Summer of Sports

 

 

I never liked sports as a kid, and naturally I thought my kids would feel the same. Or at least I thought that my lack of interest would spur their own.

 

This summer has proven me wrong. Edith and Atticus both learned to ride a bike, of course. A week or two ago Edith began learning to rollerblade. And this past weekend they both decided to show a bit of skill throwing and catching a baseball. Not to mention Edith has asked to join soccer (we'll see!), but that's only because some of her friends are in it.

Not only that, but they've decided to become fans of the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team. This is pretty much exclusively thanks to a neighbor who is a year older than Edith and an excellent hockey player himself. But we've actually been watching some of the playoff games and cheering the home team on.

They've both watched plenty of Ohio State football in the past -- something none of us will be doing this fall since the Big Ten season is canceled for the year. We'll see if these newfound interests are still around when football begins again!

My Surprising Love of the Olympics

The most strenuous game I actually enjoy playing is a rousing round of croquet. Maybe badminton. That being the case, it's surprising how much I love watching the Olympics.

Nevertheless, our TV has been on nonstop each evening with coverage from Sochi -- a big change, since I generally only watch an hour or so of television each night. But over the last week and a half, NBC gets flipped on when Edith goes to bed at 8:30, and it doesn't come off for the next three hours or so.

I love the figure skating, of course, but I also look forward to watching the ski and snowboard events. For a few minutes, at least, I get just as nervous for the U.S. competitors as I ever do for the Ohio State football team. That's really saying something for a central Ohio resident.

What I haven't enjoyed is hearing about the weather in Russia. Often, it's been colder here at home than it is there. Seeing all that snow both there and at home only makes me yearn for spring ... and maybe the summer Olympics.

New York Giants Win the Super Bowl

The streets were filled with screams of joy, cheers and honking horns when the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots in last night's Super Bowl, 21-17.

It's fun to live somewhere pro sports teams actually stand a chance of winning a championship.

Sure, Ohio State is generally a contender in men's basketball and football, this football season notwithstanding. But a BCS championship isn't the same as the Super Bowl, and I've never been under the illusion that the Bengals or Browns would ever be in one.

Luckily, I don't really care. Still, it was fun to watch the Giants take on the Patriots last night, knowing that pretty much every TV in the tri-state area was tuned to the same thing. And even though I'd rather see an Ohio or Pittsburgh team in the Super Bowl (see last year's post on my sports allegiances), this was the next best thing.

In all honesty I wasn't going to lose any sleep if the Giants had lost. But I like having someone to root for, and I would much rather have the result be something that's going to put my coworkers and fellow commuters in a good mood the next day.

Why I Want the Steelers to Win the Super Bowl

I'm not a big pro football fan, but I'll still be rooting for the Steelers during Sunday's Super Bowl.

That's mostly because my uncles are fans of the team. If I'm going to watch the Super Bowl, I might as well root for someone. And if I'm going to root for someone, it might as well be the team that has the potential to significantly brighten the year of someone I'm related to.

My team spirit -- what little I have of it, anyway -- likely didn't go over well a couple of weeks ago when the Jets played the Giants for the Super Bowl berth. The bars were crowded with fans eager to see New York take the title. Paul, admittedly a fair-weather fan, cheered on the Jets with a friend at a neighborhood bar. I quietly rooted for the Steelers at home.

Obviously the game went my way. If the Jets had won, however, I would have been pulling for them to beat the Packers on Sunday.

I've given some thought to my loyalties when it comes to pro sports. Here's who I'll root for first:

1) Teams from Columbus. Unfortunately this applies only to hockey.
2) Teams from Cincinnati. The Reds in particular.
3) Teams from Cleveland. Ohio pride.
4) Teams from Pittsburgh.
5) Teams from New York.
     a) Mets before Yankees, don't have a preference on the rest of the teams
6) Teams from the rest of the Midwest.
7) The underdog.

So I guess I'm an Ohioan before I'm a New Yorker, but a New Yorker before I'm a Midwesterner. Got it?

Rooting for the Reds and Buckeyes from Afar

I never thought I'd say this, but here it goes:

I miss watching sports on TV.

It's not that I don't have options. The Mets and the Yankees, the Jets and the Giants -- they're all on TV. But who I really want to see are the Cincinnati Reds and the Ohio State Buckeyes.

In Ohio you could barely escape from them. Sure, not every Cincinnati game was on TV, but it was rare if you couldn't catch at least one game in a series. And sure, not every OSU game was on a channel we could get at home, but we could at least catch part of it on the radio. Even the grocery store I went to in Columbus played the game over the loudspeaker.

This year I consider myself lucky. Already the Ohio State-Miami football game was broadcast on a channel we get. And, of course, tonight I'll be able to watch the Reds on the road to the World Series -- even if the game will be more than half over by the time I get home from work.

I'm certainly not a sports junkie. Just an Ohio fair-weather fan.

A Soccer Fan All Over Again: U.S. vs. Brazil

Today: Paul recounts the U.S. vs. Brazil soccer match that he and his friend Ryan saw earlier this month.

I'm what you would call a casual soccer fan. I enjoy watching a game from time to time, but I never follow it closely or really understand the difference between the numerous leagues that play in Europe, Latin America and the U.S. or what they really have to do with each other.

Every four years, however, I become like a lot of my countrymen and take a liking to the game. Some of my best memories from college were meeting my friend Tom at 6 in the morning, bagels and coffee in hand to watch early round World Cup action. 

So when my friend Ryan, who is a serious soccer fan, said he could get tickets to an international friendly between the U.S. and Brazil, I jumped at the opportunity.  He came to Brooklyn from Columbus, and we took the bus to New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey to watch the game.

As soon as we got to the parking lot a few hours before the game, I immediately I felt somewhat inadequate.  Tens of thousands of people (including Americans) grilling out, drinking heavily and kicking the soccer ball around. I realized at that moment that I didn't even know the names of the players on either teams' roster, much less would I be able to tell you for which team they played.

We wandered around, looking for the promised American Outlaws tailgate party (that's the fan club that my friend belongs to) but found none in the vicinity. It was very clear from the invitation that it was in Section J of the parking lot. We soon realized, however, that was like saying it's somewhere in a five-square-mile radius.  We walked for a good 15 minutes or so but found no formal party and settled for a cook-out by some early-20-something dude who happened to belong to the American Outlaws Pittsburgh chapter. They saw my friend's shirt and invited us over for a beer.

I've got to hand it to these guys, if the level of drunkenness of fans at a game is an indicator of the seriousness with which the populace takes the sport, then these guys and all the surrounding tailgates were putting soccer right up there with baseball and football. (That's right- football is football and soccer is soccer.  Deal with it, international community!)

There was a game of flip cup that was international in scope, with Brazilians on one side of the table and Americans on the other. There was a large circle of guys passing a soccer ball around that I was awkwardly included in. The awkwardness for me came from the fact that these guys seemed to play soccer on some adult level and (due to the fact that they were three sheets to the wind) didn't seem to realize that I do not.

The excitement level only increased as game time neared. As an Ohioan, the only thing that I can compare this to would be tailgating at a Buckeye game. I was impressed. We watched an ill-advised game of chicken -- ill advised since (a) it was grown men on each others' shoulders, (b) they were wasted and (c) they were on top of pavement, not in a pool.  Luckily, not one person got seriously hurt, although someone landed on the flip cup table professional-wrestling style and sprayed Keystone Light everywhere. It was about time head to the game.

We got in the stadium and the sound level was amazing -- just constant excitement. No vuvuzelas needed. As the game started, things settled down a bit with people confining their aggression to the call-and-response cheers you might hear at a college football game. Otherwise, they closely followed the action.

After the first half, with Brazil up 2-0, things got kind of ugly and bitter. The chants became a little meaner in scope, such as the crowd pointing at the Brazilian section and saying things like "Thi-rd Wor-ld."

In the end, the U.S. was bested by a superior team, but I came away with the revelation that yeah, people in America are serious about soccer. And not just hipsters or immigrants, but regular joes too. Can't wait 'til the next World Cup when I can become a soccer fan again.

Paul blogs about our quest to read a biography on every president of the United States on Presidents By the Book.