lived longer, she probably would have gotten a crack at being the coach of the Argentine national team.

Maradona’s road home started with his getting clean, then having his stomach stapled and recovering at a Cuban spa, there was a little lapse when he was caught celebrating an Argentine tennis victory in Moscow by peeing on incoming traffic from a bus, but he overcame that too.  To put it simply, Maradona’s ability to survive himself, think Rolling Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards as a role model,  paved the way to his full redemption and current job, coach of the team he once led to glory.  

But the man who inspired so many with his fluid, brilliant style on the soccer pitch has been unable to get his team to do the same.  In a must win game on Saturday against lowly Peru, the worst team by far in South America, rumor has it the Argentine players were begging the Peruvians to roll over.  A controversial last minute winner let the Argentines escape with a 2-1 win, and set up today’s battle with fellow mate’ lovers(seriously, the stadium will probably set a record for thermos’ and green teeth smiles) Uruguay.  In order to pull of his latest recovery act, Diego may need to spur his squad to channel the bruised, battered, but resilient man he became, not the young, graceful, energetic player he used to be.  If not, we might see a press conference next week featuring Evita in a soccer jersey.  Come on Diego…

In honor of today’s game, and Argentina, one of my favorite countries, I am republishing a story from a 2006 trip to Buenos Aires.  Vamos!

The Fraternity
a dispatch from Buenos Aires

The aging proprietor has his back to the TV as he pours house wine into a dime store glass reserved for tap water in most parts of the world. Wine flows like water here, which is evident as the barkeep heaves a jug up to his shoulders and directs the red flow into a funnel. The funnel leads to some green glass bottles whose faded labels suggest they have seen some use over years, not days. The barkeep squints through thick prescription glasses as his pour splashes onto his burgundy apron, a cloth shield that absorbs the red drops perfectly. He is still pouring a few minutes later when he begins to bark at the TV. Although the barkeep has yet to actually gaze at the screen he yells with such confidence that this must be a routine. A series of mumbled explicatives stream out with a climax of, “You Suck.” The 12 patrons of Tabare Café-Bar take their maestro’s lead and chime in with their own variations on “You Suck.” 
The object of disdain is a soccer game and in particular the home team, Boca Juniors, a capable squad that has just taken a 1-0 lead. In fact the Boca players are more than capable, seemingly unbeatable as they dance around their helpless opponents as if intoxicated with the spirit of the tango, a dance that got its start a few blocks away from the stadium.
Just a few days before Boca Juniors was rated the best soccer club in the world.
To this the unimpressed reply, “You Suck.”

Is Tabare Café-Bar enemy territory? Are these men watching their team get beat by bitter rivals? A quick glance around the room provides a response. The walls are covered with three things, a layer of grease from years of short order meals, dozens of pictures of Christ in various poses, and Boca Juniors.
Welcome to Buenos Aires, a city where you can be the best in the world and in the eyes of locals you still “suck.”
On a late Sunday afternoon the first service of the day, mass, is over, and the second, soccer, is just getting going. The Boca stadium, also known as the Bombonero because it is shaped like a box of chocolates, is filled to capacity with screaming fans. The general mellowness of Café Tabare, a Boca stronghold, sits in direct contrast to the scene on the TV above. The feeling is that these men could easily be at the game but why bother.
The strongest glimpse of emotion in this discrete Boca shrine comes from a picture of Christ who sheds a tear as he embraces a lamb. The picture sits just to the left of a bottle of whiskey. Nearby is a team photo of Boca Juniors in their world recognized blue and yellow jerseys looking particularly cocky after winning yet another trophy. If these near perfect footballers suck, it begs to wonder what these hard to please locals make of Christ, god’s version of perfection.

Perhaps upon reading the bible for the first time in parochial school they were likewise unimpressed. Christ’s accomplishment of turning water into wine conjured a “You Suck,” because he didn’t turn grains of sand into chorizo as a complimentary feat.
This seems plausible as the chorus of boo’s increases as Boca passes the ball effortlessly around the field.
The mostly 50 something crowd continues to ignore the soccer game except for the occasional glance when the announcers’ voices pick up. They are more engrossed in a game of cards that is being contested with dried lima beans instead of money.

A cat skirts across the room at the sound of a dog barking across the street. The cat disappears behind a curtain in the back of the room. A younger man appears from the curtain almost simultaneously. His furry appearance, big curly hair and a scruffy chin, begs a wonder if the cat simply took on a human form so it could drink some wine and catch the soccer game. Cat-man slaps a few patron backs, grabs a beer from the fridge and heads to the kitchen. The bar has begun to transform into a sort of halfway house for local soccer fans. Grease spatters as Cat-man fries something in a large pan. A few minutes later he sits down with a small t-bone steak and proceeds to gnaw at it so vociferously that one expects to hear an animal-inspired growl.
Back on the TV Boca Juniors star forward has just clipped an opposing player from behind and received a red card. Boca´s coach, the controversial Argentinean Ricardo Lavolpe, is up off the bench and screaming. Lavolpe has just returned from a 20 year exile in Mexico where despite coaching numerous professional teams and even the recent Mexican World Cup team he is still considered a loser and not Argentine enough. Lavolpe is apparently trying to convince his countrymen otherwise as he has transformed himself into a caricature of a Latin man with gelled hair, jeans, and a white dress shirt unbuttoned almost down to his waste exposing a hairy chest and gold chains. 
The Tabare fraternity don´t talk much about Lavolpe, which is a testament to just how bad he sucks in their opinion. He is an interloper. Go back to Mexico they say.
While the overly emotional Lavolpe kicks equipment and screams at the referee the bar is a sea of calm as it debates the merits of the red card. The Tabare fraternity seems unworried this turn of events will hurt Boca´s chances of winning. This is the paradox of these men, their indifference is equaled only by their self-assured cockiness. They are not unlike their beloved Boca players, except instead of defeating their opponents with physical skill and grace, these guys dribble and pass with their wits and sarcasm. The result is an equally stifling array of talent.
A tall man with slicked back hair and a black second hand suit walks in to a quiet welcome. He stumbles a bit as he approaches the bar, appearing to have already spent the post mass afternoon drinking. Whatever prayers that were said apparently couldn´t save this guy from some rough moments, a big smile reveals no front teeth. The barkeep pours him a glass of red wine and he shoots it like tequila right through the gap in his teeth. Another glass of wine quickly follows. The man in the suit looks up at the TV screen, sees the 1-0 score, shakes his head and throws a ¨You Suck¨ at the Boca players before he turns and heads out the door.
The poker game heats up and everyone is engrossed. They miss a great 2nd goal by Boca off a set play. Cat-man, still pawing at his steak, doesn´t bother to look up at the TV but is apparently paying attention as he begins to yell por fin! por fin! Finally! Finally! Boca is doing something. The barkeep is across the room at the makeshift poker table losing badly and almost out of beans. He goes back to the bar cracks open a bottle of coke and grabs a pastry from a display case, tearing off half with his incisors as he heads back to face his poker reality. As the game wears on and the Barkeep gets more involved, a sort of open house starts to develop as patrons grab food and drink as they feel like it. A few men grab handfuls of ice from the freezer and dump them into glasses, forming a line in front of a bottle of whiskey. The barkeep grabs another pastry from the display case and eats it quickly. He is back a few minutes later for a third.
The tall man in the suit walks back in the door with wet hair and a change of clothes. He is now wearing a pink golf shirt. Mr. Tall continues on to the bar and picks up right where he left off, shooting glasses of wine, although this time he is mixing a little water in to dull the effect or perhaps so he can drink more.
The Barkeep is now back behind the bar rummaging around for something. He checks a shelf that hosts a curiously eclectic shrine: tabs of aspirin, white out, a figurine of the Virgin Mary flanked by incense and a shot of rum, a flashlight, and an enormous jar of olives. The barkeep gives up for whatever he was looking for and turns his attention to the jar of olives. He sticks his arm in up to the elbow and rummages around for a good juicy prize. After a minute of fishing he finally snatches a keeper and holds it up as if a jeweler looking at a priceless diamond. The barkeep then pops the 24 karrot olive into his mouth and walks back to the poker game.
His grin exudes extreme contentment.
Boca Juniors score a third goal, this time people take note, it is a beautiful curling strike into the left hand corner. A few nods hint at pleasure. 3-0 for Boca.
This strange satisfaction lasts less than a minute as the opposition kicks off and immediately marches down on a lazy Boca defense to score.
The chorus is back, ¨You SUCK!!!¨
Order has been restored.

As the barkeep returns to the poker game a phone rings at the end of the bar. Not a cell phone mind you, no, this is the kind of place where you wouldn´t want to be caught dead with technology. Somebody with a laptop or cell-phone would last about five minutes in Tabare, the evil stares alone would send a man reeling towards the nearest Starbucks. No, this is a circa 1970 payphone that is shaped like a box with a coin-slot at the top.
One of the patrons answers it and begins to chat up the other line. It is not clear if the call was for him or not. In this time-warp of a bar details like that don´t really matter. What matters is that you can simultaneously embellish and complain about the best things in life. If you embrace the intricate logic that something can both suck and still be the best, then you are not only welcome at Tabare, you can also pour your own drink, grab your own olive, and fry your own steak.
Top that Christ.

Baseball Ghosts

Amidst tragedy there is always hope for a silver lining.  Last night I found myself witnessing a second straight uncharacteristic collapse by my beloved Minnesota Twins.  A base running error and another nightmare of a game by the otherwise cool as a cucumber closer Joe Nathan sealed the fate of my small market big hearted Twins.  Watching the frustration unfold from a Brooklyn bar, surrounded by the enemy(Jeter and A-rod t-shirts), salt was rubbed into my wounds by an oblivious barmaid who gave me two free beers, one for each Yankee homer.  I figured the hops laced novocaine might help, so I kept quite and took my medicine.

When the Twins made the last out, and the hated Yankees rushed the field to celebrate, my gaze wandered from the painful sight, and fixated on the bottom half of the screen.  The Yanks party was a bouncing one, their shoes elevating off the bright green artificial grass carpet.  And then it hit me…there was reason to celebrate, this was the LAST EVER professional baseball game at the sports mausoleum known as the Metrodome.

I have been a baseball fan my entire life, and until adulthood, I had the distinction of having lived in the only two baseball towns at the time with domed stadiums, Minnesota and Seattle(Pacific Northwest).  Defined by perpetual snow and rain, these communities decided to put a roof on their baseball fields in hopes of rendering the elements irrelevant.  It all sounds good, but as Seattle, and then Minneapolis finally admitted, baseball is better wet or cold, than in a climate controlled windowless bubble illuminated by blinding flood lights, where fans feel like they are breathing decades old air and smelling decades old nachos spilled on the concrete stadium steps.

Indeed watching a game at the “Dome” was kind of like being part of a 30 year long ill-fated human experiment with 50,000 other locals.  I always felt like were were being watched by researchers sitting in the luxury boxes with clipboards registering the sustained effects of hot dogs and limited sunlight on a population.  Thank god its over.  As I can’t afford to be an NFL fan, financially or in terms of the willingness to dedicate four hours on a Sunday afternoon to commercials and a few plays, I will probably never go to a Vikings game, now the sole tenant of the Metrodome, which means I may never have to set foot in the stadium ever again.  !!!

So my team is now on vacation thanks to a collapse against baseball’s wealthiest, and this year, arguably most talented team.  But I still love them, in the way you can’t stay mad at your golden retriever after it tracks mud in the house, or your dad when he forgets to pick you up after school.   As a self-declared underdog myself, God could not have assembled a more perfect team for me to embrace.  The Twins are, like the Midwestern sons and daughters they play for, quirky, slightly short, slightly overweight, scrappy, hard working, and persistent.  They are “true” baseball players, as in they are good at hitting the ball, turning the double play, and stealing bases.  After hitting the showers they put on their jeans, flannel shirts, and wire rim glasses, and blend into the local population.  The sculpted, polished, statuesque players fielded by the Yankees could probably excel at lots of sports.  And if they weren’t athletes, they’d be glamorous at something else, male models or something.

If they didn’t have baseball as a career, the Twins players would be UPS delivery guys, or work in the back at a butcher shop, or paint houses.  Second baseman Nick Punto looks like he should be wearing a hard hat and holding a thermos and a lunchpail while he works a construction crane, not batting in the 9th spot and making acrobatic plays in the field.  Punto wouldn’t even make the Yankees as a bat boy, but the Twins don’t go for the big name, expensive guys, that wouldn’t be very Minnesota of them, they employ diamonds in the rough.

As a young sports fan, learning what it meant to really support a team, I was fortunate to have a nemesis who routinely tested my loyalty, and made me into the Twins defender I am today.  My grandma lived in New York and as a recovering alcoholic had switched her addictive behavior to the Yankees.  When she came for her yearly visit, often in October, my mom would take a much needed break from her matriarch and stick both of us in front of the TV to watch the World Series.  I would sit quietly while my grandmother would talk the entire game, filling my head with facts, figures, and anecdotes, from how the batter swung the bat, to how how the announcer called the plays.  She was a PhD in baseball culture and I was her student.  When I reached third grade, and was able to articulate my burgeoning sports obsession, my grandmother started to send me New York Times sports clippings, almost always about the Yankees.  She would underline the passages she liked, and write little cursive critiques to further educate me.

She also called about once a month to talk to my mom in French, which was the thing they shared, and then, ignoring my brothers and my dad, would ask for me.  ”Jesse…your Twins aren’t looking so good.  Why don’t they have more black players? They only have one.” “Actually grandma, they have three.”  ”Well that still isn’t very many.  Is Minnesota racist? Maybe the team would be better if they had more black players.”

The 80s was the era of the Twins first real success winning the 87′ World Series on the backs of a locally born first baseman, a big, white, hunting fanatic named Kent Hrbek, and an exciting black mighty might from the Chicago housing projects named Kirby Puckett.  Those two played their entire careers in Minnesota uniforms, unthinkable in today’s baseball laissez faire marketplace.

The 7 game thriller of a series against the St. Louis Cardinals was the first time I ever really felt the euphoria of being the best.  At that time my family was spending a few years in the Pacific Northwest, and as the sole Midwesterner in my town, I felt like I had the Twins to myself, and proceeded to have a one man parade through my middle school with my gleaming new Twins baseball hat, waiting for kids to congratulate me as I walked by their lockers.  That win also meant my grandmother took me much more seriously.  The Twins winning the World Series meant I was legitimate in her world, the baseball fan equivalent of becoming a man, and her letters started to include a few clippings about Minnesota as well as the Yankees.

When my grandmother died, just after the second Twins World Series championship in 1991, she left me one last thing to acknowledge our deep baseball connection.  My mom returned from the funeral with a gold painted Yankees replica World Series ring that she had wanted me to have.  I held up the piece of memorabilia, put it on my finger for a minute, and then placed it in a box with an autographed photo of former Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto, then the radio voice of the team, who my grandmother was in love with and would write letters to.  I decided I would keep a little Yankees shrine in honor of her, but it would have to remain hidden behind my commemorative Twins World Series Wheaties boxes.

Sitting at a Brooklyn bar last night, watching the Yankees beat the Twins, I kind of wished my grandmother had been there, to sip a Coke, chainsmoke (she would have hated the laws pushing smokers outside), and watch our two teams go head to head.  The now racially diverse Twins team would have made her happy, and she would have complimented me on the sage manager, and star catcher, a local Minnesota boy.  She’d probably also would have high-fived everyone around me after the two Yankee homers in the 7th inning, and celebrated with another cigarette.  And when it was all said and done, her Yankees would have done what she expected them to, dominate, pose for the camera, and go on to the next round, and my Twins did what I expected, overachieved, played hard, and quietly disappeared into the Twin Cities population, like the average Joes they are.

My grandmother was a glamorous lady, who liked being the center of attention, the Yankees were not just her team, they reflected how she felt about herself.  That’s something I learned from her, don’t just like your team, emulate your team, be your team.  So as I walk the streets of New York, enemy territory, I dress modest, keep quiet, and work hard, just like my Twins.  The season is over, but I’ll be carrying the Twins around with me until the first pitch next April.  I can’t wait.