OK, this is the new version of this page. It was the oldest page in Shlaes.com, and dated from the “type your own HTML” days in the 1990s. Yet people begged me to leave it alone, in particular my wife’s cousins. Alas, in the new software I can’t retain the old code. Here’s what you got when you went there. Not much, and that was the point.
It was a point of pride. I’m stubborn about this, being the proud descendant of a father who couldn’t throw or catch (a by-product of his vastly accelerated education) and a reverse snob of sorts. When people bring up the football game last night, I’m likely to say “is that the one with the brown pointy ball? Or the orange bouncy one?”
It seems that being a person who doesn’t know much about sports is pretty boring. But one who knows nothing? That’s interesting. So that’s what I try to be.
One evening in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, I was at a fancy dinner with a bunch of oil company clients. Petroleum people – they were different from me. To start with, all the crew cuts at the table amounted to less hair than my medium length cut. The tattoos, if there were any, were oil field or military. So from the other end of the table rose a discussion of first-round draft choices and averages and such. I was glad to be at the other end, hearing a tattoo origin story from my buzz-cut tablemate. It was a good story – he came from a prosperous family with a controlling father, and figured out that the only way he’d get to pick his own college and his own way was to pay for his own education. So he’d joined the army. His tattoo was a large numeral, with the letters F2F. A Big Red One. The First Infantry. The F2F was for his deployment in Iraq – First To Fight.
So, a good story. But interrupted as the noisy dispute at the other conversation started to include “let’s ask Noah!” “No, we can’t as Noah!” “Why? Has my famous lack of sports knowledge made its way to Bartlesville?”
“No. We’ve all been to Shlaes.com!”
Which is why, at least back then, this was a careful site. Quirky, but apolitical. Personal, but not revelatory.
As to why I don’t care about sports? I took my younger son to a Big Ten game once. Michigan vs. Wisconsin – at Michigan Stadium, the Big House. We’d gotten seats in the middle of the Michigan section, and were surrounded by the rabid fever, the big noise, the whole thing. (To be fair, I also took my son to a Glee Club concert that night, the college tradition I cared about.) After the game he was confused – “You were really worked up. You were on your feet, yelling and stuff. I’ve never seen you do that.” “How can you not? 105 thousand people all yelling, a marching band, a war down on the field? Competition? Of course I respond. The difference is that tomorrow I won’t think about it, and in a week I won’t remember it.”
The late Arnie Tesh explained it best. He’d been to a game with a friend, and at the end of the game his friend was excited, exuberant, radiant. Arnie asked why? “We won!”
Arnie’s response? “No, they won. We watched.”