About ten days ago, the local ABC affiliate showed a replay of Game 6 from the 2008 NBA Finals. The Celtics crushed the Lakers to clinch the championship series, 4-2, and ended a long title drought. This seems to be a somewhat common occurrence these days, networks rerunning old games I mean, filling the void of LIVE sports with their most famous reruns.
I've so far been unmoved by these games, but for me Game 6 was a welcome surprise on a listless Saturday afternoon. In 2008 I'd watched the first five games of that series with my friends, most of us back on break from college, and I'd hoped all the while for a quick victory. I wasn't bloodthirsty, just selfish, but when the Lakers made it 3-2 my fate was sealed. I never saw Game 6. While the Celtics were winning, I was flying, on the way to Japan for a summer. I remember my hosts the first night, family friends, offering to show me the replay of the game which they had taped onto a VHS. I declined, citing fatigue, but mostly I was confused, having left home to return home, and with only six weeks to sort it out I began convincing myself I had no time for basketball.
Now I'm home all the time, perhaps for six weeks, definitely forever. This time, I know where I'm supposed to be, and I feel fine, rested, settled. I belatedly took up the offer after nearly twelve years. I saw history for the first time, glancing intermittently toward the screen while I proofread TOA posts, and put my life on pause to watch the Celtics run away with the game in the second quarter.
A short way into the fourth quarter, I looked up again and noticed that Trump was giving an update on the corona - you know, that PANDEMIC going around. The interruption meant preempting 'coverage' of the game, but that's fine, this is our version of history in progress, the type of thing our kids and their kids will read about in the textbooks, or whatever they'll use in the ZOOM classrooms, plus it's not like this game was live so no big loss, maybe I should turn the TV off...
Wait, what's this? The game was on! Indeed, in the lower left hand corner, in a small picture in picture box, the Celtics were finishing off the Lakers. I guess the 'coverage' of the game was just on a short commercial break, giving Trump the full screen, but now that Paul Pierce had the ball the game had carved out its own space once more. I could hardly believe it, could scarcely see the screen through the tears rolling down my cheeks, could barely comprehend that the lads at the TV studio thought it was important to keep a game from twelve years ago running alongside a press conference given by the President of the United States about, you know, an ongoing PANDEMIC.
What would we think if our history books had detailed a similar incident? Surely when JFK was giving updates on the Cuban Missile crisis, the TV networks never considered putting a little box alongside showing highlights of Babe Ruth hitting dingers at Wrigley Field. Ladies and gentlemen, the curve may not be flat, but we've reached peak absurdity. I shudder at what the future will think of us.
But I guess the answer to the future's obvious question won't be that hard at all. Why did you do it? It's an answer I've given over and over, about so many of the things I've done - I was only doing my best and, in looking back, I don't see how I could have done it any differently.
