The small things we leave behind
Even the toughest have a streak of sentimentality that is hard to ignore.
The Mug And The Magnets
Hard-headed reporters aren’t supposed to be sentimental. We’re supposed to be tough and transient, wringing every drop of truth out of a story before throwing it over our shoulders before fixing our forensic focus on the next one.
Sources and contacts that briefly seemed so close to us are allowed to drift away. There is no memory, other than that we wrote yesterday which is now wrapping today’s chips - or it least it would be, if fish and chips could be wrapped in the internet.
The pandemic has spoiled the presentation of our great sporting events, these festivals held every four years that are as much about the spectators as they are the athletes.
The Olympics is famous for the pin-swappers, some of whom have travelled to host cities for decades, swapping stories and pins from sponsors and sporting bodies, trinkets that map a lifetime of fleeting connections.
Covid has not exactly killed off that tradition, but it will be severely limited in Tokyo, as will the ability of journalists to tell the story of these magical pins.
It has also constricted the number of fans - if any - that will be able to attend, and the souvenirs that will be available to them.
For me, it is always the coffee mugs produced by a team or a tournament that I bring home, much to the chagrin of my family as half a kitchen cupboard is now bursting with porcelain reminders of obscure ski jumping competitions and football tournaments, but they are among the few objects that hold any meaning for me, as do the accreditations that I receive to the different events and the fridge magnets I pick up in each city as I go.
The accreditations are a diary of a career spent in press boxes and mixed zones, from Madison Square Garden to IFK Mariehamn in Finland’s top flight. They are imbibed with memories of meeting great sporting figures - Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Floyd Mayweather, Pelé and more.
The coffee mugs are the same.
Every morning I open the kitchen cupboard I pick one mug that will be filled twice and gulped down in the coming 15 minutes.
Each of the mugs is a reminder of the places I’ve managed to get to and that I probably wouldn’t have dared to dream of when the idea of writing about sport for a living first crossed my mind as a teenager growing up in Dublin in the 1980s that had only ever been as far as some obscure town in Wales.
There is the “Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas” one - I would have been happy to visit there just once, but have had the privilege of visiting there a dozen times or more - and the mug bought at the Boston Garden before seeing LeBron James on the parquet floor that I once watched Larry Bird grace on ITV’s “World Of Sport”.
There are the mugs from several soccer World Cups and European Championships and Olympics, and some that teams and brands have given me too.
I sometimes wonder what will happen to them when I am long gone. Will there be someone in a future generation that will find the same meaning in them that I have? I doubt it.
That’s the way of things. They are transient and carry a meaning for a while - sometimes a long time - but eventually we forget. Things of little consequence don’t tend to survive over time, and why should they?
As long as they exist they will matter to me, though.
I’m not a morning person, but looking at these mugs after I get up every day is a good starting-point for whatever it is I have to do. They are a reminder of what I have been lucky enough to experience in this charmed life, and they are filled with the potential of more such experiences to come.
The Restrictions
I saw a headline in the paper the other day about how the Covid restrictions in Sweden are set to be eased, and I found myself asking - what restrictions? Compared to other places they seem to be extremely lax, and to be honest you’d barely even notice them.
The restrictions from abroad have a greater effect - for instance, I should be packing a bag to head back to Las Vegas for Conor McGregor’s trilogy fight against Dustin Poirier next month, but right now it’s not possible to enter the U.S. from Sweden and I haven’t got time to spend two weeks elsewhere first.
The lack of journalists from this side of the world travelling over has so far led to an absence of a buzz around the fight. McGregor is nowhere near as popular as he was for a variety of reasons, but the stakes could hardly be higher; after his imperious rise through the UFC he has three wins and three losses in his last six fights, and a second loss in six months to Poirier would be a signal that his time at the top has passed, perhaps never to return.
The Podcast
… didn’t happen this week, as I have been trying to get hold of the author of a book I read recently that was jaw-dropping, but we couldn’t get it all done in time. To be honest I’m not sure I’ll ever get him, but if I do I reckon it will be worth it.
Have a great week, wherever you find yourself in the world.
Damn it Philip, I'm retired and on a pension so have limited time and resources to revisit all the interesting places I've been to so I can populate my coffee shelf. I wish I'd read your sentimental blurb back in 1979 when I first got away from Dublin for a trip.