Chasing 36

08 August 2006
Dinamo Zagreb 0 - 3 Arsenal

63' Fabregas
65' Van Persie
79' Fabregas

At some point, my interest in Arsenal has to reach some kind of breaking point - pack it up and go home or admit I'm in it for the long haul. But where does the interest come from, why do I insist on a love for a team from a place I've never been, let alone lived in? Is it for my dad - a theory I've seriously been considering for a couple days now, as I've had to explain to a lot of people why indeed I root for a North London team instead of, say, DC United (who I intend to root for - someday, I guess, when I've got my shit together). I tell them, "oh yeah, I started to pay attention to soccer so I'd have something to talk about with my dad," which is painfully true. Of course, I think it applies more broadly to all sports - I think, some time, our distance kicked in, I realized my father was only my father in technical terms. He abandoned the playing field I offered in my youth - Commander Keen, although my life has been filled with video games - and so at some junction I had to adopt the terrain he inhabited: sport. I can't place all the blame on my father; I think something clicked, much like my realization of my distance from my dad, because I also decided that my self-imposed removal from people - father, et al - was ridiculous and unfun for all concerned (and unconcerned, I suppose). It's my way of growing up it seems, by abandoning what I had loved at the age of 10 for something my father loves. So I ditched the anime and game music, and replaced it with sports and indie rock. Who can say which move was mere posturing? The anime with its self-contained art superiority or indie rock with its ambiguous elitest hierarchy - both are intrinsically aloof and annoying, yet both hold "art" as their highest ideal. Of course, I am neither Japanophile nor indie hipster, but the point remains that I deserted one so I would have something to talk about at parties, instead of staying home and talking online. Sports are just as bad as anime, except one has a larger audience. Sometimes I find myself balking at my love of sports - do I really value human achievement? Because that's what it's all about, I think, at the end of the day. Sports can be great because they can provide a sense of pride for your hometown, but the real story is witnessing the limits of human ability. Which is why steroids are the bane of my existence, but that's another story for another time. What of it all, anyhow? "Once you label me, you negate me" - and by claiming anime, or indie rock, or sports - I'm using labels for my interests. When someone asks me what kind of music I like, my options are limited to language, and simply saying "oh I like indie rock" is the easiest route. "I like pop melodies within complicated song structures accompanied by atypical lyrics" is perhaps closer to the truth, but you would never understand unless I played my favorite songs for you in a row. Likewise, trying to explain why sports are great is like trying to explain why love is great, or how a good book moves you. Telling you about following Chase Utley's hitting streak, waiting for number 36 which would never come (C Utley struck out swinging - oh, the pain that caused! And I'm not even a Philly fan!), is silly - describing the shock as I watched Zidane level Materazzi is hollow - expressing the subdued joy as the referees basically handed the Heat the Championship is tedious - and rejoicing because Arsenal's season has fucking commenced and they did it by nailing the first leg of their Championship League qualifier is just pointless because most people here only think of an arsenal in relation to the Stadium-Armory Metro stop (go Nats!). What I'm saying is you can't tell people how great sports are, just like telling them falling in love is amazing; they can only experience it for themselves. Some people never fall in love, some people never care that a team who hasn't the won the World Series in 88 years finally did it. Yet the kind of connections that I religiously search for are not going to be induced by sports, or music - sure, those may oil the gears, but they're not going to start those relationships. So why does a tectonic shift have to occur within my interests? I guess because some relationships, like the one with a father, are forced rather than created, and by assuming sports as a parallel interest, I have also assumed that my father's life is of interest. Instead of relegating sports to the background as something he follows, it is something we both follow, something that concerns us both, something that we each eat, sleep, and breathe. We live for sports and goddammit, we've never bonded more.