I was pleased to read that LaBron James has become the highest points scorer ever. Pleased because I had heard he owned part of Liverpool Football Club, but didn’t know why this was significant. It turns out he is a prominent basketball player. Who knew? Not me. But then, I know next to nothing about some American sports and literally nothing about the rest.
I am sure it says more about my failings as a sports fan that I find basketball a terrible game to watch. To my untrained eye, each team takes it in turn to throw the ball through a hoop and the team that loses is the one that isn’t so accurate. Or something. In fact, my sheer ignorance shone through when I watched the legendary movie Airplane, not realising that co-pilot Roger Murdock was in fact a famous basketball player. In fact, despite some very obvious clues I didn’t release who Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was for decades. And I only knew who Magic Johnson was when it was revealed he was HIV positive. None of this persuaded me to watch the sport. But then, I’m not very good with other American sports, either.
Take Baseball. My father was a big cricket fan and once he emigrated to Canada he became an armchair baseball fan. As someone with a middling interest in Our Summer Game, I made an unsuccessful attempt to watch a few games but it was lost on me. The same with Ice Hockey and American Football, the only real US sport I have really tried hard to like.
When early efforts were made to establish the game in the UK, which would have been in the early 1980s, I think, Channel 4 made a serious effort, showing a live game every week. For someone with the attention span of a gnat, it seemed a straightforward enough game. The trouble was the sheer length of the game. Presumably, in order to make maximum use of advertising revenue, a 60 minute game would have to be shoe-horned into a four hour plus timeframe. As soon as something happened, there would be a lengthy break filled by advertisers and blokes talking about previous plays. I got to know names like Dan Marino and John Riggins, because everyone seemed to know who they were and I didn’t want to be the odd one out. The trouble was the end of season Cup Final, the Superbowl. It went on throughout the night, a Sunday night. I tried once, and only once, to stay up for the action but once the start and mostly stop kicked in, I knew I was on a loser. And soon I’d give up the unequal battle and go to bed.
The only truly American sport I really got into was Professional Wrestling, particularly when the WWF was up against the WCW and there remained the pretence that it actually was a sport, even though in our heart of hearts we knew it had never been. Indeed, in the early 1990s, we went to two WCW shows, one in Birmingham and the other in Cardiff where we saw legends like Sting, Ric Flair, William Regal, Big Van Vader, Sid Vicious and Big Van Vader. It was glorious entertainment and best of all each match was over relatively quickly, as well it might be given the result of each match would have been pre-determined.
So that was me. Not remotely interested in so-called American sports, except the one that was more sports entertainment. It’s my loss, I’m sure, as friends of mine travel to watch their favourite sports in the UK and abroad. LaBron James has certainly done something very special and he’s managed to do it without me seeing any of it. At least I know who he is now.
