Jill Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in Santa Monica. She spends her leisure time at the local playground, scoring relentlessly against imaginary opponents.
The game was over, the season was done, it was time to go home. It had been a no-hearted, lackluster, going-through-the-motions game between the Los Angeles Sparks and the Cleveland Rockers, two teams that weren't headed for the playoffs anyway. Afterward the crowd seemed wistful, gathering in little groups just inside the exit like special friends during the last minutes of summer camp.
As for myself, I was loitering nostalgically near the souvenir counter. I already owned a few select mementos -- a WNBA inaugural season program, a Sparks key chain, an opening night tip-off T-shirt (which I did purchase opening night, unlike some people I know). I figured there was no harm in looking the merchandise over one more time, just in case.
I had sidled up to the counter and was eyeing the Sparks earrings- and-necklace set, wondering whether I'd be shunned if I wore them in public, when it struck me: What the heck was I doing? Yes, I should have the courage of my convictions and be less concerned with what others think, but what, in a larger sense, was I doing? Here? At the Great Western Forum?
I'd had similar thoughts at previous games, but the feeling had never been quite so acute. I was getting maudlin over basketball. Had I gone crazy? I've always hated sports -- just ask any of my ex-boyfriends. Sports are boring. Sports are pointless. Sports were invented by mean-spirited, hairy-moled gym teachers in order to degrade and humiliate you. Football is unfathomable, baseball holds all the thrill of stop-and-go traffic, and basketball -- well, I may see things differently now, but not so long ago basketball ranked right alongside Ronco infomercials: sort of entertaining, if you happen to be stuck in a full body cast without the remote.
What I didn't get was, why all the fighting over the ball? If the other team wants it so badly, why not give it to them? The ball goes this way, the ball goes that way. So what? Why does anyone care who wins? Isn't it all one great exercise in futility? I just couldn't feel sports the way men did. I had no nostalgic memories of ballparks at twilight; I'd never shot around with Dad at the old garage hoop. And, try as I might, I could find no sympathy in my heart for helmeted fatmen wearing tight pants. Sports was guys cheering guys. Why should I cheer them if they weren't cheering me?
After a lifetime of sports antipathy, I was surprised how excited I was by the advent of women's professional basketball. I still didn't get why people liked sports, but now I wanted to get it. I bought season tickets to the Sparks, and pretty soon I'd learned the two main reasons people go to games: a) to watch the timeless drama of human struggle played out by exceptional athletes in two twenty- minute halves, and b) to eat cheese-covered Nachos while hollering 'DEE-FENSE'. Now Lisa Leslie executes a graceful turnaround jumper, the crowd around me leaps to its feet with a roar, and some hormonal gland deep in my hypothalamus releases sweet chemical bliss into my brain.
It would be nice if everyone weren't so fixated on the gender of the players. It would be nice if everyone talked about something else for a change, like, does Michele Timms have to practice pinwheeling her arms and keeling over backwards, or does it just come naturally to her when she's on defense?
On the other hand, the gender of the players makes all the difference in the world. Women have finally entered a central part of American culture, the last remaining all-male vestige of a time when the living section was called 'the women's pages,' and news, sports, and business were for the men. Now fathers are beginning to shoot hoops with daughters; girls are beginning to feel comfortable heading over to the basketball court instead of just hanging around the swings. Stadiums are filling up with mothers and daughters, with lesbian couples, with husbands tagging along behind excited wives, with women who sit weeping for joy in the stands. (OK, so maybe I cried at one of the games. Maybe.) For the moment women's pro basketball means a lot of wonderful things, and eventually it will mean a lot of not-so-wonderful things as well, because no human endeavor is more perfect than the mortals who undertake it.
I lingered long at the souvenir counter the last night of the Sparks first season, trying to decide whether to purchase the earrings-and- necklace set. I finally decided against it. I may live to regret that decision. Then again, I may not. Instead I gave the vendor a melancholy smile, worked my way to the exit, stepped across the threshhold into the dry Inglewood night, and tried to turn my thoughts toward the ABL's upcoming season. As I was crossing the parking lot toward my car, I met a man selling Sparks T-shirts, whereupon I purchased two. One of the T-shirts is painted with a big cross-hatched net that glows in the dark. Maybe someday I'll wear the thing in public. Then again, maybe I won't. Either way, the T-shirt serves a soulful purpose: Whenever I'm looking for inspiration, something to remind me what women can accomplish when they have faith, courage, and an airtight outside shot, I put that T-shirt under a lamp, take it into a closet, and stand there, watching it phosphoresce.
10/13/97
