Yeah, I saw it. Even I, who, as regular readers of this blog have heard by now, shun the idiot box like it was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Which it is. But Lois the landlady was home, and the two of us were sniffing and blowing and cursing rogue pieces of selfish DNA, and it was an alternative to listening to each other hack. So it was on. We risked Armageddon. And we saw Jacobellis go down. What’s more, I saw it coming.

Ain’t nothin’ in this world harder than when all you have to do is get a bogey 5 on the easiest hole on the golf course to win the match, or the tournament. Try it sometime. You’re standing on the tee imagining all the trash you’re going to talk as you’re taking everyone else’s bet money, and the next thing you know your ball’s in the woods making love to some boulder in the middle of a briar patch. You take a 7 and it’s the other guys who are talkin’ the trash and headed to the bar with your bills. Well, there was Lindsey J. standing on the tee of that bunny of a par 4 …

It’s never over ‘til it’s over, right, Yogi? All the talent in the world goes for nothing if it doesn’t include the hard lesson of fighting all the way through to the end. A little less glory, a lot more gold. I had already been thinking along these lines with all the yap about Kobe Bryant lately. So when the list of top NBA scorers was published in the paper yesterday, I did a little research. The two top scorers (Bryant and Iverson), and four of the top ten, play for teams that, at the All-Star break, are out of the playoffs. Two of the others play for .500 teams that are just barely in the playoffs. Only one of the top ten, Dirk Nowitzski (at no. 10), plays for an elite team. Top scorer for the best team in the league, Detroit, is no. 31 (Chauncey Billups); for the next best after Nowitzski’s team (Dallas), no. 26 (Tim Duncan, San Antonio). So Bryant scored 81 points in a game? Big whoop. What’s he doing in all those losses, grabbing his snowboard?

I had also been thinking about what was once my favorite team in all the world. The New Zealand All Blacks. The best rugby players in all Godzone, brought together to play games (they call them “test matches") against the best players of other rugby-playing nations – USA not included. These guys used to clean up. I mean like 33-0 against England, a nation twenty times its size, clean up. And you never heard a peep out of them. No spiking, no break dancing, no cell phones in the end zone. There was a famous cartoon published in the New Zealand papers about their coach. Ten identical pictures of the guy's face: “Grizz Wyllie happy." “Grizz Wyllie sad." “Grizz Wyllie angry." “Grizz Wyllie after a try" … They even published a book about these guys, indeed about all of New Zealand: The Passionless People, folk who didn’t waste time and energy emoting, just getting the job done. They were peerless ambassadors, Maori and European alike, welcome guests throughout the world. Living there was like living in Maine, without the snow and the mud and the blackflies, and with the Passamaquoddy Indians your neighbors instead of this enclave bound to an island in the middle of the Penobscot River. It was, y’know, comfortable. Almost like being at home.

Until American television arrived. Then the showboating started. And the fights on the rugby field, and the clubhouse, and the international hotels. New Zealand rugby lost its image. And its position as the world’s premier rugby team. Now they lose about as much as they win.

“Show me something!" Yeah, right. At the fancy church in Berkeley, the leadership is experimenting with all sorts of things like gospel choirs, spontaneous responses during the sermon, all sorts of “show me" stuff. Next thing I know, they’ll be spiking the eucharist in the choir loft. Because they’re afraid that their congregation, even their building, is a little too New England, a little too passionless, a little bit too unwilling to celebrate the self.

Seems to me that, if we had a little bit more of that New England church in us, maybe the rest of the world would be treating us with more respect – a respect that we might come closer to deserving. And a certain young lady snowboarder would be bringing home a gold medal now.

  - O Ceallaigh

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