Watching through the window

The joy of gathering for a game, whatever it takes

Unless you are just now waking up from a restful 15-hour sleep, you know that the New York Knicks pulled off one of the greatest comebacks of all time last night in the NBA Finals. The Knicks were down 29 (!) points in the third quarter before winning 107-106 on this tip-in by OG Anunoby.

This is the reason those of us who love sports suffer through so many boring games and blowouts—you never know when a game will produce magic*. I never turned the game off, but I definitely turned the sound off while I read a book and glanced at the score now and then. Knicks down 22. Knicks down 17. Knicks down 11 and I turned the sound back on. And then they finished the miracle.

*Granted, Spurs fans are not feeling especially magical this morning.

I spent a couple hours after the game texting my sports-loving friends and soaking up highlights and social media posts. I have never wanted to live in New York, but I sure would have loved to be in the city last night. There were endless clips of fans celebrating everywhere from Central Park to random subway stations.

But what caught my attention the most were the videos of people watching the game through windows.

Fans gathered in little groups on the sidewalks and streets to watch from TVs broadcasting from inside sports bars or electronics stores or wherever this was.

That brought back some memories.

Back in 2008, when Alix and I spent a year at Harvard on a fellowship, there was a deli in Harvard Square called Cardullo’s that had a big-screen TV in its front window. When they closed for the night they would tune the TV to the channel with the Red Sox game. A group of regulars hung out there to watch, along with stragglers who stopped by to check out an at-bat or an inning or so. I went down there a couple of times during the playoffs. Cardullo’s is still there but I believe they took out the TV a couple years later.

But my strongest memory of window-watching comes from back in high school. This was in the early ‘80s, way before streaming. Most of my friends had cable TV, but I lived 10 miles from town and still had to use an antenna. My dad and I tuned the TV with a box that spun the antenna somewhere in the general direction of Savannah or Jacksonville, where the TV stations were. Then we would go out back to fine-tune the signal with a crescent wrench.

At some point around that time, satellite TV arrived. Within a year or two most everybody who could afford one would buy those big dishes the size of above-ground pools, expanding their TV universe from four channels to hundreds overnight. But at first they were novelties. One of the few places in my hometown that had one was an appliance store across from the mall.

I hung out with a group of guys that spent a lot of time doing the particular kind of nothing that high-school guys do: playing basketball, listening to music, inventing terrible underage cocktails. (Our go-to for a while was vodka and Gatorade.) One night four or five of us were in my enormous ‘71 Buick LeSabre (nicknamed the White Shadow) when we happened to drive by the appliance store. The store was closed but they had left a big TV on in the window to show off their new satellite package. It was showing an NBA game. For some reason I remember the Denver Nuggets were involved. Back then, on regular TV, you might get to see one NBA game a week. I don’t know if I had ever seen the Denver Nuggets before.

We pulled up to the store and sat in the car like we were at a drive-in movie. The signal was janky—after all, it was beaming in from space—but we must have watched that game for two hours. It became part of our regular rotation on those aimless nights—hanging out in the car, shooting the shit, watching a TV with no sound through a store window.

Our dating lives were not robust.

Now, of course, almost everybody has access to big-screen high-def TVs with surround sound. If you’re willing to spend the money you can watch almost every game of every sport anytime you want from your couch. But part of me does miss the days when it wasn’t quite so easy.

I don’t know what led all those New Yorkers to watch that game through store windows on the street. Maybe they couldn’t afford a sports bar. Maybe they hadn’t planned to watch at all and the scene drew them in. Maybe they just liked gathering on the street with their fellow human beings. They ended up with a story they’ll tell forever.

Upcoming events

June 24: I’ll be interviewing Denise Kiernan about her new book OBSTINATE DAUGHTERS, 7 p.m., at Park Road Books in Charlotte.

—TT

My books DOGLAND and THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM are available in all formats pretty much everywhere books are sold.