As with many men who have sat their steadily growing asses in the stands, I’ve wondered about what it would be like on the other side.
I’ve never seen statistics around the percentage of kids who dream of becoming a professional athlete compared to the percentage of people who actually become professional athletes, but I’m sure it’s heavily weighted on one side. I was one of those kids who practiced all the time, played sports in high school and thinks if given the chance, could probably train hard enough and maybe contribute on the worst team in a given league.
But I’m about a foot shorter in reality than I am in my heart. And furthermore, I didn’t enter the financial field—numbers are no friends of mine. In short, I was never meant to snort coke off anyone’s swimsuit parts.
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Still, some part of me thinks I should want that. Not the part that loves and respects my wife—rather, the part that wants to feel so optimistic that I scream into the night, as Corddry’s character does, “We’re gonna live forever!”
Here’s the reality: Just watching the lifestyle depicted in “Ballers” gives me cotton mouth, anxiety and palpitations. I’m like a puppy—too much excitement and I puke.
This has to be the point with this show. Although the grass may appear greener on Richard Schiff’s character’s yacht, even ballers have problems. Spencer is almost broke, Joe can’t get through a night of drinking without uttering the N-word and hell, one of the players is getting bullied. Bullied!
No amount of Cristal would make me ever feel OK with being bullied as an adult.
Now, take HBO’s other male-driven show that has everyone talking. The second season of “True Detective” is also four episodes deep and the mystery wrapped in an enigma is unraveling ever so slowly.Still, it wouldn’t make a very good story if Spencer were devoid of post-career concussion symptoms, if everyone handled their booze like responsible adults, and if all of the NFL players made sound financial decisions.
Of course, in the show the opposite happens. This tells me that I’m not supposed to want, at 35 years old, to be a former NFL player figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. And here all these years I was thinking how great I would have handled fame and fortune.
