• Category Archives Sport

  • Regional ldentity

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                               Settling Moon

    There is no joy in Broncoville this morning for the mighty Manning has struck out. Seems familiar to me. Aging quarterback, once a legitimate star, leads team to playoffs, then has a less than starring role in a frustrating defeat. Can anyone say Favre? Or, Randall Cunningham? Or any of the other used-to-be’s who have been behind the center for the Vikings?

    This, too, is a settling in issue. Local sports teams have a distinctive regional role, unifying disparate groups like stepson Jon, the Apache/Comanche/Spanish guy who helped unload our stuff and the customers at the Brook Forest Inn pub. When in a new region then, the newspaper, the jerseys worn, the conversations about sports, all reinforce outsider status. I’m not a Bronco fan, nor a Nuggets fan, or a Rockies fan.

    My point here is not so much about sports because I am not much of a sports fan, though I’ve had my fling with the Vikings; rather, it’s about the nature of regional identity and its markers. I find the Western ethos of the Stock Show easier to assimilate, but that might be due to my Midwestern rural roots.

     

     


    Colorado Sport

  • Railbirds

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                                       Most Heat Moon

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    A warm summer evening, a true northern summer evening with just a hint of coolness after the sun went down. The Woollies gathered at Running Aces: Mark, Scott, Warren, Frank, Bill and Tom. Most of us were novices at betting the horses, but we made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. Normally, you would expect such a situation to favor the house, but I’m sure as a group we took home more money than we bet. Warren hit a boxed exacta and so did I. Between us we won over $215.

    The food is good bar food and we had a window table with a clear view of the finish line. We discussed betting techniques: what a cute name, color, odds by Ricky, odds by trackman published at the bottom of the program, looking at the racing history of the horses. Names seemed a dominant choice.

    I bet on Hooray Katie. Lost. Frank bet on Hanna. Won a quarter. Tom and Mark bet on Kissmelikeyoumeanit and won. Mark won an exacta. Bill won a couple of times. I think Scott won, too.

    These horses, pacers and trotters, are Standardbreds. This means that they trace their ancestory to Hambeltonian 10(pic). If thoroughbred racing is the sport of kings, harness racing, the same source of information says, is the sport of the people. The people were out there tonight, cheering and drinking, enjoying the summer evening. And the Woollies were part of it.


    Anoka County Sport Woolly Mammoths

  • Germans Rising

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                          Most Heat Moon

    Stunned. I’m stunned I was shocked when Germany beat Brazil. I’ve not followed the world cup with any diligence, but apparently enough to go, Whoa! And we played Germany to 1-0. Maybe we’re better than we think?

    Another international sport I follow with a bit more diligence than the world cup is Formula 1 racing. How ’bout Team Mercedes? Treating everybody else to rear wheel views around Formula 1 tracks from China to Great Britain. First time they’ve been this good since the 1950’s.

    Hmm. World Cup. Formula 1. Next, world domination?


    Sport

  • World Cup

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Beltane                                                                    Summer Moon

    The World Cup. Is the time when the rest of the world shows why their obsessions matter more than ours. Now that’s not hard to understand when our World Series goes global by having a left coast team play an east coast team. Or, when our Superbowl refers to a match among paid giants whose fight is not gladitorial only in that it is not to the death. At least not usually. It’s also easy to understand the attitude that soccer, played in outfits suitable for a day at the beach, has a more human tenor than one played in flannel or  hyper-padded spandex with gloves and helmets.

    And, granted, in a more globalized economy, in a world with jet service to anywhere in less than a day, an event that includes 204 teams from six continents (presumably Antarctica is too chilly for shorts and polo shirts) has the right to call itself the World Cup.

    Still. If I understand it right, soccer is hockey played on grass. Here’s my first hurdle. In spite of 40 years a Minnesotan, hockey has not become even a little interesting. I know. I know. A venial sin, but a sin nonetheless. However, if I don’t like it on ice, grass doesn’t make it better. Plus, what’s with the beach outfits? Are those really any costumes for grown millionaires to wear in public? At least basketball is played indoors. Or something.

    Anyhow. I liked Brazil. I hope either Brazil or Argentina wins. Why? Because I’ve been there? Maybe. On the other hand, and I do know what this means, are you ready for some football?


    Sport

  • Harness Racing Evening

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                           Summer Moon

     

    An evening at the races. The harness races. Though we went early, a reservation for dinner at 5 pm, so we could watch the Belmont Stakes. Kate got very excited during the Belmont. She was, and so was I, saddened by California Chrome’s inability to make up ground. We wanted to see a Triple Crown win. After all, we’re not getting any younger.

    Running Aces, the harness track up here not far from us, has a two tiered seating arrangement like the tables at Canterbury Downs, each table with its own TV that can be tuned to a closed circuit channel once the local race card begins.

    The evening began cloudy but the sun came out, shining on the wetland that sits in the track’s center, mallards and egrets taking off and landing while the horses in their hobbles pulled their sulkies behind them, warming up, jockey’s pulling back on long reins, leaning way back to get leverage. Since my family has been in harness racing for three generations, I have some memories associated with the sport, though I only went to the races a couple of times in Indiana.

    Dan Patch, from Savage, was a champion of champions in the harness racing world and a much larger than life size portrait of him greets visitors as they go through the doors at Running Aces. Immediately to the right are the poker tables, blackjack and other dealer led games. Midway in, also on the right, just beyond and above the card room, is a bank of televisions tuned to different race tracks all across the U.S. Bettors who want to wager on those races can use computers lined up in three rows, computers on either side of the row. The serious horse race betting goes on up there.

    Running Aces betting tellers are further in and to the left. While dining, employees will come to the table and place bets for you. The atmosphere is low key, but the peculiar tension associated with gambling, the dream of the win, dejection with a loss, thrums in the background.

    The only time I got excited during the races was when Cowgirls RocknRoll raced in the third race. She had a wonderful blue combination of colors, including the sulky and the wheels on the sulky. I’m convinced the jockey threw the race or she would have done much better than fourth. She was, though, without a doubt, the prettiest entrant in that race.


    Anoka County Sport

  • Superbowl. Wow.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                           Emergence Moon

    It’s taking me two days instead of one to finish the planting. I have to distribute nitrogen sources in two beds before I can plant the remaining collard greens, chard, egg plant, cucumber, bush beans, green beans and sugar snap peas. Gonna do that in just a few moments, then finish up.

    Hard not to notice the grins and cheers of Minneapolis boosters after the announcement about the 2018 Superbowl being played here. To get the millions from the Superbowl we only had to spend one billion dollars on a new stadium and I don’t know how much more on Stadium East projects. Which reminds me of Kierkegard’s parable about the brewer who made beer that sold for ten dollars a barrel. “Even though it costs me eleven dollars a barrel, I plan to make up the difference in volume.” BTW: Zygi Wolf looked demonic in his Star-Tribune picture. We’ll be settled somewhere in Colorado by then.

    Is it just me or does the new stadium look like a Lutheran church designed by a 1960’s architect?

    Time to get out there and finish up the planting before the Gentle Transitions’ movemanager comes.

     

     


    Garden Sport

  • Sombra a Sol

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                      Emergence Moon

    Le Plaza del Toros. When I sat down in the red and blue wooden seats, the heat from the sun was profound even though I had purchased a sombra seat. The tickets were sold sombra a sol. Beer vendors placed blue and gold buckets filled with ice and Dos Equis up the steep aisles of the Mexico City bull ring, more buckets on aisles closer to the ring, fewer on the ones further up. Another vendor had a long pole from which hung straw hats, mine sits now atop a bookcase over texts devoted to modernism and the enlightenment.

    Supposing that the arena would be full early, I had come about an hour ahead of the march of the toreadors, but I was wrong. My seats, the ones in blue near the ring itself and on the sombra side, didn’t fill up until about 10 minutes before the music started.

    4:30 pm “I have seen one kill. Took photos, felt my stomach turn and felt a fascination, too.”

    “1st a few (two) go at el toro with capes, then the picadors, mounted on padded horses, pierce the bull’s shoulders. Blood streams. The matador does a few passes, then another, much thrusting of hips.”

    “A fight between toreadors. The crowd yells at the hero of only a moment ago. Feedback is direct, intimate, abusive. Banderilleros put in their colored lances, banderillas, again into the bull’s massive shoulder muscles. Death has a festive, colorful air.”

    “Ole’s reward skill; whistles express displeasure.”

    4:40 pm. “There is music for the entrance of the bulls. The crowd first cheers the bull (and in the case of a poor toreador may choose to continue cheering the bull over the matador.), then the picador’s go in and do their ugly task. They look comic, almost pathetic. All the while jets fly overhead.”

    “I don’t understand the exchange of the first sword for the second. Matador got gored! Got up. Going back. The crowd loves it. His leg bloody he seems more determined now. Now he seems braver, more confident. (just macho?)”

    “Down on his knees, working closer, in the spot where he was gored. Now, the moment of truth. The bull won’t come. He charges the bull, sinks the sword in the first time. Crowd cheers. He walks, starts in front of the bull as it goes down and looks pleadingly at the crowd, then gets up. A last sword has a small horizontal piece near the tip, with it the matador flicks out the the sword he plunged in, then strikes with the odd sword. (a descabello which kills by a thrust through the spinal column rather than to the heart as with the rapier.)”

    “Toro has personal attributes. He wants this, does this. My seat partner talks about toro as a person.”

    (this is material I wrote back in 1993.)

     

     

     

     

     


    Sport Travel

  • A Secular Sabbath

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                Bee Hiving Moon

    Sundays have a certain slowness to them, as if time itself moves languidly, the urgency of the workweek drained out.  Of course, that’s an inversion of the real phenomena which happens not on Sunday but in the mind when it finds itself in a Sunday way.

    Back when I was a small town boy, Sunday meant shining my father’s shoes in the morning before church.  While complaining about it.  I mean, thirty-five cents for dipping my hands in black shoe polish?  Then, off to Sunday School with one teacher or another followed by the Sunday service sitting in the family pew (not reserved, but held for us anyhow by long tradition) under the watchful eye of Jesus praying, his hands on a large boulder, in the Garden of Gethsemane.  This was stage right from the pulpit on the west side of the sanctuary.

    Afterward, at least for a long time, we would often get in the family sedan, Mary and I in the back, mom and dad up front, and drive over to Elwood (our most bitter athletic rivals, but that didn’t matter to mom and dad) and go to Mangas’ cafeteria.  It had those tubular rails with an upraised one at the back to hold your formica tray as you passed by the offerings in small dishes.  I remember most the swiss steak, which I loved, and mashed potatoes with butter pooling yellow in the middle.

    We would eat, then go home where the rest of the day disappears from memory.

    Later, as a city rat, church was a work related experience since my city time is almost exactly coterminous with seminary and my career as a minister.  So, I would head off to work on Sunday morning, usually in this church or that since I worked for the Presbytery (a geographical jurisdiction) and when I finished, again Sunday afternoon sort of disappears from memory.

    As an exurbanite, I fell into the Sunday afternoon NFL maw for several years, but as of late the Viking’s have cured me of that experience.  That means now Sundays have neither church nor the cafeteria nor football and what is left is the residue of passivity Sunday represented in its small town and football eras.  No wonder my inner world moves more slowly on Sundays.

    It’s my secular sabbath.  And I think that’s a good thing.


    Commentary on Religion Family Memories Sport

  • Guy Cred Lost

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                         Valentine Moon

    So much for solidarity with the grandkids.  The Broncos got broke by the Seahawks.  I missed it all.  May be slipping away from guy cred, I know. That’s Peyton Manning there on the ground next to that nasty hoss.

    Instead, Kate and I finished the 10th episode of the 9th season of the British cold case series, the Waking Dead, the finish of the series. It took dedication, perseverance and stamina to watch them all, but we did it.  We’ll always have Waking the Dead.  But not Superbowl 48.


    Cinema and Television Family Sport

  • Feeling Like A Heretic

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

    We cut the cord some time ago.  No more cable tv.  We use Roku and through it Netflix and Hulu Plus to get all the television we want.  Movies round out our visual entertainment.

    That means we no longer have cable television channels carrying the rites of America’s high holy day, the Super Bowl.  So, on this Sunday of Sundays, I’ve been reading a Kay Scarpetta mystery, took a nap and generally indulged on my rest day.  No workouts on Sundays.

    It does leave me feeling faintly like a heretic.  I pretend I’ve given up the old religion completely, have no use for it, but of course what I really mean is until the Vikings get a team.  I’ve never been a church goer, my attendance more like the evangelicals who get all their preachin’ over the television.  But, I never send’em money.  I draw the line at making contributions to billionaires and the millionaires who work for them.

    Kate’s a big fan of the opening and closing events of the various Olympic games.  I’m not. She will find a way to watch them.  We watched the Indianapolis 500 at Tanner’s Sports Bar.  Maybe we’ll do something like that.  These are the particular, the unique events that it does not make sense to load up onto Hulu or Netflix for their flavor is in their immediacy, the unknown.

    I’m not feeling deprived.  Not at all.  But I am aware of that holiday feeling in the air and not being part of it.

    N.B.  Go Broncos!  Have to maintain solidarity with the grandkids.


    Sport