Jock Spirituality: Part 2

Jock Spirituality: Part 2

            Great reunion this year.  I drove down from Ashland with Phil Brady and learned from him how the SF CYO was really a minor league feeder system for the seminary.  He told me that, by the time he got to St. Joe’s, he already knew about a third of our class from playing against them in CYO games.  Being from Marin, I had no clue.

            As usual, it was wonderful seeing old familiar faces at the reunion, but also meeting some of the younger guys for the first time.  Kevin O’Connor (HS ’69) told me about how the St. Joe’s soccer team, in 1968, played and defeated all the major Catholic HS teams in the area.  He was amazed to hear that, in the old days, we played soccer without being aware an offside rule even existed.

            After Mass, I was drinking a glass of wine at happy hour, rehashing with Jim Mehlfeld the perfidiousness of the Trojans in the 1956 draft.  Suddenly, out of the blue, Ken Kelzer walked up like a suicide bomber and detonated his brain. 

            “I’m really sick of hearing everybody talk about Trojans and Indians and Ramblers,” he said.  “Those were just false identities given you by a bunch of manipulative Sulpicians who didn’t know how to run a real seminary.”

            Ken and I have been arguing for the last 50 years, so I wasn’t surprised by his frank approach.  I’ve always told him he has the fervor of a terrorist and the subtlety of a pitbull.   Delivery aside, however, he always gets me thinking.

            Mehly and I immediately rose to the defense of the sports system, pointing out that our team affiliations were a basis for life-long friendships, and what was wrong with a little adolescent identity anyway?  Ken kept up the attack, and Lyman Fenn, from his portrait on the library wall, smiled down on us like Mona Lisa. “It’s all part of a dysfunctional family system,” Ken yelled, “dividing you up into teams so they can control your behavior.”  Soon jock body parts were strewn all over the library.      

            Thinking Ken’s anger might have arisen because he arrived at St. Joe’s after the high school draft, I said, “Wait a minute. You mean you never think back on that championship football team we were on in Second Philosophy?  You and Russ Terra and George Doub in the front line? Phil Brady, Pat Browne and I in the backfield?  Doesn’t that still give you a little glow of fellowship and pride?”

            “No.  I don’t remember that at all,” he barked, and I knew then that we weren’t going to solve this argument with Irish jock nostalgia. 

            The next day, after I recovered from the impact of the bombing, I started thinking about what Ken had said.  Two things occurred to me.

            His first point - about the teams being false identities foisted on us by the Sulps – was intriguing but somewhat specious. All of us had our primary identities as adolescents.  Some were jocks, some were scholars, some had voices that could levitate the chapel, some were stars in Twelve Angry Men or Brigadoon, some could draw cartoons or write funny verses, some could do great imitations of the faculty.  In that confusing time of youth, we all held on to whatever identities we could salvage.  

            Did the Sulps overemphasize sports? Maybe.  But it’s not like they didn’t emphasize academics as well. Guys got thrown out for flunking Latin, not for missing ballgames. And remember the premium system?  That was almost as competitive as the sports system. And there were teams there too – You were either drafted on the “A” team or the “B” team. Another false identity?  

            And the Sulps weren’t the only ones handing out false identities.  How about the major universities, with their fraternity systems and their football and basketball programs?  Stanford were the Indians, Cal were the Bears.  Even Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School divided students into four teams, which, when you analyzed their characteristics, closely paralleled our own (Trojans/Slitherin, Indians/Griffindor, etc.).  

            I have always been intrigued by conspiracy theories, and I have to admit the idea of wily Sulpicians plotting to program Sully as a Rambler stooge does titillate my Alex Jones genes.  Still, I would need more supporting data from Ken before I can wholeheartedly accept his thesis.  Hopefully he will provide additional documentation in ensuing emails.

            The second thing that occurred to me, however, was that Ken has good reason to be angry. For guys like him, who came to the seminary after 4thhigh, it must have been a huge pain in the ass to have to listen to all that flapdoodle about Ramblers, Bears, Trojans, and Indians. Think of all the conversations they were excluded from, all the camaraderie denied, just because they lacked a proper (false?) identity.  In that sense, the sports teams really were divisive.

            It’s too late now to change all that, but - along with my apology for being insufferably Indian-centric over the years - I do have a suggestion.  Let’s add a fifth team - “The Saints,”  for all those long-suffering late-comers who patiently had to endure all that endless babble about our high school teams.  The Saint’s team color will be purple – for the martyrs.  And Ken will be their captain.  

            We should probably award them the pennant too.