GAMES AND GAME THEORY
L
et me say, right up front, that I
don’t enjoy cricket – not only
because its named after a bug
(would you watch a game called,
say, cockroach?), but also because I
don’t trust any game or sporting event
that goes on for days and days and in
which the score can top 300 for either
side. If you can watch the game all day
on Sunday, and go to work, have dinner
with friends, read a book, and just
sleep for the following three days – and
then turn the television on and watch
the same teams in the same sporting
event contest which will continue,
apparently, until Armageddon, there
is a problem. Well, frankly, there is
something Un-American about it.
I also want to say right up front that I
love rugby though. Really love it. This,
I think is because I love the idea that
you have to go backwards in order to
move forwards, which is basically how
I live my life – and how I think most
people live their lives, or should. It
seemed like my life, but in team sport
form – entropy, chaos, moving ahead
while you move behind – or moving
behind but still moving ahead. Love it.
I loved the whole idea.
But, this is the truth; I was a bit taken
aback when I found out that there was
a rugby team called the ‘All Blacks’.
Maybe this was because I knew of
something called Apartheid, and/or
maybe it was because I learned about
this ‘all blacks team’ on the same day
I went to the store to get magazines
and found the Wine Spectator had a
cover story on ‘All Whites’. And then
when I went to the beach there were
signs and flags everywhere about the
‘Great Whites’. Backwards? Forwards?
I loved the idea but then once again I
was completely and utterly confused.
This, though, I now knew, after only
a few days here, that I was definitely
going to learn a lot in and from this
country. Meanwhile, I could watch the
beautiful clouds, see the ocean most
everywhere, and laugh when people
told me that they couldn’t stand the
Cape Wind. What wind, I said. Or maybe
I just thought that, but in a country that
has no air conditioning, I don’t think
folks should be complaining about
the wind in the summer. But that, I’m
positive, was not something I said out
loud.