Olympic busking

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Sure, they’re Dylan and Springsteen. That they recently were paid multiple millions for their music catalogs, well, it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe. Those are songwriting giants, and you can’t start a fire without a spark.

But I’m thinking—humbly yet just out of curiosity now that the Winter Olympics again are upon us—whether the ditties I have written on Olympic topics might be worth something. To somebody.

Surely originality could get some play. The Boss, after all, never touched on the subject of ski-jumping, as I have…

On the wings of a pair of skis/These jocks show no weak knees.

They fly off with ease/On a couple of skis.

Yodel-ay-ee-hee

Yodel

Ay

Ee

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Or here’s a big-picture look at the Winter Games…

Icy rinks/Ice hills

I see some/Icy spills.

Icy nerves/Icy wills

I see great/Icy skills.

Snowy mounts/Snowy streets

‘s no easy/Snowy feats.

 Snowy skies/Snowy ground

Snowy crash/Comin’ down.

Admittedly, with these ballads, I’ve never gotten around to the music part. These are only lyrics from a poor-man’s Hammerstein in need of a Rodgers, like Bernie Taupin counting on Elton John to do the composing. But you’re got to start somewhere. I’ve read where Mick Jagger originally stuck to creating the words and letting Keith Richards supply the music.

Also, just as Bob Dylan addressed topical issues, I have dealt with matters of consequence, such as the ongoing deliberations of whether the United States ought to have skipped this year’s Beijing Games in protest of China’s human-rights violations—and the history of such actions:

It sounds like we’re fixin’/To keep right on mixin’

The politics with the sports

 Can’t say I’m surprised/But the previous tries

Left everyone tied up in knots

 Our boycott of Moscow/Wound up a fiasco

‘Cause the Reds did the same thing to us

 Just four years later/East bloc c’llaborators

Thought they’d turn LA to a bust.

A protest song? Sort of. As is this next one, calling to task the skullduggery inside the Olympic halls of power, and specifically the almost routine charges of bribery of IOC members to grant hosting rights:

Bet I can find your kid a job, if you get that guy from Guam

To cast a vote for my hometown. (Don’t say I greased your palm.)

 I hear your wife likes sable coats, and I hear you like to ski.

But I could make y’alls dreams come true. (No need for thankin’ me.)

 Just tell the guys on the I-O-C, I got the best hotels.

Got buds in bidness, gov’ment, TV. Know all the local swells.

 And if you need some surgery done, I’m friendly with the docs;

Cars and women, song and wine. I’ll pull out all the stops.

What triggered this avocation was my assignment by Newsday to cover the 1997 U.S. national figure skating championships, which were staged in Nashville, Tenn.—Music City. The constant auditory sensations there, while casually passing live honky-tonks on the way to the ice rink each day, seemed to demand an attempt at some appropriate verses and choruses. The subject matter already was staring me in the face, since the sport had been shadowed at the previous Olympics by the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan contretemps and was in great anticipation of a less dangerous Michelle Kwan-Tara Lipinski Olympic showdown in ‘98.

So my debut went something like this….

I can’t figure skating, And I can’t figure her

Slipping around with guys in sequins, Falling on their wallets with certain Frequen-

Cy

 ‘Course I’ve heard of Tonya. Heard of Nancy, too.

But this ain’t exactly stock-car racing, Ain’t football and ain’t quail-chasing, I

Guarantee.

 (Chorus)

No-knee-capping, no fist-fighting. No bad-mouthing in a bind

She’ll smile right onto that gold-medal stand, if she can just say off her behind.

 (More verses)

Is Tara in the short program? Is Michelle in the long?

Does size have something to do with things? How come there’s music but nobody sings

The songs?

 Some costumes’ll make you cry. Some’ll make you laugh.

Judges just setting there with poker faces, giving life sentences on the basis

Of a four ‘n’ a half.

 (Repeat chorus)

Okay. I am aware how relationships are prevalently featured in song. And how matters of the heart can be dealt with metaphorically. Ready? A-one and a-two…

Schussh, my darlin’, dodgin’ gates like broke promises.

Schussh, my darlin’, Harrys, Dicks, cheatin’ Thomases.

Schussh, my darlin’, love’s somethin’ like a Super G.

Schussh, my darlin’, just stay warm and don’t hit a tree.

Maybe need a little help from some fellow buskers? Take two….

A Jeopardy! question

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The Jeopardy! twist on TV game shows is to supply the answers and challenge contestants to come up with the right question. But executive producer Michael Davies’ declaration this month that Jeopardy! is “a major league sport” invites an inquiry difficult to verify: Is it?

What is a sport?

In a post on the program’s website, Davies offered as proof of Jeopardy!’s sports bona fides the introduction of players’ statistics—box scores!; “lock-in” and “buzzer” data, the success rate for responses—that compares to top four champions in the show’s history. Coming next, he said, will be a “structured season and post-season every year.”

Predictably, when The Athletic website cited Davies’ we-are-a-sport claim and invited readers’ responses, the barstool argument was on. (Which may help establish that Jeopardy! indeed is a sport.)

“Is chess a sport?” one Athletic reader thundered. “What about poker? From there we can debate pool and darts, then perhaps bowling….If Jeopardy! is a sport, then….so is ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and myriad other game shows. What’s next, Monopoly?”

Another reader shot back: “Look at what ESPN says are sports. Hot dog eating, spelling bees. Jeopardy’ is a sport. There is a halftime, a two-minute warning, a play-by-play announcer. The only thing missing is uniforms.”

OK, my turn. And since the first Athletic reader brought up chess, let’s start with the 1972 world championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, when newspaper editors couldn’t agree where to place their coverage. Did chess belong on the front page? In the features section, next to the regular bridge column? In the sports section, alongside the Yankees and Mets? Was chess a sport?

Fischer and Spassky were dueling in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the thing went on forever—the impetuous, egocentric Fischer against the increasingly exasperated Spassky. The event sent office workers scurrying to chess boards to play during their free time. The contest received massive attention; an independent New York television station actually had continuous live coverage of absolute inaction while the contestants thought out their next moves. Maybe a half-hour would go by before the host of the show, Shelby Lyman, would be stirred by the sound of a little bell, causing him to announce, “We have a move!” as he went to the ticker tape. And then he would display the move on the huge chess board behind him.

And people watched, hanging on every development. There were accounts of bar patrons requesting the community TV be switched from baseball to the chess. Thus the impassioned discussions of the time, the call for guidelines, for definitions.

What is a sport? Is a sport merely a game? Or does it require a participant to sweat? Maybe bleed?

Should the Super Bowl yardstick be applied—enormous crowds and massive TV ratings? Do large audiences make a sport? Or is the number of spectators simply a function of popularity, which can be based on varying and sometimes regional public tastes.

As a society, we accept football as one of our primary sports, and it does fit casual parameters: It’s a game that requires physical effort. Back in the early 1980s, when the sudden boom in road-running was cresting and accomplished American marathoners like Bill Rodgers were yearning for the credibility and, frankly, the money lavished upon players in accepted sports, Rodgers proclaimed that “I will be running over Joe Namath’s grave.” It was his way of saying that marathoning required superior fitness to playing football. (Rodgers, who still participates in running events at 74, and Namath, 78, both are still with us.)

Still, does fitness make a sport? If so, baseball might have to do some fast talking, given the number of weighty souls—though far fewer than in the past—among Major Leaguers, as well as accounts of players smoking in the dugout and clubhouse.

It has been argued that a sport must have hand-eye coordination. But even that definition must be liberalized to include eye-foot coordination, or the world’s most popular sport, soccer, will be left out.

Another thing: If a game is subjectively scored, is it a sport—or just entertainment, like ballet? Such widely accepted sports as figure skating, gymnastics and diving are subjectively scored, not to mention boxing. (Although Marvelous Marvin Hagler’s solution to boxing subjectivity was once holding up his two fists and proclaiming: “These are my judges. K and O.”)

Boxing certainly has the sweat factor—and it does have a defense, two generally acknowledged elements of sport. But if a sport requires a defense, is high jumping a sport? An opponent in high jumping can impose a strategy on his rival, by skipping to a higher height, but it would be stretching matters to call that a defense. Without defense, is golf a sport? Bowling? Yachting? Archery? Horse racing?

How about this definition: Modern sport as the evolution of primal hunting. A sport is a sport if it is based on aiming and chasing. Baseball, football, basketball ice hockey, foot racing, tennis, auto racing, soccer—all our traditional sports would qualify. Even the high jumping example works: One aims for a certain height and chases others aiming higher. Golf may be more along the lines of aiming and stalking. But that’s close enough.

The theory of the hunting analogy assumes that, if something isn’t hunting, it’s farming. (Chess—planting certain seeds of entrapment and then waiting patiently for them to take root—does seem to lean a bit toward farming.) Hunting obviously goes back to the long-held thesis that all of modern sport is an outgrowth of warrior disciplines: Running, jumping, jousting, boxing, wrestling, climbing, riding, throwing and on and on.

So, then. What if we said that a sport is anything that is physical, competitive and has a set of rules?

Is aerobics a sport? (What are the rules?) Is ballroom dancing a sport? Is tiddlywinks? (There are serious tiddlywinks competitions; some years ago, the athletic department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent a tiddlywinks team to London for the world championships. At the time, MIT did not field an intercollegiate football team, though it does now.)

For some reason, many sports get their feelings hurt if anyone dare dismiss them as a hobby or a game. Chess insiders, for instance, insisted that champions such as Bobby Fischer had to call upon great reserves of physical strength and endurance to emerge victorious. How, the chess mavens wanted to know, could anyone not call chess a sport?

Full disclosure: I am big Jeopardy! fan. But is it a sport?

No-vax Novak

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For a guy who has felt underappreciated and un-loved compared to his contemporary tennis superstars Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic hardly did himself any favors in getting himself thrown out of Australia on the eve of the year’s first major tournament. For a fellow who is such a magnificent athletic contortionist—able to bend and twist to counter any opponent’s offensive firepower—Djokovic nevertheless managed to tie himself in knots attempting to dance around the host nation’s pandemic protocols.

The whole bizarre episode, which has ended Djokovic’s legitimate shot to win a record 21st Grand Slam singles title and thus pass both Federer and Nadal, was a public relations disaster. And something of an international incident, with the president of Djokovic’s native Serbia declaring that Australian officials had “humiliated” Djokovic and “actually humiliated themselves.”

Australian tennis officials took a hit, too, after apparently trying to give Djokovic special treatment. They were aware he was unvaccinated and that their government barred unvaccinated foreigners from entering the country, and that the Australian public was exhausted from two years of strict Covid-19 lockdown.

According to Australian journalist Van Badham, the rejection of Djokovic’s visa that followed the Open’s offer of a vaccine exemption was “undoubtedly proving popular” with the Australian public. “So, Novak. Mate. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, hey?” Badham offered in farewell.

It was reported that 83 percent of 60,000 local respondents favored Djokovic’s dismissal while the hashtag #DjokovicOut had been trending throughout the weeklong drama of Djokovic’s misleading statements and two court hearings. He became “Novax Djocovid” on Australian Twitter.

Far from Australia’s shores, ESPN’s Howard Bryant wrote that Djokovic “has cemented his membership within the pandemic’s most infamous group—the anti-vax multimillionaire athlete who behaves as if his fame, wealth and enormous platform to disseminate misinformation place him above the rest of us.”

The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill concluded that Djokovic “has made a spectacle of trying to bend the rules—thereby showing that, besides Covid, the other sickness the world is fighting is selfishness.” Hill also called Djokovic a hypocrite for having criticized women’s champion Naomi Osaka last year when she refused to attend French Open press conferences, recalling Djokovic’s quote that the press sessions are “part of the sport and part of your life on the tour. This is something we have to do; otherwise, we will get fined.”

With all those rotten tomatoes flying, even the nimble Djokovic couldn’t dodge the trouble he might easily have avoided by getting his Covid jab. And it’s not as if Djokovic is against medical science: In 2018 he revived his career by undergoing elbow surgery, ending a drought of eight straight majors without a title by winning eight of the next 13.

His fellow players, while universally praising Djokovic’s tennis talent, have expressed fatigue over his roguish stance and how it distracted from the tournament, while reminding that Australia’s vaccination requirement was clearly stated. And it’s hardly the first time colleagues found Djokovic’s actions annoying.

In 2008, he had just won his first Slam trophy at 20 when there were complaints that he too often called for trainers on court, took suspicious bathroom breaks and complained of various injuries. During that year’s U.S. Open, then-top-ranked American Andy Roddick sarcastically responded to a question about which ankle Djokovic reportedly had hurt with, “Isn’t it both of them? And a hip? And a cramp? Bird flu? Anthrax? SARS? Common cough and cold?”

At the time, Djokovic also had rankled some peers with his habit of bouncing the ball up to 20 times before serving, and by publicly mimicking the quirks of others on the tour—Roddick’s twitches under a pulled-down cap, Maria Sharapova’s pre-serve hopping and fiddling with her racket strings, Nadal’s long-shorts-and-sleeveless look, Federer’s tendency to flick at his hair while awaiting serve.

Djokovic insisted then that he preferred respect over flat-out popularity, that he wanted to be remembered as a tennis champion and not “a clown.” Much was made of the fact in last year’s U.S. Open final that fans had rallied to Djokovic’s side against Daniil Medvedev during Djokovic’s failed attempt to complete the first men’s Grand Slam sweep in 52 years. That crowd support left Djokovic in tears and proclaiming he “felt something I never felt in my life….The crowd made me feel special.”

Finally, appreciation and love. But it’s important to remind that Medvedev, who was marching to a straight-sets victory, himself was no New York crowd favorite, and that it is typical Open fans’ behavior to willingly switch allegiance, mid-match, if it means they get more tennis.

Whatever. Djokovic may have just sent himself back to Square One in his quest for widespread affection.

Animal behavior

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Anybody notice how disinterested the University of Georgia’s mascot appeared during Monday night’s national championship football game? Georgia and Alabama were going at each other hammer and tongs, with 67,000 spectators shaking the rafters and the game’s caffeinated commentators at full volume.

But a quick TV shot of Uga, the bulldog who represents Georgia’s athletic teams, revealed one spectator who wasn’t even pretending to care about developments on the field. Looking half-asleep, grumpy, wish I-were-somewhere-sniffing-fire-hydrants, Uga’s demeanor convinced me that real-life mascots aren’t the answer.

A mascot should embrace its cartoon aspect. It should be a little silly and certainly lively—a bit of dancing, some gymnastics, a few eye-catching stunts, possibly a feigned duel with the opposing team’s mascot. (To a point, anyway. I once covered a Georgia Tech-Maryland basketball game that featured what was dangerously close to a real fight between two students dressed as the Tech yellow jacket and Maryland turtle during a timeout. Could have called a technical foul on those people inside the wacky critter suits.)

Anyway, it turns out that there is a Mascot Hall of Fame (founded in 2005 and based just outside Chicago) and, among the 25 inductees, not one is live—though Blue, Butler University’s bulldog, was a finalist in last year’s voting. There are indeed a few interesting live mascots extant in college sports—among them, Ralphie, the University of Colorado buffalo, and Bevo, the University of Texas longhorn steer.

But the argument here is that those live beasts are not willing participants in the proceedings. Georgia’s Uga is a perfect example, thoroughly out of his element on a football sideline, requiring an air-conditioned dog house and the presence of bags of ice at home games because bulldogs are susceptible to heat stroke in the humid conditions of the Southeast. The Arkansas Razorback, Tusk, obviously wouldn’t know a fumble from an audible—and, furthermore, Tusk isn’t even a razorback, since those exist only in Australia. He’s a Russian boar (sort of in a razorback costume).

So why not leave the work to humans operating inside goofy outfits of anthropomorphically depicted wildcats and ducks and shocks of wheat? Such a tradition is how this topic showed up on my radar shortly before the Georgia-Alabama game.

There was an obituary about a New York Mets’ former ticket-office employee named Dan Reilly, whose place in mascot history came 58 years ago when he slipped into an unventilated, oversize papier-mache head with simulated stitches—to resemble a baseball—and became the original Mr. Met mascot.

Mr. Met was inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2007, described as “a humanoid with a baseball head.” He—Mr. Met, not Dan Reilly—thus is immortalized alongside, among others, the Hall’s first member, the Phillie Phanatic—whose human inside-job man, David Raymond, happens to be the founder of the Mascot Hall of Fame.

The Hall, which bills itself as essentially a children’s museum, describes its mission as “celebrating the unsung heroes of sports and communities.” Something we grown-ups can appreciate as well.

Of course the 1970s madcap San Diego Chicken—later recast as The Famous Chicken—is in the Hall, recognized by the New York Times as “perhaps the most influential mascot in sports history.” The Chicken pioneered the widespread creation of mascots in professional sports, though colleges have been cranking out less sophisticated ones for decades.

In my half-century as a sports journalist, I naturally have crossed paths with mascots tied to high schools, colleges, pros and Olympic sports, including one favorite at the former grass-roots domestic competition known as the U.S. Olympic Festival. That was in 1989 in Oklahoma City, when a lad named Ken Evans dressed himself in a furry critter suit and wandered among the 38 sports being contested over two weeks.

He found that “the big question” among Festival attendees “was, ‘What am I?’ Am I a bear or a gopher or what?’” He was a prairie dog, christened Boomer. And my recollection is that he lamented there being neither ventilation nor some sort of fan inside the big prairie-dog head, which became an enormous problem when he got sick to his stomach in the Oklahoma heat.

But, see: Even the people in the cheap seats could tell that was a mascot fully involved in the moment. One who knew the score.

Don’t worry. Be happy.

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STONEHAVEN, Scotland—The longest queues outside the local shops have been at the butcher’s and the sweets’ store. There are signs in most windows that only three persons are allowed inside simultaneously. Masking is prevalent.

A reader can go pages into the local newspapers without seeing a story on anything unrelated to the coronavirus—the Queen’s cancelled Christmas plans, warnings to the hoi polloi against large gatherings, shifting official restrictions from 10 Downing Street, ominous Omicron variant statistics, postponements of soccer’s Premier League games. We almost truncated this two-week Holiday visit to the United Kingdom when I was “pinged”—alerted by the National Health Service that I was “a contact of someone with COVID-19.”

That was just two days after arrival from the Across the Pond. “You do not have to self-isolate,” the email said. “You should take rapid lateral flow tests for 7 days….You may become infectious even if you’re fully vaccinated or do not have symptoms.”

We had just tested ourselves with the home kits widely available in the U.K. but it took four days before we got an email confirmation that I was negative. (We would not have been allowed to fly here in the first place without being fully vaccinated and providing negative tests two days before departure.)

Our daughter, her husband and their 19-month-old live in London and her husband’s mother is in this village on Scotland’s East coast. They convinced us to stick to our original itinerary, so after five days in London we took a sleeper train to Scotland.

We’re here, still healthy. Or, anyway, asymptomatic. Amid the bracing chill, wind and rain, far enough North that the sun doesn’t rise until quarter to 9 and sets at 3:30, it’s a fine adventure. At least when varying waves of anxiety subside a bit.

On the sleeper train segment, some malfunction—very likely a staff shortage precipitated by COVID positives or contact-tracing protocols—had forced our transfer to a standard commuter train still two hours short of Stonehaven. No worries; the trip was completed without further incident. But the fear of widespread cancellations of train and air travel theoretically could get us stuck here past our Dec. 30 return date.

Already, Stonehaven officials have cancelled their annual Hogmanay festival, a fireballs ceremony in the town square to ring in the new year. Worse—to me, anyway—COVID’s impact on employees has temporarily closed The Bay, twice named Scotland’s best fish-and-chips shop.

What to do? Have some giggles with the grandson. Marvel at the hardiness of the locals—my son-in-law’s mother swims in the North Sea, even this time of year when the air temperature barely reaches 40 and the wind howls incessantly, taking the chill factor down below freezing. My morning runs are slowed and shortened not only by the slanting rain but by the hilly landscape. We Yanks, frankly, are comparative wimps (although my wife has matched the locals’ sturdiness with her typically long daily walks).

And we’re working on a stiff upper lip.

Using the Olympic soapbox

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(A shorter version of this appeared in Newsday’s Opinion pages)

Will anybody really notice when President Biden and other high-ranking U.S. officials don’t show up for February’s Winter Olympics in Beijing? The Biden Administration’s declaration of a diplomatic boycott of the Games expressly allows athletes to compete in China, so the quadrennial shushing, sliding and skating among the world’s sportswomen and sportsmen will proceed with great fanfare and with NBC’s typically melodramatic presentation. Curling fans will not be robbed of their exotic brand of entertainment.

So: Does such a high-level snub accomplish anything?

The White House has declared its action as an objection to the Chinese government’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity” and other abuses, including a crackdown of freedoms in Hong Kong and Tibet and the recent disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai after she accused a high-ranking Communist official of sexual assault.

It’s clear that China doesn’t much worry about criticism from the West. And Olympic boycotts historically have not been an effective tool in reforming nefarious behavior. The 1980 U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Summer Games, called by President Jimmy Carter and joined by 64 other nations protesting the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, outraged the athletes who felt they were pawns, and it had no impact on the Soviet occupation, which lasted another nine years. About all it accomplished was the Soviets’ revenge boycott of the Los Angeles Games four years later which again was foisted upon non-voting athletes.

The argument here is that, while the President’s declaration is essentially a symbolic one, it nevertheless is generating an abundance of commentary and likely some discomfort for the corporate giants helping to bolster Beijing and the International Olympic Committee. And, in doing so, it is highlighting the feeble stance on human rights by the International Olympic Committee, which promotes a mission of global goodwill through a sort of United Nations in Sneakers.

The IOC awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics to Beijing, in spite of China being one of the world’s most repressive governments, amid global protests that included pleas at the time for a full boycott. When that threat passed and the competition began, all the focus went to the athletes and China’s spectacularly run events. Then the IOC favored Russia with the 2014 Winter Games in the face of complaints about Moscow’s anti-gay legislation. And Beijing was chosen again for 2022.

Each instance violated language in Provision 6 of the IOC charter requiring Olympic hosts to insure that “rights and freedoms….shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, color, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, birth or other status.”

Called out again for ignoring such policies, both Beijing and the IOC predictably are bemoaning the United States’ proposed diplomatic action by invoking the old sports-and-politics-shouldn’t-mix cliché—when, in fact, sports and politics always are mixed. Especially with the Olympics, which has become the world’s biggest soapbox, playing to the grievances of dissidents and the self-interest of image-makers every bit as much as the guardians of carefree sport.

Every Olympics site has served as a political statement by the host, whether it was Nazi Germany’s 1936 Games as propaganda for Hitler’s criminal agenda, Japan’s 1964 Olympics to demonstrate its post-World War II revival, South Korea’s 1988 Games to showcase a turn to democracy, even L.A.’s 1984 celebration of capitalist might. China wants to telegraph its technological and economic power and, not least, an athletic prowess in the familiar, if illogical, assumption that gold medals suggest a nation’s moral superiority.

Naturally, since the core of the Olympics is sport, the athletes prioritize competition but, increasingly, they may not just shut and play. Several U.S. Olympians, including figure skaters Evan Bates and Nathan Chen, have confirmed their participation while condemning China’s human rights violations as “abysmal,” and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee declared last year that it would not punish its jocks for reasonable demonstrations during the Games. (The IOC, citing its old rule limiting “athlete expression,” said it will.)

So neither Biden nor vice president Kamala Harris nor any department secretaries will join the hullabaloo in February. And China won’t change its spots. But we’ve been forced to think about the issue now.

Pre-game show

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Army is playing Navy in football for the 122nd time this week and whatever mayhem will ensue on the gridiron can’t possibly top the kind of unruly behavior traditionally practiced at the two military academies leading up to the game. Already there have been published reports of one failed “spirit mission” by Army cadets to kidnap Navy’s goat mascot, prompting a righteous declaration that the schools’ superintendents “are disappointed by the trust that was broken recently between our brothers and sisters in arms.”

The dual statement by Lt. Gen Darryl Williams and Vice Adm. Sean Buck said the goat snatchers—who wound up with the wrong animal—“do not reflect either academy’s core values of dignity and respect.”

But days later, a second cadet operation successfully absconded with two Navy mascots. And anyone who has been to West Point and Annapolis during Army-Navy week would be left with the strong impression that the various pranks—which occasionally border or vandalism and bullying—are unofficially condoned by military leaders as boisterous boys-will-be-boys fun.

On a newspaper assignment to chronicle Army-Navy week several years ago, I met Army cadets who recounted how they had tarred and feathered a Navy exchange student with shoe polish and the contents of pillows; how they “changed the landscape a bit” by putting a Mickey Mouse watch face on the campus clock tower and erected a basketball backboard and hoop five stories high on one of the barracks.

They told stories of putting the superintendent’s car in the mess hall, stacking all the plates from the mess kitchen on the parade ground to spell out Beat Navy and tying another Naval Academy exchange student to a chair and bombing him with water balloons and shaving cream.

The same week in Annapolis, Midshipmen wrapped an officer’s car in tissue paper and stuffed it with Styrofoam chips, relocated printers and chairs and desks from various offices to the football practice field, sprayed classmates’ navy-blue uniforms with white baby powder, waxed photographs onto floors, tossed mattresses out of windows.

One raucous lunch-hour food fight featured Midshipmen climbing atop tables, others hoisting their tables—ladled with chicken cutlets, bread, salad, water, iced tea, soup and utensils—over their heads. A pitcher of soup was dumped on one upperclassman’s head, a pitcher of water and catsup on others’. Perpetrators then ran for the exits, slipping on water-, soup- and iced tea-slickened aisles, careening into chairs.

“You think the Navy is all discipline and order?” one Midshipman shouted in glee. “Not during Army Week!”

At West Point, where cadets switched from dress gray uniforms to camouflage during Army-Navy week, one instructor told his class how, when he had been a cadet at the academy, he was part of a “spirit mission” that took a boat from a nearby Hudson River dock and put it on the superintendent’s lawn—surely an invitation for his students to attempt topping that. Such ritual hijinks have been passed along for more than a century, including the one by 1903 West Point grad Douglas MacArthur, the celebrated World War II general, in which the cannon fired each morning for wake-up call was somehow relocated to the top of the clock tower during Army-Navy week.

This sort of “primarily unauthorized” activity, according to one cadet speaking confidentially (on the grounds he might incriminate himself), “may actually have happened.” With a wink and a nod, the only rules applicable to the mischief appear to be unwritten ones: Cleverness counts. Whatever is done has to be cleaned up. Don’t cost too much money. Don’t get seriously hurt.

“The whole thing is tension release,” assured one Midshipman. “It’s great.”

Then, at week’s end, the two academies’ football teams engage one another. Passionately. But with the expectation that they mind all rules, respectfully and with dignity.

Enough

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(A shorter version of this appeared in Newsday’s Opinion pages)

There was this high school B-team quarterback of middling talent, a sophomore, promoted to the undefeated junior varsity for its season finale. Summoned from the bench in the fourth quarter, with his new mates safely ahead, 37-0, he promptly led two touchdown drives against the clearly overmatched opponent.

The last score came on a trick maneuver when no such thing was necessary, when the lad called for a halfback pass disguised as a run. 51-0. It was too easy.

That quarterback was me. Guilty, you might say, of the unsportsmanlike deed of running up the score. At the time, I certainly didn’t consider how the other team felt about the situation, or whether I should be more embarrassed by my actions than the victims were by the score.

That was 59 years ago, but the ethics of that sort of piling on are an old and recurring topic that goes beyond playing fields, the dehumanizing of the Other Side in all matters—socially, culturally, politically.

I’m thinking of the scraps at school board meetings, the name-calling and profanity hurled at anyone considered a “loser” for their beliefs, the inconsiderate blasting of music by neighbors at all hours, the aggressive parkway speeders and drivers who won’t give way to ambulances, the knuckleheads who can’t extricate themselves from their phones to acknowledge other human beings, the anger on social media. In general, me-first posturing.

What triggered this rumination was the local high school coach who dodged disciplinary action after his team’s recent 47-0 rout that activated Nassau County’s lopsided-score policy. Any coach whose team wins by more than 42 points is required to submit a written report on the lengths he went to avoid running up the score. Or face possible suspension.

The quandary in these matters, though, is whether respect for opponents can be legislated. And exactly how to define respect.

The great basketball star Bill Russell once was asked about the merciless beatings he and his U.S. teammates administered during the 1956 Olympic tournament, in the era before basketball was widely played beyond these shores and American opponents were predictably helpless. The Yanks won their eight games that year by an average of 53.5 points—the most emphatic being a 101-29 beat-down of Thailand—but Russell argued that it honored every opponent to always play his hardest.

In sports, a zero-sum endeavor, somebody has to lose. But so what? Being on the short end of a score hardly reflects on one’s moral character. Besides, real competitors don’t consider themselves charity cases in the face of superior talent, don’t ask for leniency and aren’t expecting it. In that sense, I’ll argue that it is possible to win big and remain humble. Besides, as long as there is fair play, isn’t there an obligation—no matter one’s skill—to do one’s best at all times?

It’s just that there are limits, the difference between a spontaneous, organic rout and a bully rout. In 1980, when Portland State defeated Delaware State, 105-0, in college football, Portland State led, 63-0, at halftime and continued to use its first-stringers. “The question is: ‘How much did they need?’” the Delaware State athletic director, Nelson Townsend, asked. “We were beaten. When it was 63-0, did they still think we could catch up?”

It didn’t help that Portland State’s coach, Mouse Davis, groused, “Don’t blame me if that team is [excrement].”

Is it necessary to invoke a mercy rule in life? Is it the duty of a dominant team to call off the dogs at some point? Clear the bench? And, in the latter case, is it appropriate for the coach to instruct his seldom-used subs to rein in their eagerness to perform? (In the long-ago days of this quarterback, the coach didn’t call the plays; the quarterback did, which would shift some degree of accountability.)

I can’t say I was sorry for that 51-0 thrashing. I’ve been on the other end of those things and, rather than humiliated, was frustrated by my—and my team’s—failures. But it’s too easy not to consider the other side. And it would have been more polite to run the ball.

Musical crescendo

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(This appeared in Newsday’s Act2 section)

As a child of the ’50s — the 1950s — my exposure to Classical music, those hit-parade tunes from the 16th and 17th centuries, mostly came from “Bugs Bunny” cartoons or radio’s “Lone Ranger” theme. (Who knew the latter was Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”? Who knew Rossini?)

I am from the first generation gifted with rock ’n’ roll and matured in the time of The Beach Boys and Dylan. My musical taste — if “taste” is the right word — could be described as having evolved over time into something fairly eclectic, but more likely to feature fiddles than violins. And heavily reliant on guitars and drums. With lyrics!

Fats Domino. Jimmy Buffet. Linda Ronstadt. John Prine. Aretha Franklin. Arlo Guthrie. Willie Nelson. Maybe not the definition of highbrow.

But lately, the morning shave is accompanied by stuff that needs a conductor, material that used to be known as long-haired music (the original iteration, before the adjective was applied — ironically, I suspect — to the emergence of the Fab Four and through the Age Of Aquarius).

It is not entirely clear what’s going on here. Or why. Does this new habit have anything to do with advanced maturity and a trend toward a calmer phase of life? Evidence of finally acquiring a light dusting of sophistication? Might the pandemic have contributed to seeking an aural escape from the latest noise on booster shots, climate change, anti-vax demonstrations, political wrangling?

This hardly is a claim of aficionado status. I couldn’t pick a rhapsody out of a crowd of sonatas and fugues and concertos, or differentiate a Dvorak opus from a Bach symphony. (Any symphony, by any Bach.) I do have old CDs of Vivaldi and Handel compositions but, compared with my typical leanings — The Eagles, Clapton, Delbert McClinton, Grateful Dead — Classical music remains mostly uncharted territory.

A two-minute Buddy Holly ditty, these are not. Radio DJ introductions alone are mysterious: Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 in D, Kochel 297. Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21. Haydn’s Symphony No. 79 in F Major. I certainly didn’t grow up being informed that I was about to hear The Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon” in C Major. Or Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” in B Flat Major.

There was a delightful New Yorker essay not long ago by Kirk J. Rudell that aptly characterized Classical music ignoramuses like me. Written in the voice of a fellow dragged to a concert by his date who clearly would have preferred being at a Mets game, Rudell’s character struggled with how Classical pieces continue for great lengths and include dramatic changes in tempo and volume. With full-stop pauses.

“Are they done?” he kept fretting. “Do we clap now?” Only to hear the music swell again.

While he mulled, “Is it relaxing? Or boring?”

In my half-century working as a sports journalist, I had the occasion to cover a number of major figure-skating competitions, in which Classical music — though the pieces are cut-and-pasted into small bits to fit two- and four-minute routines — is a common ingredient. Good listening, for sure, yet basically background music. Subliminal. Like those “Bugs Bunny” cartoons.

But here I am, having survived disco and acknowledging a reluctance to rap, still entertained by old rock, folk and country favorites, yet wondering if I might at last have evolved into a borderline egghead, or someone with grandiloquent inclinations. More civilized. More open-minded to Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Brahms, Schubert. Finally devoted to the arts.

Here is the late-in-life revelation: It’s not boring.

Questionable

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As a Jeopardy! fan, I now see the wisdom in that franchise’s decision not to hire Aaron Rodgers as permanent host. It is “the spirit of Jeopardy!,” the New York Times’ James Poniewozik wrote in an appreciation of the departed Alex Trebek, “to care about getting things right…a place to go where it is OK to know things.”

In the past week Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers star quarterback, hardly came across as someone who has all the answers. Amid a stream of misinformation, he argued that he had done his own research about Covid vaccines and, as a “critical thinker,” had come to the conclusion that the shots are linked with infertility and that NFL protocols to fight the virus are “shame-based…not based in science” and don’t make sense to him.

His claim in August, when asked this summer if he was vaccinated, that he was “immunized” was a fabulist dodge, and now that he has tested positive for the virus, is insisting he was better protected by the veterinary de-worming drug ivermectin, which has been dismissed by the CDC as ineffective.

Critical thinking, indeed. Though Rodgers is an exceptionally gifted athlete, a 17th-year pro and the league’s reigning MVP, he is no epidemiologist schooled in medical science. In fact, he did not graduate from the University of California, where he majored in American Studies while he played football.

Rodgers does have an honorary degree, awarded him in 2018 by the Medical College of Wisconsin for helping raise money for cancer research. But his recent funhouse mirror distortions regarding Covid protection have severely dented any medical credentials he may have had, causing him to lose a nine-year health-care sponsorship deal with a Green Bay-based physicians group.

His assertion of having surpassing knowledge of Covid is no more coherent than that of basketball star Kylie Irving, suspended by the Brooklyn Nets for refusing vaccination. Irving, who once insisted that the Earth is flat, also has cited personal research for his decision.

To that, former New York Knicks coach and ESPN basketball commentator Jeff Van Gundy told Richard Dietsch on Dietsch’s Sports Media podcast, “If you choose not to get a vaccine, as crazy as it sounds to me, please don’t insult us all with, you know, that your research is going to turn up something that all these brilliant doctors, around the world, so heavily invested,” have learned. “It would be as absurd to me as asking a doctor how Kylie Irving should work on his crossover game and his handle. Like, that guy thinks that he knows more about that than a basketball guy?”

(Irving, like Rodgers, also is operating without a college degree. He attended Duke University for one year and did not study medicine.)

Whether it is Covid fever settling in, or just how Rodgers has felt all along about his superior knowledge of all things, he is calling himself a victim of “cancel culture,” “woke mobs” and media “witch hunts;” maintaining that the NFL denied his appeal to be exempted from protocols, agreed upon by the players’ union that included mask-wearing in press conferences and player meetings, because league officials “thought I was a quack” for his immunization alternative.

So, regarding Rodgers’ Jeopardy! tryout: Poniewozik’s Times evaluation was that, on the show, “there were not alternative facts, only actual ones. They did not change depending on how you felt about them or the person revealing them.” Trebek, the man Rodgers hoped to replace, was seen as perfect for the role by all-time Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings because he was “the voice of fact in a post-fact world.”

Here’s the question, Jeopardy! style: Who is Aaron Rodgers?