I READ with great interest New York Times writer Jon Mooallem’s piece, “I Had a Chance to Travel Anywhere. Why did I pick Spokane?” The piece was published last September 21 and told of the writer’s finding his way into a minor league baseball game in eastern Washington to deal with his pandemic blues.
Reading it brought me back to when I used to live in Ewing, New Jersey, at the turn of the 21st century.
I lived along Glen Mawr Drive in Ewing, a stone’s throw away from Olden Boulevard where I worked. On Friday nights, I would turn left from my home for a two-minute walk to Ewing High School where I would watch the Blue Devils play some American Football in the Patriot Division of the Colonial Valley Conference.
I would oft watch the New York Islanders in Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Long Island that was like a two-hour drive from where I lived. I’d watch the Yankees, too. The Giants’ home field in East Rutherford was a 30-minute drive.
As much I love professional sports, I did enjoy the small leagues that outside their communities, no one knows about.
Here is something I wrote about back in 2001 in my e-mail to my parents back in Manila:
Fall 2001. It’s shaping up to be a cold winter. However, the chill I feel is not from the season’s weather conditions. It’s more because of the loneliness, unhappiness, and feeling inadequate that feels like an internal version of a Bone Dry Martini’s ingredients of gin, vermouth, and a few olives that gets you buzzed faster than you can say “I’ll settle for Coke Light.”
I stay in a house with other fellows who battle similar demons so it’s not a home where I can get cozy, play and listen to my music, cook what I want, stay up and watch sports all night long, or fart anywhere without having to mind my Ps and Qs.
One guy is from Batangas and he oft chats with his girlfriend back home. Another hails from Cavite and to relieve himself, he gets off at night when we’re fast asleep. The others in the home work for this guy from Tarlac who came to the United States as an illegal immigrant but has since been granted citizenship. This Tarlaqueno runs several fast food shops here in Lawrence, Princeton and Ewing and through this has made his fortune. Of his 32 employees, only three of us are in the United States. The rest are all TNTs and are hoping that they have their paperwork fixed. A house with all these people makes for a combustible atmosphere more so when one of the women’s is having an extra-marital affair with a work colleague—and get this—that she continued even if her husband has joined her here in the US.
That’s none of my business, right? Everyone’s an adult here. They all know the consequences of infidelity and of being in the US illegally.
So I spend more time outside than inside when I am done with work. Moving out to New Jersey, I don’t go to New York as often. I’d love to move back, but not now when I need to earn and save. Post-9/11 hasn’t made the rent any lower or easier to pay. Besides, New Jersey is lovely.
Ewing High School is a small school. As I understand, there were less than 800 students with their student body coming from the area or from Lawrence or Mercer counties. They have their share of notable alumni. However, there are only two I recognize—jazz musician Richie Cole who recorded an album with our very own Bobby Enriquez, and Janis Hirsch who has written and produced television shows such as Will & Grace, LA Law, Fraser, and National Lampoon to name a few. They have had a few athletes who made it to the National Basketball Association or the Major League Baseball, but none who set the league on fire. They have had some success in some sports but for American football, none since 1981.
Nevertheless, Friday night home games are packed. Double or triple the student population as friends and family come over to watch.
I, on the other hand, am a curious onlooker who enjoys watching. And I wonder, how many of them harbor dreams of playing in the National Football League (NFL)? Giants Stadium is 30 minutes away via car.
And yet, for many of these kids, this Patriot Conference is their NFL.
One time, a teacher from the school, who perhaps had seen me watch many times over, came over and struck up a conversation, “Do you have any family on the team because I see you here a lot?”
“No. I just live about a minute away and if I am home on a Friday night, I come over to watch if there is a game.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” said the teacher. “Thanks for the support. We aren’t really a big football school, but we sure give it our best. This is the farthest many of these kids will go in terms of football. So it means a lot to them. And it doesn’t stop anyone from dreaming.”
In one home game, the Blue Devils lost a close match losing only by a field goal in the dying seconds in the match. The players were shocked, in disbelief, and in tears. Wins were hard to come by and when you lose a nail biter, it sticks in your craw even more.
“I think the games and the results teach you that in life you can’t have everything,” summed up the teacher. “Thera are what—almost a hundred high schools in New Jersey and we’ve got few Division I schools like Princeton, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Monmouth, St. Peter’s… But there’s Div II and III and the NJCAA. So you pursue what you can and just live life to the fullest.”
Incredibly in the cold of the night when the team suffered a painful loss, in a non-descript place and a non-descript high school English teacher, I found a nugget of wisdom that jarred me out of my collective funk. I shook his hand before I left thanking him quite profusely. I couldn’t sleep a wink that night.
That inner Bone Dry Martini?
I had spat it out thrown on the street. And the summer of 2002, I moved back to New York with a renewed sense of spirit and purpose.