It’s All About Sports!

Dearly beloved,

We are gathered here to celebrate the lives and mourn the passing of two fine men. To be truthful, we don’t really know much about them as men – their wisdom, fairness, ingenuity, compassion, responsibility – so we honour, as we often do, their career accomplishments. They were utterly dedicated to their chosen profession, and paid a great price for that devotion during outstanding careers in the graceful, and brutal, exercise of power. Millions had watched their rise, profited (in ways not easy to account for) from their successes, and muttered quietly about their eventual and inevitable fall. And now they are gone. They were thirty years old.

They still are, actually. Brian Westbrook and LaDainian Tomlinson are running backs, a celebrated but cruel position in the National Football League. The average runner lasts four years in American professional football; WestB and LT were not average, though, having careers exceptional both for their thrilling productivity and longevity. Each is a hero of fans in Philadelphia and San Diego, respectively, and each has been widely admired in America for their toughness, skill and flair on the savage playground that is football.

But they’re done. The Eagles and the Chargers have released these star athletes in what must be among the most blunt displays of the cruelty of professional sport. These are young men, paid absurdly high salaries, to be sure, but their extended excellence – both are possible candidates for their sport’s Hall of Fame – was no protection from the scrap heap when they “lost a step” of speed or, in Westbrook’s case at least, had suffered one two many brain-rattling concussions. They may try to prolong their playing days, no doubt in reduced roles, with other (probably lesser) teams hoping to benefit from their diminishing skills and veteran character. Many hope that they, unlike the majority of sporting stars, don’t cling too long to what was, reminding their fans of how great they had once been. 

Already, some might have muttered in the last season or two, that ain’t Tomlinson, that’s gotta be somebody else just wearing his gear…Hey, didn't Westbrook used to beat that first tackler? So what do you do when you’re 30 and your best years are behind? When sporting kinship, huge paydays, applauding millions and a certain kind of pure striving are over? When what remains is the mind of an athlete and never-ending conviction, but also body aches and a certain lostness? We may resent the money and the godlike stature that athletes are given and, yes, the highs of professional sports stardom are giddy and enviable. But what a fall awaits when your muscles fail and when, as too many find, they are but little prepared for life outside the game.     

Here we are, in jockdom's Most Wonderful Time of the Year -- NBA and NHL playoffs, college basketball just finished, baseball beginning, Master's golf if you consider golf a sport, the NFL draft if you're in serious need of therapy -- and I'm worried. I do hop on cbssports.com a couple of times a week to see who's beating whom in hoops. I live in Ottawa, so the briefest dalliance with local JockRadio tells me more about the NHL smash-mouth Olympics than, strictly speaking, I actually need to know. I guess I'm saying that my personal sports mania may need a shot of sildenafil citrate. 

(And I'm not really "worried". I'm not a complete Peter Pan, and while I've often said that my own immaturity was an advantage in relating to kids, I'm not completely opposed to putting away childish things. But it's interesting. Year after year, I find that I'm content with knowing just a little bit less about pro sports. Watchin' every last game? No need. I've seen so many that it's much more efficient, if I really feel the need, to read a game summary and say Hmm. The Spurs went out in five to the Mavericks. I like the Spurs. So I read to find out why they lost. No Ginobili. Big numbers for Parker and the Big Fundamental, but not enough. So there you go.)

My first thought was brilliant -- they always seem to be -- where else could the wake for Coach Wright be but in the tiny, tiled box of a gym where he spent so many thousands of hours with his "kids", this never-married father of none? The Caledonia Sweatbox, the dim, cramped but comfortable Blue Devils’ lair, where half-court shots were no longer than an NBA three-pointer, where big-footed forwards needed to turn sideways to get their Chuck Taylor high-cuts completely out of bounds…

But what if there are only twenty people there? That gave me pause; even in that bandbox of a gym, twenty voices would make for some unfairly desolate echoes. As it happens, my grand thought was punctured, and for the best. As it is with too many aspects of sporting and educational life these days, the bureaucratic and custodial hoops we’d have had to jump through were too many, so we didn’t celebrate Don Wright’s life of ball-bouncing generosity in the centre court circle of The Gym, as madly poetic as that might have been.

We did better. The community hall we got was perfect. (Its hardwood floor was a far better surface than we ever played on in the old town high school.) What do you need, really, when it’s time to pay tribute to the life of a man – once painfully shy and young and slender, but by his last days grey and limping and carrying too much goddam weight – who gave to our youthfulness and to our kids whatever he had? Nothing but the people, as it turned out, and they were there. We were referees, athletes’ parents, fellow coaches, former players and friends. (I was all of these things. A five-time winner.)

Dave B was there. He had been to Don something I never was: a young coach who got to discover, years later in repeatedly teasing conversations, that he had cut the man we were honouring when Don was an earnest and under-skilled twelve-year-old. Dave and his wife Georgia had made sure, for the last several years, that Coach Donny had a place to go for Christmas dinner. (They also did most of the coffee-making, cookie-dealing and cleanup for the memorial. The Basketball Family lives.) Dave, the nearly legendary “Bart” of the Hamilton hoops community, had been with Don one of “the usual suspects” when it came to college and high school basketball games, especially for girls’ and women’s teams. His eulogy at the service had some good laughs, but it was serious business. It even allowed a glimpse of anger, for Bart wanted it known that his friend, our friend, was more than might’ve met the eye. Bart had seen and heard too much of those who dismissed the Coach as either a has-been or “some old guy, whatever”. He made earnest and teary amends.

Most of those who spoke after Bart were former players, though there were some old friends and fellow coaches that he'd never blown a whistle at. (Come to think of it, he rarely blew one at any of us. He had no interest in the whistle. He wanted his voice to be enough. It was.) The sharing was utterly informal, as Don had insisted and would have liked, but at least one former Ontario West university All-Star, an experienced teacher, had written her remarks in order to have some anchor, some way to not “lose it”. Mind you, she’d already lost it twice before her turn came, and duly lost it again, but my goodness, weren’t these the best kind of “losses”: of composure, of emotional restraint, of the kind of busy life-living that sometimes leads us to forget to say “thanks” to those who built us? Cindy and I weren't the only ones to lose it more than once, and we gained so much by really feeling what we felt.

There were about 100 of us. It was a grand reunion, including the core of my own high school team from three decades gone. Present, too, were about ten young women, high schoolers who looked a little bewildered and felt, for a while, out of place. They were members of the last teams that my old buddy Don, sore and often discouraged, gave his last weary hours of coaching to. They honoured “Mr. Wright” by their presence, and they went away knowing more of the man than they had, and wishing perhaps that they had found a way to give something back to him. We all did. 

So long, Coach. Thanks for all the sweat, the hope, the ideals. Keep caring for us as we do for you. Fare well, brother.   

My, now, that was quick! After finding Game One to be nearly interminable, suddenly the entire series is over. Yikes. A couple of the games were close, but the Rockies were never really in it. In basketball, opposing coaches will sometimes try to "freeze" a shooter before a critical free-throw by calling a timeout. Or even two. Essentially, the Rockies froze themselves by sweeping the National League playoffs, while the Red Sox needed seven games to take the ALCS.

Baseball's an everyday game. More than any other sport -- though fans of the Ottawa Senators felt that their long layoff hurt their Stanley Cup chances last year -- baseball is an everyday game and a subtle one. Timing and touch are critical. For the most part, you can't rely on energy and hustle to overcome accumulated playing rust, and as the Colorados showed, eight days is an eternity. Them Sox sher can hit, though, can't they?

8:16 p.m.

What a great television! Thanks, Wendy and Bernie!

It's the 103rd "World Series" of baseball, named not for its global reach -- though the game is getting more international -- but because it was initially sponsored by a long-defunct newspaper called the New York Globe. (You could look it up, and I hope you will. Going Google-free tonight.)

The participating teams are proving that baseball is a sport that is the least reliabl of all the North American major sports in having its "best team" win. After all, baseball is a marathon 162-game schedule, and the playoff series can end in a shorter period than an individual engagement with another team in-season. So here we are, with the Red Sox having come from behind in the American League championship series to win. No surprise here, really. Boston is a big-money team and dominated their division most of this season. However, Colorado had to win 14 out of their last 15 games just to qualify for a tie-breaker, and they have now won eight straight post-season games to take the National League title. Whoever is hottest at the end seems to be the team to watch...

8:24 p.m.

Who gets the National Anthem for Game One of the World Series? "The Pride of Boston, and the epitome of our culture, Maestro John Williams..." At the time when he first won an Oscar for the score to Indiana Jones, he was the conductor of the Boston Pops orchestra. So we had brass in the outfield instead of some brassy blonde. I approve.

Pre-game introductions highlighted by one of baseball's specialties, a close-up shot of Boston manager Terry Francona launching a brown spurt of tobacco juice for the edification of all. Spitting is the thing. Country ball.

Actually, no. The true highlight, and no sarcasm here, is having Boston Red Sox icon Carl Yastrzemski throw out the ceremonial first pitch. (He bounced it to the plate. But he's still a hero from my youth. I changed my batting stance as a 10-year-old in homage to his highheld bat. The last winner of the Triple Crown, in 1967.) Quite splendiferously cool to see the visiting Rockies lined up along their dugout's top step to watch the great Hall of Famer demonstrate his old-man arm. And he's so central to the Red Sox team's painful mystique, as all his greatness and all those seasons never brought him to the Series championship. They didn't break the so-called "Curse of the Babe" -- they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1492 or so and had never won the big one since until the 2004 exorcism. 

 8:44 p.m.

Wow, this Josh Beckett is all I've heard. The starting pitcher for the BoSox just threw bullets, nothing but fastballs in the high 90s to strike out three straight Rockies. Yikes. (That was 90 as in miles per hour. This may be the World Series, but we are in the Excited States of Anti-Metric Measurement.) But here comes the pride of Canada, the first Canuck to start as the pitcher of a Series game since Reggie Cleveland did in the mid-70s. Jeff Francis, a big left-hander with stuff and style.

8:50 p.m.

Wow. Runty little second baseman hits it out. Dustin Pedroia hit a big home run in the ALCS, too. Second batter Kevin Youkilis lines a double. David "Big Papi" (this reference to him is already getting annoying) Ortiz moves the runner over, and Manny Ramirez drills the first runner home. Not a good start for the Canadian.

8:58 p.m.

The black and purple/blue of the Rockies' uniforms remind me of the cover to Black Sabbath's Master of Reality album. Those little armless vests don't work for me at all, especially with the guys showing off their guns with polyester long-sleeved undershirts. 3-0 at the end of one inning, and the Rockies would love for the rain to turn into a monsoon. One of the many things that make baseball a distinct game: it's outdoors, and you can't play it properly in anything more than the lightest of rains.

9:07 p.m.

The Rockies are going to need a second time through the order, after their eight days off, to catch up with Beckett. Four straight Ks now. Whoa! Why bother throwing the curveball? It results in a double that nearly went over the massive Green Monster, the left-field wall in Boston's Fenway Park. Nice to see a park like Fenway in the World Series, not just a boutique field designed to evoke nostalgia for the days when baseball truly was the National Pastime.

Hey, and there's my new shortstop hero, Troy Tulowitzki, ripping a double to get the Rockies on the board. (I was a fan, still am, of Khalil Greene of the San Diego Padres, though I haven't seen him much; but hey, he belongs to the Baha'i Faith, and the minority religionists have to stick together.) Some of his teammates have been waving fairly helplessly, but two doubles in the bottom of the first may have broken the Beckett mystique, just a little. Baseball is, perhaps more than any other team sport, such a mental exercise. You most often can't overcome poor play with hustle, effort, all that "old college try". In true baseball-speak, you gotta try EASIER.  

9:37 p.m.

Lots of car commercials, of course. Boy toy night at the television. There was one that had, though, more than just jolting music and chaotic camera angles. There was actually an appeal to ideals and ethics, a frontal attack on our tendency to materialist impatience. But I can't remember what the product was. Ah. I'm sure I'll have another chance at it. It played, after all, twice in the first half-hour of the broadcast. And it's raining hard now in Boston. Oh, oh...

9:51 p.m.

It's the top of the fourth inning, less than halfway through the regulation ballgame, and all the young baseball fans in North America, at least in the Eastern Time Zone, should be long gone to dreamland. And this is one of many reasons that baseball is dying out in large parts of the continent. I used to race home from school to catch the end of Series games that started in the afternoon. Money, money, money. Seven Ks for Beckett in four innings. Nice. ("K" is the baseball scorebook symbol for a strikeout. Boston fans have been provided with "K" placards by a local radio station. This being the Series, they may not require JumboTron appeals to "Make noise" and "Clap your hands!" I am ever an optimist.) 

10:12 p.m.

Canada's Pitcher just escaped the fourth inning, but there's another crooked number on the Red Sox scoreboard. (The occasional one run doesn't always hurt, but those bent numerals...) Francis may be done for the night, in which case he will continue one of the odd little facts that litter, even more than they always have in baseball, this number-crazy game: no Canadian has ever been the winning pitcher in a Series game. A nice little piece of conversation about Francis a couple of innings ago: born in Vancouver, named for a legendary Montreal Canadiens star (Jeff for Geoffrion, nicknamed "Boom Boom" as the hard-shooting Hab also was). And never learned to skate. So the American broadcast duo has a little fun with that, but I'm thinking What? You name AND nickname your kid after a hockey star and never let a good little athlete play the game? Not that every Canadian boy has to be a hockey head -- none of my four have, although the youngest gets outdoor hockey in Canada's cold capital's outdoor rinks -- but there's a parental oddity there that I'd like to know more about.  

The rain has eased, and now the necessary five innings to make the game official are in the book. All Red Sox. More of those little ballcaps with the old-fashioned 'B' on them will be adorning male heads all over the continent.

 10:40 p.m.

And my attention is wandering. Past my bedtime. But I can watch Manny Ramirez, one of the oddest-looking great athletes ever, hit. Three hits tonight. Everybody knows a hitter has to keep his head down on the ball, but he's perfect. Wow. A flaky dude, a chaotic and sometimes even incompetent outfielder, but what a hitter. Okay, perfect? Sorry. My error. Had he been a left-hand hitter, now then he'd be perfect. Just detected another Howden error: Red Sox captain Jason Varitek does indeed wear the traditional knee-high knickers and tall red stockings. (I lost it in the sun.)

10:56 p.m.

12-1. Fifth inning. Another Colorado relief pitcher. I need a relief bloggist.

11:02 p.m.

The Red Sox are still up, now 13-1, and they've finally gotten the 3rd out of a 5th inning that seemed to have started yesterday. Cameras just caught a shot of writer Stephen King in a rain poncho, reading a magazine. You may have heard of his novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Okay, I haven't read it either, but Gordon was a Red Sox pitcher with a fine curveball, as I recall. Naturally, he was called "Flash". And here's another one of those things about baseball: no sport has been written about better. There are lots of short stories, a few fine novels and tonnes of creative documentary writing about the game. It's the only game, I used to joke -- and I love baseball -- that's more interesting to talk about than to play. Almost true.

Macho guitars and turbo-charged video about a minivan from Toyota; at the end is slipped in the printed fact that it has the best fuel efficiency among grocery-getters. Not hard to see that peak oil hasn't entirely penetrated North American consciousness. And then comes the ad for recreational gas-guzzling, the Polaris ATV.

11:26 p.m.

Wendy and Bernie just got home. They're the guys with the three televisions, any one of which is at my disposal when my lust for sport cannot be sated by radio or on-line reports the next morning.

Just when I thought there was nothing more to say, here comes Ashanti singing "God Bless America" as the since-9-11 7th inning stretch song of choice. No more taking anybody out to the ballgame. Patriotism. Bowed heads. (An echo, of course, of the U.S. Air Force fly-by to punctuate "The Star-Spangled Banner". Bowed heads and blood lust. Ooh. Did I just say that?) The extreme patriotism of Americans has always been an irritant to me, Canada having traditionally been a little quieter about our national pride (except certain hockey blowhards). We're getting a little more vociferous, in our reserved Scottish way, and I wince about it sometimes. Our pride is not mainly based on military might, so I feel less compromised about our occasional chest-thumping. But the attachment of national glory to every single athletic contest? I mean the solemnity of l'hymne nationale before each game beyond high school. Surely this is a tradition that, if it weren't so deep and patriotism such an American article of faith, would have long outlived its usefulness. And to add the alternative national anthem for a mid-game bit of national self-importance is sickly sweet icing upon a cake that's past its best-before date. I wanted to paste my favourite little bumper sticker over Wendy and Bernie's TV: God Bless ALL The Nations.

And on in relief for the Red Sox is Mike Timlin. Mike Timlin? He's still living? He was relieving for the Blue Jays last millennium, for goodness' sake. And speaking of great relievers, the other Canadian chucker won't likely get off the bench for the Red Sox. Whither the Eric Gagné of old, he of the unhittable Dodgers closeouts? Hard not to be a bit suspicious about how he fuelled his earlier exploits, but maybe he's just old. I know that feeling.

12:02 a.m.

Sheesh. Error number three for the typist. Gagné is in, but this IS, after all, a twelve-run ballgame. We're finally in the ninth inning. We'll soon be home. And my current favourite name just made the catch for the Sox in centre field: yes, friends, Coco Crisp is in the game as a defensive replacement.

12:07 a.m.

Big Eric closes the game with a strikeout. Yawn. Zoom, zoom, zoom. More car sales. Time to jump into my car.