The Sporting Life

The Sporting Life

I’m a Boomer, and I’m about as athletic as a fencepost, but I’ve always been light on my feet and limber. I could run the bases but not hit the ball. I could scrum in rugby but couldn’t pass. I could skate, sort of, but I couldn’t stop. That one year playing rugby at boarding school was the only time I ever took part in organized sports, and I did it mostly to prove to myself I could. I was the “hooker”, a smaller player who is held up in the centre of the scrum by two “props”, and whose job is to kick the ball out the back to his team. We had a system. The two props would hold me up off the ground, I’d use one foot to kick the other hooker in the knee, and the other foot to get the ball out. It would work once every game. I got a broken nose for it eventually.

That particular episode led to my second expulsion from school. The first time was for a petty act of boyish blasphemy, eating the sacramental host at breakfast with peanut butter and jam. I deserved that one. During the summer (I was expelled right at the end of the school year), I talked my way back into his favour by paddling over to the Headmaster’s cottage, across the lake from my family’s and appealing to his sense of good old fair play.

Anyway, there I was, a year later, with a broken nose, and the game lost, and a stopover on the school bus for dinner in Toronto. Bad combination for the team, already grumpy and sore. Almost everybody (but not me), took their $5 dinner money and headed for the closest tavern to the bus station. The team that reboarded the bus for the ride back to school was sloshed, and not in a good way. There was no bathroom on the bus, it was a yellow school bus. Some kind soul donated a loafer which was passed around and emptied out a window. More than one player was sick in the aisle.

Some of the drunkest on the bus were the prefects, our figures of authority. They swore us to confidentiality and everyone slunk off to their dormitories to sleep it off. The bus company wasn’t sworn to silence, though, and they complained about the state of their bus the next morning. There was an inquiry and prefects were called to account. Those of us who had already been accepted at colleges (I was one) were expelled, and the rest of the team was put on probation for the remainder of the year (it was at the end of the year, again).

The announcements were made at lunch, to properly shame those who were were being drummed out. Despite the fact I was one of the few who wasn’t drunk, we all had to go (as long as we had a college to go to). My classmates gathered around my chair and sang the “Going Home” theme from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, in harmony (we were a very musical school).

The next time I played a sport was 30 years later, in rehab. When you quit drinking, they think sports is going to take your mind off your addiction, and physical activity is always seen as a very important part of recovery. Well, the idea of playing volleyball was enough to make me want to drink again, but play I must. I ducked the ball, dodged out of the way when people tried to pass it and generally ran away from every play. The counsellors eventually assigned me to bowling because I made the games almost unplayable.

I’m a sailor, but that’s not a sport, it’s an obsession, like collecting string or climbing mountains. It’s also a huge waste of money, something like owning and running two houses at once, except one has a wet basement. Sailing is known as a very drinky sport, and my yacht club is no exception. I have beer and wine in the fridge on my 38 foot ketch Passat, (for visitors), but by dinner time on weekends, I’m often the only sober skipper in the basin. 

The only sport I enjoy really, is darts. It has a lot in common with golf without the tiresome walk through the wet grass, and pool, without the fact I can’t sink the 8 ball to save my life. Darts is funny, in that you can’t really play until you’ve had two pints or so, and you can’t really play after about  4 pints. Unfortunately, when I quit drinking, I had to put the sharps away. I couldn’t hit the triples any more.

Campaigns and Champagne

Campaigns and Champagne

I’m a Boomer, and the first election I remember was Diefenbaker winning his final victory (a minority) in June of 1962 when I was 8. We lived in the US, but my parents were Liberals and were interested in the outcome. My mother went out and left me with the radio and asked me to tell her who had won. I’m not even sure I got the answer right when she got back.

That’s just the first in a lifetime of election campaigns, some spent as an observer, some as just a voter, some as a volunteer and some as a paid professional. There are a couple of rules I’ve observed over the course of the last few campaigns I’ve polled. I’ll share them here

Rule #1. If you’re complaining, you’re losing. If the other guy steals your signs, if another candidate implies you’re a racist, don’t complain. Don’t whine. No one likes a whiner. They may sympathize, but they won’t admire you. Always be attacking, always on the offense.

Rule #2. No Headgear. Indian chief headdresses (think Coolidge and Nixon), Fireman hats, hairnets (Gilles Duceppe), military helmets (that photo in the tank was the single most damaging thing Michael Dukakis’ campaign encountered). Barack Obama cancelled a very important visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar because he knew he couldn’t risk the obligatory orange hankie.

Rule #3. Never book a hall bigger than the crowd. What you want, ideally, is a crowd outside the door that can’t get in and a packed room. An overflow room doesn’t hurt. The deadliest thing to see on the news is a half-empty hall, and the news cameramen know how to shoot it so it’s obvious.

Rule #4. No pyrotechnics. After the Pepsi commercial, Michael Jackson wore a wig for the rest of his life. “’Nuff said.

Rule #5. You root for the local team. And you get their name right. How many times have you heard Obama say “You know, I’m from Chicago, and I root for the Cubs, but the (INSERT LOCAL TEAM HERE) really deserve the pennant this year”. In the US, this is even more critical with college teams. You could lose an entire state by referring to the Kentucky Bobcats.

Rule #6. No nookie on the road. Not even with your wife or girlfriend or significant other. Circumstances are just too uncontrollable. Save it for home territory. Then there are the candidates who, um, stray. The Big Dog for instance, Bill Clinton. It’s part of their charisma and drive, they wouldn’t be who they were without the need for hot lovin’. These candidates, especially, have to be watched. Schedule policy briefings until they drop, stand outside the bathroom when they pee.

Rule # 7. Never eat in public. There is no graceful way to do it. Remember Robert Stanfield and the banana, Gerald Ford and the tamale. There is an unfortunate picture of Rick Santorum going down on a corn dog that may do him as much damage as his Google entry.

One of the great spectacles of our time, now lost, was the brokered convention. Unfortunately, live TV only overlapped this amazing show for a few years, but we got some great entertainment out of it. Most people remember the violence of Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, but in Canada, they were boozy back-slapping parties, with real back-rooms full of real smoke, where real deals got made.

Simon De Jong , a contender for the NDP leadership in 1989, unwisely allowed himself to be mic’ed during the convention. The entire country heard him on the phone with his mother, saying “Mommy, what should I do?” as his supporters tried to convince him to swing his support to Dave Barrett before it was too late. He never lived that moment down. (A sidebar; after retiring from politics, De Jong became involved in the Brazilian mystical Daime Church, and it's powerful hallucinogenic sacrament, Ayahuasca).

The grand march across the floor (the best conventions were held in hockey rinks) as one candidate took his supporters to another, sometime stopping mischievously to pause, as if unsure to which candidate they were marching. The ritual hanging of new scarves on the new arrivals, the hugs, standing together in the candidate's box, shoulder-to-shoulder. And you wondered what promises had been made and how they would be kept.

Leadership conventions are automatic affairs these days. The only question at the Liberal leadership convention in 2012 was which multiple of ten Justin Trudeau would win by. In the NDP convention which preceded the Liberal bunfight, it appeared there was a genuine horserace of sorts, with both Nikki Ashton and Nathan Cullen making effective, impassioned speeches at the convention before the voting, while Brian Topp and Tom Mulcair led the pack. But the small percentage of members voting in person at the convention was kabuki. With One Member One Vote (OMOV) and online voting, Thomas Mulcair had been elected leader for days before the convention occurred.

I know, because three days before the convention, I auditioned for the first ad that was going to introduce the new leader. I took copies of the script home with me. It has a section where Olivia Chow praises the new leader, saying “he’s been an effective MP, MPP and Cabinet Minister”. There was only one candidate who fit that description.

So, I guess the old jiggery-pokery still goes on, it’s just hidden in a different way now, not in the back rooms, but in the party’s servers.