Future Or No Future

"I can admit when I'm wrong but"

You say this to yourself and you lie. You can't. You've done it a few times but you don't actually believe it. You convince yourself that time will in fact prove you right and that's why you always end with "but."

But, herein lies the rub. You're just wrong. Constantly. So am I. The only part that really matters is who you're wrong to.

You have to be wrong to your boss and you have to be right to your kids. The grey area lies within your friends and your tastes. I once had a journalism professor, now a friend, that chastised me for spelling "grey" that way. "You aren't from England," he said. But I like it better with an E, it feels more smooth. I was wrong in school, but I'm not now.

Everyone in every sport is wrong at the end of the season except for the champion. This is the case for players and teams that are both contending and rebuilding. There are no probable outcomes. The media will tell you about averages and projections and percentages but the absolute truth of competition is that everything either happens or it doesn't. There is a winner and a loser. But if that call went the other way. It didn't. You lost.

So why does this matter?

You might simply want your team to win, which, of course. You might choose to be more thoughtful about athletes and quote Teddy Roosevelt. "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."

I am here to tell you that it is okay and that it doesn't matter. The man in the arena is wrong too. You make the same mistake every year by rooting for the New York Jets but you aren't actually rooting for the Jets at all, you're rooting for a sense of camaraderie with those around you or a chosen group of like-minded others. This is something Vonnegut discussed in Cat's Cradle regarding "Hoosiers" and it's also part of the famous Jerry Seinfeld bit, "You're actually rooting for the clothes." I don't want to belabor this point too much, this is all sort of obvious, but allow me to take one more step.

You draw your line somewhere and you stick your flag in the ground. I gave up on the Cleveland Browns after 30 years of fandom when they signed Deshaun Watson for $230 million after 22 lawsuits were filed against him for sexual misconduct. This does not make me a beacon of morality, it just illustrates where my line was with the Browns. I still sing along to David Bowie. I still dance to James Brown at weddings even though I know he bashed Tammi Terrell's head into the wall before she died of brain cancer. I still listen to Tammi Terrell.

You drafted Aaron Rodgers in fantasy football. You pre-obligated yourself to root for someone who allegedly said that Sandy Hook never happened and those shot-dead children never existed. Is there duty-free fandom? To whom do you pay the tax on yourself? Zach Bryan is the number one Billboard artist and also a country singer that reportedly attempted to pay $12 million to keep his ex-partner quiet regarding his abuse. It's all shit.

Everyone separates and everyone is wrong. I am not here to be your lighthouse. You have to find your own way. In the meantime, however, you do have an opportunity. You can gift yourself the ability to take your body apart and hold your organs up to the light. Examine them. Feel what you feel but then ask why. Camus said, "in psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth." That's why you're wrong. There is no right. But (but) if you try, you can find something close to clarity in your heart. It sits there, comfortable, assured. You don't exactly know it, but you can feel it. You enjoy it. And you're wrong. And it's okay. It has to be. There is no way to be alive without the evil that surrounds you, you can only do your best to not let it consume you.

-Michael Campana

A Special New Band

There are many long-held misogynystic rhetorics in sports and music and movies (and everything) but the one I'm specifically talking about here goes like this: Oh you like Dark Side Of The Moon? Name 5 songs off it. If you present as a woman I am certain you have been asked a version of this question at some point. This sort of thinking is usually brushed aside quickly, as that is a dumb thing to say. Someone's enjoyment of art is personal, we all know this, and it doesn't take a cinematographer to look at Do The Right Thing and feel it's visual power.

ESPN analyst Benjamin Solak recently took to Twitter with this idiotic thought-pattern in defense of Chicago Bears' quarterback Caleb Williams. The post read, "New Rule: you aren't allowed to comment on Caleb Williams' play on Sunday unless you can name the six guys who played offensive line for him off the top of your head." This is not something he directed at any woman and its logical premise so obviously flawed that you might be curious why I even bring it up. If, for example, you forgot the last name of the Bears' left guard, Solak doesn't care for your thoughts on the play of their quarterback. This clearly makes no sense. I can confidently walk onto any pickup basketball court and tell you who the good and bad players are within fifteen minutes. Solak's idea presupposes that every Good Player is already known and that scouts or fans couldn't possibly see someone they're unfamiliar with and evaluate that player's game. Again, patently stupid stuff. And again, this is the kind of illogical bird-brained thinking which spawns misogynistic micro-aggressions that ultimately serve to make one person look superior while being exclusive about America's most popular forms of media.

Should everyone's language be so concerned with not offending others all the time? No. When trying to enlighten others and broaden your tent is it best practice to speak to people where they're coming from? Of course. This plays out most often in burgeoning romantic situations. It's rare that you lead with, "I have depression and unresolved issues with my mother and I fucking hate the New York Yankees." Most people's language when they're trying to get laid is much more sanguine, more sensitive. People understand that when you want something from somebody else, be it commentary or thoughtfulness or an evening of debauchery, there is always a level of compromise needed to make it work. We can go to that place for dinner and then this cocktail bar I like for a drink. I don't love Klay Thompson on this Mavericks team but I don't know who else they could have gotten.

The election day postmortem for the left has seen everyone under their smaller-than-expected tent pointing fingers. There is one faction of people still obsessed with Covid and I can't blame them. The virus was traumatic in some way for nearly everyone and I cannot fault people for taking some years to work through that. These people feel excluded and left behind, often struggling with Long Covid and rendered disabled. They are, of course, invited under the tent, but often don't join the party. People have given up masking and they are scared. People don't know about the newest strain, or the next flu, or the exact numbers on how many are still suffering, so they yell and yell that the left isn't being inclusive to their needs. Do they have a point that there are still risks and dangers in the world? Absolutely. Is there an argument to be made that the left needs to meet them closer to where they're at? Sure. Is there also a point at which you need to stop vilifying people that agree with 95% of what you believe? Fucking obviously.

Disability has become the new identity for so many and as someone living with epilepsy I can see how this could be attractive. It's easy to fall into the sort of thinking discussed herein earlier. You don't know what I know. You can't name the newest flu strain. I am the one who knows and needs to be accounted for.

This sort of attention seeking isn't much aside from a way of othering oneself under the guise of safety. There are so many ways to contribute, be it emotionally, financially or just spreading awareness. When participating in a political movement or enjoying some music or watching a game you yourself should be acting in good faith, otherwise you make everything worse for everyone, including yourself. If the woman next to you phrases some sort of sports colloquialism unconventionally, who gives a fuck? If the guy at the concert doesn't know the gang-vocal singalong, who gives a fuck? Everyone needs time to learn everything they ever know before they know it. People will always speak their truth, but the moment it dismisses yours you don't have to keep listening. You lived through it too, you saw it, and you're doing the best you can.

-Michael Campana

Here Comes Midnight

It's happened again, but this time with little fanfare, minimal gloating, and almost nothing to be said from the victors.

What should they say? What great celebration is owed in this moment? Hate won? We're going to make it great again-again? Almost nothing surprises me about this moment in history, not even its pathetic whimper.

There is no accounting of America without hate. To speak to this country's founding speaks itself to unimaginable levels of human suffering. No election can solve this, it always has been and always will be. The Democrats are placing blame on Biden, or Harris, or Bernie, or the working class, or Latinos, or whichever cloud they gaze upon next. They will commit to anything at all to get your vote except inspiration. Genocide and transphobia are on the table if you, yes you, will just vote for them this one time. Or next time.

So they lose.

The winners here tally about a dozen people. The free-thinking patriots of the all-powerful USA have sold their amber waves of grain to the highest bidder. This has been bought and paid for in cash by a few billionaires with some extra time to kill. The suffering will be immense for so many, but two-day shipping on tissues should make it easier to wipe away the tears.

At this precise moment there are only two options for the American electorate. Grab everything you love and hold it tight, or retreat inward and commit to individualism. The cavalry isn’t coming. There is no movement, there is nothing now except sacrifice. The only choice left is whether to sacrifice those around you or to sacrifice for those around you.

-Michael Campana

I Coulda Been A Contender

Yanks down 3-0. Just gotta win tonight, Cole on the mound tomorrow, Rodon after that, anything can happen in a game 7.

Simply parroting Red Sox narratives from 2004 won't get you anywhere. This place is death.

Got tickets tonight we gotta give it our all for the boys. Standing ovation every time Judge is at the plate, we need to show him love, the Bronx needs to show out.

Everything inside of you is broken. The Dodgers are a baseball machine created to destroy the greatest memories of your childhood. Paul O'Neill never existed. Your mind has invented Derek Jeter as a concept to make you feel something. The love of a brother, or the most popular kid in school, or even, at your most delusional, yourself.

In high school we could have won sectionals if coach let me pinch run in the 7th. I had the pitcher's rhythm down, I coulda taken second, probably third too. Yeah, I'll have another beer, the fuckin stadium charges fuckin twenty bucks.

Does it ever end? What is a life well-lived? You've given them everything and they don't even know you're alive, blood in your veins, fight in your heart.

Gleyber Torres pops up to right field in the first inning. It's hooking foul, Mookie Betts is tracking, and at the wall now, he rises up and makes the catch. You grab his glove with both hands and hold his arm in place as you rip the glove open. You are a scumbag. You will be lauded for this behavior. You will be profiled in ESPN. You will have professional athletes on television praising your commitment to your beloved New York Yankees. You get kicked out of the stadium but you'll be invited back the next day (update: this invitation was rescinded, because obviously). Your ticket was even refunded. This is probably the best day of your life.

It's finally happened. You've been given air to breathe. If the Yankees win the next three games you will have achieved baseball immortality. Not really, but that's how it feels. You have, in your mind, saved the season. For now.

There are a few famous sports fans from Fireman Ed riling up the crowd at Jets games to James Goldstein, always ridiculously dressed courtside in support of the Lakers. The people who are only famous for being fans tend to be white men and wear hats. I don't know what this means. The most famous sports fan is Steve Bartman, a Chicago Cubs fan who famously interfered with a foul ball causing Cubs left-fielder Moises Alou to not be able to catch it, thus resulting in the Marlins continuing to score runs and eventually win game 6 of the 2003 NLCS. The Marlins would go on to win the series-clinching game 7 and Bartman would be ostracized from baseball. The facts of the case don't actually reflect poorly on Bartman. He didn't grab Moises Alou and the Cubs mostly lost because of a complete defensive collapse. Following the game all of Bartman's personal information was published online and police had to station at his home due to the threats of violence. He also wore a hat. He didn't deserve it.

I will not say the name of the Yankee fan who ripped at the arm and glove of Mookie Betts, for he does not deserve any oxygen. He does not deserve death threats either. He deserves a lifetime ban from any MLB parks and literally nothing else.

In the modern age of sports fans have more access than ever. Most players have social media, many run their own podcasts and some even write about themselves or the game. This is in many ways excellent. Feeling a connection to your favorite players and teams has always been one of the greatest joys in sports, and more of that is generally better. The humanization of athletes is hypothetically a wonderful response to the lionization of those same athletes.

But fans are fucking dumb.

The first professional sporting event I attended was a Browns-Jets game in 2007. The Browns won fairly comfortably and late in the third quarter Cleveland receiver Joe Jurevicius caught a first down pass to extend the drive. A Jets fan screamed out, "Joe! Didn't one of your kids die? None of my kids died!"

This is true. Joe Jurevicius had a child pass away as an infant. It was the most despicable thing I've ever heard another person say.

There are countless examples of fans' bad behavior at sporting events, and to list them would probably restock the Library of Alexandria. So what's the idea here? There will be no stoppage to this behavior as long as sports exist, so why bother worrying about this?

In the political landscape of America there is an understanding that the public should hear both sides of an idea to make the best informed decision about said idea. This also, is a hypothetically good premise. It also-also doesn't really work. I can say anything at all about anything at all when I'm alone in my apartment and it does not matter. The moment I say it to another person and they consider it, however, it is no longer mine alone and it begins to be real. This both-sides way of thinking is what platforms CNN guest speakers to accuse others of being members of terrorist organizations. This is why your aunt or uncle or grandfather, you know the one, no longer has normal thoughts about anything.

There is a moment in talking with someone or reading an interview or watching television that you understand that what you're engaging with simply exists in bad faith. The idea that these bad-faith actors should be given any oxygen at all is wrongheaded and myopic. I do not need to hear out someone perpetuating the idea that you should be able to grab someone at their job and physically do whatever you want to them. That is patently ridiculous.

You will never find moral clarity in fanaticism, that is by nature not its function. You can, however find redemption in your own heart. You can be better.

-Michael Campana

Show Me All The Rules, I Just Want To Belong

The Minnesota Vikings lost a football game on Thursday night that they probably would have lost under any circumstance, but.

They were whistled for a safety at the end of the contest, giving the other team two points and the ball back when said other team grabbed their quarterback by the facemask and yanked him down in the end zone. This is against the rules. A flag should have been thrown, the Vikings awarded 15 yards, and play should have resumed with the Vikings retaining possession. This didn't happen. The player from the other team played for the Los Angeles Rams, which doesn’t really matter, but what does matter is that the Vikings weren’t given the proper chance. Again, they would’ve lost this game 99 times out of 100.  

Football is funny this way. It's probably the most flawed sport in terms of its rules and their implementation (tennis is best at this, as David Bazan said, “fewer moving parts means fewer broken pieces”). There’s a real argument that most of the time a team loses it's absolute bullshit and most of the time a team wins it’s hard-won and earned. Fandom in every sport is a carcinogen in this way, but football is unique in its aphorisms. You can call a penalty for holding every play is something you will hear if you watch even 3 football games in your life, yet it’s the most watched sport in America by a wide margin. The top 10 most watched television programs in America have all been Super Bowls (the 11th is the finale of MASH, numbers 12-20 are also Super Bowls, this is funny to me). So why do we give football this power if it’s ultimately up to a few underpaid referees much of the time? The announcers even generally punt the idea of referees as important rule enforcers and mostly denigrate them to people who at best are doing their jobs and otherwise are mostly fucking up the game.

I don't want to talk about why you root for something so arbitrary, that's for another, likely much longer piece. Maybe that's the point of this entire website, I'm not exactly sure. You probably have a job or a child or classes or some obligation. And there is something important in that. You are not the referee or at least you don't feel like it. For example, when I truly consider my position I know in my heart that I am in fact the referee for my dog. I don't like thinking about this but it's completely true. Most of the time, however, I am not the ref and I don't really decide anything. Maybe for you the ref is your boss or your landlord, but it probably isn't. It's usually something more conceptual like traffic.

Part of the reason that you've been promoted or honored or given an extension is just because someone likes you. These things rarely have to do with merit. You probably work with someone who is totally incompetent and can barely complete a simple task without being taken step-by-step through it. I promise you that this is fine. Someone likes them. I know it's frustrating and I know you would never be that stupid. But sometimes you are. It's just that nobody tells you because they like you.

There's a common but vague understanding that football is war and America is war and that's why we can't take our eyes off either or something. I don't disagree with this idea but I think it's too simple. Football is sort of like if every day in your attritional life you were declared the winner or loser. This never actually happens to anyone (although the thought of my fiancé declaring me the winner of each day is as intriguing as the thought of her declaring me the loser of each day is terrifying). You never really get to decide what happens, you play through, and maybe it works out or it doesn't. Yeah, you can hate the Cowboys or the Rams or your awful coworker, but when the game ends they're never the ones on which you call bullshit, it's always the referees.

You hope against hope that next time, just next time, someone will blow the whistle and deliver justice. What you haven't realized is that you've been getting it the whole time, you just couldn't see it.

-Michael Campana

RIP The Fun, Sassy, Grimace Mets

The Spreadsheet Mafia‘s move from the boardroom to the diamond has stolen a lot from baseball. The math of the true three outcomes: homer, strike out, and walk reign over a mathematically driven formula that’s stolen from the soul of baseball the way it’s stolen the creative soul of America.

America’s craving for authenticity and camaraderie in a world rapidly driven to isolation, artificial intelligence, and slate-colored company logos is how the richest payroll in the financial engine of America becomes a group of the most lovable underdogs in sports.

The 2024 Mets embraced the art of the gimmick this year. Having had a rally pimp, a veteran literally named Seymour Wiener, Grimace, Hawk Tuah, a gay Mets gimmick, the goddamn Temptations at Game 5 of the National League Championship Series, and a Latin pop star playing second base. All being run by a guy who quite literally settled an insider trading case with the SEC nicknamed Uncle Stevie.

Oh, and that guy you work with who just grabbed his stuff and quit one afternoon after he absolutely couldn’t take it anymore? The Mets had one of those too.

In May, before the power of pop cultural icons inhabited the Mets lifeless husk of a roster, Jorge Lopez walked off the mound, fired his glove over the proactive netting, and told a reporter that he was on the worst team in baseball because who doesn’t love ripping their employer on the way out.

That’s not starch cleaned. That’s real life. In an era where regular people put out statements on holidays and current events the way politicians used to (Like they all actually spend “today and every day thinking about veterans in a country where nearly two dozen vets commit suicide every day).

We’ve taken the human element out of even writing those bullshit thought leadership pieces on LinkedIn and out of dialogue across movies, books, and shows.

Weird stuff happens in baseball because baseball happens every single day. Just like real life. It’s messy. It’s imperfect. It reflects our lives. Major League Baseball is typically played 5 days a week. Some days you win and others you lose. Often it can feel monotonous. Sometimes you can’t believe it’s happening to you. But it’s always there. 7pm. Every night.

–

Sure, this Mets team didn’t have a coke problem. But it had personalities. It had drama. It had ways to connect the baseball supporting public to this team.

And Mets fandom played a large part in combatting the cynicism surrounding fun gimmicks online. Baseball in its infancy drummed up support for barnstorming tours through personality and flare, driving fans into packed stadiums. Even Satchel Paige, the greatest pitcher of his era, once pitched while sitting in a rocking chair and being attended to by a nurse.

Now, baseball, more than anywhere else, (and probably why it was the first to be taken over by dorks), loves to button their top button and tell you why a bat flip quite literally gave their grandpappy cancer the first time he saw it when he stopped to see a barnstorming tour in nineteen-ought-seven.

But you can’t out-cynic a fan of a team who quite literally batted out of order like Little Leaguers six years ago.

“Same old Mets,” once a weakness, was now the ability to make “weird” things fun again.

Weird like colorful logos. Weird like writing your own essays and novels. Having your friends over to play video games and listening to records rather than playing in your room, alone, and attached to an internet that is actively rotting the very thing that makes you human.

The Mets became underdogs despite their payroll because they reminded us that baseball isn’t a business comprised of robots and spray graphs. They became fan favorites because they reminded us of what we used to have. Creativity and expression devoid of the relentless pursuit to break everything down to numbers and whether something you enjoy puts you in the red or the black.

Baseball is humanity and letting it be so means more than stolen bases and 300 game winners.

The sterilization of baseball mirrors our own creative culture. And what can be more America’s Game than that?

-Michael Mulraney

There’s Nothing Else Out There For You

Kawhi Leonard was born 9 days before me in Los Angeles, California. He is entering his 14th season in the NBA and he probably won't see the floor as he is out indefinitely with a knee injury. Injuries are nothing new to any player, especially Kawhi. Out of a possible 1,066 regular season games he could have played in his career, he's participated in 696 of them. That's just above 65%, barely passing in high school.

This is sad, but only sort of. At his best in 2019, while leading the Toronto Raptors to a title, he was the closest thing to Michael Jordan since His Airness left the game for good. On offense he was a relentless bully, forcing you to play his game, muscling you into his spots, and scoring at will (30.5 points per game that playoff run). He hit one of the most iconic shots in NBA history in game 7 of the Eastern Conference semi-finals over a soon-to-be MVP Joel Embiid. Defensively it was even worse for the opposition. A two-time Defensive Player of the Year, it just felt like you couldn't even dribble near him without losing the basketball and watching him stride the other way with it, his long arms extending to the basket as he laid it in, unimpeded. There's a good chance that none of us will ever see this version of him anymore, and it is possibly the case that at 33-years-old he will never again play meaningful basketball.

It never looked like he cared while playing meaningful basketball. The two-time NBA Finals MVP just sort of moved the way you'd imagine a velociraptor would before killing a fawn. No need to jazz it up, this is what I'm supposed to do. Expressionless, lethal. The first of his Finals MVPs came when he was merely 22 and the award essentially functioned as a trophy for LeBron James or whoever did the best job slowing LeBron James down. His second trophy, with the Raptors, was an undeniable excoriation of every other player on the planet. No one even came close to what he did.

Most of us will never know this kind of talent. We're all naturally better at some things than others, most of us aren't historically great at anything, and that's okay. The paradox of Kawhi, however, is that he was historically great and it still didn't seem to matter much to him. After his 2019 championship with the Raptors he opted to go back to Los Angeles and sign with the Clippers, ostensibly to be closer to home albeit on a historically dysfunctional and incompetent franchise. He could have gone to the Lakers, he could have gone anywhere, but when asked about his feelings on Los Angeles' favorite basketball team, he responded, "I like Allen Iverson. I was an AI fan so I didn't like the Lakers." Hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, LA and hometown immortality, but he was an Iverson fan, so why would he like the Lakers?

I was an Allen Iverson fan too, this is probably one of the only things Kawhi Leonard and I have in common. We were both 9-years-old when a brutally injured Iverson played the most inspired basketball I've ever seen, winning MVP and reaching the Finals against a Lakers team featuring Kobe and Shaq that hadn't lost a game that postseason. Until they played AI. It would be the only game in that Finals the Sixers would win, I would weep with pride, and the Sixers wouldn't return to the Finals until (redacted). I wonder if Kawhi learned, as I did, that winning ultimately wasn't that important. That Finals is still the best memory of my life as a sports fan.

And moreover what's the talent for? What is its function? Materially, sure, it's to play basketball supernaturally well. But when one lays down at night alone and balances accounts, what did the talent do for you? The difference between 90 and 250 million dollars probably isn't that much, emotionally, but you were close to your family and that is. I work on the road (another thing Kawhi and I have in common, I guess) and as long as my bills are paid, the rest doesn't really matter. To be around who you love usurps material greatness every time in the heart of the mind.

He only played like Jordan once, and that was more than enough.

-Michael Campana

Sleepless Long Nights

To Provo, Utah I read in an email. A long way away from my home sweet Albany, New York. I don't want to get too deep into this, I probably write too much about the airport as it is. 3 out of 3 flights delayed, 14 hours of travel, at the end of my emotional rope when the pilot announces, "If you look out of the right side of the plane you can see the Northern Lights."

The last pilot said that too and let the entire plane down. No one could see anything. This time was different. This time I was on the left side of the plane. A rare air-travel kindness was extended to me by two women across the aisle. "We can move. You should see this, it's worth it."

To the window. And then tears. And then back to my seat. And more tears.

It isn't like baking, the tears. There's no science. The closest I've found is the final sequence in Field of Dreams when Moonlight Graham can't go back and Ray Kinsella finally asks for that catch. My great-grandmother died and they didn't come, the Sixers traded Jrue Holiday and they did. Maybe it's the expectation but again, Ray Kinsella and his dad.

Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 500th home run on Father's Day in 2004, with Griffey Sr. in attendance. That did it. He waited a week after homer 499, probably not intentionally, but baseball in all of its fickle humor seems to find a way. It always seemed to find a way for the Griffeys. They were the first father-son duo to hit back-to-back home runs, Sr. managed Jr. with the Reds, even Jr.'s 400th dinger was hit on his father's 50th birthday. Back to #500. Griffey was on the road in St. Louis, a town famous for its knowledgable and respectful baseball fans (a recent trip to Busch Stadium did not confirm nor debunk this, they weren't notable but they were also playing a pretty awful Rockies team). Legendary Reds' broadcaster Marty Brennaman was on the call for the Reds the afternoon of June 20th, 2004, and his work was tremendous. The call went, "The pitch, and a high drive! Hit back into deep right field! Junior has just knocked the door down to the five-hundred club! A high drive into the lower deck in right, number thirty touches 'em all and boy what a Father's Day gift for Senior!... And now Junior running down toward the area where his mom and dad sit and he is there with his father for a big Father's Day hug. What a scene it is here in Busch Stadium in St. Louis!" A raucous standing ovation by the Cardinals fans followed.

My father never took me to see the Northern Lights and he's got a healthy discomfort in airplanes. He did however, play with me. He really played. Baseball, basketball, football, ping-pong, it didn't matter, he was a dad who played. I excitedly told him about working in the Superdome in New Orleans and throwing a touchdown pass to one of my coworkers in 2019. I invited him over to pull out my Sports Emmy and thank him for everything he did over the years. We never went back-to-back in the majors, but we did make the paper once. The photo, taken in June of 1996, was taken from behind home plate and pictured in the center of the frame was my dad on the pitchers mound, me off to the left with my whiffle bat in hand, and the ball sailing over his head. The caption read, "Michael Campana Jr., 4, marks Father's Day with a mighty rip Sunday while playing ball with his dad, Michael Campana Sr., in Schenectady's Central Park."

After I landed in Salt Lake City and made the 45 minute drive to Provo I only had about 3 hours to sleep before I had to go to work the next morning. I didn't cry. There isn't any science. But there is reason. At my best what beats in my heart is in rhythm with those around me. Every time I play it's my dad's blood running through my veins. I'm just the phlebotomist.

-Michael Campana

This Isn’t A Dream

Early in the summer at my friends Dan and Shannon's apartment, a group of us were drinking and partying on their stoop. This wasn't noteworthy until late in the night one of our friends was having a little too much fun and had probably drank one too many beers, and started being very silly. He was on the top step of the stoop and kept throwing his head back in laughter and hitting the glass pane on the front door with increasingly greater force as the minutes rolled by. Dan told him to stop. And again. And eventually said, angry now, "This isn't a dream! You have to participate!" This made everyone laugh, but he was serious and he was right. There was absolutely no need to risk a trip to the ER and a broken door for anything that was happening. No one was owed this night, it was simply fun, and any debts were to Dan and Shannon for hosting all of us.

I get upset when playing sports, most of all basketball. It's the game I understand best and while I'm almost never the best player on the floor I love it so deeply that I do everything possible to help the team. Need a ballhandler? I'll distribute. Spot-up shooter? I'll be in the corner. Slasher? I'll cut backdoor. Lockdown the other team's best player? Well, let's all at least have fun. I love pickup basketball and it is absolutely infuriating to me. I recall a recent men's league game, where beleaguered facing a halftime deficit I yelled to nobody and everybody all at once, "it CAN'T be just me getting back. I smoke a pack a day I CAN'T be the only one." We lost that game. We shouldn't have. I wasn't happy.

I don't care if my team misses every shot and I don't care if we win or lose. I do however very much care how we get those shots and how we win or lose. Pickup basketball is a meritocracy. If you win, you stay on the court. If you lose, the next team waiting replaces you. It doesn't matter if you're 6'9" or 5'2", it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, it doesn't matter if you speak English or Farsi. It is the American ideal played out on blacktop between anyone who wants to participate. Over time you learn about what this means, and you learn that it's Marxian. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." If you can't shoot particularly well, this will be sorted almost immediately and you should keep the ball moving. If you're a great rebounder, park yourself under the basket and corral misses and you will be adored.

It might seem paradoxical to imply that an activity can be both Marxian and meritocratic, but I assure you that closer examination of these two concepts proves that to be untrue. There is something that happens when people aren't performing within their ability. It's a shift in the breeze, the rim shrinks a bit, the ball doesn't bounce quite the same. Shots go up, but they don't fall. Passes slow, and sometimes altogether stop possession by possession. The game, instead of being beautiful and collaborative, becomes desperate and individual. This is upsetting to everyone, eventually. It takes everyone to commit to being a part of it for any of it to work. And it's important that it works, that's why we're all here.

The lionization of professional athletes is probably the worst thing to ever happen to pickup basketball. Everyone wants to make contested jumpers like Kobe, or shoot threes like Steph Curry, or (worst case scenario) dribble like James Harden. This is fair and it is not my job to tell anyone not to have fun and do what they want on the court. But this can also fuck up the game. To what we owe our teammates is an important question to ask ourselves. If you just want to get your shots up, you'd probably not consider this necessary, but if you want to stay on the court, finding the correct answer is imperative. And there's nothing worse than being on the sidelines.

In speaking to the American ideal in his famous Lyceum Address, Abraham Lincoln said, "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." He understood that in a society that wants success, it will not come from anywhere but collectively within, and that is also where the wellspring of hatred resides. No one can do it alone. Everything good in this country has the stain of collective bloodshed on its shirt, sacrifice for others in every direction. That is how you win. Together.

This isn't a dream. You have to participate.

-Michael Campana

Eat Fresh

When you travel for work for nearly a decade you learn about yourself. Most of these insights aren't really helpful, they're just observational. Some of them are strange (you don't really enjoy driving cars made by Kia, it turns out) and some of them are borderline obsessive (the hospital corners style of bed-making in hotels is untenable and must be undone immediately). You develop habits both good and bad.

You make use of the hotel gym.

You eat too much fast food.

You will go out of your way to catch a ballgame, or try out a cool-looking bar.

You don't manage your sleep well enough.

There are busy seasons and slow seasons, and during your busy seasons you find yourself feeling worse and worse as the time passes. Your body breaks down much easier in your mid-30's than it did in your mid-20s. Your diet has a more immediate effect on the way you physically operate. You developed a seizure disorder at age 29 which to mitigate involves always taking your meds, trying to stay hydrated and fed and altogether unstressed. You aren't supposed to get too hot. Or too cold. You think. You're definitely not supposed to do cocaine. Airports don't make doing any of this easy (except the cocaine part). You've been spending a lot of time in the airport chapels because they are quiet and nobody is scrolling Tik Tok with the sound on. There are no screens there and your brain can quiet down.

You spend so much time in airports. You hit the button that stops the light show on the moving walkway in the Detroit airport, you run into some coworkers at Reagan in D.C. and kill a layover with them, you try to stay hydrated. Work gives you a per diem to spend for food, you do your best. Some weeks your best is terrible. It's hard when you're in the middle of nowhere and you've just worked 13 hours lugging cameras up stairs in a football stadium and there's a Bob Evans across the street.

Sometimes you just need a vegetable. These are generally hard to come by in airports so you end up finding yourself at Subway more often than you'd have ever imagined. The sweet onion chicken, spinach, banana peppers, tomato and onions works. You're not sure if it actually makes you feel better, but it isn't a burger and fries so this feels like a minor win.

You think about your friend from high school, Grace, who loved Subway. She was the first vegan you knew personally, way before it had taken off in America the way it has now, and you think of two conversations you had with her. One, at a late-night diner in your hometown when you were eating a burger with an over-easy egg piled atop it and the yolk was dripping down your beard and you remarked, "if I got to the pearly gates and St. Peter showed me this footage and didn't let me in, I'd understand."  Another, years later, when you were working at a pizza parlor and ate mostly vegetarian salads for dinner when pizza each day became literally too much to stomach. "I think I could be vegetarian if it weren't for the money."

You thought about that more over the years and it was coupled with the thought that you were a coward. Not because you weren't vegan, but because you've let others do your animal killing for you. The choice was clear. Either kill, drain, feather and butcher your own chicken or commit to vegetarianism. But this binary seemed absolutely ridiculous, so you did neither.

You're back in the airport at Subway and they fucked it up. It was looking as perfect as possible for one of these sandwiches and then they asked what dressing you wanted. "A little sweet onion and a little chipotle mayo." The woman applying the condiments is just so, so stoned. She's just staring at you with her dead-eyed, half-toothed smile and the dressing is absolutely everywhere. You've never seen this much sauce on anything outside of a wet burrito. You're alone. You pay for the sandwich and a sports drink and find a table. You open the sandwich up and it's barely edible. You just wanted some vegetables.

Airports are some of the only places where absolutely no one at all cares about you. Every single person in an airport has the most immediate and pressing needs imaginable and never realizes that every other person in the airport does as well. High school is sort of like that. No one can see more than three inches in front of their face but they have to get to the gate, or the bathroom, or their crush, or gym class. Desperation leaking out of you with every outfit choice or boarding time. Will anyone care today? Eventually you become numb to it. You think about your high school lunch menu and how you ate a chicken patty and fries almost every day. Did Grace just eat fries? Did she bring her own lunch? You don't remember. You sit and pick apart your sandwich before your flight boards, trying to extract some nutrition from this abomination. You drink half your sports drink and fill the other half with water for your flight. You'll try and eat more vegetables next week.

-Michael Campana

In Defense Of Edging

Laying down last week, alongside my fiancé, I was watching the charming Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg rom-com, Celeste and Jesse Forever. About midway through there's a static shot of four people sitting on a bench, three of which are characters we are familiar with. The one all the way to the left is smoking, speaks one line, is never really in focus, and obscures his face with his cigarette, and then, by doing a bump of cocaine.

"That's Chris Pine!" I exclaim to Jessie (the affianced, not the movie character) and I can't tell if she believes me or not. I'm not even one-hundred percent. This character never appears again in the film. The credits start to roll and I tell her to wait. As they're rolling I see a character named "Rory Shenandoah" played by "Kris Pino" and shriek. I then look up Chris Pine's filmography and there it is. I was so satisfied. Rashida Jones thinks she can sneak a Secret Chris Pine by me? Not happening. Aside from spending the evening with the person I love most in this world, that was far and away the best part of the day.

On September 19th, 2024, Adrian Wojnarowski retired from ESPN to become the general manager of his alma mater's basketball program. Known for his signature Woj-Bombs, he seemed to have all the news before anyo.... I'm so fucking bored even typing this. It's so fucking boring. There is this space in the universe, and we all know it exists, between the real and the supernatural. It's that moment when you know what's happening but your brain hasn't processed it yet. LeBron James tracking Andre Iguodala from behind, taking off, and right before it happens, before he blocks him, all the plasma inside your blood electrifies. A young Allen Iverson being drafted number 1 overall, the swell of the crowd, the cheers, your heart aflutter at his smile after everything he went through. That's the sauce.

Adrian Wojnarowski was by every account excellent at his job, but it's a job that shouldn't exist. Every year he knew which draft picks were headed where, staining the sauce, burning the onions to the side of the pan. To be paid to be a mouthpiece for ownership and to prevent watching and enjoying the youthful exuberance of the draft is a deep attack on what sports means to people. You'll often hear the phrase "that's why they play the games" when a scrappy underdog defeats an overwhelming favorite, and that's the rare colloquialism that is in fact true, but it leaves out most of the picture. That's why we watch these athletes and listen to this music and watch these movies. I could have read the entire script of Celeste and Jesse Forever and I would've missed my favorite part. I could read every box score of every game played for the next 5 years but I wouldn't be any closer to knowing more about the game of basketball or more about my feelings about the game of basketball.

There are other journalists who do these same jobs, jobs that Woj essentially created in the modern era and I implore you to leave them behind. Everything that happens will still happen, always and forever, and it's up to you to decide how that makes you feel.

-Michael Campana

Football Season Is Beginning

"Beginning this week, ESPN plans to utilize AI technology to produce text game recap stories of select sports events," I read, before squeezing the bridge of my nose and closing my eyes.

I have a headache. I forgot to take my seizure meds this morning because I was in a rush to leave the hotel. You see, I had to ride in to Ann Arbor with a coworker because I couldn't get a rental car from the airport. They said my license was damaged, and while I admit there is the slightest crack in the bottom-right corner, it does not appear at all damaged when you look at it. I suppose the scanners they use at the rental car place detected something was amiss, so I had to call a car to get me to the hotel. Thankfully the company covers that. Right, the hotel is in Romulus, Michigan, which isn't too far, but with traffic it was about 45 minutes this morning. I'm working the big game this weekend, Michigan against Texas. I have one of those jobs in television where you'll never see me, but you'd miss me if I wasn't there. Anyway, I was in such a rush to catch this ride that I forgot my medicine, which I have to take twice a day, and I probably wouldn't have done that if the rental place would have just looked at my license and my boarding pass or taken some other form of ID. The license does scan and it isn't close to expired. The meds are on the bathroom sink next to my toothbrush. I forgot to do that too. It isn't good to miss a dose for obvious reasons (I could have a seizure) but it also stresses me out, which makes my head hurt, and stress is a trigger for those same seizures. 

It's almost lunchtime and I'd usually find somewhere around the stadium to eat (Zingerman's Deli when I'm in Ann Arbor) but I don't have a car and none of the guys seem to be going there. I'll scrounge up something from the craft table, probably a Cup O Noodles and some beef jerky and be fine. I'm here a day early this week to install a second system for the graphics that I put on television. It's the big game so we need more graphics. I can't tell if the article about the AI is written by AI, sort of a test or distraction. Maybe if people are just mad about the article it'll get engagement (Good) and it'll be proof of concept (Better) and no one will even notice that they didn't have to pay anyone to write it (Best). It doesn't really matter, cosmically. The moons of Jupiter shed no tears, Titan does not smirk. Hunter Thompson took care of this matter for himself, even though football season is just beginning this year.

I have been added to the crew's travel grid after a couple weeks of reaching out. "Hello I'm not sure I received an email regarding... I don't want to be a pest, but" so progress is being made there. If I had the rental car I could use my lunchbreak to go back to the hotel and take my meds, but they'll have to wait. My fiancé always reminds me to take them, and she was on the road with me last week, but someone needs to watch the pets and I can only ask so much of the people around me. I can only ask so much of the people around me.

-Michael Campana