Leaving things behind

Ididn’t know that the Oscars had even happened until I read that an actor about whom I couldn’t care less had slapped another actor about whom I couldn’t care less.

But the oversight also made me realize that that there are lots of things, going beyond the Oscars, that I used to care about that I don’t any more—in the past year I didn’t watch a single minute of the NBA, professional tennis, the World Series or the Olympics, all of which once occupied large chunks of my time.

I still go to a Cardinals game or two every season, courtesy of my father-in-law, a longtime season-ticket holder who has an actual seat from the old Busch Stadium in his home. I still like being at a ballpark, drinking beer and eating hot dogs (which somehow taste better there), but I don’t watch baseball on TV or follow the standings any more (whereas the 1969 edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia might have once been my most valuable possession).

I probably averaged six or seven sets of tennis a week when it was warm enough to play from junior high into my 30s, and wouldn’t have missed a Wimbledon final no matter how early I had to get up or how hungover I might have been. But I haven’t been on a tennis court or watched a match in at least 20 years (and therefore missed maybe the greatest three-way rivalry in the history of sports—Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic).

I stayed up late to catch the round-by-round radio reports for the “Fight of the Century” (Ali-Frasier) and still believe that the round-robin matches between Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler, Tommy “Hit Man” Hearns, and “Sugar Ray” Leonard were among the most exciting things ever in sports, but haven’t followed boxing at all since Mike Tyson got improbably knocked to the canvas by Buster Douglas (!!).

As for the NBA, I went from knowing the name of every player on every roster during the Michael Jordan era to knowing the names of about a half-dozen players in the entire league now. I’ll always believe MJ was the greatest, but maybe because I’ve only watched LeBron James on TV a few times.

It hasn’t been just sports, however. Most of the little rock music I listen to these days was recorded before the mid-1970s. I saw the recent headlines about the death of the Foo Fighters drummer, but have never heard (to my knowledge, anyway) a Foo Fighters song, and when I think rock drummer, I think Ringo, Charlie Watts, and Keith Moon.

Perhaps the most anticipated movies of my teens were James Bond installments, but that interest faded by the time they dragged Roger Moore over the finish line, and I don’t make any effort to catch the amusement park rides/cartoons disguised as Bond films these days (even if things perked up a bit at first with Daniel Craig).

I’ll still pop “Goldfinger” or “From Russia with Love” into the DVD player every now and then, but have come to believe any Bond without Sean Connery doesn’t count (and as Bond becomes ever more PC/woke, that is, ever less like Bond, that won’t change).

The last superhero movies I watched were the second Superman with Christopher Reeve and the first Batman with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson as the Joker, and I have become increasingly baffled as to why any adult would want to watch movies with characters from the comic books they read when they were 9.

Of course, some of what I’ve left behind has been effectively replaced, including the tennis court by the golf course (a sport which a younger me could never have imagined playing, what with the terrible ratio of activity to non-activity and those awful plaid pants). I also watch way more college football, to the point of spending most Saturdays in the fall flipping between games from 11 to 11.

Pulling a beer from the fridge after work has been replaced by shaking a Beefeater martini with two olives, accompanied by a hand-rolled cigar, and the music playing in the background is now Sinatra and jazz, much of which was recorded before I was born.

Some things have, however, stayed the same—the Dallas Cowboys have been my team since I was 7 years old, although there have been times over the past quarter-century of mediocrity under inept management when I wondered why I bother. I don’t watch every game of March Madness like my friends and I used to in college, but I’m sure I’ve seen every Final Four since Bird/Magic (and still get my bracket busted early on).

There are also things that I wasn’t interested in way back then that I’m still uninterested in now—soccer (what kind of sport doesn’t let you use your hands?) and hockey (still can’t see the puck, and the ritualized “fights” are absurd) come quickly to mind.

And I never cared about the Grammy Awards either—at last glance the Rolling Stones, in their nearly 50-year recording career, have won a grand total of three.

Asleep at the Wheel has eight.