Beware the ides of March, indeed. For this is the time when
relationships crumble, women weep and grown men groan. Why
such an outpouring of emotion? It all has to do with 768 sweaty
youngsters in shorts.
The NCAA men's basketball tournament is once again upon
us. For sports fans, this is the greatest fortnight of the
year--48 win-or-go-home games take place during the first
four days alone.
My introduction to March Madness came in 1983. That was
the year Akeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler's Houston squad--dubbed
Phi Slamma Jamma--would have done well to study less Julius
Erving and more Julius Caesar. In the final game they were
stabbed in the back by the underdog Wolfpack five of North
Carolina State.
The 'Pack prevailed, 54-52, when sophomore Lorenzo Charles
rescued teammate Dereck Whittenburg's errant toss and redirected
it with a forceful slam just before the final buzzer.
It was a blow struck for underdogs everywhere, and I quickly
learned that such dramatic upsets happened annually in the
tournament. This democratic disregard for favorites appealed
to me. The last two weeks of March have since become a time
of true possibility, unparalleled sports drama, occasional
redemption and, for a Maryland Terrapins fan like me, chronic
disappointment.
This year promised to be an especially intriguing tourney.
Maryland had its best team in years and a player many consider
the most exciting currently enrolled in college, junior-transfer
guard Steve Francis. They lost in the round of 16, but an
exciting Gonzaga team made up for it by reaching the round
of eight before losing in a close game to Connecticut.
With Saturday's Final Four games--Duke vs. Michigan State
and Connecticut vs. Ohio State--the madness will come to
an end. When all is said and done, this fan will have seen
63 games. My descent began two weeks ago, when I set a course
to take in as much of the action as possible, hitting the
bars where the satellites are. Here's one bleary-eyed fan's
notes on early-round life.
Wednesday, March 10--The Night Before
11:30 pm: Wanting to be prepared and ready to execute
the fundamentals, I drink lots of water and turn in early.
Thursday, March 11--The Start of a Breakdown
6 am: Wake up having to pee.
8 am: Get up before the alarm goes off. Maryland is playing
Valparaiso in the first game of the tourney at 9:20 am.
Plan to stake a place at Portland State hangout the Cheerful
Tortoise, figuring it should be a lucky spot to watch a
team of Terrapins. Stop at a mini-mart for the papers; March
is the only month it makes sense to buy USA Today.
9:15 am: Arrive at the CT and settle in next to the blazing
faux-fire with an unobstructed view of the monster screen.
I'm among a handful of hard-core fans. Several TVs lining
the walls are tuned to either CBS or ESPN. Just after tip-off,
a guy wanders in wearing a Maryland hat. Turns out he went
to high school across town from me.
9:50 am: Another Maryland fan shows up--went there for
undergrad. The three of us talk ACC hoops: Tar Heels, those
bastards at Duke who regularly make it to the Final Four,
Len Bias. Steve Francis makes another gravity-defying leap
of imagination.
11:15 am: Six cups of weak coffee later, the early lunch
crowd arrives--almost all guys. They look like a new breed
of human with a billed cap somehow grafted to the head.
They come in packs of three and four, dragging chairs from
one table to another. Maryland fends off tiny, upset-seeking
Valparaiso. They do nice chips and salsa here.
1:40 pm: Gonzaga, a small school from Spokane, Wash., beats
Minnesota, who made four players ineligible this morning
for academic improprieties. A ripple of Northwest pride
erupts throughout the bar. Some even jump up from their
creaky wooden chairs to applaud.
2:15 pm: Step blinking into what has become a bright Portland
afternoon. I've passed five hours in a bar lit by TVs, neon
beer signs and video poker while one of the most glorious
days of the year has bloomed outside. No one said this would
be easy.
4:30-9:30 pm: Catch the evening games lying prostrate in
my bed. Day one ends in a close ball game, as 12th-seeded
Detroit pulls off the upset of the day, beating fifth seed
UCLA. Exhausted, I go out to a rock show to unwind.
Friday, March 12--Ball of Confusion
9:15 am: Arrive at the Sandy Hut on Northeast Sandy
Boulevard and overhear a seasonal exchange. Paunchy guy
in red sweatshirt: "Hey, how ya doin'?" Paunchy guy in gray
sweatshirt: "Better than UCLA."
9:30 am: Just me and a few older professional drinkers
ringing the bar, their heads bobbing slowly above beers.
This is a lonely, defeated few, more into drinking than
the game. Dig the red vinyl booths and the large Al Hirschfield
reproduction. Amazingly, basketball-crazed Boston is hosting
its first-ever NCAA tourney game, between Cincinnati and
George Mason.
10 am: Already seen more shots than at a Dorothy Parker/Raymond
Carver drink-off. At halftime I make some idle calculations.
Number of shots taken from day one: 1, 897. Total number
of shots made: 790. They do a nice eggs-and-bacon breakfast
here. Coffee's good, too.
11:05 am: Head for the A&L Tavern near Northeast Glisan
Street and 60th Avenue.
12:30 pm: At A&L there's not a woman in sight--just
several blaring tubes, fans in sweatshirts and caps, business
guys on their lunch break. High cell-phone count here. Four
different games going at once. My head spins to keep up.
It's nearly impossible to pay attention to one game at a
time. Luckily there's only one giant screen, so if you look
straight at it and repeat "This is the only game in the
world" over and over, things are manageable.
1:43 pm: Bravely order the "Philly Phred" cheese steak
and switch from coffee to Coke. Tasty, but too chewy: This
is the first cheese steak I've had with cubed meat. Sitting
stiffly in a wooden chair, I miss the Sandy Hut's booths.
4:30-9:30 pm: I actually have some work to do and catch
only a little of the evening games. Just as well--another
destruction by Duke, this time of Florida A&M.
Saturday, March 13--Making the Magic Last for More Than
Just One Night
9:20 am: Back at the Tortoise for round two, but the
satellite is down. They can only show the game CBS picks
for our region. This is very, very bad. Like many sports
fans, I've developed an incredibly elaborate and arbitrary
system of superstition. I take it as a sign of bad luck
that I have to change venues after seeing the round-one
Maryland win at the Tortoise. Speed over to the A&L
to catch my Terps.
11:13 am: Discussion breaks out at A&L over which seat
offers the best view of five different televisions. A woman
bartender with a fleshy, erudite face points to a stool
at the high bar and says, "That one's good because you can
see four screens out of the corner of your eye." A bearded
guy with a mild paunch and a moustached guy with an impressive
paunch drink beer and make predictions. Maryland coasts
to a win over Creighton. Still, St. John's looms in the
next round.
3:30 pm: Three close ball games conclude the afternoon's
action. As games wind down, a man gives a play-by-play of
all three on his cell phone. Another guy asks him who he's
talking to. "My mother," he says, grinning.
Sunday, March 14--Not So Easy as Sunday Morning
9:50 am: Woke up to see Duke already leading Tulsa by
30.
11:15 am: Hanging at Claudia's, a sports bar somehow not
out of place near Hawthorne Boulevard's clutch of pungent
New-Age shops. I'm impressed by the throne-like chairs at
the bar--they look as if they were ripped from the control
room of a spaceship. Chairs are full; bar's filling up.
Fifth cup of strong coffee. This place is a serious sports
fan's nirvana. Tables are covered with Sunday papers, all
open to the brackets. My waiter--trim, hairy, earnest--looks
like he'd be happier at an ultimate Frisbee tournament.
If a Martian landed in Claudia's, it would think all of
Portland was near 30, white and whiskery--and transplanted
from the Midwest: Michigan State, Kentucky and Purdue all
have a throng of fans here. Sports fans at Claudia's are
different from the blustery folks at A&L or the resigned
gang of the Sandy Hut, and different again from the optimistic
college crowd at the Tortoise.
4:10 pm: The last game of the weekend goes to overtime.
Two of the most mythic college teams of all time, Kentucky
and Kansas. It's a hell of a ball game: pressure-packed
shots, players scrambling on the floor. Typical tourney--never
fails to deliver drama. Kentucky wins in overtime. The Sweet
Sixteen is now set. Underdogs Gonzaga, the buzz of the tourney
so far, upset No. 2 seed Stanford to make it. A roomful
of paunchy fans slouch toward the door and, blinking in
a bright Sunday afternoon, leave drunk on microbrews and
roundball thrills.
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Willamette Week | originally
published March 24,
1999
|
