Football Instead of Polo?

"It's a well known fact that if a Jewish boy sweats, he dies." So went the Little League managers cry back when I coached Little League in an outrageously affluent and largely Jewish neighborhood. Not only wouldn't the kids run out a ground ball they would only rarely charge a line drive to the outfield. The mothers were a continuing pain in the ass, and some fathers were worse. I had a particularly weak kid on the team who we thought might actually get hurt if he played catcher, third base, or second base, so we stuck him in the outfield where he was safe from line drives and sliding base runners. Because he was a nice kid and wanted to improve and play I had him do several sets of push ups (like three) each day. One day his father sidled up to me while walking to the parking lot and told me he'd "have me taken care of" if I forced his darling to do any more push ups. And football? Holy shit, no rich kids mom would ever allow it. Football was a major evil in our society and should be stamped out.

Segue to last Saturday where the richest of the rich in LA and Ventura counties gathered to witness a championship playoff in (get ready) eighth grade tackle football. Mothers were all over the place cheering and screaming like anyone else and these kids really hit like any big city Pop Warner team. They blocked hard and ran hard. And I mean really really hard. Now we're talking RICH kids. The parking lot contained mostly MCBs, a few Ferraris, and the obligatory Cadillac and Mercedes SUVs, most of which were hybrids. The players were of all races and a couple of black movie stars were in attendance, meaning that their kids were playing.

So what's changed? Are we in for a bunch of really tough rich fucks, who will not only rig the stock markets but punch our lights out if we bitch about it? No more eleven and under yacht races? Doesn't anyone care about polo anymore? Or has the entire culture changed before our eyes in more ways than we ever imagined? This is liberal LA where racism may exist but it's very quiet, so quiet that the "N" word is only whispered and then only to a very close friend who wouldn't rat you out. I observed a "leveling" of sorts. A race integration on a very basic level. Rich black kids were running into rich white kids at top speed; rich white kids were dishing out de-cleaters to rich black kids, all to the cheers of fucking mothers for Chriss sakes.

I discovered that the priciest of the private schools now field football teams, many of which compete against public school teams from as far away as SanDiego and Santa Barbara. And they actually win games. One of them has one of the best basketball teams in the city (two Division I players), and the private school football teams now dominate the LA Times Top Ten lists all the time and consistently win CIF championships.

This is a change that must mean something. Doesn't it?