Day One

Welcome to the The Anti-Fan blog.

I’ve been fiddling with it for a while and you may have chanced upon it the last week or so, but Friday, July 25, is officially Day One.

I’ve been writing The Anti-Fan column for The New Mexican in Santa Fe since late-1999, and what I wrote about my approach in my first column is as true now as it was then. Besides my blog postings — which will be put up nearly every day — I’ll post my weekly columns each Friday, and eventually an archive of my columns will be available on-site, but for now, let me quote from my first column as a form of introduction.

Whoops. Before I do that, please note, the next blog item is today's New Mexican column. The blog proper begins with the third item ("You can be ...). Also note that comments (and criticisms, yes) are welcome; profanity and rants are not. I hope you enjoy the blog. OK, here's the first column:

(Column begins)

My first fan moment?

New Year's Day 1961, sitting in front of a black-and-white TV, watching someone named Larry Zeno run, so help me God, a single-wing offense for UCLA in the Rose Bowl game against Minnesota.

The Bruins lost, but that didn't matter I liked their uniforms. A fan was born.

I was 9 years old.

My next fan memory was 1962, on the playground listening to my transistor radio as the Los Angeles Dodgers folded in the ninth inning of the deciding playoff game against the San Francisco Giants. That was painful, but with the Dodgers there were better moments to come, such as 1963 when Sandy Koufax and company swept the Yankees in the World Series.

But I not only rooted for the Dodgers, I rooted for the Angels (painful), I rooted for the Lakers (mainly painful), I rooted for the Rams (always painful), I rooted for the Kings (excruciating). I rooted and watched and listened.

For a fan in L.A., sometimes things got better (Bill Russell retired; a decade later Magic Johnson was drafted), sometimes things got worse (Sandy Koufax retired; Georgia Frontieri took over the Rams). But a fan I stayed.

Then I moved to Santa Fe.

Living in a city so far from the bigs can help one's perspective. So can growing older. The other day I watched a young New Mexican photographer living and dying with every pitch of a Yankees game, and I thought, "Was I ever like that?''

But it's not only distance, in miles and years, that have changed my attitude toward sports. It's the times, and no, they're not a changin' they're changed. There have always been greedheads and egomaniacs in sports, but now there's more, it seems, and with the amount of sports coverage on TV, they're harder than ever to ignore. Thanks to the communication revolution, the boors and babies and me-firsters come into our houses and into our faces until I want to say, a la Rhett Butler, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

I'm no longer a fan. Call me The Anti-Fan.

But tuning out sports altogether is difficult. For one thing, I often edit sports stories and design the sports pages at The New Mexican, and it helps to have an idea what's going on. For another, it still can be riveting to watch what happens between the lines.

That's where you see character displayed, both good and bad. And if I root for anything these days, it's people with character. And that's what I'll do here, as well as its opposite. You won't find any paeans to Lawrence Phillips here, or excuses why general manager X just had to give bad guy Y a second, third or ninth chance because, shoot, it's the American way, and to err is human and, oh yeah, our guys just have to plug that hole at wide receiver.

Noting hypocrisy in either politics or sports doesn't take a sharp mind; a barely sentient one will do. I qualify.

(Column ends)