On our first date, Susan and I shared basic information about each other over coffee. What music did we like? What was the name of our elementary school? (In case we wanted to break into each other’s Facebook account.) What sports did we follow? Susan said: football and baseball. I said: women’s basketball and auto racing. Susan laughed, sure that I was joking. I wasn’t. So we compromised. I became passionate about Susan, football and baseball. She became passionate about women’s basketball, auto racing and, I dared to hope, me.
Once, Susan and I, now married, took our little 50cc motor scooters for a run along country roads in the forest above our home in Monterey. As we headed back towards town, we passed the community college and noticed a football game in progress on the distant football field. Naturally, we scootered over to take a look and discovered a Pop Warner game in progress between two bitter rivals, teams composed of ten year old kids and cheered by rabid parents.
We, of course, joined one set of parents, learned the names of their darling children on the field and came to hate with great passion the other team, the other parents, the neighborhood the others lived in, the food they ate, the music they played and every other aspect of their miserable little lives. Now, it may be true that we saw ball carriers on our team head toward the technically incorrect end zone and be more apt to fall down than be tackled by an opposing player, but they were our kids and we loved them and the team flag they fell down under.
Before we moved to California, Susan and I held season tickets to the Northwestern University women’s basketball games. We cheered the players, who, by Big Ten standards, were not very good. We had great respect for the old coach and grew to dislike greatly the new coach who replaced him, feeling sure we could do a much better job in rallying the team to that ever elusive victory.
When we moved to Monterey we had, of course, a great many immediate concerns. How do we get the electricity and phone turned on? Where is the closest grocery store? What women’s basketball team should we adopt? You, now, the usual stuff.
We tested the local colleges and university and found their sports programs not up to our, admittedly very low, standards. So we moved farther afield and found, to our great joy, Stanford. Their women’s team is always well into the top ten in the country and the prohibitive favorites in the Pac 10 (now the Pac 12 and soon, probably, to become the Pac 34). We’ve been making the pilgrimage to Palo Alto to see the games for about ten years now and have watched whole generations of young women mature from unsure freshmen to accomplished seniors, only to break our hearts by having the temerity to graduate.
The thrill of victory; the agony of defeat. Such is the life of a sports junky couple.