Growing Up with The Game

Unbeknownst to the average fan, the spectacle that is Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor is not the only Michigan Stadium in the state of Michigan.

In fact, there are undoubtedly many Michigan Stadiums sprinkled throughout the mitten in small towns from Mackinaw to Toledo. The one I know exists in my hometown, a short walk down the street I grew up on, through a patch of woods, and in the middle of a vast grassy field speckled with baseball diamonds. The chalk on the football field reads "Lutheran High School Westland," but not in my mind. To me, that high school football field will always exist as the Big House.

When we were young my little brother and I used to toss our peewee-sized blue and yellow Michigan football around our front yard on brisk, grey fall days after school, waiting for our dad to turn the corner on his way home from work. In the days before the early Michigan winter set in, there was just enough daylight left for some quick outdoor playtime with our dad after the end of the 5 o'clock work day. We waited anxiously for him to get home so he could take us down to Lutheran High School's football field, where he would toss the football around to us. To an outsider, it might not seem any different than tossing the football around our own front yard, but to us, playing at that football field was different in so many ways.

When I was on that field, I wasn't catching passes from my dad; I was Mercury Hayes, wearing the #9 Michigan jersey, catching a pass from Scott Dreisbach or Brian Griese. When I chased my brother down those chalked sidelines, I wasn't tackling my brother; I was Ian Gold, tackling some bully-faced Ohio State Buckeye player. When I stopped to catch my breath, sometimes as it formed a tiny smoke cloud from the frigid air, I didn't see some meager metal bleachers on the sidelines; I saw the endless rows of the Big House, with a hundred thousand fans cheering for me under a cold November sky in Ann Arbor. To my brother and I, at least, that small high school football field was Michigan Stadium. And in all those dozens and dozens of games we played there, we never once played anyone except Ohio State -- and of course we never lost.

I don't think this is a unique experience to my brother, my dad, and I. I'd be willing to bet that thousands of fathers and sons from Westland, Michigan to Grand Rapids, Michigan bonded over playing against Ohio State together, whether it be in a backyard, a high school football field, a farmland field, or a park. In the same way, I bet thousands of fathers and sons in Ohio bonded by playing against imaginary Michigan players in imaginary Horseshoe's on autumnal Ohio evenings.

It always seemed like those evenings spent out on that field were all in preparation for some big event, the event of the fall: the Michigan - Ohio State game. It was almost as if we felt that our play out on Lutheran Field was practice for the big game, that diving for all those passes from Dad would somehow boost Michigan's chances of beating Ohio State that year. That if I dropped one of those passes, I was letting down the Wolverines. And that even if I forgot to wear my Michigan windbreaker out to the field, I wasn't fulfilling my civic duty as a young Michigan fan.

In a way, the fall season actually did culminate with the game. Always occurring on a late November Saturday, family and friends always gathered around the television set for a gathering that rivaled Thanksgiving. The fridge was stocked full of ice cold beers and enough soda to keep me up all night, the smell of chili sifted through the kitchen as it cooked on the stovetop, a log crackled in the fireplace, and maize and blue attired faces sat on the living room sofas in an eerily quiet anticipation of the game.

In this way, Michigan - Ohio State is far more than a football game. It is its own culture. It's fathers and sons. It's a way of identifying yourself. It's family gatherings. For families in Ohio and Michigan, The Game is a holiday around which the year revolves. As I'm sure it did for kids in Ohio, it felt like part of my genetics; it was just how I was supposed to grow up. I dream of one day being Denard Robinson throwing passes to my own son in our backyard, buying him his first Michigan jersey, and taking him to his first game. I dream of one day being able to tell stories about my days at Michigan to my grandkids.

Over the past few years, I've subconsciously tried to downplay the significance of the meaning of the rivalry, pretty unsuccessfully. Each loss has brought back images of those autumn evenings at Lutheran Field -- our Michigan Stadium -- scoring touchdowns with my brother. Each loss has brought back the images of those family gatherings, making those losses sting even worse. It's no use downplaying the significance of those games. The Game, to me, will always be more than a game. This Saturday, come four o'clock or so, I know I'll be shedding a tear or two remembering those times with my dad and my brother at our own Michigan Stadium -- I just can only hope this year those tears are tears of joy, and that I'm singing "The Victors" at the top of my lungs.

Go Blue.

The Goin' Nowhere Blues

"In the corner of the barroom/

Lives the ghost of Langston Hughes/

He's takin' notes and smokin' cigarettes/

Sippin slowly on his booze/

Got them goin' nowhere blues"

- Robert Earl Keen: Got the Goin' Nowhere Blues

This morning, I woke up, slightly hungover from one of those wish-I-was-still-in-college Wednesday nights at the old undergraduate bars, to a text from an old college friend. Essentially, the text said something along the lines of: 'been reading your blog, and feel the same way. My life is in need of a major change.' He said he skipped work today because he just couldn't do it. We texted back and forth for a little while, lamenting about the ruts we were in. I expressed how I missed college, when all of us (college buddies) were all together in one place -- not dispersed all over the country in D.C., N.Y.C., Cleveland, Chicago, and wherever else; I expressed how I missed college days when everything just seemed to make so much more sense.

Not long thereafter, I sat looking out my apartment window as snowflakes started to fall. It hit me that winter was here, and here for the long haul once again. The first snow conjured up images in my mind of months spent hibernating indoors and drowning beer after beer on uneventful weekend nights, of nights locked up inside warm pubs, of the slow monotony of yet another winter -- stuck in a prison of routine.

Maybe it was in part due to the alcohol wearing off, but the whole morning seemed to be overwrought with an oppressive weight, the weight of paralysis.

There used to be an old dirt road in my hometown, unpaved and hidden from suburbia underneath a shield of pine trees. I used to go there nights during the autumn of my senior year -- sometimes I just didn't want to go home. I was tired of my hometown, tired of being trapped in the strictures of high school life, tired of the same old same old. I remember thinking I might bust at the seams if something big didn't happen, soon.

I never thought I would feel that way again. But that text I received from my college buddy still is sitting with me hours later: "I'm ready for a change, in a major way".

Ironically, as I type this, I'm sipping the same beer I always drink, getting ready to go to the same bar me and buddy always go to. Might be a long winter.

The Paul Kemp Blues

Late last night I returned to my dark, lonely apartment in the eerily silent midnight hour after a viewing of The Rum Diary. With the cinema-induced images of miniature rum shooters fresh in my mind, I felt a lot like Paul Kemp -- the main character of the film/novel, and a portrait of a young Hunter S. Thompson -- did in the lonesome and crazy world of Puerto Rico.

Like Kemp, I felt stuck in that strange quarter-life stage between the carefree bliss of youth and the contentedness of settling down, the stage in which one struggles to define just what one is doing with his life. Like Kemp, I felt at odds with the career track I had chosen for myself and was left to wonder just how I had arrived at this career juncture. Like Kemp, I felt torn between an ambition to do something that I can't quite put my finger on yet and a lack of ambition in which I am content to half-ass my way through life in a haze of self-indulgent adventure. Like Kemp, I simply wanted a shot of rum -- if for nothing else than to make sense of all those thoughts.

But I was out of rum. Instead, unable to sleep, I picked up my copy of The Rum Diary and re-read the last couple of pages of the novel as I waited for the NyQuil to kick in. The last paragraph of the novel:

"Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street. Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night."

Thompson's closing lines are simultaneously both nostalgic and foreword-looking. There is a sense of sadness as Kemp looks back on his time on the island. Despite the ups and (mostly) downs he encountered, Kemp seems nostalgic as he realizes how much the island has influenced him and how it will unavoidably play a significant role in wherever he goes next. Nothing can ever change his time there; it will forever be cemented into the footpath of his life.

In the past several weeks and months I've been thinking a lot about the different stones on my own life footpath thus far as well. As an avid walker, I walk a lot in directions of places that occupy a special spot in my past. Over the summer, probably because it was the only thing I could tolerate soberly without hating life, I must have walked every square foot of my hometown. I walked past the Mike Modano Ice Arena, the place where Steve and I learned to skate as little kids. I walked past the post-demolition rubble that remains from the movie theater I used to go to. I walked down the trails alongside the Rouge River for just about as far as my legs would take me. And of course I walked to the old sandlot.

In Ann Arbor I've done a lot of walking by the places I called home during college, namely Mary Markley dormitory hall and the old house on State Street infamously known as the BOX house. So much of my life took shape in that tiny room on the 2nd floor of Mary Markley hall. I met so many people that year: some were fleeting drunken encounters with people now dispersed throughout America; some were historical moments with the people that will be my best friends for the rest of my life. It's weird to look up at my old window, where so many good times and a few bad occurred, and see that some unnamed freshman has the gall to occupy that room. In fact I can't even get in the front door of the building.

The same is true with the old college house. The rooms are now occupied by people not my best friends. It seems wrong in a sense. Those were our bedrooms, that was our front porch, that was our kitchen countertop bar. That was our house -- where relationships bloomed and relationships ended, where we got bad news on a phone call from home, where we rejoiced together over a sporting event, where we laughed and where we cried. So much of my life is ingrained in that house that it feels blasphemous that anyone else should live there, in the seat of our memories.

As Paul Kemp does as he departs Puerto Rico, I look back with nostalgia at those places. And like he did, I recognize that each place you go forms the sort of backbone of your life; each one will be a part of you no matter where you end up.

As Kemp laments in the film, "Life is full of exits". He exits Puerto Rico knowing exactly where he's been, but having no idea where the next stone in the footpath will lead him. And so I, in these times of uncertainty, may have no idea which direction my life might lead me in the coming years. But anytime I want I can take a stroll by Mary Markley dormitory Hall or by the old BOX House and know exactly where I've been.

Indeed, perhaps it's better to know where you've been rather than exactly where you are going. It seemed to work out pretty well for Hunter S. Thompson, after all.

Hard Times in Ann Arbor

My first experience with the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry was with my childhood best friend, Steve. We met when we were about three years old when we both moved into our brand new neighborhood, and we have been friends ever since. In a world where I know all too well that best friends come and go throughout the years, I feel very lucky to say that we've maintained that friendship through everything -- the awkward adolescent years, the clicky high school years, and the college years. And I know it will stay that way forever. Someday he'll be one of my best men at my wedding.

Steve was raised in a Michigan State household, and thus naturally gravitated towards Spartandom. I was raised in a pro-Wolverine household, and began loving Michigan football well before I even began loving my little brother Patrick (poor Pat was on the receiving end in many bouts of brotherly-fights during our youth; sorry Pat). Whether you hung a maize and blue block M flag or a green and white 'S' flag from your porch was sort of a dividing line in our neighborhood. Throughout our childhood's, our green and blue attire contrasted in the backdrop of whatever our playscape was. I'm not a big believer in destiny, but if there ever was a destined path for the both of us, it was that Steve would wind up in East Lansing and I in Ann Arbor, attending our beloved perspective institutions.

During those childhood years, consisting mostly of the 1990's, Michigan gridiron success overshadowed Sparty most of the time. I remember thinking that Steve must be really devout in wearing that Michigan State jersey when it seemed to be the unpopular school of choice in Michigan during the nineties. Being the Spartan fan in those days was the road less travelled, it seemed to me at least. And it took courage to remain resolute in Sparty-fandom during that stretch of history.

I have even more respect for Steve's resolution in those years, nowadays. After this year's Michigan-Michigan State game, in which my Wolverines were defeated for an unprecedented fourth time in a row, I remember (as I was walking back to Steve's house in East Lansing from the beer store, ironically) feeling for the first time in my life that being the resolute Michigan fan was the tough thing to do. I remember feeling like wearing a Michigan jersey around the state of Michigan required more fortitude than wearing an MSU jersey around. I felt a lot like how Steve must have felt after many of those 1990's or early 2000's games.

Last Saturday night, as me and a group of my Michigan friends gathered around a television set with drinks in our hands, begrudgingly rooting for Wisconsin to prevail over Michigan State, I felt happy for my friend when Michigan State won in the final moments of the game. Everyone deserves an experience like that every once in a while; those unforgettable moments are what makes sports meaningful, after all. But more so than happy I felt jealous. I thought about Steve and the unbelievable four years he's experienced during his time at Michigan State. And I thought about my own four years when I was at Michigan, and the utter sadness I had to deal with when it came to Michigan football. Why did Steve deserve that ultimate college experience with his beloved Spartans, but not me? It's a selfish thought, no doubt, but it's what I felt at the time (before descending into mind-numbing drunkenness shortly thereafter).

A breakdown of our college years (* note: Steve is still in his fifth year, and thus is likely to see a bunch more wins and possibly even a B1G championship this year):

Record:

Steve: 32-14 (likely to be about 38-15)

Me: 28-22 (misleading due to my freshman year 11-2 season)

Record against rivals (much more telling, in my opinion)

Steve (against the block M): 4-0

Me (against OSU and MSU): 1-7 (let me repeat, 1 and fucking 7.... 1 and fucking 7)

Times tried to kill self with alcohol

Steve: not as many as me

Me: More times than necessary

OK, jokes aside, I truly am happy for Steve. Steve's the type of fan that deserves the satisfaction. I know plenty of "Spartan" fans that loved Michigan football for 18 years until that MSU acceptance letter came in the mail and then magically it seemed convenient to become a Spartan fan. Steve isn't that guy. He's one of the fans who deserves what State is getting.

I just wonder how I'm in the group that deserves what Michigan is getting right now. I guess what you have to take from it all -- not only sports, but life in general -- is that the bad times make the good times (when they eventually come around) all that better.

Big Two-Hearted Sandlot

After returning from war, Ernest Hemingway went to the Upper Peninsula to camp and fish for several days in an attempt to heal his physical and emotional scars. It was a special place for him that brought him back to simpler days and made him forget the tragedies that can befall you on this treacherous journey that we call life. I wish I could call up Hemingway's ghost for a good trip up to the Big Two-Hearted River so I could ask him just how he healed those emotional wounds, if he ever did, or how he got over the heartbreaks that are rampant in his books. But since that scenario didn't seem likely (maybe If I had some absinthe), I figured I would settle for a trip to my own special place. For me, that special place is a tiny sandlot baseball field, secretly nestled in the woods of Hines Park and in between bends of the Rouge River.

In my mid-teens my life revolved around that sandlot. The neighborhood guys and I played literally whenever we could -- we sometimes would even wake up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday just to get a game in if someone had obligations that would prevent us from playing later in the day. And we worked tirelessly to upkeep that field, doing everything from mowing it to erecting foul poles to pouring kitty litter in the batter's box when it was soggy from rain. Quite simply, we were in love with the place.

Today I took a walk to the old ballfield. I felt like it was something I needed to do. I felt that if I could just see it again, some of the emptiness that has existed in my soul for the past three months might dissipate. If I could just stand in that old batter's box, maybe I'd be able to feel young and alive again, instead of the desolation that has hung like a cloud over my head for too long now. I knew the sandlot wouldn't disappoint.

It was a beautiful autumn day. The trees in the woods are just changing colors and the seasonal change in the air was palpable. As I walked down memory lane -- the trails we walked hundreds and hundreds of times on the way to the field -- I thought about the people we used to be: young, bright-eyed, naive and innocent kids with the world in front of them. It sounds strange, but it was as if I could almost see the ghosts of us dragging our baseball gloves and bats down the trail to the field, our laughter echoing off the trees. And I thought about the person I've become since I left home and that sandlot. I thought about the people we've all become. I thought about how easy it is to get lost in the world when you leave home, when you're world becomes more than just a sandlot baseball field.

But when I arrived at the field, I didn't think about being lost. I just felt hope again.

Sure, the field is overgrown with tall grass and weeds nowadays; the pitcher's mound is barely even visible through it all. But underneath all the brush, the magic is still there. The magic of a boyhood summer day, baking in the sunlight while rounding the bases. The magic of when a game-winning home run in a friendly match could be the highlight of your whole week. The magic of a grill-cooked hot dog and a soda in between a summer day's doubleheader. The magic of a couple of best friends just having fun.

It felt good to be home again. I just wish I didn't have to leave.

More Than a Game

After the worst summer of my 23 year life, I find myself longing for that first kickoff in Ann Arbor more than ever.

Over the past two and a half years my future started to take shape. I fell in love and found a best friend in the same person. We planned our wedding Up North together. We named my first son. We named our future dog - Bo. We signed a lease to an apartment that we would start the rest of our lives together in. And in a world where 50% of marriages end in divorce, we promised each other time and again that we would defy those numbers. I started to think that the world was a good place, after all.

In a moment, my future crumbled. And I still don't even know why. I just know that it's gone forever. Those 2 and a half years of my life will always just reside in my past as a gigantic lie. And the future that I had planned was just some fantasy land that apparently meant absolutely nothing. Essentially everything that I believed in for the past two and half years, and everything I believed in the future vanished in a moment.

People can't be trusted. The most important people in life have a funny tendency to let you down. That's just the way it is.

There's one thing that means anything to me that still remains, though: Michigan football. Sure, Michigan football has let me down more times than I can count. But upon summer's end, without fail, it's always there waiting for you on that first Saturday in Autumn. Michigan football will never pack up without warning and stop playing, leaving you wondering what the hell happened. Michigan football will be there, good or bad. And it always will. I can count on it to be there through deaths in the family, lost friendships, lost jobs, you name it. And this fall I will be very thankful for that.

People sometimes say sports is just a game. And sometimes that can be true. But this fall, Michigan football will be a hell of a lot more than a game to me. It's that long lost friend that will always be there. It's a crutch to lean on when life is shitty. It's something that I can believe in, when I don't believe in a damn thing in this world anymore.

Life is But a Joke

"Now the question on the table is: how drunk is drunk enough?

First the sadness cells go so you smile real big. And then the quiet cells go so you say everything real loud for no reason at all. That's OK, because the stupid cells go next, and everything you say is real smart.

And finally, come the memory cells.

Those are tough sons of bitches to kill."

-The Legend of Bagger Vance