A little football amongst friends

I like sports. I always have. I like to play them. I like to watch them. I like to read about them. I like to gamble on them. I like to engage in seemingly frivolous activities related to them. But most of all, I like what sports are able to do. They make us remember. They make us forget. And without a doubt, they bring us together.

A few years ago, I was able to experience the unification power of sports in a way that everyone should at least once in their lives. It was 2004, and I was studying abroad in Rome during autumn quarter. I was having a great time looking at old stuff and eating new stuff. One day I received some news that snapped me out of my ethnocentric Italian mood -- the Red Sox had come back from down 3-0 against the Yankees in the ALCS. Game 7 was to be played that night, at 3:00 AM Rome time. "Wow, I need to see that," I thought. But where was I going to watch an American baseball game in the middle of the night in Rome? After some poking around, I discovered that an Irish pub called "The Abbey" would be open late in order to broadcast the game. That night, a few friends and I woke up [really] early and took a tram over to to the pub, expecting to find a very disgruntled bartender looking after a few American miscreants. Much to our surprise, we couldn't even get into the bar because a tangled mass of bodies blocked the door.

When we finally wedged our way in, we found ourselves in the middle of what must have been at least 500 people all craning their necks to watch the two TVs which were broadcasting the game. Fortunately one of the girls I was with was quite attractive and thus was able to communicate, in universal body language, "I'm good looking, please let me sit." I took advantage of the situation by sitting on the wood paneling on the wall (yeah, the 6" or so that acts as decorative trim) directly above her. When Johnny Damon hit the grand slam I was tossed to the floor rather unceremoniously as the entire place erupted and started shaking harder than Mt. Vesuvius. When the game ended, euphoria broke out. Hugs and kisses were exchanged. Everyone started buying everyone else drinks. The man standing next to me announced that he had traveled 22 hours in a skiff from Sardinia just to watch the game, though that was nothing compared to the man who claimed he arranged for the Mafia to get him out of Sicily posthaste so he could catch the broadcast.

It was about 6:00 AM. My friends and I had a difficult decision to make. Classes started at 8:00 AM. It clearly wasn't worth traveling back to our dorm/hotel and then coming right back to where we were standing for our classroom was less than a five minute walk away form the pub. However, we were also really tired. What exactly were we supposed to do for the next two hours? We tried our classroom. It was locked. We tried churches. God was still on break. Finally, we decided to fall asleep underneath a fountain in front of the Pantheon. It was absurdly uncomfortable and we were absurdly happy. Sports had brought us together.

I thought I would never be lucky enough to find myself in another similar situation. However, I underestimated the power of tape-delayed football in the Marshall Islands. Because FOX was carrying the Super Bowl, it was not broadcasted in the Marshall Islands because of licensing conflicts between FOX and Disney/ESPN, which is the only carrier in the Marshall Islands. This, of course, was very distressing to the fifty or so football fans in the Marshall Islands. In response, the Majuro Fantasy Football Association managed to arrange, through rather unorthodox methods, for the video taping of the Super Bowl. The plan was for someone to pick up the invaluable cassette and deliver it to the local [only] television company who would then televise it locally.

On Monday, thirty men and a few women of varying ages and persuasions made a pact to avoid all forms of telecommunications for twelve hours. It was like we were on an island in the middle of the ocean or something. We worked during the day, and avoided the internet. We rode cars home, and either turned off the radio if we owned our own cars, or hummed loudly to ourselves if we rode in taxis, much to the very confused chagrin of the driver and other passengers. After work we sat in front of turned off televisions. We gave the tape an hour margin for error – what if the game went into overtime? Finally, 6:00 PM hit. The diehards headed to a Chinese restaurant to watch.

As I approached the restaurant, a sudden fear coursed through me. What if I was the first one, and the TV was currently set to ESPN? I walked up the stairs and loudly as possible, drowning out any background noise that might be emanating from the TV. When I got to the top and peaked through the door, I see about a dozen or so people already there, waiting. It was safe. They were all watching the Bollywood channel all in Hindi.

“What the hell are you watching?”

“We figured this was the safest channel to watch. Why the hell did you walk up the stairs so loudly?”

The people quickly stream in, every one more anxious than the previous after having avoided everything with an antenna for a day. A particularly gruff man walks in and makes a declaration.

“If anyone says anything about the score he will absolutely die.” Everyone murmurs in agreement.

We decide it was time to switch channels. Carefully, the remote control is pressed to navigate to the proper channel in order to avoid accidentally channel surfing through something dangerous. We sit and watch for ten minutes.

“Where the hell is the game?”

“Is it on channel 18?” someone asks, since channel 18 is the other locally broadcasted channel. Someone steps forward to change the channel but makes a mistake. He doesn’t press the one hard enough and we end up on BBC.

“Fuck! That’s a news channel! Change it! Change it!” The man fumbles with the remote frantically.

“I can’t! The batteries are dead!”

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

In desperation, the man unplugs the TV from the wall. A pause.

“It’s still going to be on that channel when you plug it back in.”

Through a coordinated effort, the man plugged the TV back in while someone else simultaneously began surfing towards the safe foreign language channels. We reached channel 18, nothing. We surfed back to channel 29 and soon after the channel becomes fuzzy and the tape begins to play. Cheers.

An hour later we were still watching the pre-game show.

“When did they start taping?”

“I told them to start at 11:00 AM.”

“When does the game start?”

“11:17 AM.”

“OK, someone’s wrong.”

The game finally started at around 7:15 PM. The crowd became considerably drunker. Packed inside the one room restaurant were about forty people. Half of them were Americans, and the rest were an assorted smattering of Marshallese and Australians. There were volunteer teachers who have been here for six months, and former Peace Corps volunteers who have been here for more than thirty-five years. In addition, there were the people I have come to dub, “the old salts,” the men who look like they had just stepped off a ship lost at sea. They’re old. They’re hard. They drink like fish. They smell like fish. And they wanted to watch football.

“Hey, it’s still 7-3 at the half.”

“How the hell is this happening?”

“I think this could be bigger than Namath in Super Bowl III.”

“Dude, you remember that one?”

“Yeah, it was the last one I saw in the States.”

“Hey haven’t we been having a lot of power outages lately?”

A worried pause.

“Shut the fuck up and keep drinking.”

The power stayed on, and Giants stayed in it. By the fourth quarter the crowd had dwindled a bit, but the ones who needed to be there still were. When the Giants first took the lead in the fourth, the place exploded. Some of the crowd sounded like college frat boys. Some sounded like professionals. Some sounded like pirates with grog.

When the Patriots retook the lead, a few groans were heard. Even pirates hate the Patriots.

Finally, it was Eli’s time to shine. He made the escape. He threw the pass. Tyree made the jump. Harrison made the belly-to-back suplex. Tyree applied the super glue to his helmet. High fives are exchanged. Chest bumps are awkwardly made. The old salt next to me jumped up and started cheering as if he had just spotted land.

“Hey do you realize that happened like eight hours ago?” said the amused person next to him.

The old salt looked a little self-conscious and sat down nervously to sip his beer.

When the game ended it was about 11:00 PM on a Monday night. A volunteer teacher from New York bought a round of shots for everyone still remaining. Most people downed it. An old salt looked at it curiously, poured it into his empty beer bottle, and began sipping it. We filed out of the restaurant, to go home to our various dorms, apartments, houses, and buccaneer cabins.

It was eight hours after the game had ended. It was on a VCR. It was with kung pao chicken and New Zealand beer. It was in the middle of the Pacific. It was a little football amongst friends, and it brought us together.