I grew up playing baseball, and I was pretty damn good at it too. I always made the all-star team, and I played up through high school. Growing up I went to Angels games as much as I could, and I was enamored with the likes of Bobby Grich, Bob Boone, Rod Carew, and Freddy Lynn. I remember watching a past-his-prime Reggie Jackson belt homers out of Anaheim Stadium, the whole stadium chanting his name. When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be a professional baseball player. It held so much power and importance for me in those days. But that didn't last forever.
In 1994, the year of the big strike in baseball, I was 19 years old. My appreciation of baseball in the previous few years had diminished somewhat, mostly due to my new interest in surfing--which I had taken up at the age of 12. The strike in '94 was the end of the line for my respect of professional sports. This had less to do with the sports themselves than the ways that our society obsessed over them and deified their participants. It all seemed so ridiculous to me...all of that money and energy being spent on a simple game.
I have a difficult time not relating the frenzy and fanaticism of American professional sports with the gluttonous games in the ancient Roman coliseums, which served to divert the attention of the populous away from the machinations of self-serving politicians. But this is hardly a new comparison. The thing is, when you pay close attention, the similarities are a little too disturbing.
You see, I worked as a bartender for about 5 years in my 20s, and I was one of the few who really didn't give a damn about sports. People would ask me what the score of the USC game was and I would answer, "How the hell should I know?" I was often met with glares and challenges like, "What kind of bartender are you?" It was, I admit, pretty entertaining at times to stand in the way of certain ESPN junkies and their fix. My favorite thing was trying to get people to talk about anything besides sports in bars...that didn't always work out so well. I was somewhat of an oddity in many of the bars that I worked in, and I kinda liked that.
But there was a more serious side to all of it. I think I started paying attention to politics--really paying attention--around the age of 24 or so. That was smack in the middle of my bartender years. I remember how frustrated I would get during the Superbowl and the World Series. All of the passion and energy that my customers had for those games, seemed, in the context of geopolitical events, inane and insane. This was in 2000. A pretty important year, and one in which I was trying to find my way through the fog of uncertainty that was, and continues to be, American politics.
I have remained disinterested in sports for a good part of the past decade. As the days go by, I have a harder time understanding the attention they receive, and the meaning they hold for people. But there is no denying the fact that football, baseball, and so many other sports hold real meaning for millions of people. Amidst a five year war with a country on the other side of the globe, however, I just cannot justify or share that passion. It all seems like nothing more than a diversion from reality. But then, maybe that's all people want.
Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if more people knew about the political history of the United States as well as they know about the antics of Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. Imagine that. But the war continues on, while millions of Americans spend their precious time and hard-earned money on cultural events that, in my opinion, mean very little.
But is that a fair assessment? In the last few months I have been rethinking this matter about sports, politics, and meaning. My studies in cultural anthropology certainly have something to do with this, since one of the main foci of that discipline is trying to elicit meaning from cultural beliefs, ideas, and acts. And make no mistake: proferssional sports in the USA are cultural institutions, laden with social, political, and ideological meaning. But what do they mean? Why do so many people continue to flood through the gates, buy the overpriced tickets, and watch rich men PLAY games? Why is that rational, or even considered fun?
A friend just forwarded me a email from her brother who is on his 3rd tour in Iraq. At the end of the email he expressed his frustration over the fact that it seems like people just don't care about what he is going through. He wasn't frustrated, actually, he was pissed off. And, even though I have been against the war from the start, I understand. The machine continues on, and it continues on rather peacefully and smoothly, despite the five year war. Sometimes I look around and think to myself, "Damn, we ARE complacent as hell."
Is this how the Republic crumbled in ancient Rome? Did those people sit idly by while their troops and politicians went mad with power and corruption? Were they content to watch elephants, bears, and tigers get annihilated in the coliseum as their government imploded?