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.