One Wednesday night a few years ago, I was wedged into the middle seat on an airplane between a man with a fat file case on his lap and a woman wrestling with a day-old copy of The Wall Street Journal. A little after 7:30, the pilot's dry-plains twang crackled through the microscopic speakers overhead: "Uhh, 'scuse me, ladies and gentlemen. Jest wanted to tell you ... heard word up here ... Cal Ripken Jr. has just broken Leew Gayrigs's record ... Tew-thousand, one-hunnert-and-thirty-one con-secutive games. We'll keep you posted." And then, about 200 people riding an air-conditioned tin can over Lake Moultrie through the dark of the night put down their file folders and plastic cocktail glasses and wadded-up newspapers -- to applaud.
We were fans. By the time I landed at Washington's National Airport, other fans had laid down their laptops and sample books, or stood with an elbow on their rolling trash carts or floor brushes to lok up at Cal Jr. on the airport television screens. A grown man with a receding gray crown of hair, jumping up from the ball field like a boy to slap hands with fans and hug his friends, his familiy, and the men on the opposite team. "Goddamn," said a score of people, shaking their heads. "Goddamn, that's something. Isn't that something?" Not a small number of eyes, including my own, were glistening. You can tell yourself: It's just sports, it's nothing real; it has nothing to do with your life, no resonance in the real world of living, dying, and struggling. And you'd be right. Then, something happens. MJ leaps! Mac swings! Flutie scores! And inside, where your body cannot kid you, something takes over and it feels real. It's not like tearing up at your wedding, sobbing at a funeral, or choking up at a child's first steps. It's closer to seeing Caesar stabbed; or watching Emily Webb in Our Town so wistfully, tearfully, exclaim in Act III, "Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you!" A play that rubs something real.
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I'm leaving this one for you while I'm gone:
Date: 2001-08-31 10:51 pm (UTC)We were fans. By the time I landed at Washington's National Airport, other fans had laid down their laptops and sample books, or stood with an elbow on their rolling trash carts or floor brushes to lok up at Cal Jr. on the airport television screens. A grown man with a receding gray crown of hair, jumping up from the ball field like a boy to slap hands with fans and hug his friends, his familiy, and the men on the opposite team. "Goddamn," said a score of people, shaking their heads. "Goddamn, that's something. Isn't that something?" Not a small number of eyes, including my own, were glistening. You can tell yourself: It's just sports, it's nothing real; it has nothing to do with your life, no resonance in the real world of living, dying, and struggling. And you'd be right. Then, something happens. MJ leaps! Mac swings! Flutie scores! And inside, where your body cannot kid you, something takes over and it feels real. It's not like tearing up at your wedding, sobbing at a funeral, or choking up at a child's first steps. It's closer to seeing Caesar stabbed; or watching Emily Webb in Our Town so wistfully, tearfully, exclaim in Act III, "Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you!" A play that rubs something real.
-- Scott Simon, Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan