WEEKLY COLUMN:
JDM vs the WORLD

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FINE PRINT

I watched a baseball game this evening. First time in a long time. It was a tightly contested struggle between the San Francisco Giants and the Houston Astros. It doesn’t matter who won.

It’s a funny thing, this baseball. There’s a reason why I don’t watch it much anymore. It’s too typical.

By and large, I sort of stopped caring about sports in 1998, just after my beloved New York Yankees won the World Series against the overwhelmed San Diego Padres. You know, they said at the time that George Steinbrenner could maximize his money by selling the team at the conclusion of that championship year. The theory was that the Yankees would never be worth more, since they’d accomplished so much that year. That’s sort of how I felt about sports as a whole. After 1998, it just didn’t matter anymore.

The Yankees had set records that year for number of wins or something like that. I’m not particularly in the mood to rework my wording, but I’m sure you remember it if you’re reading this right now. Or maybe you don’t.

Sports are mostly forgettable fare. Really, they are. We try to mask them as all-important. We try to make them seem like metaphors for life. But they’re not. They’re just games.

And there’s a reason why I’ve mostly outgrown them, but I’m not sure just yet what it is. Maybe it’s the money thing. Who doesn’t get a rise out of that age-old debate? Maybe it’s the attitudes that many athletes have. You know, these are grown men getting paid exorbitant salaries to act like the same schoolchildren to whom they sometimes refuse autographs.

Yet I can’t find any reasonable argument against paying these men their due. They keep the cash rolling, after all. I’d sure rather have them raking it in than the greedy do-nothing team owners.

The team owners are the ones to blame for my apathy, I think. These are the people who make a fortune off of the hard work of others. Sort of like Wall Street brokers. But sports team owners are an ilk of ill repute in my little corner of the universe, as they are sewn of the same cloth as high school sports coaches.

Those folks are the bastards. Yes, those are the people to blame. These are the people who raise up small armies of physically gifted, self-aggrandizing muscle freaks. If you’ve ever seen the way these young athletes walk around the high school halls, you’d puke. Strutting their sixteen-year old stuff as if they own the place. So much conceit. So much undeserved entitlement. Most of them don’t even make it in the so-called big leagues. Plenty of them don’t even have an education to rely on.

The NFL gets me sometimes. Does the N stand for Nefarious? Here’s a league of thugs. We’re talking rapists and murders here--not all of them, of course, or even most of them. But some of them. Just like any other profession, I guess. You’ll encounter bad people no matter where you go. So, maybe sports really do mirror real life.

But education is secondary in sports, let’s face it. That’s why a remotely talented high school athlete can find his way into college free of charge, while the bookworms can bust their behinds for eighteen years and skate into that same university on razor-thin scholarships.

College sports make money. People well-versed in Dante and Voltaire most certainly do not.

Maybe it’s the professors’ fault. Maybe professors know how much an education won’t get you and therefore urge their students to succeed in another arena if they possibly can. Yes, indeed, it’s the professors who’ve made me despise baseball and its brethren.

Or maybe I don’t know what I’m rambling about. I don’t know. I get confused sometimes.

Do professors, teachers, mentors and the like deserve the millions that instead go to the chest-thumping athletes that they coddle all throughout high school and college? No. The athletes rightfully deserve their money because they’ve excelled at a profession that allows them to fuel an industry capable of zapping the public of its souvenir, ticket and parking money.

So, maybe I should place the blame on those who support better pay for teachers. When will they learn that teaching is a noble profession, and noble professions by definition cannot pay? But I digress, for entertaining the millions and millions is noble enough. There’s a distinct honor in knowing that what you do is important to people, that how you ply your trade affords those less fortunate a temporary escape from the meager insanity that is their everyday life. Michael Jordan is coming back. He knows a thing or two about this unique ability.

There’s a reason why I’m talking now but I don’t know what it is. Maybe you can tell me. Maybe you don’t care to. It’s really of little concern to me.

Barry Bonds broke a record this evening, but it wasn’t the homerun record. It was the single-season walk record. Hooray.

Meanwhile, it’s ironic that Barry Bonds has been a sports media favorite this season, considering his less than stellar reputation with that same crowd, what, maybe one year ago? Mr. Know-It-All Sportscaster rears his ugly head only when the weather is fair.

The Astros didn’t pitch to Barry Bonds on this particular evening. That’s not how baseball is played, don’t you know. And said Astros, playing in their very own ballpark in front of their very own fans on a night when a playoff berth was at stake, were booed and heartily so.

Because when it comes down to it, the fans--the same folks who likely purchased their tickets long before they knew the significance of the game--were no longer there to see their favorite players, the men who’d been temporarily selected to pretend for a few million dollars that they represented the fine Texas city of Houston. No, sir or madam as the case may be, they were there to see history in the making. They were there to say, “Yeah, I was there the night that Barry Bonds broke the record.”

Even if they weren’t, they could say so anyway. I could say so if I wanted to. I won’t. But, indeed, they were there for the breaking of a record. Just not the record they salivated for.

The Astros were maligned for the intentional walks of Barry Bonds, when, at 69, he stood literally on the cusp of tying Mark McGwire’s record of 70. The fans created an energy that’s important yet underestimated in professional sports. The Astros walked the would-be homerun king because they cared more about their playoff hopes than either the ultimate fate of Barry Bonds or the hopes and dreams of their fans.

The same fans who had clung to so many hopes and dreams of the Houston Astros variety. And just this once, those fans asked of their team something a little bit more. Or less, as it were.

They had their chances, the Astros did. They flirted with helping Barry Bonds make history. With two out and two on in the top of the ninth, and with the game no longer up for grabs, the Astros had the opportunity to let Bonds make history. They could have loaded the bases, as he was on deck when that half of the inning ended. The fans wanted to see it, but the Astros did not. Selfish, I say. But damn it, it’s just a game anyhow.

Fifty years ago on this very same night, the Giants won the pennant with the infamous “shot heard ‘round the world.” How sweet it would have been for Barry Bonds to accomplish his own such shot on this anniversary evening. Alas, it was not meant to be. For the former was a sign of how innocent life was back then, and the latter is indicative of just how freakishly complicated our lives have become.

I know, now, why it is I’ve come to not care for professional sports. If you’re still reading, you’ve probably got your own ideas, too. Hey, I’m not going to bog this number down with a conclusion. It’s a free country. Make your own. You’re entitled.

I said that it didn’t matter who won this game. The Giants did. They won by a score of 11-8. Then I wrote this article. Then I went to bed.

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