Ed Harris, JTNews Columnist
It’s easy for me today, in my mid-50s, to find myself sometimes mentally caught in the past. For example, as a youth I possessed a six-inch thick helmet-shaped Jew-fro, which has left me with a permanent sense of myself as a person with a full head of hair, so lush you could lose your hand in it. As a result, I can never get over a mild shock every time I look in the bathroom mirror and see a bald man staring back at me.
I’m also rooted to my childhood sports affiliations. America is a mobile society, and a lot of people have moved away from the hometowns where their sports loyalties initially formed. As a result, it’s not uncommon for many of us to feel a sense of exile in regard to the sports teams of our youth. This is especially easy in Seattle, a relatively young city that has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few decades. My wife is even more removed from her sports roots, as her hometown team was Amsterdam’s Ajax football club in the European league. On Super Bowl Sunday she was as excited about the prospect of watching the Puppy Bowl, with its “barking lot” and “tail” gate parties as she was about that other big game on TV.
There is a certain enchantment to the memory of nostalgic childhood athletic heroes. I recently mentioned to Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum of Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation, in regard to the relative degree of ease or difficulty in delivering a d’var Torah, that one would prefer a lively portion filled with drama, such as Noah’s Ark or the splitting of the Red Sea, instead of a long, tedious list of “so and so begat so and so who begat so and so.”
Rabbi Rosenbaum, however, replied that those seemingly “tedious” lists contain names with a certain magic to them, like hearing a 1950s Yankees lineup being announced over the PA system: Batting third and playing right field, Mickey Mantle; batting fourth and playing center field, Joe DiMaggio; batting fifth and catching, Yogi Berra.
Everyone here in Seattle, or so it seems, is still on an emotional high from the recent Seahawks Super Bowl victory. Heading into the game the Seahawks were regarded as brash and arrogant. But what seemed overdone swagger increasingly resembled well-deserved confidence as the evening progressed and the scoreboard rang up points like a pinball machine. Seattle is a generally low-key town with a quiet, easy-going vibe, so it was impressive to see the incredible outpouring of emotion resulting from the Seahawks’ victory. The team has created a community for its fans, much in the same way our family has found a home in the local Jewish community, with both groups sharing an emotional bond in common.
I am happy for my local Seattle friends and neighbors. But I remain a New York Giants fan. Spectator sports are not a big deal in the Harris mishpacha, which is perhaps my fault, given how I’ve stressed the Giants over the years . Like most young people, my kids spend a lot of time focused on screens, but television is usually at the bottom of the list, behind video games, Facebook, and YouTube. On occasion, I’ll challenge them to name a single player from either the Mariners or the Seahawks. Ichiro? Sorry, he doesn’t play here anymore.
Will the names Wilson, Sherman, and Harvin ever acquire the mystique of those long-ago Yankee teams? Perhaps. But one thing is for sure: You couldn’t lose the tip of your pinkie in the seven hairs left on my head, let alone an entire hand. And I should know: There’s a bald guy who keeps on reminding me every time I glance at a mirror.
Ed Harris, the author of “Fifty Shades of Schwarz” and several other books, was born in the Bronx and lives in Bellevue with his family. His long-suffering wife bears silent testimony to the saying that behind every successful man is a surprised woman.