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attending my first sporting event
Tuesday, July 2 2002
I took Sally to Prospect Park's Vale of Cashmere this afternoon with an intention of kicking back with the latest New Yorker and drinking an ice-cold Molsen Ice at the "birthday spot". But for some reason I forgot to bring anything to read at all. So there I was sitting in the shade drinking a beer with nothing much to do. Gretchen says she does this all the time, and that might be fine and dandy for someone of her gender, but for someone of mine, it was just a little bit creepy. Remember, this part of Prospect Park is a big gay cruising scene, and the surest sign of a fellow-cruiser is that he's sitting around doing nothing at all. So while I was sitting there, these two different guys came walking towards me, staring at me intently as I tried to pretend they weren't there. When they got up to within a certain distance, both of them made a U-turn and walked away. I think for them the deciding factor that my business was not the same as theirs was the presence of Sally, who kept emerging from the woods after chasing squirrels, chipmunks and rats.
Hoping to further expose me to her summer obsession, Gretchen had bought a couple tickets for tonight's women's basketball game in Madison Square Garden. It was "us" (the New York Liberty) versus the Seattle Storm, and Gretchen erroneously thought, the turnout would "probably be poor" because New York hasn't been playing well lately.
Madison Square Garden is adjacent to Penn Station on 34th Street in Manhattan. As we were walking into the building, I realized that this was the first time in my life I'd ever been to a sporting event (unless you count the rodeos and horse shows I attended with my mother as a kid). We were early enough to get free stuff, in this case limited-edition bobble-head dolls of "little Becky Hammon" (as Gretchen calls her). The dolls didn't look anything like Becky Hammon, but they're solid injection-molded sculptures and will probably command a good price on Ebay some day.
We found our seats off in the cut-rate stands and then went to do the things one is expected to do at a sporting event: getting beer at the "bar" and buying french fries at the food court. I also bought some so-called "chicken fingers" and they looked so good in their golden brownness that Gretchen said she was tempted to take a bite.
It didn't take much of an investment in people watching to determine that a large percentage of the people who had come to the game were lesbians, many of them couples, others solitary gym instructors and Subaru drivers strutting around in their New Balance sneakers. A few of these ladies even sported mullets.
Back in our cut-rate seats, Gretchen was soon horrified to discover that we were surrounded by Seattle fans! Yes, these bitches and assholes were cheering when those other people were making baskets! This wasn't going to make for a very good game experience, so we went in search of better seats, soon finding a couple right down near the floor at center court. Our new seats even had cup holders for beer and there were ushers hanging out waiting to get us food and beer. It's a different experience watching a game live without the slow-motion instant replays and the steady banter of a television commentators. The players seem more life-sized in the flesh, though their techniques also seem more natural. For example, for the first time I could actually watch the interaction between someone with the ball and someone who was guarding her on my terms, not the cameraman's, and this allowed me to see all sorts of hand motions and petty insults I would normally have missed.
Overall, I'd say I had a much better time than I expected to have. Before leaving, we even stopped at the ticket window to buy seats for the July 18th Madison Square Garden game so we can get another set of bobble-headed dolls, which on the 18th will be the Liberty's famously red-faced coach Richie Adubato
Though there had been nearly 15,000 people at the game, I was nonetheless surprised by the sheer number of New York Liberty fans riding back to Brooklyn with us on the 1 train.
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