UNDERDOG

My dad didn’t care much for sports. When he was a kid, all there was was the farm and work. They played basketball and baseball at school but he had no passion for any of it. He was small for his age and a year ahead of his peer group in school. Top all that off with a Napoleon complex; he couldn’t pass up a fight, even if it wasn’t his. He mellowed with age and my mother’s influence but his flash point was easy to trip. He was never against us playing sports but neither did he have time to come watch me play and that was alright, I just wanted to play. When I asked him who he was rooting for in the World Series or a boxing match he would reply with a question of his own; to know who was playing and who was the favorite. I’d tell him and he always chose the underdog. The cards life dealt him were sufficient for a steady job, a devoted wife, three stand-up sons and the respect of people who knew him; and for him that was enough. But he couldn't shake off Napoleon; always saw himself as the underddog. Whatever he wanted, it was an up hill struggle with somebody else in better position to get there first. If you identify as the underdog, you root for underdogs. 

I recently saw two different movies, both bassed on ture stories, both revolving around the Olympic Games. In the summer games of 1936, Jesse Owens single handedly debunked Arian Superiority, Adollph Hitler and the Nazi movement. The movie followed Jesse from his enrollment at Ohio State, through the games in Berlin where he won four gold medals. It won’t win any Oscars but it did dilligence to the ugly, embarrasing  scourge of Jim Crow and other cultural injustice plyed on people of color. Still, Jessee Owens was a stallion. He was a world class athelete, tying the world record in the 100 yard dash while in high school. If he was an underdog it was in his life off the track. Racism is alive and well and any depiction of that disgrace still disturbs me, even from a self righteous culture 80 years ago.

On the other hand, Eddie Edwards was a white boy from the working class. As far as athletic abiility goes, he was average at best. Nobody, nobody except his mother saw anything remarkable in him or in his obcession with the Olympic Games. He fixated on track and field until his early teens than turned to skiing.  At great expense and inconvenience he pursued skiing until it was obvious that he could not compete with the big names. In a revelation he turned to the ski jump where Great Britain had not been represented in decades. Through a gauntlet of discoouragement and resistance from the establishment, Eddie Edwards met the standards set forth by the British Olympic Committee, that had been fashioned specifically to thwart his aspirations. Eddie was going to the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary. 

It goes without saying that in England, he enjoyed white privilege. It’s hard to imagine a black man, even in England, overcoming lack of ability to become an olympian.  After a year of self coaching and painfully slow progress Eddie was probably 15 years behind on the ski jump learning curve and a marginal athlete at best. His dream was not to win medals, rather it was the experience of representing his country, to simply be part of something grand. If he could do this without killing himself, his efforts would be a great success. Other athletes and the governing body had a different view. They represented an elite class where financial issues and national prestige were at stake. They didn’t want a ragamuffin-wanna-be taking up Olympic space. 

When Eddie landed his jump on the 70 meter hill he was extatic, celebrating the shortest, last place jump of the competition as if it were a victory. Even thogh considered an embarasment by British officials, he became an over-night folk hero. His simple, naive, unpretentious enthusiasm was so attractive and so wholesome that the world embraced him. Over a hundred years ago Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympics put his brand on the games; “The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” In every way, Eddie had lived up to Coubertin’s ideal. He was an underdog and my dad would have loved both Eddie and Coubertin. He opened himself up to the jabbs and insults from elitests but he also won the hearts of underdogs everywhere. The spirit of the Olympic Games has evolved and Coubertin’s egalitarrian sympathies don’t carry much weight. I think Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards was the last of his kind. It’s all about corporate sponsorship, world records, national prestige and money, money, money. But in 1988, Eddie ‘The Eagle’ flew and we all watched. In many ways I never wanted to be like my father but the underdog thing is irresistible. Struggle! Never give up!