SPEED SPORTS
So often, it seems we predicate our enjoyment of sports events on the quality of speed.
As I get older, I find that either sports have changed radically and get more attention through dependency on speed, or that I have simply slowed down and can't keep pace with what is happening. Games moves faster or I react slower. It is one or the other and I am not entirely sure which is correct.
Why, for instance, should I now find I watch soccer games on TV rather than football? I watch golf tournaments and baseball game but shy away from basketball, volleyball, stock car and formula racing, but still look for horse racing, sulky competitions, and even foot races and field events. Baseball endures, forever,it seems although I get lost if things move along too rapidly. This is thing about speed being at the base of so many things goes back, I suppose, to my early days of riding atop the high back seat of my Uncle Andrew's fine Saxon Touring Car back in the early 1920's. That my first memorable encounter with speed because he used to rev that fine old car up to sixty miles per hour or better - or worse – my brother and in high, wing-like back seats above the in cloud of dirt road dust we were creating with spinning, wooden-spoked wheels.
I learn a negative lesson from that from that childhood experience, I think. We realized at the time that what we were doing was risky and, I'm sure we knew it was against the law of common sense as well as that of the Commonwealth of Virginia. To have such memories has kept me off of such curious forms of self-elimination as what have been loosely-called “roller coasters” in our leading family-style theme parks. You are not about to catch me on one of those flip-flopping, loop and counter-loop, whiz-bang, thundercrunchers - the thrill rides of our century. It may well have changed my view of sports activities, as well and made me favor less abusive types.
I remember when, Sir Malcolm Campbell, came from England with especially built sports cars which were driven up to as much as three hundred miles per hour on the famed Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. and we all agreed that was about as fast as we might ever move. Then, we talked about moving at the speed of sound; then breaking the sound barrier and who knows where we might be at the moment on some undetermined mach scale or other? Everything else is faster... why not sports?
There was s time, when I could look at a football game and know where the ball happened to be. No more. It hasn't been there at all, the explanatory diagramming shows me. I watch basketball and get the feeling it consists of sweating giants running endlessly from one end to the other in a restricted area seemingly only intent on knocking each other down as they strive to lower a ball into a hoop - maybe - and head back to where they came from. To do it all over again until somebody blows a whistle and they all hitting each others hands held high. I have come to prefer to watch a golf ball descending majestically through the sky to plop ever-so-lightly and to roll to within a few inches of the cup or far beyond it into the rough. I'd much rather see a soccer ball being driven from one player to another skillfully caused to elude the foot of an enemy player to be counter-claimed by another a pair of players. I can see it. I can keep up with it most of the time, and feel good about my attainment as a sports-watcher.
The final, honest look at it all, however urges me to accept the idea that I am guilt of lack of appreciation for sports which attract thousands of new fans daily. I don't particularly like admitting I've slowed up that much, but I find some satisfaction in knowing that you too will, in time, wish activity could take everything a little slower so you could stay with it.
A.L.M. Aug 17, 2004 [c708wds]
