9/24/2003 An anti-fan tries to become a good sport
Haddayr Copley-Woods
There have been very few times in my life when I wished for my own death. The most dramatic was an ill-fated nine-hour deep-sea fishing trip and seasickness extravaganza, during which only my physical inability to throw myself overboard into the cool, inviting water saved me.
The most recent, however, was when my husband Jan began talking about his Red Sox. Some ump made a bad call, or the idiot bullpen lost a three-run lead, or aliens landed in the middle of Fenway to finally take Nomar home.
I stood very still in the middle of the kitchen, trying to blend in with the cabinets and linoleum like a woodland creature so he would not notice me drifting slowly toward the knife drawer. I murmured "mmhm" at appropriate intervals, hoping my end would be swift.
Perhaps it's my past. Despite my marriage to a man who calls himself‹with a straight face‹a member of Red Sox Nation, I disdain sports. I see it as my birthright: as an artist and child of intellectuals, it is my duty. As a female, I am also still a little testy about the whole excluding-women-and-girls-from-sports-for-centuries thing, Title IX and the Lynx notwithstanding.
In high school, I watched our losing football team suck up tax dollars as the school slowly chipped away at our award-winning music program, which finally dissolved into the budget-cutting ether. I spent gym class sensibly running from flying objects and protecting my head.
This is still my same reaction in the face of sports: I run, duck and cover.
I've always seen, in the abstract, the point of professional sports as a replacement for tribal warfare. When they aren't competing for school dollars with my beloved arts I can see them as a slightly benign force that has nothing to do with me. A football game is better than warriors of the Green Bay Militia skewering dozens of Minneapolis Vikings through the guts with broadswords to steal our famous red cow. Just don't make me watch it.
But there is obviously more to it than that. As a sports anti-fan, I am increasingly in the minority. When my femme friend Kristen recently confessed her long-hidden desire to play rugby, I knew my allies were deserting me. The time had come for me to face my nemesis head-on. Maybe if I could find out what other women like about sports, I could appreciate them more.
The first person I called was my friend Anita. A lifelong sports nut, Anita met her husband because he saw her reading Sports Illustrated on the train. Anita emailed me an impassioned 731-word essay detailing her warm childhood of sports fandom for the Dodgers and the Red Sox, her current breathless involvement in the play-by-play of each game, and her bafflement with anyone who does not love sports. She loves sports for all of the same reasons Jan does: the camaraderie, the connection to extended family sometimes thousands of miles away, the lively discussions of the intricacies around the dinner table.
My friend Darcy was just as enthusiastic. As a runner and golfer in high school, she loved the ability to challenge herself and the support of her teammates. She believes that her son is learning important life lessons from watching and playing sports: how to keep trying even when you feel like giving up, how to talk yourself into having self-confidence after you've messed up, how to be part of a team, how to improve yourself. Although she doesn't like what she sees as an over-emphasis on competition sometimes found in boys' sports, she lit up when I asked her about it.
Over and over I had the same experience: I asked a woman what she liked about sports, and she couldn't stop talking. Enthusiastically. Happily. Just as I would talk if you asked me about politics. Or Irish culture. Or anything else important to me. Each woman I spoke with had decided to involve herself in sports, and to get something important from the experience, instead of flouncing out in a huff and isolating herself as I have.
So I think the next time there's a game on TV, I may sit down next to my husband (upwind, as he has refused to wash his Red Sox cap since the season started), and watch. With an open mind.
I will take the precaution of locking away all sharp objects before the game, though. I'm too young to die.
Haddayr Copley-Woods is a writer and graphic designer who lives and works in Minneapolis's Powderhorn Park neighborhood.
