Enter Sportstrotter

By Andrew Braithwaite • November 27, 2007 • 10 Comments

Andrew Braithwaite, The Sportstrotter

TORONTO—If I were to rank the three subjects that, on a daily basis, consume the greatest share of my working imagination, my list would look something like this:

1. Sports
2. Women
3. Alcoholic Beverages

Of course, the items on this list are a lot closer than might be inferred from their hierarchical arrangement; there’s only a fraction of difference between my three great loves. But we’re going to stick with integers because that’s how lists work best.

Basically, I really like sports. And when I say sports, I mean all sports — not just the same old ones that everyone likes, your baseballs and footballs and seniors curlings.

I also like golf.

It has always struck me as somehow significant that people from all around the world, despite their great differences in culture, upbringing and average daily consumption of clear spirits, can usually be found to agree on one thing: that when you stick a set number of people on a designated plot of land, hand them a ball of some sort, and then challenge them to put that ball in a goal, or a basket or an end zone or slam dunked inside the rotting carcass of a goat… if you challenge two sides to compete against one another in a meaningless contest governed by an arbitrary set of rules, certain observers will care; the outcome will matter to them.

The importance you place in the outcome of this meaningless contest determines your place on the sports-fan continuum. But whether you’re at the “Will watch nothing but the World Cup final every four years�? end of the spectrum, or the “Will scream and holler at two wobbly washing machines racing across a run-down barroom floor in Tijuana�? end, the important part is that you’re a point on the line. Welcome to the club.

* * *

My plan as the Sportstrotter is thus: to spread my attention as wide as possible, to cast a capacious net over the entire world and its frivolous games. From Toronto at present, and then from my new home in Paris later this winter, I’ll traverse the sporting spectrum, bringing you stories from all manner of cultures. No Cuban stick-and-ball game will be too obscure, no Dutch middle-school track meet too fixed, no Syrian women’s rec hockey league so nonexistent that I can’t report on (or fabricate it) for your amusement.

And now, for self-motivation and posterity, here are my pre-season goals for this column:

1. Win a championship
2. See goal #1

You feel me, people? I’m not about individual accolades, I’m not the kind of guy who’ll be checking his post-column box scores on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I’m not fishing for a huge contract when I enter free agency in the offseason. It’s all about winning.

Because isn’t that what sport is all about? Yes, it is. Win at any cost! That’s the Sportstrotter way.

Posted in Sportstrotter •

Pat Tanzola

Thank you Sportstrotter, you’re brash but beautiful – like a lingerie model at a belching contest. Which is your next assignment.
Jeremy Keehn

I’m going to tear all the “N”s off your keyboard, Sportsrotter! How you going to take the title writing only about baseball and ultimate frisbee? Huh, chump? Huh?

- Bironist
dave m.

no dwarf tossing, no credibility

(but a v. nice first post all the same)
Julia

Only a fraction of difference, huh? I wanna hear how women and booze only fractionally differ from your love of throwing a ball…unless you’re tossing g+t’s at passing fillys?

brava…
Scott W

This will most likely be the only sports column I will ever read. Well, this one and Hey Rube on ESPN.com
Jeffrey

I wanna know about ski ball. I can walk by all the fixed games at any given midway no problem. But there it is, on the left, without the blaring music out of blown speakers, sans the headache inducing flashes. Just polished wood and six undersized bowling balls. Ski-ball. I`ll happily blow five whole bucks trying to win a stuffed animal to big for a key chain and too small to give someone without insulting them. Is there championships? Is there guys or girls who can ball a three hundred? (or whatever the top score is.)Origins? Stakes?
I wanna know.
Jane

Silly Sportstrotter, we ALL know that the Dryer always wins…. ALWAYS
African Observer

Man, they give a blog to just about any crackpot idea these days, huh?

Also, Ethiopian Goat-Ball is going to be huge. Trust me on this.
anon

Sports, women, and alcoholic beverages? A new low for the Walrus.

Do we not have enough empty blather about the above elsewhere on the newsstands and online? I was under the obviously mistaken impression that the Walrus would be digging a little deeper (and elsewhere) than the beaten track of empty drivel that Canadian readers are already regaled with.
Lyle

Wow, I thought this was just going to be more of the same old jock talk, but I gotta tell you, anyone whose writing is being followed by the kind of anonymous fan who can use blather, drivel AND regaled all crammed into 2 short sentences, has got to be worthy of my continued subsciption.