The Meaning of Loyalty (or, Why My Dad Became a Braves Fan)

by Ian McLoud

I grew up in Saginaw, Texas, a town whose only claim to something better than obscurity is its massive grain elevators - some of the biggest ever built, because this is Texas after all, and even small towns here need the biggest something to prove the Texas bravado. Anyway. I grew up in Texas.

Two sports existed in our household: football and baseball.  Nothing else counted.  Basketball is played by a bunch of “wannabe-gangster-thug-rappers,” or so my dad said. Hockey is just plain boring, unless Coach Bombay is there telling us all about the triple-deke, the flying V and quacking.

My dad, a man I admire more and more as I get older, was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers. We never went to Cowboys games, but I remember the Ballpark at Arlington, in all its beautiful, green, majestic glory. I, however, wasn’t a Cowboys fan, or a Rangers fan. 

I was a Green Bay Packers fan and an Atlanta Braves fan. The Braves make sense; I spent summers in Georgia with my grandparents and when Grandpa went to bed, Grandma and I would stay up late and watch the Braves. Grandma would scream and scream at Chipper, Glavine, Maddux and Smoltz. Mostly Chipper, and often so loud I was afraid Grandpa would wake up and tell us to go to bed. I liked Green Bay because I was weird and also, one time they won a Super Bowl while I happened to be watching.

But my dad was a die-hard fan of Texas teams. Sundays in the fall meant the Cowboys were on. Summers meant talking about Rangers baseball.

So it struck me as really odd when, after a move to Georgia, my dad began rooting for the Falcons and the Braves. I understood the Braves because they’re awesome, but at the time, the Falcons were even worse than the Cowboys. I asked dad what was up with this sudden change of heart; he said something along the lines of, “We live in Georgia now,” and I probably made some crack about him needing to learn the meaning of loyalty.

As I get older though, I view that response differently. My dad, a former minister, was doing something that I now realize had an importance all its own: he was trying to relate to his new neighbors, new friends and a new church community. He was, to quote Paul, “becoming all things to all people.”  That may sound weird; all he did was change his allegiance to sports teams.

Big deal, who cares? But looking back, I can see how the people he met cared. He could converse with them about a subject that they both knew something about. No one in Georgia cared about the Rangers, or the Packers, or the majestic grain elevators of Saginaw, Texas. But they did care about the Falcons and most definitely the Braves.

My dad had this whole idea of understanding a new culture and building relationships that bridged the gap. He could relate to people in this new environment on a level that I simply couldn’t because I was stubbornly sticking to my Brett Favre (pre-Jets) loving ways. He could connect and build relationships whereas I was still an outsider. And from him, I learned the importance of culture and relationship building before it became the trend du jour. (Hey! My dad’s a Christian Hipster!)

He was acting out the all things to all people that Paul was talking about. And while I don’t think Paul was envisioning sports fandom exactly, still, it works. Especially in a society where our sports affiliation is seen as a key to our identity.

So yeah, my dad wasn’t loyal to the Cowboys or the Rangers. He’s not even really loyal to the Falcons or the Braves. But he’s loyal to God and to people. And sometimes, that means giving up things we desire in the pursuit of connecting with others. 

Ian is the Youth and Family Minister at the Lakehoma Church of Christ in Mustang, Oklahoma. You can follow him on Twitter @KindaScottish.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
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Forever Waiting on Greg Oden

by Ben Howard

As an Ohio State basketball fan, Greg Oden probably first entered my consciousness sometime in 2006.  Oden, universally regarded as the best high school basketball player in the country and one of the best of the decade, was the crown jewel of the “Thad Five” recruiting class under first year coach Thad Matta.  Oden was tasked with establishing Ohio State, historically a football school with a mediocre basketball team, as one of the NCAA’s elite programs. 

However, the summer before he enrolled, Oden broke his wrist and was forced to sit out the first half of the season.  At the time, it was reported as an injury that occurred late in his final high school season, but the truth was more ominous and foreshadowing.  Greg had actually suffered the injury defending himself in a fight with his brother, Anthony, who had become angry at the idea of his brother’s success and future.  This would not be the only time where Greg would be hurt, physically or emotionally, by those close to him.

Once Oden got back onto the court, the Buckeyes became a powerhouse.  They would eventually play in the National Championship game where they lost to a juggernaut Florida team by 9.  The loss was in no way a deterrent to Oden’s career though, and he declared himself eligible for the 2007 NBA Draft where he was drafted with the first overall pick by the Portland Trail Blazers.

Expectations were once again high in Portland.  With Oden, along with young players Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, Portland was set to establish a dynasty in the NBA.  However, at this point Greg’s career began to go off the rails.  The summer before his first NBA season, Greg began experiencing some pain in his knee and was forced to visit a specialist.  The resultant microfracture surgery meant that Oden would miss the entirety of his first season, and possibly the beginning of his second.  Oden would later reveal that the disillusionment of the surgery, along with the tragic loss of a close friend in a car accident led him to begin drinking heavily in addition to “doing things I shouldn’t have been doing.”

Greg came back in in his second year and played in 61 games, but the drinking had become even worse.  Looking for guidance during his recovery, Oden invited his cousin, a veteran from the Air Force, to live with him.  However, the cousin took Oden even deeper into alcohol.  In Oden’s own words:

My cousin got wrapped up in the NBA lifestyle and threw parties at my house all the time. So I got wrapped up in it too. When I played well, I'd drink to celebrate. And when I played poorly, I'd drink to forget. That second year in Portland I pretty much became an alcoholic.

The offseason gave Greg the incentive to get a handle on his problems.  He stopped drinking, hired a personal chef and got into great shape.  He began the next season on fire, and was beginning to fulfill his much-longed for potential.  Then, in the first quarter of a game on December 5, 2009, Greg landed awkwardly fracturing his left patella.  Oden has not played in an NBA game since.

In the myopic world of sports fandom, Greg became a joke.  Even though he wasn’t responsible for the injuries he had suffered (it isn’t like hurting your knees is tied intimately to some deep character flaw), Greg was mocked and ridiculed by the fans of Portland.  He had come to symbolize both their hope and anticipation, and their bitterness when that hope vanished due to bad luck.  During this rather difficult time, yet another humiliating event occurred in Oden’s life.  At the risk of being indelicate, Oden was a wealthy young bachelor and therefore had his fair share of female admirers.  One of these admirers leaked nude pictures of Greg onto the internet.  Oden was humiliated by the event and refused to leave his house for three days.  Not only was he the symbol for failure and unmet potential, now he was a fool and a target of wrath and mocking for the sports community.

Over the next two years, Oden continued to meet frustrations and setbacks with his recovery.  Every time he seemed on the verge of making a comeback, yet another obstacle emerged and prevented it.  It also eroded his confidence in his employer, who he believed had tried to rush his return thus extended his recovery time with ill-advised treatment.  Oden was eventually released by the Blazers in early 2012.  He has returned to his childhood home of Indianapolis, Indiana where he intends to rest and rehabilitate during the 2012-2013 season before attempting a comeback.  If/when he comes back, Greg will only be 25 years old and will still possess the potential for a long and happy career.

I’ve always felt bad for Greg Oden, and I think that’s because I’ve always felt a little bit like him.  Now, I’m not trying to say I have world-class talent or something like that, I may be arrogant at times and a bit grandiose, but I’m not that arrogant. However, I do understand the struggle to hold up under the weight of expectations that you have neither courted nor control.  We live in a culture that is enamored with the idea of expectation and potential.  Our schools have programs for the “talented” and “advanced” kids, politicians drone on and on about how children are our “future”, movies and TV shows succeed or fail often based primarily on their trailers and the buzz surrounding them, and ESPN broadcasts the drafts of every major sports league.  At the same time, potential is exactly what it says it is: the potential to become something, achieve something, be something.  It is not the thing in itself.

I think our cultural obsession with potential, the next thing, the new “Best Ever”, has the shadow effect of demoralizing those who don’t, or can’t, achieve to the level that they’ve been predicted.  We’ve subtly undercut the belief that you can be happy and content without being an overachiever who does amazing, storied feats.  Personally, I feel this crunch quite acutely.  I am 25 with a college degree, a good entry level job, nearly finished with a Master’s degree, surrounded by friends and family who love me, and a majority of the time I feel like a chronic disappointment.  I see 20 year old savants with doctorates and people my age with book deals, people who have “achieved” something, and somewhere in my warped perspective of the world, I feel like this is the norm, when it is more than exceptional.

The story of Greg Oden isn’t the story of failure.  Instead, I think it’s the story of an idea, the concept of GREG ODEN towering over and enveloping the man.  The problem is that Greg Oden has never been and can never be in charge of GREG ODEN, he can only be in control of himself.  Perhaps, in my case, or yours, the expectations we feel are illusory and the crush is self-imposed, but it is a perception birthed from a culture that idealizes its young and its future at the expense of its contentment and its present.

At its core, this obsession with expectation and potential is deeply unchristian and deeply destructive of the image of God embedded within us.  We follow in the paths of people plucked from what we would perceive as mediocrity and placed in positions of power and leadership.  We come from a line that believes and trusts that we do not achieve under the work of our own talent and potential, but through the work of God’s spirit through us.  Our achievements are not our own, but they are the gracious out-workings of God in us and through us.  We do not aspire to become the best version of ourselves, but instead we struggle and strive to incarnate the very image of God embedded within us at our creation.  We are full of expectation, we are full of potential, but it is not the potential of the I or the Us, it is the potential of our creator and our redeemer.

Peace,

Ben

Much thanks to Mark Titus for his incredibly useful interview with friend and former teammate Greg Oden.  Read his interview here: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7908766/a-rare-interview-former-no-1-overall-pick-greg-oden-injury-plagued-career