Some Observations at the End of the Year

Some things that are on my flu-addled brain as the year ends...

I'm troubled that our decade is now 60% of the way done and we've yet to come up with a damn name for it. And it's not the "aughts," smartass. I mean a name people will actually use.

It's been a few decades since Paul Simon first asked where that crotchety asshole Joe Dimaggio had gone off to. But it struck me as a funny question because even as Simon was asking it there was no shortage of sports heroes who carried with them a good amount of mythology. They had fame, talent and swagger, and they were popular (even before the Internet) in areas thousands of miles away from their media market so that even your mom knew who they were. Namath. Ali. Arnold Palmer. Billie Jean. Wilt. Russell. Jim Brown. Gordie Howe.

Sports heroes weren't in short supply then, and they haven't been at any time since. The 70s had Orr, Kareem, Walton, Dr. J, Clemente (briefly), Nicklaus, Pele, Bradshaw and a host of others. The 80s were flush: Bird, Magic, Gretzky, Montana, Navratilova, McEnroe. The 90s had Jordan, Lemieux, Favre. I've left a bunch off the list, but my point is there's pretty much always been some nationally known, heroic figure in at least one of the major sports -- and often in more than one.

Fast forward to 2006 and look at who we've got: No one. That's right. There's no transcendant hero on the sports scene today. There are a bunch of super-talented people who -- though likable -- don't make the cut (Peyton, Brady, McNabb, Ortiz, Duncan). And there are more who don't make the cut even though they're full of talent and are every bit Dimaggio's equal in the sour-asshole department (Tiger, Kobe, Bonds, Clemens, Owens). Of all these Tiger comes closest but falls short (for now, at least) because a) expectations were so high he couldn't possibly have lived up to them and b) only a select few care about a sport like golf.

So what we've come to now is what I think might be an unprecedented period in American sports. There's no sports hero in sight. No sure thing on the horizon (Reggie Bush?). One or two faded from the rearview (Jordan, McGwire, Pedro). Ratings are down across the major sports. Where have you gone, Paul Simon?

This lack-of-heroes thing is hardly all that's unusual about 2006 America. For instance, I can't think of a city-of-the-decade candidate right now. Think about it -- music- and culturewise, from San Francisco in the 60s to New York City in the 70s to LA in the 80s to Seattle in the 90s, we've always had at least one city that helped define a decade. These days we have... what? I seriously couldn't even begin to mention one city that means anything more culturally to this decade than might any other city. Boston? Portland? DC? Atlanta? Vegas?

I suppose Vegas is the best choice -- what with its exponential population growth and the dizzying (and downright puzzling) popularity of poker. But something tells me Vegas in 2009 will be like Miami in 1999: a city on the rise that was able to fool people for a little while into thinking it might become a hell of a lot bigger than it really ever would. And that reminds me to mention this: poker is to this anonymous decade what cigars were to the 90s.

I'd like to nominate what I think is a better choice for city of the decade (so far): "the suburbs". They're expanding at a much higher rate than cities. They're becoming more and more liveable as many cities become less and less so. And they're increasingly being celebrated in pop culture. After all, one of the decade's best albums so far (Green Day's American Idiot) was a rock opera dealing with suburban rebellion.

Happy New Year! (I've got to go blow my nose.)