Sit down and be counted

Jim Thorpe, the greatest American athlete ever, was born on this day in 1888.

“I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who loves sports hates common sense.” – H. L. Mencken.

   “What’s your interest in football?” Sully, slumped in a chair after dinner (turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, okra, fruit salad, rolls, and then dessert), was working on his second six-pack.

   “What’s my interest in it?” Jack didn’t drink, as it turned out; he sat on the sofa with his legs crossed, hands cradling the mug of coffee in his lap.
   “Did you play football?”
   “No. I just always liked it.”
   “Why?”
   “I don’t know. I just have.”
   Sully had a theory that Americans’ lust for this idiotic game was explained by their shrinking attention span. Six seconds of actual play, sandwiched in between interminable stretches of players standing around while a crew of crazed announcers—were they on steroids, too?—told viewers what they’d just seen and what they were just about to see, was the perfect diversion, or religion in many cases.  --  Chapter 36, The Misforgotten.

I'm sticking my neck out -- it's a GREAT game

Anniversary of first publicly played basketball game, in 1892.

"Nothing here but basketball, a game which won't be fit for people until they set the basket umbilicus-high and return the giraffes to the zoo." -- Ogden Nash.

He loved the game. Never before or since had he had a passion like this. Basketball had bewitched him. He did not care for anything else. His yearning was like a flower that lives for the sun. A seed had been planted, had taken hold and grown.


He loved the feel of the ball, the boom of it bouncing, its seams spinning in flight just so, then the sound—shink!—when a shot went through cleanly, the net flying up and clinging to the rim. He loved to dribble, an act of faith, the ball going down and coming up again, the simplest of things but reassuring.

He loved the games, every game a fresh start, a new quest, you pitting yourself against perfection. You could never attain it. The game was a coy mistress, with many suitors.

He loved the wooing and the courting, but above all the solitary days and nights, alone with a ball and a hoop and his thoughts. Nothing in life would ever be so pure.  --  Chapter 20, The Misforgotten.

What a character!

Sportswriter Heywood Hale Broun was born on this day in 1918. His famous remark is "Sports do not build character. They reveal it."


"I hate all sports as rabidly as a man who loves sports hates common sense." -- H. L. Mencken.

   Most of his life’s activity, it occurred to Sully, had consisted in just about equal parts of sports, reading and drinking. The rest had been sheer boredom. All of it had been boredom, to one degree or another, for that matter. Life was short only in retrospect; when it was happening it could take forever.  --  Chapter 22, The Misforgotten.

We'll drink to that

Prohibition was repealed on this date in 1933.


"Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life." -- George Bernard Shaw.

Most of his life’s activity, it occurred to Sully, had consisted in just about equal parts of sports, reading and drinking. The rest had been sheer boredom. All of it had been boredom, to one degree or another, for that matter. Life was short only in retrospect; when it was happening it could take forever...

Alcohol was a great sage and a great liar. Its way was toward life, and toward death. That is, it revealed life for what it was, a dream, and hastened one toward death, that dreamless sleep. The dream of life would give way to death, and death in turn, as a nullity abhorred by nature, would give way to new life, not a botched one this time but a fully realized one at last.  --  Chapter 22, The Misforgotten.

Not a real kick for him

November 6, 1869 -- First college football game played.

"To watch a football game is to be in prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing." -- Jacques Barzun.
 
Sully had a theory that Americans’ lust for this idiotic game was explained by their shrinking attention span. Six seconds of actual play, sandwiched in between interminable stretches of players standing around while a crew of crazed announcers—were they on steroids, too?—told viewers what they’d just seen and what they were just about to see, was the perfect diversion, or religion in many cases.  -- Chapter 36, The Misforgotten.