Dear Neighbor,
It’s November, when we celebrate Thanksgiving and, for many people, the main course: football. I will not be present in the viewing lounge.
I loathe watching football for the singular reason that I don’t understand it: the rules, the violence, the endless timeouts, the pathological fandom, the player worship, to say nothing of the next day’s autopsy of the game.
None of this makes sense to me. I’m not a team player. Never was.
It isn’t that I hated the enterprise; I truly didn’t get it. I used to feel the same way about church: All these people showed up week after week when they didn’t have to, and I couldn’t understand why. I didn’t learn until much later that a lone wolf can still happily be part of, and loyal to, various groups.
Off to the Met
My dislike for watching and participating in sports hardened when I was 7. One Sunday on the way home from Mass, my parents announced that we were all going to the Twins game that afternoon. My siblings were thrilled; I was not. I’d already been dragged to church, and this loomed as another round of alienation.
What I’d wanted, and planned on doing, was diving into the newest edition of “Encyclopedia Brown,” a series of books about the boy detective who solved neighborhood mysteries. That, to me, was a perfect Sunday afternoon. I offered to stay home alone, but my age quickly nixed that suggestion.
Off we went to the old Met Stadium in our green Oldsmobile, six of us (three in front, three in back) with zero seat belts and zero air conditioning, standard in those days. It was July and blisteringly hot, and I, in the backseat’s passenger side, was miserable. I dangled my foot out the window to cool down, which worked brilliantly until a bee stung my big toe at a stoplight.
We sat in the bleachers, broiling under the sun. No amount of Frosty Malt could assuage my misery (still, I indulged with gusto). I brought along “Encyclopedia Brown” and read throughout the game. That was the most enjoyable part.
Always With a Book
Books have both saved me and caused consternation to my co-attendees at games over the years. In 1990, I visited an old friend in Madison who told me he’d gotten us tickets to a Badgers game. I read “Anna Karenina.” He’s still a friend, but he continues to harangue me for that crime.
In the early ’90s, I dated a basketball devotee who invited me to join in his fun. I told him up front that I didn’t like watching sports; he assured me I’d grow to love watching the Timberwolves. I did not, and I read nearly the entire Sinclair Lewis oeuvre throughout countless games. My boyfriend declared us (he, Lewis and I) a ménage à trois, yet continued to invite me.
He was an attorney, and his firm once gave him courtside tickets, on the floor where the likes of Spike Lee and Jack Nicholson sit. I was warned not to read during the game, as it would be televised and he’d be ostracized if any of his partners saw his “weirdo date,” which I didn’t regard as an insult. I got hit by the ball. Twice.
I’ve been invited to many sporting events (Twins, Vikings, Kicks, Timberwolves, North Stars), always attending with a book in tow, and when I looked up, it was to watch the clock more than the game. I must say the St. Paul Saints are fun to watch because they’re so goofy.
Then Came the Lynx
Then, a few years ago, the Lynx entered my life, courtesy of Daisy’s law firm’s season tickets. I was actually looking forward to the first game, against the Phoenix Mercury, whose star player was Brittney Griner, my hero for surviving Putin’s petty wrath after a Russian court sentenced her to nine years in prison for less than a gram of medically prescribed cannabis. (A prisoner exchange released her after nine months.)
The Lynx were different. Oh, so different. Five minutes in, I said to Daisy, “It’s like watching ballet!” It seemed more relational, not combat-based as in men’s sports. Also, WNBA players, by and large, can’t dunk because of height (though my gal Brittney Griner currently holds the record with 27 career dunks), which makes shooting more spectacular.
This past September, I was at Target Center when the Lynx played the Indiana Fever, and I got to see Caitlin Clark play. A true thrill.
Less than a week later, while Lily was visiting from New York, she, Daisy and I sat in the basement watching the Lynx play the New York Liberty. It was my idea, and I’d looked forward to it for days. We had pizza and stared, mesmerized, at the screen. We cheered and we screamed, at times in delight, at times in fury.
During the fourth quarter, I said to the girls, “This is how real fans feel when they’re watching the Super Bowl.”
I finally got it.
— Dorothy
Dorothy Richmond writes for the Hill & Lake Press. She lives in Cedar-Isles-Dean.
