Get a sporting life

Can a man get by without knowing a thing about sports? It's better not to risk it.

Out There by Dan Tobin

Guys like sports. No, guys love sports, they worship sports, they need sports. Guys who can't do their own taxes can explain the most minute intricacies of the NBA salary cap without blinking. Guys who can't tell you Beethoven's first name can not only rattle off the name of every NFL player, but his team, his college team, his strengths on the field, his helmet size, any childhood allergies, and four people who've been in his kitchen. Guys know sports. Well, most guys.

Lacking a sports-oriented father, I grew up completely sports-disoriented. I almost never watched a game. I had no idea which teams were good and which had been cursed since 1918. I was hard-pressed even to match up most cities with their corresponding animal, item of clothing, or racial slur against Native Americans.

As a kid, I came up with other ways to vent my primal urges (baking), and found things to discuss with my father other than the quarterback sneak. Back then, my lack of sports knowledge translated into real problems only when I wore a baseball cap. God forbid someone wanted to discuss the team advertised on my forehead. I'd have to admit I didn't know anything about the Reds; I just liked the letter C. If it's good enough for Cookie Monster, it's good enough for me, right?

I eventually found hats with non-sports messages, but my black hole of knowledge became increasingly troublesome by college. If I couldn't talk sports, how would I ever interact with random guys? Would I actually have to come up with -- gasp -- meaningful conversation?

Yeah, right. I'd have to learn sports.

Luckily, my friends in college were desperate to transform me into a sports authority. They even had a system: Globe sports page by day, ESPN SportsCenter by night, with lectures, stories, and game viewing along the way. I wasn't starting totally cold, having briefly followed Georgetown because I liked the name Boubacar Aw. But I was my pals' Eliza Doolittle, with a soundtrack more Jock Jams than Rodgers and Hammerstein.

In Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney described sports fans as the largest fraternity in the country. Just replace Greek letters with league acronyms, secret handshakes with high fives, and cheap beer in plastic cups with cheap beer in aluminum cans, and you're there. And I was finally pledging, even though I dreaded getting hazed via dodge ball.

As the information started sinking in, I asked fewer inane questions ("Are Tim Hardaway and Penny Hardaway the same person?") and even made casual sports references in conversation ("Why, he's as big a loser as the Jets in their recent 62-10 loss to Denver!"). My sports knowledge was still spottier than the dishes in the non-Cascade dishwasher, but I faked it better and better.

Come March, I was invited to join my friends' NCAA basketball pool, and that was big -- bigger than Manute Bol's inseam. It was their way of saying: "Dan, you have arrived. You're not a total dumbass when it comes to sports." That, or "Dan, we need an eighth person for our pool. Give us five dollars." Either way, I was more than happy to join. After all, March Madness unites the sports world and the gambling community like no other event.

For most of the year, guys follow their favorite teams closely, and try to keep a more general handle on everyone else. It's a vicarious thrill when "your" team does well, because it makes "you" a better "person." A few times a year, though, every guy watches the same game: Monday Night Football, the World Series, Wrestlemania, and the most epic of them all: the Big Dance, the NCAA hoops tournament. In every office, dorm room, schoolyard, and cellblock, guys of all ages pore over brackets, choosing which teams will move ahead and which will be sent back to class to clean erasers.

In a page out of a lousy after-school special, I won my pool. Granted, I'd picked Arizona solely because of a job I was applying for in Phoenix, but it was practically Dick Vitale in a Virginia Slims ad: You've come a long way, bay-bee. The best part wasn't the cold hard cash, but the cold hard respect, as well as my newfound ability to gab about the tournament as it progressed. I'd finally earned the right not to be ridiculed, at least in terms of sports. I could wear a baseball hat again.

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It didn't take long before I discovered the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. These days I'm hooked, and sports are part of my everyday life -- though I was still alarmed at how sick I felt during the Patriots' wrenching last-minute loss to the Steelers. How could these people I've never met, who don't even know that I exist, who paint silly black bars on their cheeks and run around banging into each other for a living, affect my mood?

Becoming a sports fan means becoming emotionally attached to a bunch of strangers. You celebrate when they achieve their goal, and you rue it when they fail. Unlike politics, sports is not a democracy; you don't get a say in who gets traded or when to steal third. Whether you know every NFL player's favorite sandwich spread or can remember only that the ball is shaped like the Hindenberg, sports doesn't actually affect your life unless you let it.

The thing is, I've finally decided to let it. Sure, my quest for sports knowledge may seem like a networking strategy or a plea for acceptance, but sports also provides a cultural education I've never encountered elsewhere. To further paraphrase Jay McInerney, it allows me to learn from both truck drivers and stockbrokers. It allows me to have random conversations with total strangers. And, well, it's fun. I like to let loose and yell at the TV or spike the remote after a great play. If nothing else, watching sports generates ups and downs; the emotions may be vicarious, but they're also absolutely real.

So am I a better person for knowing Penny Hardaway's real name? Hardly. But do I feel more comfortable in social situations now that I'm pretty much a sports guy? Sure, although my transformation is far from complete. At my most pathetic, I bubbled with questions at a Patriots game early this season -- really perceptive questions, like "What's with this line of scrimmage thing?" and "Which one's the throwy guy?" -- and there's nothing quite as emasculating as getting a football education from your girlfriend, in public.

But I learned from that defeat, and when that same young miss brought me to a Celtics game, I staged a full-court press of my own and howled about bad calls with the best of them. I guess it's just my Y-chromosome kicking in a couple decades late, but I don't question it. Because guys like sports. And after 22 years in the dark, so do I.

Dan Tobin (a rookie out of Tufts, .275) can be reached at dtobin[a]phx.com.