The SoCal Years 20: Dream Team Season

The Riveting Adventures of A New York Actor-Girl in the Southern California Jungle

The SoCal Years hubs comprise a series of narrative essays from the late 1990s, pre-9/11, immediately after grad school when, knowing she would run screaming back to the East Coast in the end, a young-ish New Yorker, armed with her new Drama MFA, decided nonetheless to dip her toes into the Hollywood swamp.

ticket to superbowl xi

no, i didn't go

my long distance service sent this to me—it's a phonecard

(saw you take a second look, though)

Dragged myself off my little green (Target, $9.95) computer stool—my prominent cheeks have begun to make permanent indentations in the vinyl seat—and away from the computer screen. I think nine hours staring at one at the bank, then five or more hours online at home has to be the reason I've been feeling so whipped lately, even with ample sleep. I'm sure lack of physical activity can't be helping either.

So I'm at the Deidrich's across from Main Beach, Laguna, by a window with a spellbinding vista of the water spread before me. Watching the white—well, pink—boys dribble and dodge and shoot and dunk. But rarely pass. Not sure "teamwork" is a concept in Orange County—the land of Me and My Money.

In my sophomore year of high school I managed the junior varsity basketball team. Which meant I tracked plays and kept stats. Oddly fulfilling, even if I never quite became "one of the boys." One of them told a friend of mine that I had "nice tits and a big ass." I was also smart and different. I figured the combination was the reason.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Until I grew breasts I was, for all intents and purposes, Dad's oldest son. He turned me into a sports fan, boys and girls, you bet.

And because he's no sports snob, I was exposed to them all. Last night I scheduled offline time to watch the artistic programs of the World Professional Figure Skating Championships. Next Sunday, I'll shriek bloody murder during the Superbowl. Okay, I'll root politely, probably for the underdog.

Tried some tennis one summer—Dad bought us tennis rackets. I was an embarrassment. Played on a couple of softball teams he coached, mostly outfield. Ran some track. In spite of my short legs I was a good hurdler but a mediocre sprinter. The coach should have used me in the stamina events, but I guess he figured such a little girl would probably run out of steam fast. He was wrong, and I shoulda told him so.

Carried a flag in the marching band my junior and senior years. That was when I became quasi-in. The popular girls liked me because I was "nicer" to them than the other "brains." Probably also because I had a bit of a wild side and went to their parties, two, three times a week. Shared angst and swapped spit in a Miller-Lite-induced stupor.

The flag and rifle corps and the marching band were very cool and very exclusive. We were also the only pep-squad-like group at the football games (except, of course for the cheerleaders) which, along with our swanky green and white uniforms and sexy, white tasselled boots, upped our coolness factor 100%.

We took our football seriously in Small Town, Massachusetts. The town was all about cruising Main Street in the evening, going clubbing across the state border, living beyond one's means in a town with a depressed economy, and high school sports. And that was just what the adults were into.

The games were exhilarating for the band and corps on many levels. For one thing, we were a championship band full of champion musicians. For another thing, we were so cool. And finally, our team won all the time. All the time. I imagine things would have been different if our boys were constantly falling on their faces, but they didn't, and we loved them, and the town loved them, and their fathers were happy, so they were happy.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

When I was a kid, I was a lot more into the whole team loyalty thing. I think I must've been in elementary school when I chose my favorites—the two Oakland teams, who were, in those days, hotter than a New York sidewalk in the summertime. I chose them because of a social studies assignment—to choose one of the 50 states and do a research project and report on it. I chose California. Arbitrarily. Who knew I'd end up here one day?

Of course now the Oakland teams aren't much to write home about, but back then, you couldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole. The Dream Team A's, around the diamond: Don Baylor, Phil Garner, Bert Campaneris, Captain Sal Bando, Gene Tenace; Billy North, Joe Rudi, Reggie Jackson in the outfield; Catfish Hunter on the mound.

I collected memorabilia and watched every damn game on TV. Dad was a Dolphins and Yankees fan, so we didn't really have any internal rivalries. We took a trip to Boston one day when the A's were in town. There we were—in a bleacher full of big, ugly, hairy Red Sox fans—three small Filipinos, waving green and gold pennants, screaming at Campaneris to "cream it, Bert!" Dad, a die-hard Yankees man since he was my age, was pro-A because he was anti-Sox.

The A's won. I realize now we were pretty lucky to get out of Fenway Park with little more than a couple of dirty looks thrown our way.

Got my heart broke bad when the blood-letting began soon after the '76 series. Rudi got traded, Captain Sal and some other free agents left in a huff, and it was downhill from there. I cried my eyes out in big, heaving sobs that day, lying on the carpet in front of the radio, while Dad sat by helplessly, not knowing quite what to do. The Dream Team disintegrated within weeks. I was devastated, and embarrased about my reaction, and I never let myself get so attached to a sports team again.

Did have a close call ten years later—the '86 Mets—pulled myself back hard when my boy, free agent Ray Knight, bailed after the unreal phenomenon of that year's World Series. That was the week when every shop window in the City that had a TV sitting in it had a crowd of people glued to the glass. When every person on the subway had on a pair of earphones plugged into a walkman, tuned to the playoffs and then the series games. We cheered together in chorus. Cussed like New Yorkers in chorus.

When Ray Knight clobbered the winning hit in Game Seven, the Village sounded like New Years Eve. Every taxicab on the street had the game on, every window in every apartment building thrown open. The cacophony was harmony to me, and I got out on the fire escape and woo-hooed along with the rest of the neighborhood. Poor Nathan, who took the series just as seriously as I did, wasn't too happy. He's a Boston native.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

It was the Snake—Kenny Stabler—and his Oakland Raiders at Superbowl XI in the Chinese Year of The Snake (some coinky-dink). They went to three Superbowls plus one as the L.A. Raiders (pshaw). I don't know why I know all that. I stopped following pro football after I started to get interested in boys. I loved our own football games, but that's because I was in love with the quarterback, every year of high school. Whoever he happened to be. Plus, like I said before, the games were cool, and the flag corps was cool and I was cool in it, and it felt cool to be cool.

I even chose my beloved undergrad institution partly because it had a football team, none of whose games I attended, and which won something like two games while I was there. By that point though, I'd found theatre and suddenly understood the truth about cool. Self-fulfillment, baby.

I don't know why I saw both conference championship games last weekend. Because I have no life just now? Because I needed to do something other than surf the net? Because I needed to see whether yet another quarterback could make my blood boil over? John Elway is, indeed, cute as a button, but something's different. These days, I'm looking for a man who not only can send a ball zooming 50 yards, but who also knows more than two or three stock sentences about "teamwork" to tell the press, after winning (or losing) a championship game.

Okay, more digressing. The '86 Mets were chock full of smart athletes who could have whole, intelligent conversations with the media, who could answer questions with more than pathetic platitudes—Gary Carter, Ray Knight, Keith Hernandez. On whom I had a big crush and who I ran into some years later, sitting at the next table at a favorite restaurant on 37th and 1st. He looked deeply into my eyes and said something about beautiful New York women to the bleached blonde with him. As with most such opportunities in my life, I blew it and failed to capitalize on the not-too-subtle, and probably for his date infuriating, compliment.

Just think: a smart, gorgeous athlete. Like finding a needle in a haystack.

No, I think I'm just entering one of those sporadic periods during which I have a need to attach myself to something that makes me yell and scream in a positive way for a change. Might as well be team sports. ◊