By Blair Thomas
Welcome to Portland, the anti-sports town of America. From April to October, we live in a hippie utopia, where sports are virtually non-existent. Why collect baseball cards when you can collect cans? Why bother tailgating to the big game when you can bike to the bookstore? Who would pay for a ticket to anything when you can watch street musicians outside of Whole Foods for free?
Heaven forbid hugging a fellow fan when citizens can hug trees instead. Forget Air Jordans when you can rock the Birkenstocks. Who needs Yankees versus Red Sox or a potential Mariners MLB rivalry when you can watch a couple of Frisbee golf legends duke it out over at Lewis & Clark?
For students that are returning from the Bay Area or Phoenix during Thanksgiving: Could you please bring the city leftover stuffing and the 49ers? During Winter Break, could you bring us a present like the Oakland A's for Haunakah or the Arizona Diamondbacks for Christmas? We will even take the Oakland Raiders for Kwanzaa.
Normally, Santa will bring a good city a new baseball or basketball team for the New Year. In that case, I promise I will not complain if Santa endows me with what he gives to the bad cities (National Hockey League teams).
As a lifelong Portlander, I am desperate and lonely. Santa show me a sign, I still believe in you, I will even take a Major League Soccer franchise.
We live in the 22nd largest metropolitan market and all we have to show for ourselves is one professional team. While many will throw out the Portland Lumberjax, we need to be real with ourselves. Any athlete that needs a side job as a box boy at Costco to make ends meet isn't making a professional athlete's salary.
As far as the Portland Beavers or Timbers go, that is like saying watching a bunch of JV kids is better than watching the Varsity ones. While they might be your little JV superstars, they are still just that, JV superstars.
In Portland, we do not even give our kids hope that there will be future pro teams. Portland high schools are on the verge of not playing sports: In 2004, a $250,000 donation from NBA player Damon Stoudamire saved the funding of PIL athletics, due to the city's unwillingness to step in and donate. On the campus scene, Reed College doesn't even have sports.
Nationally, I hear about fans in places like Cleveland and Seattle and how bad they have it. Ohio fans complain about the Indians and Browns not winning championships for decades. A word to Cleveland fans: Be happy you have teams that choke every year at least you can fantasize three times a year about getting a LeBron James for the other two teams.
In Starbucksland, fans cry about the possibility of losing the Sonics. Cry all of those tears into Qwest Field and Safeco Field and get over it. Over 90 home games are played per year without your stupid Sasquatch mascot. It takes Portland fans three years to get that many played in P-Town. Even a mouse with big ears and a magic kingdom has more teams that play on his block than Portland.
In a city where we measure points by how many plastic bottles we reuse, and victories by how many trees we save, it is nice to finally have the NBA season starting this week. For all of the sports freaks out there, our week has come. This off-season for the fans has been nothing short of amazing.
Not only did we get rewarded by being one of the worst teams in the league last year by getting the top pick in the draft Greg Oden (albeit a crippled Greg Oden), but we traded the biggest criminal on our team in Zach Randolph. Although the team will more than likely lose close to 60 games by the end of the year, at least these boys have Portland stitched across their chest.
For six months, I along with many others, will embrace my weirdness. I won't apologize for wearing my Brandon Roy jersey, as I wouldn't expect you, my fellow anti-sport hippie Portlander, to apologize for wearing toe socks. Although I have beaten on you today, I must acknowledge that we are not as far apart as we may seem.
Secretly, as you explain why defending a tree is important, I agree because we need to defend trees of our own, namely Yao Ming and Shaquille O'Neal. When I complain about Steve Nash heating up the court, I know deep down in your socially conscious heart there is a parallel with the global warming issue that you feel so strongly about. You believe in alternative solutions to driving, and I do too. You want people to drive hybrids and I want 3-point shooters as an alternative to guys that drive to the basket.
Inevitably, it will rain for the rest of the NBA season in Portland, but it should not be a metaphor for our relationship. I will vote to get out Bush, if you will vote to get us Reggie Bush. There was a time not so long ago even you, my anti-sports hippie, were once a pro athlete. Thirty years ago to be exact. It was 1977, and his name was Bill Walton. It sounds a little familiar right?
Walton was cool, he had long locks that resembled part braided bird's nest and part mullet, dredlocks I believe you call them. He hulked up on a vegetarian diet and was a little anti-social with people in suits and microphones. Look into the mirror my fellow Portlanders, he was you. He was me.
He was Portland.
Thirty years to the day, we can get that moment back. I'll meet you at the playground, and ride my little pink Vespa just for you. I'll meet you in heaven, because even in an anti-sports town, heaven is a playground.
Blair Thomas is a senior ?political science major
