The mystery of Texas Hold ?Em
The Stanley Cup playoffs are in full swing, the baseball season is well underway; the hottest story in golf is 16-year-old Michelle Wie, who wants to play against the men in the PGA. The basketball season is winding down; the World Cup soccer playoffs are winding up; Justin Gatlin just ran the 100-meter dash in 9.76 seconds, slashing an entire hundredth of a second off the world record. It seems as if we?re jumping higher and running faster than ever.
I know about these sports because I watch them all on television. I don?t actually do any running or jumping or throwing or lifting. I use a cart when I play golf. And I make my partner drive it. I?d like to play more golf, but it would cut into the time I spend watching it on TV. Pass me that bowl of taco chips, would you? And get me another beer, the kind they advertise on ESPN, perhaps an Ultra.
I remember a time, long ago and far away, when there was no such thing as microwave popcorn and Ben & Jerry?s ice cream. Back then I could watch entire TV shows without eating anything, without drinking anything.
I remember watching the Winter Olympics from Squaw Valley in 1960. All 15 hours of it. Fifteen hours crammed into two weekends! It seemed odd to be sitting in front of a television for that long, especially when I could have been outdoors playing. When I could have been outdoors doing something athletic. Last year, I think I watched a baseball game that was longer than 15 hours. Or maybe it just seemed that way. At the Turin Olympics, NBC bragged about having 415 hours of coverage. The BBC ran 500 hours.
At Squaw Valley, there was no nine-hour opening ceremony that looked like the ?Greatest Hits? video from the Cirque de Soleil. There was no mention of the athletes? parents, no mention of their spouses or their children. You pretty much watched them ski jump and wondered how they ever got the courage to do that ? not just the televised jump, but their very first time.
But traditional sports like soccer, football, baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, NASCAR racing, bass fishing, roller derby, horse racing, ice skating, croquet, pro wrestling, boxing, bowling, motor cross, curling, snowboarding, surfing, wind surfing, extreme skiing, bike racing, tractor pulls, darts, badminton, rodeo riding, bull-riding, team roping, ballroom dancing can?t fill up 500 channels, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If only there was some sport that was easy and cheap to produce, some sport that didn?t depend on the weather, some sport that was easy to film, some sport that didn?t need a special stadium built to watch it, some sport that doesn?t need farm teams and coaches and managers and agents … could there be such a thing?
Yes. It?s called Texas Hold ?Em poker and it?s cheap and easy to produce. That?s why there?s suddenly so much of it on television. Is it a sport? Yes. And Gin and Canasta and Bridge are all sports, and I?m an athlete. What a work out card playing gives you. Sometimes when I get up from the poker table I?ve lost ten pounds. Mostly from my wallet.
And unlike other sports, there?s nothing sleazy about poker. You never hear about poker players using steroids or throwing a game or making outrageous amounts of money for doing practically nothing. That?s why the best poker players are so admired by young people. Because of their integrity, because of their passion, because of their commitment. You can even hear teens talk about it while they are gambling away their lunch money playing poker. ?It used to be a bad thing,? they say, ?To say athletes are only in it for the money. But in poker it?s the only thing!?
The only mystery about Texas Hold ?Em is when are they going to start a poker room down at my health club? Don?t they want me to stay fit?
Jim Mullen is the author of ?It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life? and ?Baby?s First Tattoo.? You can reach him at [email protected]