I guess it’s cool to eat local. If I sound begrudging it is simply that, like most Americans I have lived away from the production of my food and mention of locally raised food makes me fear that I will somehow become involved in this production. My dad escaped the farm for a reason. No, I like local food and the tasty karma that comes from not crunching down on too well-traveled food. I want to say I celebrate anything local as long as it is positive and wholesome and good. And though sports have a varied reputation I’ll include them on my celebratory list.
It is interesting that in times past a team was made of locals. A strong local athlete was a boon to a region, someone to pin the collective hat on. Nowadays, not so much. Take Boise for an example, where different high schools are known for a prowess in a certain sport and can attract students based on it. But let’s go up a level: the Boise State University football program. This team has excelled in recent years, the “program” being strong, athlete’s unpicked by bigger programs landing here and being molded into (more increasingly) NFL material. Ah, but here is my question. The football team is made up of players from across the nation with only a few homegrown players. For the sake of argument, at least, wouldn’t it be neat if local pride could radically be restored? Then people issuing the “That’s our boys!” comments would really mean what they say.
Now, is it good to have this desire? I’m cautious about this mainly because it seems to introduce a chauvinism about something that is purely chance, namely where one is born. Right? I don’t like that argument, that we could all have equally been born in some other country, in some different political climate with some other relationship to freedom (or other American ideals – wouldn’t it suck to be born somewhere without the relation we have to cars and cell phones? Hmm . . . ). I’ll just be superficial: whether intended or unintended we are the products of our parent’s actions and those actions were tempered by a particular society. Also, to get far out, if our souls choose our lives before we are born – this is reincarnation stuff and here is a giant grain of salt – then we are meant to be who it is we are. In a real and philosophical sense.
But still, what of pride? I’ll just say that today we don’t have to crush neighboring chiefdoms to claim cropland and bragging rights. We can take pride in our locations while still respecting other places for their prized relationships to their lands and customs. Iowa, for instance, which is Idaho’s homonymic sister state may celebrate corn and flatness, just as Idaho celebrates potatoes and topography. I’m sure Iowans are into their things just as we are into ours.
But our potatoes. Locally they are really no big deal. It was late local great J.R. Simplot that mass produced the Russet Burbank (potato) for McDonald’s that cemented our potato brand. Money is now involved. Potatoes are now a nationalized commodity. Ah, nationalism. (Ah, globalism.) In this way good players become commodities. Some big schools, like SEC schools, do pick from a big pool of talent and semi-local athletes play for their particular region. But at BSU we (ironically) metaphorically import our potatoes, leaving California schools bereft of a host of missed opportunities. To support a team means to celebrate the tradition. In may also mean to celebrate the wiliness involved in convincing a player from another area to join that school.
In the past these players were looked on as non-locals but, the best players being sought after and brought in, these non-locals were also viewed as saviors. If they won and become local legends, if they brought trophies to a region with a trophy-drought then their non-local provenance is overlooked. They came to represent the school and all the school stands for. Then, as now, non-local players who joined a team joined the family that is that team and that community. No doubt about that. Today it goes unquestioned that players from elsewhere are accepted into their new communities with open arms.
I say this for the sake of argument, to flesh out a daydream. If anything it shows how we live in a different world than the world of a hundred years ago. I was thinking of concluding with the line: The next time you see an athlete play, ask yourself “Who are they?” This doesn’t make sense. They are people at sea like the rest of us subject to tides perhaps out of their control, perhaps like we are. But maybe one day (soon?) we will find out what it is to live locally, living locally perhaps being the only option.
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