Sports

Binding Us Together

I was up early yesterday morning, feeling the annual draw to the television coverage of The Open Championship. It is always an interesting test of golf’s greatest players on courses that are completely different than the American courses with their lush fairways and perfectly manicured greens. With closely cut fairways that look more brown the green, thick rough, treacherous bunkers and the constant swirling winds, the golf courses across the pond test the players’ mental toughness and bring strategy back into play – a factor in golf that has largely been removed from most American tournaments where the game has largely been reduced to who can drive the ball the furthest and make the most putts. That is not to take anything away from guys like Scottie Scheffler and Rory Mcllroy but strategy just isn’t that much of a factor for most of the pro golfers in American tournaments.

Yesterdays’ final round did not disappoint. Three of my personal favorites (Scheffler, Cameron Young, and Tommy Fleetwood) made charges but were all ultimately vanquished by a tough course and, in Scottie’s case, a balky putter. Still, it was a great tournament that found a New Zealand’s Ryan Fox birdying the last hole to avert what everyone was thinking might be play-off holes against Cameron Young. For all of the drama, though, I felt very much like a casual spectator. I had my favorites but did not feel an emotional connection to anything happening on the television set. As I sit here this morning reflecting on this, I realize that what I miss more than the golf strategy are the conversations and bonding that sports in general used to generate with family and friends.

Back before cable television, the internet, and the almighty cell phone, sports occupied a unique place in American culture. Whether it was Monday Night Football or the Friday Night Fights, the sporting events were a part of the fabric of society. Even if you watched the event alone, you would know that it would be the conversation the next day around the time clock, water cooler, or in the high school cafeteria. The announcers would be scoffed at, the coaching calls second guessed, and the athletes either celebrated or panned. Beyond that, you didn’t always expect to be watching the event alone or at least without involvement with others.

The biggest games or the games with most local interest would usually either be on at dinner parties or backyard cookouts or, even more likely, those events would be planned because of the game or match that was on the docket. The world of sports was a part of the glue that held our society together – regardless of differences in political or religious views or overriding petty differences in the workplace. The leagues had not yet begun to celebrate wokeness and take sides in cultural debates and the athletes weren’t so highly paid that they seemed like they lived in a world completely detached from us working class folks. The world felt smaller and more unified, at least for two or three hours on a Monday night or Sunday afternoon.

I am struck now that it is not necessarily the sporting events that I remember the most. It is the people I shared those events with that made them the most memorable. I was at the 2000 U.S. Open with my friend Scott. We were there at Pebble Beach for every round, including the practice rounds. We saw right on the ropes watching Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, and Tiger Woods – who won his first U.S. Open that year in runaway fashion. We were there when the gates opened so we could watch the groundskeepers prepare the course for the day’s action and, on the last day, we were part of the crowd that was allowed to walk the fairways behind Tiger as he marched toward his destiny.

In 2004, Scott joined my friend Shane and I for the Indianapolis 500, won by Buddy Rice. The race was cool but the memories are all about the tornado warning that cleared the stands and shortened the race. Shane and I were desert rats from Arizona. We had never been in a tornado before so we were standing outside of the grandstands with the winds whipping us from every direction, hoping to get a picture while the stadium signs flashed the urgent take shelter warning. Then there was being crammed into restrooms for our own safety and, afterwards, wading through waist-high water to get to the bus that would take us back to our hotel room. It was the best of times.

In 1998, I was in the stands with my son, Logan, and my cousin, Jim, when Jake Plummer and the Cardinals won a low scoring game to get into the playoffs for the first time in 16 years. The game was played at ASU’s Sun Devil stadium and was memorable only because of what it meant to the Cardinals franchise and for the sunset that we were treated to that night. Years later, Logan, Colleen, and I were in the stands when the Cardinals beat the Green Bay Packers in a last minute thriller that would launch them toward the Super Bowl.

In 2012, Ollie, Marc, and I represented the Buff at the Super Bowl in Indianapolis. The game was cool but the parties were the highlights of the trip. I was too old for most of the festivities but I didn’t let that stop me. It was the Super Bowl, after all!

For all of those historic live events, though, there are countless other memories about gathering around a television or radio (my earliest sports memories were listening to Al McCoy call the Phoenix Suns games from the Madhouse on McDowell) or grabbing the telephone off the wall cradle to call someone so that we could relive what we had just seen. I remember calling my Mom in total misery after Danny White’s Dallas Cowboys lost to Joe Montana’s San Francisco 49ers. I remember her calling me in 1986 to tell me to find a television to watch because Jack Nicklaus was making a back nine charge at the Masters.

There was the Suns magical run with Charles Barkley that had the whole family watching from someone’s living room. There was the Diamondback World series win, which found Logan and I dancing around like drunken fools with Mom and Pete. There have been so many football games on Monday Nights, Sunday Nights, and Thanksgiving Days that they all blend together but I can still hear the triumphant screams, the painful moans, and the laughter.

Watching the tournament yesterday, though, I think the thing that made me feel the emptiest was that my step-father Pete was watching from up above instead of sitting in the room with me or being just a phone call away. I missed him even more on Father’s Day, watching the U.S. Open . The major golf tournaments are painful because we always shared them in some way.

My friends and relatives are kind of scattered across the country – or the valley – these days and there aren’t many sports parties or even phone calls to relive the events together. Everybody just goes about their lives and sporting events, in many cases, aren’t even that important or top of mind anymore. Fortunately for me, my son will join me for some of the biggest games and my wife, Colleen, is learning to enjoy the Diamondbacks a little bit. She does now recognize for instance that “Corbin Carrol is pretty fast.”

Yes, honey, he is……..