When I did a prior post on blame, I forgot to mention the anecdote I most wanted to mention.
I never paid any attention to school sports. Never went to any of the games. So, it was rather ironic that, in my 20s, I was living with a boyfriend who had been my high school teacher, and then boss. In high school, he had also coached varsity basketball, so he still had friends that were coaches.
One year, in the 80s, a coaching friend had a really good team that had the potential to go to the state championship. So, we went to all the games. (That team did, in fact, end up going to the state championship, though was eliminated in the first round.) After each game, me and my boyfriend, along with the coach and his wife, and often a few others, would go out to dinner. I was taken aback when, at every dinner, much of the conversation was about all the bad calls the referees had made. To me, it seemed like a lot of whining, rather than taking responsibility for the one's own game play. Silently, I wondered why couldn't these people show some class and stop blaming refs for the fact that every attempted basket or steal wasn't perfectly executed?
Once, on the way home, I pointed out to my boyfriend that it seemed like all everybody did a these post-game dinners was blame the refs. Completely serious, he responded, "You have to blame somebody!" You did? I couldn't compute that.
Toward the end of the season, there was an extra large dinner party scheduled for after the game, with over a dozen people showing up. Then, after everyone was seated, the referees also showed up and sat at our long table. There was a lot of immediate discomfort, like, "Who invited them?" I was silently amused. I admired the refs' gumption. They were as much a part of of the high school basketball world as anyone. Why shouldn't they show up to a big dinner that "everyone" was going to after the game?
It wasn't until a decade or so later that I "got" what my boyfriend had meant by "you have to blame somebody". As a child who loved horses, and particularly horse racing, I of course had all sorts of fantasies surrounding the sport -- and other endeavors, too. In such fantasies, success was always in abundance. When I become a racehorse owner in the mid 90s, I quickly found out that winning wasn't an automatic given.
Our first horse, Enliven Kleven, had been second in his two starts for us in Phoenix. I'd been able to fly down from Denver for both those races, due to "fare wars" between the airlines which resulted in super cheap tickets. For EK's next start, our trainer had the wild and highly exciting idea to send EK to Hollywood Park for a cheap maiden claimer. Phoenix was a B level of racing, and Hollywood Park in southern California an A+. Our little $12,000 horse would compete on one of the toughest circuits in the world? Gollygeewow!
I couldn't find an affordable plane ticket for race day, so was resigned to attending my local off track betting facility to watch the race. (The manager of our partnership was in attendance, and she said that Hollywood Park couldn't have been nicer to her. It was as though they had the foresight that large partnerships were going to be the dominating ownership model in the future of the sport.) It was a full field of twelve and EK was fourth choice on the morning line, meaning he was respected with his two seconds, despite being from lowly Phoenix. It was so, so exciting, watching him on the large video screen at the OTB, getting saddled in the paddock, and coming out for the post parade.
Then the horses were loading in the starting gate, with EK among the first. It was hard to tell on the TV screen, but something was going on. Not all the horses loaded, and there seemed to be some kind of commotion in the gate from the horses already there. After many, many tense minutes, it was announced that EK was scratched, and the camera showed him being led down the outside rail, riderless, back to the barn.
It was so hugely disappointing. What had happened that caused him to be scratched? Upon arriving home, and seeing the emails posted after our manager began calling partners from the track, we found out that the horses on either side of EK had lunged forward in the gate at the same time, and he thought the race was on and had lunged forward, too, and somehow got himself caught under the gate. They'd actually had to move the starting gate to free him. Thank goodness he wasn't injured, other than what our trainer described as "body sore". Within a few days, he was back on a trailer to Phoenix, the dream of racing at Hollywood Park turned to dust.
I remember posting to our partnership email list that I wondered if others felt as I did -- that I was extremely angry at those other two horses for messing up the race for us. It wasn't logical, but that's how I felt. I recall at least one other partner admitted to feeling likewise.
And that's when I "got" why, during all those high school games that I attended with my boyfriend the decade prior, everyone bitched about the refs after the game. When one is trying so, so hard to make something happen -- to train relentlessly and build toward a particular endeavor to achieve success -- it's so disheartening to have it taken from you, especially when you feel like whatever adversity happened wasn't something you had any control over.
I feel completely differently about that kind of stuff now. There's only oneself and one's own perception. But I'm glad I had the experience of being able to understand why something which had been so puzzling to me -- blame the refs -- eventually made some kind of sense.
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