Sports, the good old days

From my novel Kerouac's Scroll, a road story about two old farts driving across the country to see K's scroll at the Smithsonian. This is before they pick up a young hitchhiking prostitute, which changes their adventure considerably. Chapter Seven:

7: Rap #1 –
Sports, now & then

“Compared to the fifties,” I began, “sports suck. Especially professional sports. What’s the difference? Lack of team spirit. Lack of personal character and class. Today team sports are a game of inflated egos. Look at professional football. Some lineman sacks the quarterback. Big deal. That’s his job. That’s what he gets paid to do. So what does he do? He does a little dance and pounds his chest and struts around like he’s the best lineman of all time. What an asshole.”
“And how they carry on after scoring a touchdown!” Hooker put in.
“Exactly. All that showoff garbage. Can you imagine Huge McElhenny doing a dance after scoring a touchdown?”
“No way! Or Jim Brown, Alan Ameche, Joe Perry, Gayle Sayers.”
“It’s disgusting. And they’re all millionaires.”
“More millionaires are sitting on the bench,” said Hooker.
“You got that right.”
“You know what started it?”
“Expansion.”
“And free agency,” Hooker added. “No player is loyal to a team anymore.”
“Exactly. I mean, it used to be every team, no matter how far down in the standings, had its superstar. The Pirates had Ralph Kiner. Know what I mean?”
“I do,” said Hooker. “There was stability. You rooted for the home team. You knew all the players and knew they’d still be around tomorrow.”
“They played on grass, for God’s sake! I can’t believe they started playing on carpet.”
“Sports heroes used to be heroes, somebody to look up to.”
“Exactly. When I was a kid, I used to collect autographs.” I told the story again, even though Hooker had heard it many times before, about how as kids a friend and I would go to the Green Hotel in Pasadena, where I grew up, to get autographs from visiting teams coming in to play the Los Angeles Rams. On one occasion, my hero, Hugh McElhenny, asked Roger and me to help him pick out a birthday present for his nephew. We spent an entire afternoon with him! It was like hanging out with God.
“Once McElhenny was asked to compare college ball and pro ball,” I continued, again telling Hooker what he’d heard countless times. “I like pro ball all right, he said. But I don’t like the salary cut.”
Hooker said, “I ever tell you about meeting Archie Moore in an airport?”
Of course he had. Many times. He told me again.
“Now there was a gentleman,” Hooker concluded. “There was a man with class.”
“That’s what jocks don’t have today. Nobody has any class. I think Cassius Clay started it.”
I glanced at Hooker. He looked at me with narrow eyes. I continued.
“He’s the template for egomania in sports, right? He started the loud, flamboyant, show-offy style. The media loved it, nurtured it. Now any third string jock has to strut around like Cassius Clay.”
“Mohammed Ali,” Hooker corrected me. “Who was one of the great heavyweights of all time.”
Boxing was Hooker’s sport, not mine.
I said, “You can defend his skill but you can’t say he had class. He was a loudmouth.”
“He was psyching his opponents.”
“In the beginning maybe, but it became his trademark even after he’d established how good he was.”
“He had the balls to live by his convictions,” Hooker said.
“I understand he’s one of your heroes, Red. What I’m saying is, the rampant arrogance in sports today may well have begun with him.”
“Maybe.”
After a silence I said, “I feel sorry for kids today. You look up to a jock and he ends up beating his wife or doing drugs or creaming some asshole in a bar. At the very best, he’s just an arrogant jerk who couldn’t walk in the shoes of a player from the fifties.”
“I don’t know about that. Records keep getting broken. Jocks must be getting better.”
“Improved technology, sure. Steroids and all the other enhancement drugs they take. We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. Soon we’ll be building robots that break all the records, too, but so what? Where is the team spirit? Where is the humility? Where are the jocks a kid can look up to?”
“They do look up to them now,” said Hooker. “That’s the problem. You watch a basketball game in the park lately? Kids after school or on the weekend? They strut around as much as their heroes. They obviously look up to them and mimic them.”
“That’s depressing.”
“But there it is.”
“Arrogance begets arrogance.”
Hooker said, “Parents can be just as bad. Look at Little League games. Parents cussing out the umpire, screaming at their kids, even getting in fights.”
“Winning matters too much.”
“Maybe it always mattered too much.”
I said, half singing, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I think it was true once. When I was a kid and played what used to be called sandlot ball, sometimes I was on the winning team, sometimes the losing, but the game was fun no matter what side I was on. It was sports. It was fun. Winning or losing was just what happened on a particular day. Didn’t you feel that way?”
“Yeah. But it’s different if it’s your job, the way you make your living. Because then winning means more money.”
“It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?”
“The bottom line.”
“You know what I like to watch these days? Women’s sports, like basketball and soccer. You still get a sense of team spirit.”
“Not to mention all those young things in shorts and tight bras,” said Hooker.
“Very funny, asshole.”
“You don’t notice things like that, right? What are you, senile?”
“It’s frosting on the cake. I go because the games are exciting. It’s sports for sports sake.”
“Or sports as intellectual masturbation,” said Hooker.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nobody watches young women in skimpy clothing for the love of sports. Unless it’s bedroom sports.”
“Everything isn’t reduced to sex.”
“Of course it is,” said Hooker.
And so it went, until I glanced at the clock on the dashboard and saw that it was past lunch time. I took the next exit and drove several miles into a small town in Idaho called Mountain Home.
Mountain Home was one of those typical small western towns, with its Main Street lined with brick and stone buildings, everything square and squat and right-angled. It didn’t take too much imagination to picture horses instead of cars on the street. I found a café and parked in front of it.
We barely had settled in with our hamburgers when Hooker said, “My favorite sport is boxing. One on one. As basic as competition can get.”
I remembered in the Army how Hooker used to drag me to an all-night movie house playing Fights of the Century, where we’d drink the bottles of beer or wine we had snuck in.
“And poker,” said Hooker. “There’s an underrated sport.”
“Poker isn’t a sport.”
“Of course it’s a sport.”
“Poker is a game.”
“Same difference.”
“A game isn’t necessarily a sport,” I said, my voice rising.
“Of course it is. I think the terms are pretty much interchangeable.”
“I assure you they aren’t.”
“What are you, playing the intellectual snob card? To most people, a sport and a game are the same thing. You don’t believe me? Let’s take a survey. Miss!”
Gesturing to the waitress, Hooker hit a glass of orange juice, knocking it to the floor. The glass shattered and liberated a tiny orange pool.
The waitress hurried over and was about to speak until she saw Hooker, who had risen to his feet. She looked terrified.
“A sport is a game is a sport, madam!” Hooker said. Then he mumbled, “I need a smoke,” and stepped toward the door.
The waitress stared at me, still speechless.
I pulled out my money clip and peeled off enough for lunch and a set of new glasses.
“This should cover it,” I said.
The waitress took the money and stared at it.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll finish my lunch now.”
“Of course. I’ll get this cleaned up right away.”
“There’s no hurry on my account.”
But a bus boy was already on his way with broom and mop.
I finished my burger and left. The car was parked right outside the café but Hooker wasn’t anywhere to be found. Then I heard a shrill whistle.
Hooker was across the street, up at the corner, waving his arms.
What now? I crossed the street and headed his way, trying to look casual about it.
“I have proof,” said Hooker as I arrived.
He was standing in front of a small wooden building identified as the library.
“Follow me if you dare.”
He led me inside to a large dictionary, which he had bookmarked in two places. He opened the page at the first bookmark and read, “Sport: physical activity engaged in for pleasure.” He turned to the other bookmark. “Game: activity engaged in for diversion or amusement.” He gave me his bad-toothed grin. “I rest my case.”
“Let me see that.”
I looked at the definition of game. Then I turned to the definition of sport.
“You editorialized,” I said, then read the definition of sport again, with my own emphasis. “Physical activity engaged in for pleasure.” Growing excited, I flipped back and read again. “Game: a physical or mental competition.”
Now it was my turn to grin.
“There’s a huge difference right there,” I said. “Sport is always physical. A game is sometimes mental. Obviously poker is a mental game and not a sport.”
“Let me see that,” Hooker said and reached for the dictionary but I put my arms in the way, stopping him from turning the pages. We arm-wrestled over access to the dictionary. Finally Hooker faked me out with a move and grasped a page of the dictionary. I quickly recovered, grabbing his arm, and in the struggle for control of the page, it suddenly tore with an audible rip. We both froze as the librarian rushed over.
“Gentlemen, please!”
The librarian, a white-haired woman, stared at the torn dictionary in horror.
“I need a smoke,” said Hooker and beelined out of there.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching for my money clip. I dropped three twenties onto the dictionary. “I think this should cover it.”
When I came out onto the porch, Hooker said, “You’re a poor loser, brother.”
“Bullshit. Poker isn’t a sport because it isn’t physical.”
“The hell it isn’t physical. I’ve seen poker games where fights started. I’ve seen poker games where somebody got shot. Not physical, my ass.”
I let the matter rest. There was no more discussion of sports for the rest of the day.