"Real classy, Boston."
Sport is life.
Or, to quote from the Apple TV series Ted Lasso, "Football is life."
"Football is life" are the words used by the Dani Rojas character. He bursts onto the scene with the bounding exuberance and joy of a puppy let off its leash. The character is eager to embrace life, his new team, and the game of football--i.e. soccer as we would call it. The show is on Apple TV and worth the subscription price. Binge, then cancel, if you like. Amid everything going on in the world, the Ted Lasso show is a welcome view of a game, a team, life, and the effect of a relentless positive attitude.
Football is life goes both ways. Life is football. Life, including the behaviors of political life, shows up in sports. Something new and coarse is happening in crowd behavior, most recently and visibly among crowds at NBA games.
Jack Mullen was a multi-sport athlete in his youth in Medford. He is a lifelong sports fan. He also a close reader of political news. In our youths we thinned and picked pears together in Medford-area orchards. Later we both worked on the staff of SW Oregon Congressman Jim Weaver. Mullen asked to share this reflection.
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
Once my father took his nose out of the newspaper and showed me a photo of Stan Musial and Adlai Stevenson talking to each other. I was hooked. My lifelong love affair with sports and politics began that day and has never ceased.
I still have a hop in my step every morning, rain or shine, as I unfold my newspaper before entering my abode. I glance at the front page before moving to the sports page. On rare occasions, such as back in the days of Watergate, I stay on the front page. Usually I jump immediately to the sports page.
This week, the competition for my attention between the front page and sports page is intense. Zoe Lofgren and Liz Cheney are lifting my spirits just as the basketball fans in the Boston Garden are taking sports fandom to a new low. My concern that our fragile democracy is on its last legs haunts me daily. The efforts of those on the January 6 Committee give me hope that we still have a fighting chance to save our democracy, just as members of the Senate Watergate Committee saved our democracy in the 20th century, as Lincoln in the 19th century.
Meanwhile, in Boston, the hometown Boston Celtic fans showered opposing Golden State basketball players Draymond Green and Steph Curry with chants of “F*** You, Drey-mond” and “F*** You Steph-on”. Warrior coach Steve Kerr and player Klay Thompson, in the same vein as that Senator in 1954 said to Joe McCarthy “Have you no decency, Sir?”, at the post game press conference, said, “real classy, Boston”.
I am left to wonder, just what are we now in the last days of spring 2022? Will decency find its way back in America? It is a real struggle.