Sportsball

I'm writing this right after another loss by the Syracuse University men's basketball team, so, y'know...ouch. I'm hurting here.

Many of my music-fan and/or comics-fan friends are not sports fans. Some of them are actively disdainful of sports, which is their right. But I tell ya, I love SU basketball almost as much as I love my superhero comic books and my loud 'n' jangly rockin' pop music. I am as Otto made me.

Otto the Orange

It wasn't always so. Although I developed a keen interest in baseball when I was about ten years old, that interest didn't really last into college. I retained a residual wisp of support for my preferred team the New York Yankees, but it was more like the nostalgic aura of warmth you might feel for a former best friend with whom you no longer have anything in common, whom you've outgrown. I got caught up in the excitement of the 1977 World Series, watching in my freshman dorm as Reggie Jackson earned his nickname as Mr. October. I didn't follow the team again for decades thereafter.



Growing up, I did enjoy playing a few sports, even though I was spectacularly unspectacular at everything. I played Little League baseball, plus pickup baseball, softball, and whiffleball every chance I got. I played backyard football. I played hockey on the frozen pond behind some houses up the street. My friend across the road had a basketball hoop on his garage, and I played HORSE--very badly. Does croquet count? I played that, too. Howzabout hide 'n' seek?

Both my Dad and my brother Rob tried to help me get better...or at least get adequate. Dad coached my Little League team, and later said that he couldn't fault my effort; I practiced and practiced, and I got so I could hit a little bit, catch a tiny bit, but I could not throw the ball to save my life. Rob did teach me how to throw a football, and later on my other brother Art took me to the gym a few times for weight-lifting, trying to get me to consider going out for the high school football team. That was never going to happen in any known universe.

I hated gym class, but did enjoy a few of the sports played in that setting. I loved playing volleyball, and not just because it was co-ed, and there was a really, really cute girl in my class who favored wearing cutoff shorts. Okay, maybe that was the reason I liked volleyball, but I enjoyed the game, too.

For dramatic purposes, the role of my high school volleyball classmate will be played by Debbie Harry

In college, I played intramural (and occasionally slightly inebriated) broomball and floor hockey without distinction. Let's face it, I sucked. I did a little bit better in softball games with my team of McDonald's co-workers. But I still couldn't throw.

Beyond my youthful passion for the Yankees and our local AAA team the Syracuse Chiefs, I had virtually no interest in spectator sports. My sister Denise dragged me to one high school football game in the '70s, and I attended a basketball game to (sort of) cheer on a team made up of my Roxboro Road Middle School teachers. Art took me to at least one Syracuse Blazers hockey game (which I liked), and I saw one soccer game (Syracuse Suns or Syracuse Scorpions--I forget what they were called at the time). 



Living in Buffalo in the '80s, I was appalled when the local TV station pre-empted the national news in favor of a press conference with newly-signed Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly. It's just SPORTS, people! But I eventually became a casual Bills fan, rooting for them from afar as I moved back to Syracuse by the decade's end. I don't follow them closely, but it's understood that I'll take a night off from my Sunday night commitment to This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio when the Bills make it back to the Super Bowl.

Yeah. No worry about that this year.

When my wife Brenda and I moved permanently to Syracuse in 1987, the move coincided with the SU men's basketball team's run to the Final Four. The Syracuse community's pride in its college team was infectious, and we found ourselves fully invested and ultimately heartbroken when SU lost to Kansas in the final seconds of the championship game. Curse you, Keith Smart!

2003!!

For all that, though, I didn't really become a basketball fan until 2003, when SU's thrilling season culminated in a national championship. After that, as the 2003-2004 season commenced, I found myself surreptitiously checking the team's progress, hiding my burgeoning hoops fever as if I were ashamed of it. I finally felt compelled to confess that I had indeed become a basketball fan. Brenda joked that it was my version of a mid-life crisis at the age of 44: no sports car, no mistress, but a sudden dyed-in-the-wool passion for college basketball. Syracuse college basketball.

Over time, I also became interested in SU football. I watch those games whenever I can. It's been a rough recent stretch for the teams I support. My semi-estranged former flames the Yankees didn't make it as far as I woulda preferred. The SU football team underperformed this season. The Buffalo Bills folded like origami in the playoffs. And my favorites, the Syracuse University men's basketball team, are off to a frustrating start that inspires very little confidence as the heart of conference play looms.

But they're still my teams. All of 'em. The Yankees, the Bills, Orange football, Orange basketball. I'll keep cheering them on, win or lose. That's what fans do. No one has to be a fan of anything, whether it's Batman or The Beatles or SU hoops coach Jim Boeheim. I choose to be a fan. When I get discouraged, well, there's always the next game. If the season doesn't work out, there's always next year. 

I'll be here. I still can't throw worth a damn, but I'll be here to watch those who can. Let's go, Orange, let's go.



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