NOVEMBER 4, 2021 – I’ve not been a big fan of big sports, though as a kid I was a major fan of major league baseball. In 1965, on my transistor radio I listened to nearly every Twins game and bought baseball cards every other day. By season’s end I knew as much about baseball as any 11-year-old could.
Years later I married into a family of sports fanatics. With the speed of a slap-shot I understood that emulation was a lost cause. I stuck with loner sports: running and skiing.
When our sons came along, each latched onto sports like a football in the hands of a star wide receiver. Soon I felt like a runner in a track meet two-mile, drifting so far behind I wound up in the lead—until I was lapped.
Fast forward to yesterday. In the company of our older son with his encyclopedic knowledge of sports, I watched Fox Sports. In years past I’d skated by such shows—oblivious and impervious to the hyper-chatter that epitomizes sports commentators. This time around, however, I was mesmerized.
In the first segment panelists debated the Scottie Pippen – Michael Jordan controversy animated by (a) Jordan’s treatment of his former teammate in a 10-part ESPN series, The Last Dance; and (b) Pippen’s push-back in his newly published memoir, Unguarded. I was awed by the panelists. As they talked in tightly bound sentences and name-dropped like WW II, C-47 paratrooper planes over Normandy, I decided that litigators—generally a garrulous, articulate lot—had nothing on sports commentators. The latter sound like contestants in an auctioneers’ Super Bowl.
Following the brilliant performance, I listened to Colin Cowherd (seriously?) “bang on” (his phrase) Aaron Rogers for having lied about non-vaccination, having tested positive for Covid-19, and having left his team and Packer fans in the lurch during a 10-day minimum suspension.
I’d never heard of Cowherd (for the record, I’d known about Aaron Rodgers). He exhibited the same intensity I’d witnessed in the panelists who’d preceded him, but because he was running his own plays and not under the pressure of a shot clock, his delivery was closer to the pace of Freddie Freeman upon hitting a homer than the speed of Mookie Betts stealing second. What Cowherd yielded in speed, however, he gained with conviction: Aaron Rodgers is selfish, end of discussion. Or rather, not the end of discussion but fuel for an open-ended, variegated monologue about attributes of leadership vs. the effects of self-centeredness. By the end of his rant, I decided that Cowherd was a positive influence on people corralled by his delivery.
Later, with our older son I watched a televised Timberwolves – Clippers game. He answered my ignorant questions respectfully, and I apologized for not having taken greater interest in major league sports when he and his brother were growing up.
“Let’s start watching games and talk shows together,” I said, making up for lost time. “And attending games.”
Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
