I remember in my 8th grade earth science class, as part of the labs we would have to do, there would be a front-loaded series of definitions that we’d have to figure out for ourselves in order to get full credit on the assignment. Most of them were fairly simple and straightforward, but occasionally you’d come across a really abstract concept, and because we were 13-year-olds, our teacher would just give it to us.

Often this was done to establish a baseline on an overarching idea that important to the subject itself, like “what are rocks¹?,” so we’d have something to build on as the year went on. But in a few other instance, I have to assume that she stepped in because she didn’t want to have to read the philosophical musings of children, like what it means to be alive or the one I remember the most, how to define “time”.

For that, and this is the honest truth, the definition dictated to us was "it’s just time, you know?”. And for roughly the next 25 years, I thought I got what she was trying to say, though I didn’t realize I lacked a full understanding of what she meant until this past Sunday, while this was happening…

… it finally clicked.

As I watched these three events (and eventually, briefly, a fourth with the Six Nations match² between Italy and France in Lille) I started to think about how they were all happening in the same moment in completely different parts of the world — Krakow (Poland), Ahmedabad (India) and Milan (Italy) — while I was sitting in another³.

I stood at the intersection of different worlds, all happening in real time but with different relationships to it based on where they were: it was morning where I was, afternoon in Europe and evening in the subcontinent. After I was done with what I was watching, I’d eat lunch and the dart/hockey players would eat dinner (okay, mostly drink alcohol, because they were all done for the day and they are darts/hockey players) while the cricketers would be going to bed (or staying up all night worrying about what came next, given how bad India got beat.) The “everyone on this train has their own life, history and family” phenomenon on a global scale.

It was also in this moment that I started to think about whether it was worth it. Not the ability to watch everything at the same time, or whether I could have spent my time better in totality — there are way worse things to do with your time than watching sports — but whether each of these individual experiences were worth what I was giving them. And while it was happening, the answer was yes. What better way to live your days than watching humans achieve at the highest level in pursuits they’ve dedicated their entire lives to?

For the cricket, the rugby and the darts, that feeling has remained mostly the same. (Though your mileage may vary on how you engage with the success of South African sports as an ongoing concern⁴.) But the one that presumably should have been the least debatable — our victory over the Canadian savages⁵ to complete a clean sweep against our hated rivals to the North in their own sport — became, at first, mildly bemusing before devolving into bewilderment. Then, eventually, being pissed off that I had wasted any time celebrating their accomplishments; or for ever allowing for the possibility in my head that they might not be those kinds of sports idiots.

I had hoped that, fully aware of the idea that the only people you want to know the politics of less than hockey players are baseball players, these players had largely skated away from being MAGA chuds in the traditional sense of the idea. That even if they would say they vote for him, it would be because their parents did or because he seemed cool after getting shot. I held onto the idea that they were too disengaged from the world around them to have any meaningful opinions on anything of substance, but were probably fundamentally not terrible people. That they weren’t the kind of people I would feel bad for having given any quarter to when it came to judging them by their incredibly dumb actions in the initial aftermath of their monumental win.

Some of the controversial issues with the men’s hockey team's behavior were, to me at least, things I was okay with being ambivalent about, even in the context of who was involved. Partying with Kash Patel? As someone whose met hockey players before — including one that played for several years in the NHL and at a wedding I was attending bit into a beer can to shotgun it — it was not the least bit surprising, even if I didn’t love it. Like getting mad at a dog for barking. Nor did I find Patel’s presence at the post-game celebration or in the administration indicative of anything. Other than maybe a reflection of the low standards for competency and emphasis on intentional hypocrisy as a display of power for the regime; and, for the hockey players, perhaps the most idiotic example of their willingness to party with anyone as long as they bring enough beers.

I also don’t have it in me to rend my garments over them showing up at the State of the Union, even taking into account that I’d rather self-immolate than spent a second in the same room as with that guy (though I’d prefer that he’d do the same before I was forced to) or his enablers. I can understand (or at least appreciate) the dynamics involved in rejecting an invitation to be honored in the seat of government in the country for which you just won a gold medal and why, even if you personally disagreed with what was going on, one might make the same trip to appease or honor the family and friends who helped you get there.

But it was what happened in between that put on display the failure of the team as ambassadors of their sport and our country and, on a very obvious level, as human beings.

There is perhaps no greater example outside of elections and Republican National Conventions, at least in my mind, of a group showing so spectacularly that they aren’t decent people. What was so bothersome about the incident wasn’t even the action itself exactly⁶ — sometimes you laugh inappropriately at bad jokes made by dickheads because you don’t know what else to do, especially when you’re as young and as clearly dumb as much of the men’s hockey team is — but the aftermath, which involved a complete abandonment of responsibility by those involved over the fallout, contrition over the shittiness or even a basic understanding of why people might be bothered.

Instead of an accepting of how their responses to that guy treating the women’s team like second class citizens may have been perceived, the stars of the team came out and responded with a chorus of hater-blaming. And worst than that, the familiar claim that, essentially ‘some of [their] best friends are lady hockey players’.

None of this should have been surprising, as much as I wanted to believe in a miracle. Hockey is an impossibly privileged sport, making golf look inclusive by comparison⁷. It’s extraordinarily expensive and subject almost entirely to not just the kid’s but the dedication of parents to the sport. This kind of insularity can breed a lot of bad things, like an outsized tolerance towards egregious sexual assault, racism and homophobia as well as a tendency within the community to treat the players, especially the boys, as precious angel babies who can do no wrong.

Women’s hockey, like almost(?) any other sport, has its issues, though nothing at the level or with the sustained presence found in the men’s game. And, at least according to the program itself, the decline of the invite to the State of the Union by the women’s team had less to do with a principled stand against fascism than incompatibility with previous commitments for many members of the team. Which is to say it’s not impossible to eventually see a picture like this with the women’s team:

But, at the moment, the women’s team deserves the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to whether or not we should assume that they are secretly supporting our dickhead president and his awful goon squad. While even one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch, it would be wrong to assume things about our finest hockey players, the three-time Olympic gold medal winners that they are.

As for the men, after what’s transpired this week, they’ve lost any goodwill or leeway when it comes to many Americans thinking that they aren’t the same as every other rich dipshit from a teen movie. That the team isn’t filled with the kinds of characters who deserve to be punched (or hit with a hockey stick) in the face. It’s a lesson they desperately need, whether in real life on the ice or metaphorically in the public eye, because they need to learn that there are consequences to their actions and idiotic decisions.

It’s just time, you know?

The snowstorm that crushed Long Island under two feet of snow has also slowed down the production schedule of the Darty Party podcast, which will be recording this week’s episode in the hours after this newsletter is released. But there was plenty to talk about over the last week, including a masterpiece of a performance by the best darts player in the world, Luke Littler at the first ever Poland Darts Open.

While others can be better than him in any given leg or, presumably, during any given game, when he’s playing like he did over the weekend, there’s no sight in sports more exciting even while maintain such an obvious outcome. Dismantling opponent after opponent, not with a particularly great deal of flair, but a steadiness of temperament and skill that seemingly belongs to someone far more advanced in years, Luke Littler is the type of talent that comes along once in a generation to wreak havoc and let slip the dogs of awesomeness that will change the sport forever.

So, here’s hoping he’s not a Tory, I suppose.