To put it mildly, the trouble with infatuation over sports like Cricket is that babbling about in-swinging yorkers or cover drives can help you score only if you’re on Indian shores or somewhere in the big cities of Australia. Pretty much elsewhere people look at you as if you’re from outer space. Especially here, in the land of “Milk and Honey”. Sample this. You’re out for lunch with your buddies from work Roger, Mike and Mark. Eager to show off you breathlessly exclaim right off the elevator,
“Hey Roger! You watched that game last night?”
“Yeah dude! #$%^in’ felt miserable afterwards. Manny strikes out thrice and Dodgers lose in the ninth!”
(Deflated like a week old party balloon)
“Uh huh… Ok… Actually I meant that cricket match. New Zealand trumped South Africa?”
“What? #$%^ no dude! Mike, you have any idea what the #$%^ he’s talking about?”
Mike’s opinion doesn’t matter, since you’ve already fizzled out like a wet firecracker and are now resigned to listening to the threesome recount for the rest of the lunch in graphic detail about last night’s ballgame, while you pipe in with a few “Wow!” or “Oh man!”s just to reinforce that you’re still sitting at the table.
In summary,
You’ve no clue what channel ESPN is on,
The only topic you can talk about without embarrassing yourself is exception error handling in Java.
Hand on the Bible I’ve never gone out for lunch/dinner/drinks with a gang involving Roger, Mike and Mark. Seriously!
Whoever the poor soul above is, I pray that he still isn’t blissfully watching re-runs of “Friends” and “King of Queens” on TBS, while the rest of the humanity can’t seem to get enough of the Super Bowl or a Yankees – Red Sox playoff series.
Swinging back to me, I’m fairly sports literate now but wasn’t always exactly the “Sports Guy”. Until a few years back the only way I’d be caught dead watching a basketball/football game was if someone came to me and said “Just keep staring at the TV for the next three hours and I’ll give you a $25 Starbucks card”
“Everything in life happens for a reason”
Spinning the memory wheel backwards, I vividly remember the first football game I saw. No fancy touchdown passes or no receiver clutching an elliptical ball and running for his dear life through the length of the field. Nope. None of them ESPN Sports Center highlights. Just a bunch of well fed guys clawing at each other’s throats as soon as a whistle was blown. And almost immediately men clad in zebra clothing threw a yellow towel (which I later learned was a ‘flag’) and rushed onto the field waving their arms wildly. The crowd was cheering and so were my friends. I just shook my head in amazement. And America pays good money to watch this?
If that was football, the basketball game was no edge-of-the-seat thriller either. Ten black men each almost the size of a palm tree and who could easily pass off as each other’s first cousins were scrambling around an orange ball. Two suited old men looking like worn-out Mafia dons were patrolling the sidelines showing fingers (no, not the middle one) and barking orders that no one seemed to pay a heed to. I peered closer into the tiny TV and found to my shock three puny referees scrambling about desperately trying not to get crushed by the giants. Give me a break! Well… then what sport did Michael Jordan play that made people go weak in their knees?
In my feeble defense, at least I gave these two the benefit of an hour before determining them unworthy of my adulation. Baseball? I’d given up within the first few minutes. Yankees vs. Red Sox, it doesn’t get any bigger than this, right? Apparently not. One look at that parallelogram shaped lush green field and it brought back fond memories of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. I was half expecting Sachin Tendulkar to step out and thump Glenn McGrath for a scorching extra cover drive. Instead I got an Asian guy who swung his bat around for a few minutes like he was swatting flies.
“He’s so getting it from his captain and coach” I surmised, watching him make a fool of himself.
Right when I thought he was dead meat and I had it all figured, he suddenly crouched low, barely made contact with the ball and shockingly started ambling to his right. That apparently set off a chain reaction among the lazily standing players on the brown mound (right… “base”) who started running towards each other at breakneck speed. The bar I was in with my friends went abuzz too and folks started cheering, banging their drinks on the table. One lady even stood erect eyes moist, fingers cupped on her lips blowing kisses as if she’d just won an Oscar. Ok! I made the last one up!
“#$%^ yeah! Way to go!” I joined the chorus setting my beer down hard determined to get into the scheme of things. I gently nudged my friend inquiring what on earth just went down.
“The bases were loaded, runners crossed and now we’re in a position to score” he hastily clarified, eyes still glued at the flat screen.
“Oh! So… we haven’t even scored yet?”
No score and the Asian guy was walking back with a not-so-thrilled face, probably because no one seemed to be cheering for his sacrifice. I’d have exercised my vocal chords if that ball had flown out of the park. Whatever! I swear if anyone had offered me a ticket to India at that moment, I’d have gladly gone back and watched South Africa and New Zealand grind it on my dad’s telly out for the next five days.
And that’s why Daddy spent more time salivating over a rental video on Sundays than soaking up America’s favorite pastimes…
“Nothing is inevitable except death and taxes” espoused Benjamin Franklin. I’d respectfully like to add “A paradigm shift in the quantitative thought process of what constitutes quality entertainment” to the mix. The renaissance of which began when I setup shop in Los Angeles…
One thing’s that stuck with me since childhood is my fascination with figures. Yeah… yeah… the fair kind too. But I’m talking digits here. Nothing heavy duty like breaking codes or finding patterns in random numbers, just an innate ability to reel off match figures to nonplussed friends.
How many runs did Sachin score in the 2nd test against South Africa at the Wanderers in 1996? 160(225).
What were Waqar’s figures in the semifinal against Australia in the ’01 Natwest Series? 10-2-59-6.
If I could do this for matches that took place years ago, then regurgitating box scores of games less than a week old should be child’s play, right? Question was, what game? The answer wasn’t difficult, thanks to a beaming Kobe Bryant plastered all over the Los Angeles Times the next day, arms outstretched as if he’d just conquered Russia. Bryant had single handedly outscored the Dallas Mavericks with a stellar 62 points by the end of the 3rd quarter sending them to one of their most embarrassing losses. Thank you!
Possess rudimentary knowledge of the Lakers (know who Shaq is, won a ring a few years back) Check
Team’s still winning games with pizzazz Check
More than half of the state goes gaga over them Check
When in Rome… Goodbye Dodgers, Angels, Trojans or even Long Beach State Volleyball. Daddy was now drawn hook, line and sinker into longest running soap opera in Hollywood.
It’s fascinating how the same games that seemed so lackluster earlier could be so enthralling now that you’ve a faint idea what’s going on. The learning curve was much easier than I thought. 90% of the offense ran through their ringleader Kobe Bryant who seemed intent on contorting his body in every imaginable way and taking every difficult shot that existed. People couldn’t get enough of yelling “Yes! Kobe!” or “MVP” every time he was on the court, which only spurred him on to put on a show every night. Passing the ball wasn’t in his dictionary, at least yet, so most of those early games were a dissertation on how much you could score and make people scream.
Special Mention: The 81 point spectacle against Toronto Raptors on Jan 22, 2006. 81 points of the highest order designed to lead your team to victory when you were down by 18 and dead in the water in the 3rd quarter. For a recent convert like me, watching it unfold before my eyes I kept thinking “This s**t is impossible. I can’t believe he just scored from that position” as goose bumps erupted all over my body. Strangely, I wasn’t tearing my throat out. Instead I sat huddled in a corner arms crossed with a beatific smile facing the TV like a college grad who’d just toked up.
81 points: 28/46 FGs, 18/20 FTs 7/13 3ptrs 6RBs 2ASTs 1BLK.
Perhaps that’s when my in-game ritual was born. Whenever the team’s dead in the water I mute the TV, switch off all lights and curve myself into a fetal position. Sounds radical all right, but trust me, the team always mounts a furious comeback. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but faith ensures they never rollover and play dead. Ever!
And for those games that the Lakers were winning or played by other marquee teams, their broadcast is always about the drama. Three men talking incessantly for almost three hours covering the game 60% of the time and the rest 40% talking about what was going on with the team, league and pretty much anything else that came to their mind when the microphone was on. So before the final buzzer you’ve been told what each player did for Thanksgiving, what they got their moms for their birthday etc. Sounds cute right? Well… for me who’d already devoured this online it was a nightmare listening to it again. Can we not discuss the last few offensive plays? Didn’t someone miss a defensive assignment? I mean, Kobe’s great but giving him three uncontested layups in a row means someone stunk, right? I probably had to sit in the coaches meetings to get that stuff…
Onto Act Two: Hello Fantasy Basketball.
(Insert stupid joke)
No! This isn’t where we fantasize about the players and talk about it!
Keeping things simple, you gather a bunch of likeminded basketball crazies, form a league where each constructs a team of 12 players and go head-to-head every week to determine the winner in all categories – points, rebounds, assists, steals etc. 2006 I first signed up, officially gaining entry into the world of the “Big Boys”. Incidentally, nothing more than my high school and college buddies who’d happened to have a two year head start in the world of pro sports (read Anand, Aravind, Sriram, Shankar among others).
Operating with your fantasy team requires round the clock access to all details on your players. Thanks to websites like Yahoo! Sports, Rotoworld, ProBasketballTalk who religiously updated their news as much as when a player sneezed and which I checked at least 5 times a day, I’d say I was pretty much covered.
(overheard in the cafeteria)
“I wonder if Kirilenko is playing today?”
“Oh no! AK-47’s got a sprained thumb and strained ligament. That stuff’s going to keep you out at least 2 weeks. Go for Millsap instead”
Prognosticating with a straight face as if I were the team doctor! AK-47? I was now calling them by their nicknames as if I’d been playing ball with them since kindergarten. Well… If any tool could transform a dumb $%^& into a know-it-all, this was certainly up there. Of course having Bryant as your #1 pick in the draft two years in a row certainly helps. That, and a collection of nobodies whom everyone had either no clue about or given up on. Thanks to a leap of faith and favorable assurances from newspapers (Sacramento Bee, Indianapolis Star etc.) I picked them only to watch them outperform every week. Dutifully never missing any opportunity to rub it in the faces of my more experienced compadres who wondered how I’d struck gold. Work ethic son…
All this huffing and puffing is great but you know, there was something gnawing inside reminding me that I was still only a “Laker Fan”. To become a fanatic (maybe even a diehard one) I had to crank it up a notch. That meant I had to cough up dough and start following the team on the road. Quite naturally, everyone except me thought I’d gone s**t crazy. I’d never been so sure of anything else in my life. Considering that we play quite a few games in the west coast in cities like San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix and Portland, given my limited resources going over there screaming and in general making a darn fool of myself wasn’t that much of a stretch.
Nothing more noteworthy than the game in Portland two years back that I’d gone to with Anand, his wife, Aravind and bunch of other friends. Everyone around me was a Laker hater and thought Kobe Bryant should be burned at the stake, if not already. The only way I could tune them out was by taking a few puffs of you-know-what, which I certainly did. By tipoff I was high as a kite and realized that I was the only one in our section wearing some piece of identifiable Lakers clothing. If there were other fans they were as yet to come out of the closet. And that’s when it happened.
The Blazers won the opening tip and the lead guard Roy was now setting up the offense. Right at that moment, I stood up triumphantly and announced “Defense! Defense!” making no bones of the fact that I’d come there for one purpose and one purpose only, “Support thy Lakers”. I swear to God, at least a thousand people were shocked and stared at me wondering who on earth I thought I was. Anand certainly thought I’d lost it and slunk lower into his seat dragging his wife along. She refused to look at me and kept reminding us that someone was going to hit us with a hot dog!
Hot dog, popcorn, soda I couldn’t care a damn. I was already in seventh heaven. Everyone wants a piece of the Lakers when they’re squaring off against them and the Blazers were no exception. Dazzling plays, the constant back-and-forth between fans made things even spicier. As is the wont, I had a lot to say after almost every possession. Good plays were rewarded with a “Fantastic sir!”, “Well played boys! That’s the way to go!” and even the ubiquitous “MVP” chants whenever Bryant went to shoot a free throw. Never a doubt that I’d came off like a proud English teacher watching his wards perform a school play. Bad Plays? Let’s just say we’re glad none in our section (and the ones adjacent too) save for my entourage didn’t understand my mother tongue. Lamar Odom bore of the brunt of my beautifully strung together choice expletives that in hindsight I’d like to recall. Sorry L.O.!
By 9.30pm we’d lost the game and I was reminded yet again by a 100 odd people that Lakers suck. For added measure Aravind grabbed a bunch of random guys and informed them that I’d driven from Los Angeles just for this which made them go even wilder. “Take me to the nearest bar” I grabbed Anand’s wife and pleaded. Nothing like some Jack Daniel’s to get me back to the penthouse and forget about the a** kicking that we’d received. Good times good times…
Somewhere along the way I’d realized that I was afflicted with multiple personality disorder. Now I know what you’re thinking. I wasn’t smearing my face with paint, donning a cape and slashing people’s throats by night to come back to a desk job during the day. Simply a metamorphosis in the overall psyche and demeanor after the outcome of a Lakers game.
Victory? I’m the chirpiest son of a b***h around. It takes me at least half an hour to wipe that smile off my face, even longer if it’d been a couple of overtimes, comeback victory etc. My adrenaline’s through the roof, I get substantial work done in record time, go to the gym and sweat it out like a pig without feeling a thing and finally come home to watch the highlights at least five times over three different sources (SportsCenter, NBA TV, Yahoo! Sports video).
Loss? Stay away from me as I’m the biggest sourpuss in the vicinity. Getting blown out from the beginning or right after halftime it’s much easier to deal with those. But close ones that boil down to the last possession or two, it’s that much harder to take. Thanks to your cousin or a few friends who’d like to continually remind you by sending texts like “Say, were you watching the game?” or “Please call me when you’ve stopped crying” Seriously?
Honorable Mention: Loss to the Celtics – Game 4 of the ’08 NBA Finals. My therapist (which is me, by the way) has advised me to often talk about it as its cathartic. I don’t even know what that word means! But I thought I’d endured my share of heart wrenching defeats after India folded belly-up against Australia in the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup. No! Lakers in an amazing display of cluelessness ensured that they’d take the cake. How do you lose a game at home when you’re up by 31 points in the 2nd quarter, the entire fan base is screaming wild and thinking the Celtics aren’t going to show up after halftime because they’ve been embarrassed enough already?
It wasn’t the amateur display on the court that made matters worse. Rather the aftermath. Flurry of calls from friends, colleagues that started pouring in even before the result was official. I threw the phone away in disgust and ran off to the beach. At 9.30pm! I drummed up every imaginable “In the Devil’s Doldrums” scenario to continually kick myself under the bus. As I begun to feel better I realized there were still 3 games to go and that we still stood a chance. Pfft! whom was I fooling? Even I knew a 3-1 series score meant a death knell. Trudging back home way past midnight I even wondered if I should pray at the Malibu Temple tomorrow for a Lakers victory. Never mind! Lord Balaji too had probably smartly bet on the Celtics anyway!
It took me almost three days of wallowing in self-pity before we finally beat the Celtics on Sunday. There weren’t a deluge of calls, just a. But at least I could answer them and say “hope” without getting laughed at… There, I feel much better now. Thank you Doc!
(Present Day – Somewhere in the Bay Area, CA)
“How much longer?” I snapped, fidgeting and getting frustrated by the minute.
“We should be there in 15 minutes” drawled Avinash taking a deep breath from his cigarette for added effect.
“I can’t believe I’m missing the game” I hissed further. Didn’t matter even if I had a meltdown in the middle of the freeway. I wasn’t going to get a hug or nothing like that. I still had to drive him to Santa Clara to pick up his car while the rest of America watched the Colts dissect the Jets defense.
“Since when are you into football?” he asked, dripping with both sarcasm and surprise.
“Long time baby! You’ve no idea”
True, on both counts. A couple of years back, thanks to a crash course from my brother and cousin, two self-confessed football-aholics I realized that following a much smaller pigskin (the football, that is) carted around the field wasn’t that bad at all. Agreed, there were more men and more rules, but as long as I’d learned the vital ones, that’s all that mattered. Fantasy football entered the equation and pretty soon I was flying high mucking up my Sundays doing nothing except vegetating in front of the TV watching NFL. Half a dozen million men in this country would rightfully approve…
Me, Avinash and plans should never be used in the same sentence. That’s why instead of heading to the hotel at least 30 minutes before the Saints and Vikings tipped off we were scrambling to find the first available bar in Santa Clara. Barely making it I bumped into a TV showing some obscure horse race.
“Awesome ‘Princess Diamond’! Way to go beauty!” I blathered without thinking.
“Machannnnnn! You follow horse racing too? Wow!” Avinash’s eyes were now wide open and the words were dipped in nothing but sincerity, adulation and admiration. Right at that moment I’m guessing he’d have coronated me as “The Sports Guy”.
“Definitely! She won the Kentucky Derby in ’07 and ’08. I’m going to Louisville next month and betting $500 on her and her sister. Surefire wins pal!”
Of course I said nothing like that.
“I’m just kidding man! I don’t know what the #$%^’s going on” I patted his shoulder reassuringly and lead him to our table…
Daddy might be the jack of all trades, but he’s the master of one. One that involves unrivalled unwavering and unquestioned fanaticism towards his favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers. And pray, what might get to drag him away from a game?
Nuclear Holocaust
8.5 Earthquake
(b) and not (a). Considering all the adjectives used thus far, I’ll stay transfixed to the idiot box my skin peeling off all around me, watching Kobe sink another eye-popping field goal.
Hallelujah!
