I Watch Sports Because I Like Being Angry

Ghana has just been eliminated from the World Cup in penalty kicks against Uruguay. This might be the single most tragic sporting event that I have ever seen. On Facebook, a friend of mine wrote, "More proof there is no god." Upon reflection, however, I replied, "this is more proof that there is a god, and that he likes to see us suffer." With that in mind, allow me to recount some of the greatest personal tragedies that I have suffered in the cruel world of sports.



January 22, 1989 - Super Bowl XXIII: San Francisco 49ers 20, Cincinnati Bengals 16. This is the game that started my long history of sports heartbreaks and near-misses. I was four years old when this Super Bowl took place, and on that day I decided that I was a die-hard Cincinnati Bengals fan. I probably didn't even know where Cincinnati was - I still have a hard time spelling it - but as soon as I saw those helmets, I knew who I was rooting for. Plus, they had players with the names "Icky Woods" and "Boomer Esaison." How cool is that? And when the Bengals took a 16-13 in the Fourth Quarter, I was certain that they would win. But then Joe Montana led the 49ers on a historic 85-yard drive, connecting with Jerry Rice for the winning touchdown with 57 seconds left in the game. I broke into tears at the end of that game. It would not be the last time.

June 14, 1992 - NBA Finals, Game 6: Chicago Bulls 97, Portland Trail Blazers 93. This game is the reason why I still can't bring myself to root for the Bulls. People often forget how good the Portland Trail Blazers of Clyde Drexler and "Rip City" actually were. On the road, and facing elimination, the Blazers came out hot and were up on Chicago by 15 going into the Fourth Quarter. But then they flopped, scoring only 6 points in the final 4 minutes, getting outscored 33-14 for the period. This series also started the strange tradition of the Blazers getting "commercialized" - that famous picture of Jordan smiling and shrugging is from game 1. But how many people recognize Cliff Robinson standing around stupidly in the background?



June 4, 2000 - NBA Western Conference Finals, Game 7: Los Angeles Lakers 89, Portland Trail Blazers 84. Speaking of which.... In L.A. the Trail Blazers went into the Fourth Quarter with a 75-60 lead over Kobe and Shaq and the Lakers. Portland had completely dominated the game, and looked certain to advance to the Finals, where they would be the heavy favorites over the Indiana Pacers. That's when my Grandma - who I love very much and am very grateful towards, and who happened to live in L.A. and be a Lakers fan - called and offered to buy me tickets to the Finals if the Blazers won. If. She cursed them. Portland went on to choke up the largest lead ever in a Game 7, and L.A. went on to win their first of three championships. Oh, and this:



That's Rasheed Wallace, Portland HOFer Scottie Pippen, and Brian Grant all getting dunked on. Nice going, fellas.


May 31, 2002 - NBA Western Conference Finals, Game 6: Los Angeles Lakers 106, Sacramento Kings 102. The rest of the games on the list are not quite on the traumatic scale of the first three; either I get older, and so the stakes are not as great, or I don't feel the same kind of loyalty that I developed as a kid, or simply that the magnitude of the collapse wasn't as epic. For example, I've never been a Kings fan, but I supported them because they were from a small market, because they were "scrappy"*, and because they were playing against the Lakers. But this game is on this list because it was the infamous Tim Donaghy game, when the Lakers shot 40 free throws, 27 of them in the Fourth Quarter. People from Portland had been complaining about the refs' bias for the Lakers for two years. After this game, other folks began to see what we had been talking about.

Or what about:

October 16, 2003 - ALCS, Game 7: New York Yankees 6, Boston Red Sox 5. This one lost some of it's tragic element the next year, when Boston got revenge. Of course, I doubt that real Red Sox fans would agree with me on that one.

July 9, 2006 - World Cup Final: Italy 1, France 1. (PK's 5-3.) The head butt hear round the world. I put this one on the list because this is the game that started my deep hatred of penalty kicks as a way to determine the winners of soccer games.

January 1, 2010 - Rose Bowl: Ohio State Buckeyes 26, Oregon Ducks 17. At first, I was devastated by this loss. Then I realized that the Ducks had made history just by winning the Pac- um ... X.... Then they started stealing laptops. Can't wait for September.

And now...

July 2, 2010 - World Cup Quarterfinal: Uruguay 1, Ghana 1. (PK's 4-2.) I generally don't byt the whole "they deserve to win" argument that sportscasters often make. New Orleans didn't need a Super Bowl. They need federal aid. Cleveland doesn't need an NBA title. They need a functioning infrastructure. But even I get sucked into the whole narrative of a game meaning more than just a game. Especially when the sport is taken to a national level. Ghana deserved to win this match. And they were robbed.

The Universe is cruel.

* This may be one of the reasons why I keep being crushed by my teams' ultimately coming up short. I have since learned that "scrappy" is usually code for short, untalented, dirty, and, unfortunately, white.

Resolutions Were Meant to be Broken

I have been meaning to post about this incident for awhile now, but for some reason or another it just has never come out right. So now I am just going to go ahead with it, and damn the torpedoes.

Every Tuesday and Thursday - before my internship at the publishing company - I stop by the Starbucks on Randolph and Wabash for a tall coffee and a croissant, or, barring the availability of any croissants, a blueberry muffin. And, barring the availability of a blueberry muffing, a glazed doughnut, although I personally believe that Starbucks' doughnuts are gross. I just need something to out in my stomach in the morning.

Anyways, back in January - during that period of unbearable coldness - I was sitting in this one particular Starbucks when a homeless man wandered in. Despite being African-American, his hands were white, as in, they were frostbitten to the point of total lack of blood circulation. My guess is that he had spent at least one night out on the streets, maybe more. Also, I don't think that he was altogether there upstairs... he kept talking to himself and was weirdly dancing to the lite jazz that they were playing on the Starbucks corporate radio at eight in the morning. Muttering to himself, he sat down at the counter by the window next to me, when W-, the store manager who, every morning, greets me and every other customer with a "How are you, honey, and what will you have today?", said to this guy: "Excuse me, sir, you'll have to buy something in order to sit there." He responded by getting up from the stool where he was sitting and doing this weird little dance across the cafe floor.

"Sir, please buy something, or I'm going to have to ask you to leave!" said W-.

"Ah, fuck you!" said the guy.

"Sir, I am the store manager, and if you don't buy something or leave, I'm going to have to call the police." said W-.

"You ain't the store manager!" said, the guy, shutting his eyes and rising up in his tippie-toes. "And you know how I know's that? 'Cause you's black!"

And I guess that this is what shocked me about this whole episode. Because, even though it seemed rather apparent to me that this vagrant man wasn't sane, he still had the presence of mind to acknowledge the fact that black people don't own things, that they cannot have a place of authority because they are black, that no black person (let alone a black woman like W-.) could ever rise to the position of store manager.

No cops were called. W-. got pissed and she and her co-worker - also a black woman - showed the homeless man the door. It was cold outside - well below zero - so I don't know if he had the resources or the presence of mind to survive. After he left, the ladies had a laugh at how crazy he was, and then got back to their jobs of serving coffee at (now) eight-thirty in the morning.

And I suppose that my point is this: that four months ago, the homeless man would have had a point, that W-., even if she dared to call herself store manager and even if she had some power to decide who can or cannot come into her store, was never in a position of real power, because she was black. Nobody really ever had to take her seriously. But that the election of Barack Obama has changed alot of that. That is, that he's not a symbol of African-American advancement in America to places of power; he is it. You can't call his position of power merely symbolic or ceremonial. And, not that that's an end to racism in America or anything, but it is the beginning of the end to the idea that any authority wielded by African-Americans is as nothing more than a place-holder, that W.- was only acting out the will of the white male who is her boss. (And, I guess a little unfortunately for this narrative, happens to be Jewish.)

Because Obama is the boss. He's the store manager. He gets to decide who gets to eat and who doesn't.

This Doesn't Seem Very Science-y to Me

From the New York Times article, "Study Sees an Obama Effect Lifting Black Test-Takers":

researchers have documented what they call an Obama effect, showing that a performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.

Excuse Me? Could you repeat that, please?

Researchers in the last decade assembled university students with identical SAT scores and administered tests to them, discovering that blacks performed significantly poorer when asked at the start to fill out a form identifying themselves by race. The researchers attributed those results to anxiety that caused them to tighten up during exams in which they risked confirming a racial stereotype.

Uh-huh. So... you're saying that the consistent under-performing of Blacks on standardized tests in America is not due to socio-economic conditions like failing urban schools, high unemployment rates, and the prevalence of single-income homes, but rather of "anxiety that causes them to tighten up during exams in which they risked confirming a racial stereotype." Right. If only Black people could learn how to relax and take life so seriously, maybe they could be more successful.

But it's all fixed now! As of Noon, EST, on January 20, 2009, the problem was solved forever!

On the initial test last summer, whites on average correctly answered about 12 of 20 questions, compared with about 8.5 correct answers for blacks, Dr. Friedman said. But on the tests administered immediately after Mr. Obama’s nomination acceptance speech, and just after his election victory, black performance improved, rendering the white-black gap “statistically nonsignificant,” he said.

Thank God, now that African-American problem is taken care of. Now if only women could follow Hillary Clinton's example and start earning higher wages at work.

At least this guy seems to remember his Hume:

“It’s a nice piece of work,” said G. Gage Kingsbury, a testing expert who is a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association, who read the study on Thursday.

But Dr. Kingsbury wondered whether the Obama effect would extend beyond the election, or prove transitory. “I’d want to see another study replicating their results before I get too excited about it,” he said.

I also may name my first-born, "G. Gage Kingsbury".

Happy Memorial Day

So the skies finally cleared up over the South Side of Chicago this evening, and I decided that it was time for me to take a break from editing my thesis paper (due Tuesday!), put on some pants, and take a stroll through Harold Washington Park. (Of which I think there are at least a dozen throughout the city.) The park was filled with families enjoying the holiday, barbecuing, listening to music, chasing their kids. It was all quite pastoral. I flaneured from one end of the park to the other, and then reached a bench and sat down to take in the sights.

And then I had one of those moments. You know, one of those, "I am the only white person in the entire park" kind of moments. Not that it bothered or really me (that would be more "racist") but it's just a very strange feeling. And the strangest part about it - and I don't think I'm being paranoid here - is that a lot of the other people in the park noticed that I was the only white guy there, too.

Granted, city parks are designed to encourage spectacle. They're akin to shopping malls and airports, in that they're anticipating that some people will be there just to sit and watch complete strangers mill about. The trade-off (unlike, say, voyeurism) is that the people who go to just watch have to allow to let themselves be watched by everyone else, too. The idea is that everyone is equally exposed to everyone else.

But all that changes when you're the minority (or, even worse, a singularity.) If you've got some quality that marks you out from the rest of the crowd, say, you've got a second head or a chainsaw instead of a left arm, then it is only natural for you to stand out in the crowd. But if you have a different skin color than everyone else, then you ought to be prepared to have yourself put on display for everyone else to gawp at.

Now, I'm pretty use to being such a spectacle for others - I believe that the charitable way to describe my gait would be "drunken stumble," even when I'm sober - but there is an undeniably different sense altogether when you are the sole representation of your particular ethnicity. Fortunately, the sentiment that I drew amongst the other people at the park was mostly, "Is he lost? What is that white boy doing? Is he drunk? How can we help him?" Because I know from experience that the reaction made when an African-American wanders into a white community is closer to, "Is he lost? What is that negro doing? Is he drunk? Should we call the police?"

I guess that all I'm saying is that it's a lot better to be a white boy lost in a black neighborhood than it is to be a black boy lost in a white neighborhood.