SPORTS FAN REVIEW: IN THE BEGINNING

Sports fan knows one thing: Rivalry.

Without rivalry, sporting events resemble theater without the curtains.

With rivalry we feel something deeper, way deeper, way down there.

If you come from a certain time and place the only rivals that mattered were the Marshfield High School Pirates.

But, everyone grows up. Right?

The Pirates were good at everything every season.

Looking back from a distance of five decades, which seemed like a long time when I heard someone say, “Fifty years ago.”

Hell, twenty years seemed like an eternity where someone said they’d worked the same job twenty years.

When you turn sixty-nine it’s easier to say, “fifty years ago,” and a twenty year spell at a job seems like a week.

In other words, time takes a different role. It may not change anything, but the events, the history, take on a different meaning.

Was Marshfield worthy of a sports fan rivalry?

100%.

They had Mel Counts who went on to Oregon State all-American status three time, Olympic gold, the Celtics championships x 2, and Lakers among others.

He was before my time by a decade but his honors and accolades were in the Marshfield gym showcases I looked into.

Steve Prefontaine was closer to my time, but still a distant four years earlier.

 

He was undefeated in cross country and track his final two years at Marshfield and lost just one race during his college career at the University of Oregon.

He set 14 American records and, at the time of his death in a 1975 car accident, held every American record from 2 miles through 10,000 meters. 

 

He went on to the University of Oregon, ruled the record books, an Olympic 4th place finish, and wrote the book in support of athlete rights.

During my time Marshfield had another special athlete destined for greatness like his historical school mates.

 

My Marshfield Miracle Sports Fan Rivalry

Good athletes show early. They run a little faster, jump a little higher, fall down with more grace.

That wasn’t me.

I joined teams and played ball like the rest, but noticed who was good.

When my school teams from North Bend played any school from Coos Bay, the home of Marshfield greatness, we got waxed.

They were bigger, stronger, and faster. And they shaved and drove cars in the eighth grade.

(I made the car thing up, but some of those eight graders sported a shadow on their faces.)

I saw a few young Pirates I hoped I’d never see again, guys who looked like twenty year olds who’d been working out.

They crushed my teams the first year, the next year, and every year after.

It helped me understand a sports fan rivalry.

 

After losing again and again, the looking forward to the next season of losing over and over, it was either quit or find a new sport.

It seemed unfair to lose on teams with guys that didn’t play any harder than I did.

I was an elderly fifteen year old coming to grips with reality. It didn’t look good.

Before hanging up my jock, I joined the wrestling team my first year in high school.

I’ve learned since that unless you start wrestling in pre-school you’ll never learn enough to win anything.

I heard it from a kid’s coach who’d never won anything.

The progress I made the first year on JV led to a second year on JV with a varsity spot when someone didn’t make weight.

On the day of the biggest rivalry match for sports fan young and old, North Bend v Marshfield in the North Bend gym, the coaches juggled their line-ups.

They were stronger in the heavier weights. One guy stood out, the guy who pounded his own teammates and everyone else.

Our coach learned where the other would slot their tough guy and responded the right way since their tough guy also pounded our guys.

To secure a win we had to work around their bad-ass.

That was my job. I was the work around. Our good guys would beat their weaker guys and I was the fresh meat thrown in with a classic pep talk:

 

“Try and not get pinned.”

 

Shake Hands, Ready

That’s what the ref says in the middle of the mat.

I’m out there with a guy who looked thirty, standing under the big light lowered down with the rest of the gym dark.

‘Don’t get pinned?’ I thought. I might get pinned; I’ll probably get pinned in the spotlight in front my hometown who’ll watch me do the loser’s walk after I crawl to my feet.

The guy across from me looked like he’d been warming up since lunch, carrying a full sweat and snorting and stomping his feet.

I got the message: I was about to get stomped, a second year wrestler going against a guy who looked like he fought his placenta in the womb.

When we shook, he ripped my hand forward then threw it upward with his release.

If I had been a more seasoned athlete I wouldn’t have hit myself in the face.

Instead, I hit myself in the face, stunned, when the ref said, “Ready, Wrestle.”

My mean opponent stepped in and pummeled my face like a speed bag, knocked my headgear over my eyes, and form tackled me to the mat with his shoulder in my gut.

The ref whistled him for unsportsmanlike conduct and gave me a point, which made him steam and snort and stomp even more.

I stood across from this raging demon thinking, ‘Ref, this fucker doesn’t need to be more pissed.’

I knew what was coming; it seemed like the whole building knew what was coming.

This guy would rag-doll me, slam me, then grind my face into the mat, before pinning me.

I’d seen it all before; it had happen times before. Getting my ass kicked was the norm, and it looked like a normal night except for the crowd, the lights, and the lunatic.

 

Practice? We Talking About Practice?

Two nights earlier we had a guest in the practice room, a man named Bruce Glenn.

He did a clinic on takedowns I remember like it was yesterday.

The one I liked was called a drag-trip where you pull your opponent’s arm across the front of their body while stepping in between their feet with your foot to heel-trip them.

 

“But don’t use this unless you’re behind in the finals with time running out.”

 

My time was running out under the lights and I was about to get rag-dolled and thrashed by someone who seemed insulted he had to compete against someone so below him.

He was better than most everyone, but with me he had the bottom of the barrel and didn’t like it.

Our coach could have forfeited the match and the outcome would have been the same.

But I needed the experience? Who needs the experience of being trapped with no way out but to face the consequences?

 

Sports Fan Knows This Is How It Works

I’d been ready to quit sports a year earlier because of losing too often with quitters and I was ready to quit just before the biggest loss of the night?

Should I fake an injury?

Faint?

Or consider this my finals where I’m losing and the clock is winding down?

After punching myself, getting slapped around, pummeled, and smashed by this seething brute, I had one chance.

I ran away.

Come and get me, fucker. I backed up, danced around, didn’t engage. I stalled, pushed, and side-stepped.

My guy was getting angrier the more he had to chase. He liked to go in rough and psyche people and pin them early.

My plan was the same, get roughed up and pinned.

But I saw my shot and took it.

I pulled his arm across his body, stepped in, and heel tripped him.

Except he didn’t fall down. My head was down around his knees with my eyes closed, my legs tangled in his ankles.

What the hell? I looked up, he looked down and couldn’t move, so I pushed his leg with my head and he toppled over waving his arms during the fall.

He jumped up madder and meaner than ever, charging after my impersonation of a matador in the well-lighted ring.

Falling three more times was all he could take before he quit trying and laid down in the second round.

 

And That, Sports Fan, Is All You Need To Know About Winning

Don’t quit on your team, your family, or yourself.

Find something to believe in and call it out.

Whether sports, spirit, or how you think others ought to behave based on what you’ve been told by some charlatan on TV, get a grip and hold on.

You can’t win if you don’t play; you can’t have a story about winning if you’re a cheating, lying, little bitch.

I never saw my guy again, but I spent the last round giving him the business, listening to crouching sounds from my cross-face, and in general working out the fear I had at the beginning.

Things look scary, and they are. 

And you are braver than you know.

Ready? Wrestle with your problems, reader.