As an adult I have a not unfounded fear related to participating in Organized Team Sports. A game of Thanksgiving softball in the park, you say? Instantly, I envision myself idle and parched in the outfield, cloud-gazing, ruminating about breakfast sandwiches and blue frost gatorade, a stretch of idleness punctuated by one heart-flailing holy shit moment. The ball is near me! I must lunge at it! Or at least, pretend to be moved by its proximity to my kneecaps.
The first and last time I engaged in a friendly game of team-building dodgeball was in the spirit of ingratiating myself with new co-workers at a new job. Within the first two minutes of warm-up, I incurred a spiral fracture to my pinky finger. This, after, a WARM UP, passing the ball between my own team-mates. Publicly I exhibited a coolness and offered shaka signs with my entombed pinky and still mobile thumb. In private, though, I browsed through the hashtag #dodgeballinjuries on Instagram as a method of self-soothing. I had entered the elite rankings of those who got beat up playing kindergarten sports.
It’s not that I’m not athletic. I will proudly dub myself a MESOMORPH any day of the week while imploring you to pinch the uncanny denseness of my calf muscles. It’s just that I gravitate towards the “alone, together” brand of non-contact sports that seem so emblematic of our time. Competition is not necessarily my driver. The only person I want to best is myself, and even then, I’m not so dogmatic about it. I run. I vinyasa. I cycle. I reform. Let’s all get high off one another’s energy while also sort of ignoring each other and remaining, literally, in our own lane. That’s truly my jam.
And yet, and yet. I want to be a contender. I long for the low-key patter of sports-talk that engenders connection with in-laws, with Lyft drivers, with acquaintances. I’m like an alien that really wants to LEARN. I may not be a classic sports fan, but I have found within the wide, wide world of sports the various aspects that speak to me. Call it finding power with your limitations. Call it, boredom while this basketball game is on.
1. Loud Sports Shouting
Sports Shouting is a reference to one of 30 Rock’s perfect shows-within-a-show and is exactly what you’d expect, a frame of talking heads interjecting over one another for airtime. For a long time, the 30 Rock image is precisely what ESPN’s, Pardon the Interruption (or PTI, for short) looked like through my eyes.
Yet, PTI exemplifies the best of hot take culture. In PTI, it feels like the verbal sparring could, at any moment, give way to our hosts pulling off their lavalier mics and throwing down on the shiny studio floor. And yet, I’ve grown accustomed to the crochet-y enterplaining, a back and forth that is nevertheless always within the bounds of civility.
The discussion topics are pre-slotted, like a menu of conversation, with two minutes allotted per subject. As each jostles to litigate their case, once the buzzer sounds, our hosts, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon must finish their sentence, and move on. (When either one is off the air, in comes Fill in Frank. Fill in Frank!)
Perhaps the texture of these TV arguments is indistinguishable from the hum of a full dishwasher at the end of a day. Or perhaps I merely admire a conversation, forced to withstand a 2:00 countdown timer on a split screen.
2. Player Profiles
Here is something I’ve said out loud before (I’m sorry, I am who I am). “I love learning about sports through long-form human interest profiles!”). Here are some of my favorites:
After LeBron, Le Déluge by Vinson Cunningam.
Mainly, I was grabbed by the Mad Men analogy. Bob Benson: Don Draper is Ben Simmons: Lebron James.
Tom Brady Cannot Stop by Mark Leibovich
This was written in 2015 and already Tom Brady was eating avocado ice cream.
Did you expect the reporting in this article to be so in depth? Who could have anticipated this? Perhaps this list is really a thinly veiled fascination with sports diets.
3. Sports Media
This is distinct from sports movies, which I have no interest in. Sports developed as TV concepts though. [Joey Lawrence WHOA!] I imagine a 30 for 30 could comprise a list ranking of its own, but for my purposes, the O.J. one is forever formative. A documentary produced entirely from media footage of the time, set to music, and absent of any present day commentary, this documentary is an art form.
LeBron again for The Shop. Le Dope.
The Tom vs Time video was mind-blowing (hello Facebook Watch!). Seeing how hard he worked, I felt entirely worthless. I also liked peering into his Chestnut Hill kitchen. Nice island, Tom!
Hard Knocks. Are you kidding me? And the soundtrack!? This was especially useful for learning about Antonio Brown.
4. Good Sportsmanship High Fives!
I sometimes like to raise my palm and say “Good sportsmanship high five!” because I just love the camaraderie that much.
(In the intramural sport games of my youth, each team lined up at the end to trade good will high fives with their rivals. Perhaps I’m imagining this based on the peak baseball game in Dazed and Confused. Good Game. Good Game. Good Game. Yeah Right!)
I love that NBA players have unique handshakes with everyone on their own team. It’s a rush to my sense of well-being when players lithely help one another up from the court; and when died in the wool rivals give each other daps leading into cool grown man hugs. What do you think they are whispering in one another’s ear?
5. Sports Compliments
When you say “good eye,” is that what you would call a sports compliment? If so, it’s the only sports compliment I know how to give.
6. Slow Motion Replay
There is a lot of debate surrounding this. Did it ruin the game? Distort our attention span? Commoditize the perfect play, as in soccer, when the entire game would be re-watched simply for the sizzle reel. I enjoyed Helen Rosner’s In Praise of the Wild Overuse of Slow Motion on “Chef’s Table” reminding us that Chef’s Table’s signature cinematic closed-shutter shooting derives from the world of sports (and violent movies).
7. Walkout songs!
I am comfortable enough in my music taste to have identified the category of music that makes my spine tingle the most. It harkens back to the of-the-era, but endearingly dorky by today’s standards CDs labeled “PUMP UP MIX ‘01” or some such. Outkast’s B.O.B with actual foghorns in the bleachers. Give me that stadium sound. Make it clap, make it jump!
8. Kids dancing on teleprompters
The Kiss cam seems smarmy, but every time they pan to a little kid to doing the Dougie, I’m just like, man that kid is going to be famous someday. Oh my god, they are all going to be famous.
9. Touchdown Dances
Kneeling, Kissing the Ground. This is an obvious one, but it’s so spiritual.
10. The Special Food Designed for Consumption During Sports
It’s like there is a whole recognized class of food that you get to indulge in while watching sports that somehow elevates your level of commitment to the game. In a stadium setting, let’s give it up for Fenway Franks and Dodger Dogs, even though I can never eat them. I’ll just be over here watching you from the condiment station, quizzing you on your pumping technique and your ketchup to mustard ratio.
Honorable Mentions goes to Honorable mentions.
Also..
Sports Superstitions. How is anyone making fun of stones and crystals and horoscopes when there are so many superstitious fans on the loose? The fans who bedeck themselves in vintage jerseys only to sit at home in front of the set. The bobbleheads pointed just so towards the antenna. Silver Linings Playbook, it’s so earnest and so crazy.
Sports analogies. Closing Sign Offs. Bad Local TV Commercials. Wheaties boxes. Halftime shows where the girl wears ice skates and does gymnastics and double axels while getting double bounced on a trampoline and you have to half cover your eyes because that is insane, and are you seeing this?
Go Pats.