The view from the bleachers

One of the best parts of my job is the diversity. It’s not just covering government meetings or just newspaper composition or just advertising sales. It’s all of those things plus quite a few other elements.
Despite all the time away from home and the haphazard, sometimes downright unhealthy meals, I enjoy covering high school sports, for the most part, although as veteran observers of such events can attest, you tend to see people at their best and at their worst, and I’m not just talking about the athletes. Some of our local adults could learn a few things from their kids about sportsmanship. I remember what it was like, gentle readers, to have my own off-spring in uniform and to agonize with them over losses, poor performances, inept officials and coaches, and all the other ills that amateur sports are heir to. And I remember that, at times, it is difficult to remember that it is, after all, just a game.
More often than at baseball or football games in my experience, people’s emotions can run pretty high at basketball games, although such things can happen at any sporting event. We’ve all heard about or experienced Little League Mommas and Daddies, but from what I’ve seen, the players tend to get the worst of it at basketball games. No doubt this is due, in part, to the proximity of the crowd to the players and the intimacy of the setting.
In my humble opinion, however, there is one other very potent influence at high school basketball games. At football and baseball games you are outdoors. There are plenty of other things to distract you. But at a basketball game, there’s just you and the game and the bleachers. In all honesty, have you ever been comfortable sitting on the bleachers at a basketball game?
The older I get, the more I dread spending two to four hours a night, twice a week or more, trying to pay close attention to a game while sitting on a contraption that is a holdover from the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witch trials.
I can envision the scene, as the Grand Inquisitor looms over his victim.
“Confess that you are in league with the devil,” he screams, “or it’s gonna be three hours on the basketball bleachers for you!”
“Oh, please, no,” begs the poor schmuck who finds himself in this position for no better reason than he set the blades a little too close to the ground when he mowed the Grand Inquisitor’s lawn. “Anything but that! Stretch me on the rack, beat me with whips, brand me with hot irons, but please, not the bleachers!”
Every once in a while, I get to attend a game at a modern facility where somebody took note of the fact that old guys need a little support if they’re gonna sit through three basketball games a night, so there are seats with backs and, sometimes, even padded seats instead of wooden or plastic benches designed, I am convinced, by sadistic orthopedic surgeons as a means of drumming up business.
In my own particular situation, I am not aided by my reputation as a smart aleck. When I stand up between games or between quarters, and either wince or cry out in pain as my dilapidated body rebels at the continued mistreatment, some of the other spectators are quick to take note of and comment upon my discomfort. Some of you guys are pretty mean. Others just say things that are meant to be sympathetic but miss the mark by a hair.
Last week, I was moaning my way toward the aisle at Harding Academy when a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, noting my obvious agony, said, “I just come for the last game but you sit here through all three of them. Bless your heart.”
What I wanted to say, but didn’t, was, “Don’t bless my heart. Bless my butt.”