Kevin Van Valkenburg · @KVanValkenburg
25th Sep 2014 from TwitLonger
A few thoughts on the Ryder Cup, Roger Angell and my favorite sports gif ever
So, it's been a unsettling few months to follow sports. But we're on the eve of my favorite event that exists — the Ryder Cup — and I wanted to write a quick thing about why it matters to me, with an assist from Roger Angell.
Angell — maybe the most elegant sports writer of this, or any, era — wrote what I'm about to share when covering the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds for The New Yorker. I read it often when I'm frustrated with my own work, or if I get bogged down in the cynicism of sports in general, just to be reminded that that it's ok to care about them so much. It's ok, despite the logical realization they're frequently barbaric, occasionally corrupt, sometimes trivial and frequently ridiculous. It came from perhaps his most famous piece, "Anicourt and After," and it's the best thing anyone has ever written about fandom and love.
"It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift."
--Roger Angell
We'll get to the Ryder Cup in a moment, but first, a story.
Several years ago, when I was still working for the Baltimore Sun and writing weekly columns about the Ravens, I got an email from a Steelers fan in Afghanistan, Staff Sergeant Ryan Miller, a Marine in the 8th Engineer Support Battalion. He was a regular reader of the Sun's sports section. He told me that the military has rules about how many hours you can spend surfing ESPN.com and SI.com and FOXSports and such, but there were no such restrictions on newspaper websites. Miller had taken, in his down time, to reading sports sections around the country, and he wanted to let me know he'd become a regular reader of my work. Life was a little scary in Afghanistan. You lived every day with tremendous tension and anxiety when you were out in the combat zones, and when you came back to Fort Leatherneck, what you wanted was to feel *normal.* To be reminded of the world back home. You wanted to experience your shared love of the NFL with other people. To be reminded that -- no matter how silly it is to cheer for guys in black and yellow uniforms playing football when guys in real uniforms are getting blown up in you real life -- what you're really attracted to is a sense of community. Feeling like you belong to something. Your town, your city, your region, your neighborhood. It's that feeling you get when you're walking through an airport in an unfamiliar city, and you see someone wearing a Cubs hat, and you also happen to be wearing a Cubs hat. That little nod of recognition, that moment where you bridge the gap between you no matter how little else you have in common, *means* something.
There were times, Miller told me, when he'd be laying in the mud beneath his truck, freezing his butt off, not really sure what dangers were out there in the dark, and what would run through his head was: I wish I knew the Penguins score. I wish I could call my friend and talk about whether they can still win the series when the game was over.
It's kind of hokey (in fact you could argue it's extremely hokey) but it still creates a sense of community that few other things in life can replicate. Scott Van Pelt, my ESPN colleague, grew up in the Baltimore/DC area and went to the University of Maryland he's happy to share this information with people, as many Marylanders are. He said something two years when the Orioles made the playoffs for the first time in 15 years that I really loved. I don't think he'd ever go so far as to call it profound, but to me, it's truth. "This is why you root for one team, and one team only," Van Pelt said. "Because it can be bleak for so, so long. But eventually the sun comes out again."
Which brings us to the Ryder Cup. Some people love the World Cup, the NBA Playoffs, the World Series or the Olympics. Every sports fan has their "something" that connects with them on level that is a blends of nostalgia and excitement. For me, it's the Ryder Cup. It's my favorite "thing" in all of sports. I love the teamwork and cooperation it requires. I love that it turns typically-stoic and robotic athletes in to fist-pumping, awkward high-fiving lunatics. I love how much of it is mental, not physical, and that the athletes are playing for nothing more than pride and love of country. (Or in Europe's case, to honor the European spirit of cooperation.) And obviously, I pull for the United States. I kind of love that they're underdogs too, because how often can you really say that about the U.S.? Two years ago, when Justin Rose made a 60-foot putt on the 17th hole in a match against Phil Mickelson, and Mickelson shook his head, took off his cap and clapped in a show of respect, I thought: As much as I like trash talking and fist-pumping and celebration dances, I love this too. A shared respect for moments of wonder.
When Europe came back and won the Cup, when Martin Kaymer made a putt to close it out and NBC cameras flashed to Jose Maria Olazabal in the fairway, he closed his eyes and cried as he thought about his friend, his mentor, and his Ryder Cup partner Seve Ballesteros. And I'd be lying if I didn't admit I got a little choked up too. There was nothing scripted or phony about that moment. It was just raw and honest and real. It wasn't about sports as much as it was about love and memory. But sports made it possible.
I can watch it 100 times and tear up every time. I'll probably watch it 10 more times before the two teams tee off tomorrow. Copy and paste this in your browser and you can watch it here:
http://cjzero.com/gifs/OlazabalReaction.gif
It's the caring that matters. You don't have to follow games. I won't fault you if you aren't interested anymore, if recent news has soured you on the athletes we follow and the leagues we obsess over. I wish we could care as much about elections or fixing our schools or solving issues that truly matter. But I look at Olazabal crying — or Tiger Woods bawling in Steve Williams' arms after he father died — and I don't ever want to stop following, because no matter how selfish and soulless sports can sometimes be, my god, some moments are still such a gift.