My First Finer Thing

I love sports. I follow almost all sports.

In a way it reaffirms my masculinity. If I'm feeling a little too feminine, nothing beats watching a good game of American Football where you have a bunch of guys huddling up and then kicking ass. Sure, it may seem a little fruitty, but trust me if you get hit by a 280 pound man that can run 40 yards in under 5 secs and live to tell about it. Well, you know God exists and all that time spent in Church/Temple or/and Mosque sure paid off.

I guess I follow sports for two big reasons, the first one I already mentioned: it reaffirms my masculinity, a truly Manly Man will follow all Manly Man sports (Cricket is not such a sport, nor is chess. Golf only makes the cut because of Tiger Woods). The second reason is that it is a brilliant conversation starter (helps me get chicks!) Unfortunately, this doesn't quite work in India since most people follow cricket, and since we've established that cricket isn't a sport I simply do not follow it.

For all you women out there, if you want to pick up a guy at a bar? Trust me, read up on sports! Preferably the Manly ones these include Football, Soccer, Basketball, NASCAR/F1, Baseball (though its a borderline sport: the only thing that makes it a sport is all the steroid use and now that they are testing it's a matter of time before it's not a sport), Ice Hockey and Olympics when it comes around once in 4 years.

I for one love a woman that knows her sports. I had the biggest crush on a red head back in college cause she had an awesome Long Island accent along with the fact that she followed the Knicks. The fact that she was a potential HCHHSSTT had nothing to do with it.

Of course there are moments you want to avoid, such as the Champions League Final between Chelsea and Man Utd. led to a moment where I saw a colleague stand on a bar, strip of his shirt, wave it around like a mad man and shed a tear. You want to avoid moments like that. Trust me, you get scarred for life.

I believe every Manly Man has one team he commits himself to no matter what! It's like a marriage. You love the team and well you also hate them. For me it was the New York Knickerbockers (that's a kind of men's underwear). Like all marriages this love - hate relationship all started when my brother got me a pair of Nike Flights from the states which were worn by Allan Houston. They were uncomfortable as hell but damn they looked good. When I saw the buzzer beater Houston hit against the Miami Heat to take them into the NBA Finals, it was a done deal. I read up on their history, and trust me they have history.

We had a ton of great moments together, like the time we beat out the Heat in the 1999 finals and then the Heat again the next year.

Of course all good things come to an end and after numerous playoff defeats, some of them which left me crying and my brother questioning his love for the Knicks. They commited the biggest sports crime ever: they traded their Franchise Player Patrick Ewing. They made it worse by signing a bunch of players to bad contracts and finally hired Isiah Thomas.

This was about the time I started thinking maybe it was time for a divorce, maybe we had gone as far as we would go together. Maybe they needed new fan's and I needed a new team to support. Instead we went through a phase of 4 -5 years where we just existed.

In this time the Knicks kept making one bad decision upon another. All the while refusing to fire the man behind the team that became the joke of the NBA.

The man was sued for sexual harassment and they didn't fire him? In any other job a man sued for sexual harassment would've gotten lynched! Hell, the Americans impeached their president for having "sexual relationships"! But no the Knicks left this moron in charge. They even gave him a contract extension. I think it finally took the Commissioner of the NBA calling the owner and threatening him with a law suit that got him to fire Isiah Thomas.

Finally, with Thomas gone and a new person in charge, I feel we can work out our differences. After all we have a new coach, and hopefully soon we'll have a new Franchise player (Lebron James in 2010!).

Honestly, sports have made me cry (like a man!), made me deliriously happy and definitely made me jump 4 feet out of my seat. I also like to believe that it helped my brother and I bond and share a kinship that we may never have had.

I have to admit to something, I started following Formula 1 because of my brother, it gave me something to talk to him about (you try talking to a 16 year old when you are only 9!) I started to support Senna because of him and after he passed away (I cried that day). I started to support Schumacher because of him (I was 11 and man did that piss him off! Joy Joy!).

So to my brother, I say thank you for introducing me to one of the finer things in life.