Mid-Majority's 10 year adventure as a website is coming to an end tomorrow night. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to participate. I was born and raised a sports fan. I have gone through several phases of fandom in my life and today at the ripe old age of 56, I still have a lot to learn, but I have been blessed by Kyle's sharing of his sports journey with us. This post is my attempt to express how much I appreciate the experience.
I was brought up to be a sports fan from the start. Born in Northwest Indiana, long before people started calling it "The Region", I was raised to be a Chicago White Sox fan. Which, of course, means I was raised to despise the Cubs, but that's another conversation for another time. Bears, Blackhawks, and Bulls came later in my teens, but as far as I know, the only sporting events my Dad and his brothers took me to were White Sox games at Comiskey Park.
Being an innocent child, I didn't care about competitive balance, the endurance of pitching arms, the wisdom of bunting in the early innings, bean-ball wars, or the evils of the reserve clause. All I cared about was watching players in uniforms do amazing things with bat and ball, learning their names, and hoping I could watch them play for my team forever. I cried when the Sox traded Tommie Agee between 1967 and 1968. As I reached my first decade on this earth, I added pennant races to the list of things that kept my attention.
As for participation, from an early age, soccer was my game. Sure, we played 5 dollars in our subdivision, but I never found a sandlot somewhere to be the 60's version of Smalls. During recess at Immanuel Lutheran School in Valparaiso, Indiana, the sport of choice was soccer, and I remember myself being widely acclaimed as one of the best goalies in our class. I absolutely remember feeling a sense of pride about it. I may have just been hearing what I wanted to hear -- maybe I was one of the few idiots to volunteer for the position. But I remember doing a decent job for a 3rd grader.
As I grew older, I fell out of the in crowd and there wasn't as much call for me to participate in sports. I remember playing little league, but not for very long. But there was one sport I latched on to like no other sport before or since: basketball.
In the 60's and 70's in northwest Indiana? This could only mean one thing. Long before there was anything called "March Madness", I was into "Hoosier Hysteria", otherwise known as Indiana High School Basketball. My mom worked for NIPSCO (Northern Indiana Public Service Company) and we always used to get a big wall poster with the field of 64 bracket on it. I always pasted one on my bedroom door and filled it out when all the sectionals were over, and I always tried to listen to the local games on the radio, when my parents weren't taking me to Boucher Gym to see the likes of Joe Hill (later known as Joe Otis) play for the greatest basketball coach I have ever known, Virgil Sweet. I attended his basketball camps all 4 years they were available, learning among other things the proper way to shoot free throws. For reasons unknown to me at the time, there was something about basketball that got under my skin. There was a court across the street from my house, and every day after school I would go there and play H-O-R-S-E against myself (unfortunately, being a loner by then, I didn't tend to have a friend to play with). Like lots of kids, I would fantasize about hitting the winning shot in a real game. Some part of me dreamed of making that a reality. But the rest of me wasn't very committed to that dream.
I tried out for basketball in 7th grade but wasn't good enough. So I tried again in 8th grade. I actually had transferred to a junior high school in the public system after the 6th grade because my Dad felt the sports opportunities were better at Ben Franklin Junior High. In 8th grade, there weren't enough to make cuts, so I made the team by default. I remember scoring a point or two during the season, enjoying wearing a tie to school (being "special", but I was what the kids today call "the human victory cigar" -- i.e., the last man on the depth chart. In 9th grade, there were a couple of cuts but I still made it. Fred Mitchell, who would later become varsity head coach at Chesterton High School, saw something in me that I couldn't see in myself. I remember a couple of brief flashes where I showed some spirit. I remember being an annoyance to my teammates. I remember being pulled from a game because, as someone told me later, I looked like I was "about to pee my pants." I remember for once in my life standing up for myself in practice and earning the respect of my coach who stood up for me. And I remember parlaying that into absolutely nothing but kidding myself, thinking the dream was still alive. After 10th grade, it fell to Dale Ciciora and my scout master Dave Glass to talk sense into me. And it took me until my 30s to realize that I never committed to the game of basketball. I just liked the idea of being on a team and wearing a uniform. I was an imposter. I was meant for some other field of play than the basketball court.
In high school, I remember watching Notre Dame end UCLAs 88 game winning streak one Saturday afternoon, then traveling with the varsity down to Lafayette to watch Valpo High take on Lafayette Jefferson that evening with their twin tower front court, and Coach Sweet reminding his guys how the Irish guards disrupted Wooden's behemoths. Valpo didn't fare very well that night, as I recall, trying to duplicate the effort.
Several years after I graduated from Rose-Hulman with a BS in Computer Science and got a job with McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis, Hank Gathers, Bo Kimble, Tom "Human Bruise" Peabody, Jeff Fryer, Per Stuemer, and friends captivated me as they did a lot of people, playing a reckless but highly entertaining form of basketball that took the nation by storm. They were unconventional, finally taken down by the UNLV Runnin' Rebels in the Elite Eight. Soon thereafter, Paul Westhead moved on to other parts and LMU basketball dropped off everyone's radar screens, but it left a taste in my mouth that made me thirsty for more excitement. On my 36th birthday, my Dad took me to the IHSAA Final Four in Indianapolis to watch Valpo High compete for the state championship. A certain young man played on that team who is now well known to the world by the name of Bryce Drew. It was my alma mater's first ever appearance in the state championship game for basketball (we won the state football championship my senior year). My reward for jumping on the bandwagon at the most opportune time? Valpo blew a 10 point lead with less than 3:00 to go and lost the title game in overtime. And yet I turned to my Dad and told him this was the best birthday present I ever got. A few years later, Bryce managed to find the magic, and as you can imagine, I've been a Valpo fan ever since.
It seems trivial now, but I remember being impressed watching two teams of high schoolers sacrifice their bodies diving for loose balls and boxing each other out, expending all their energy, then after one blows a lead and loses in OT, they both line up and shake hands with each other (and it was more than just a perfunctory ritual). Kids who were opponents suddenly become comrades. It's a simple thing, but it is beautiful.
20 years later, I realize why it impresses me so: I still have just enough of the little kid in me. That kid who never really got what the game was all about, he just wanted to wear the uniform and have everything turn out great. He loved to dream the dream but didn't have the guts to work to make it happen. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. And even now, he's in there, wanting his team to win and not understanding when they don't. He could never shake hands with an opponent who beat him. As a fan sitting in the stands, he's pissed the other team beat his team.
And last Sunday, he was pissed that Kentucky beat Wichita State. He didn't want to understand that it was a great, classic game that will probably show up on ESPN Classic for years to come. He wants to blame the refs or the selection committee or the unfair system by which Bill Self can -- with impunity, mind you -- refuse to play Gregg Marshall's team because "there's nothing to gain and everything to lose". Mostly he wants to jump into Doc Brown's DeLorean and find some way to change history (making that layup by Cleanthony Early late in the game might be all it takes). He feels cheated out of what's right.
To be sure, "he" no longer is in charge of my life, but I still feel that little kid in me. That "kid" fumes watching the Shockers having to shake hands with the Wildcats and congratulate them for winning.
Which is why I was so transfixed watching both post-game press conferences later, seeing a bunch of grown men who had to hurt inside being so mature and yet so genuine. And then something happened that hasn't for me in quite awhile: I actually watched Kentucky play Louisville in the Sweet Sixteen. Understand: for 10 years now, I've *only* ever watched NCAA tourney games that involved at least one mid-major. I'm not sure exactly why, but I can always think of several plausible reasons which stem from that little kid inside me who hates how teams like Kentucky have all kinds of built-in advantages over the smaller schools and who still fumed over all the pre-tourney grousing about Wichita State getting a 1 seed.
These college athletes take losing and injustice a lot better than I do, that's for sure.
And I am drawn to this game they play in ways I am still trying to understand. I'm not much of a basketball analyst, even as just a fan. I can spot bad free throw shooting form (thank you, Coach Sweet!), and I can get by identifying bad passing form or failure to box out, but critiquing strategy or substitutions or coaching is beyond me. I'm not sure I care all that much about improving that. I have little trouble enjoying a basketball game -- as long as my team wins or there's more games left on their schedule. But just as I never found the soul of the game as a kid player, I'm still searching for the soul of the game as an adult fan.
That's not what drew me to The Mid-Majority, but I find that I've been helped all the same to understand the game of basketball better. I was drawn there as a place that talked about all the teams that do not have the exposure and the advantages of the big schools. Since I am a fan of one of those schools, Kyle's website has felt like home to me. But, as U2 once sang, even though I am a believer, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." I still have a lot to learn, even though I spent seasons VIII and IX (2011-2012 and 2012-2013) regularly contributing to the website (though -- please -- not even close to the contribution made by our season X traveler, Ray Curren), I had to be reminded this year that at the end of season IX, Kyle renounced the very mantras that I had taken to heart ("It always ends in a loss", "Our Game always hurts you"). The very fact that these things are still experientially true for me tells me that I still have things to learn. I still haven't discovered the real beauty of Our Game, though I probably have glimpsed it here and there. I feel like I found a way to appreciate the Wichita State-Kentucky game just for how special it was, though I kick myself for not actually going to the game (I live in St. Louis for crying out loud).
What kept me a Mid-Majority fan and then member was the relentless pursuit of basketball games between teams toiling in relative obscurity, as well as the clear-eyed consistent critique of what generally passes as "coverage" dished out by the national media. Mostly what kept me on board was great writing, which I aspire to. Even though I missed writing for the website this year, Peter Robert Casey has thoughtfully provided a new website for people like me, which I have already begun using and will continue to in the future.
And although the Mid-Majority website will cease to exist tomorrow night, I am determined to take this season's theme -- "Go. Think. Remember." -- with me into the future, and add one more imperative: "Learn". Thank you Kyle, thank you Ray Curren, thank you Jen Ahearn who so ably edited season VIII contributions that she managed to anticipate and correct my format glitches for me and was always patient. Thank you to all of Mid-Majority who shared this enterprise and made me feel like a member of the community.
One last regret: work prevented me from going to the First Four this year, even though I remembered to save my vacation days this time. I watched the games, so I was with you in spirit, but I wish I could have said hi in person. Is there any way I can meet some of you in Dayton next March?
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