A Diamond in the Rough

Photo of 1500m heat start from 2022 World Athletics Championships at Reimagined Hayward Field by Howard Lao

This Saturday and Sunday mark the Diamond League Final- the end of the professional season of Track and Field depending on who you ask (don’t you dare ask on Twitter, for you do not know the terrors that await, lurking at the ends of darkened threads withs single digit view counts, their axes readied for grinding). The Prefontaine Classic plays host to the DL Final this year- the Super Bowl of the Diamond League series if you will. The TRACKLND crew is packing up the station wagon and heading down the dusty I-5 to Eugene. We’re lighting the lights and pointing the cameras at the Citius Mag crew who wrangled themselves a big old shiny metallic stage to do some pre meet hypothesizin’. Come on down.

My first trip to Eugene was during the summer following my senior year in high school. My sister and I stopped for a night on our way up to Portland to see a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. I grew up in California’s central valley, reading stories of Eugene and the men of Oregon but until I was 18, I had never driven further north on the I-5 than Woodland. My sister and I got to Eugene in the evening in time for a small meet at Hayward Field. It was a tune-up for athletes competing at the World Championships and World Junior Championships. We sat on the backstretch, in the East Grandstands and watched Matt Tegenkamp warm up wearing the light blue, green and white of the Nike kit that year. His calf, quad and hamstring striations impeccably visible through his light blue tights. He won the 1500m going away in 3:36.07 and the incoming Oregon Freshman and Junior National Champion from Oceanside, CA AJ Acosta, absorbing more of the spotlight finished 10th in 3:47. The stands were sparse, but worn by the bodies that had packed them for generations. I felt privileged to have much of it to myself, to contemplate the history, lingering slack jawed teenager, gazing wistfully longer than I should at a nail in the wood board bleachers and chicken wire fencing underneath the stands leading into the restrooms.

The next time I went to Hayward Field was 6 years later for the Oregon Twilight Meet. At that time I was squatting in the living room of a suburban townhome owned by the Oregon Project in Beaverton. Dorian Ulrey and I made the hour and forty-minute journey through the grasslands in his Nissan Rogue. That evening he raced the 1500m against the OTC’s Andrew Wheating, who pipped him at the line in 3:44.97 for a fine season opener pre super shoes. Following the race, 6’6” Andy referred to 5’8” Dorian as “the little man” to a Register Guard reporter, probably Ken Goe… as in “I didn’t see the little man coming up beside me” or something like that. The statement was literal and otherwise harmless in Andy’s eyes but taken by Dorian as a slight that stuck with him- each man’s interpretation of the event the result of their being the star of their own story. Dorian stayed late running 5 sets of 3, 2, 1’s (600m, 400m, 200m) around the turf field behind the west grandstand. All told that day he ran 18 miles, including his morning shakeout, warm-up, 1500m race, race cooldown, post-race workout and post-race workout cool down. I drove us home.

When we got to the meet, and Dorian went where the athletes go, I sat alone for a bit in the East Grandstands until the feeling of squandering an opportunity got too overwhelming for me and I looked for people to talk to. I was in Eugene fergodsakes. Around me were the people of the books. They had seen all the things I had read about. Their very existence was mythologized simply for having lived in the place where all the things happened. I spotted an older woman sitting alone near the 1500m start line halfway up the stands and I went and sat next to her. The woman was Marcia McChesney. Accomplished masters runner, mother to the famed McChesney boys who ran at South Eugene and then the University of Oregon. Wife to Bill McChesney, who was volunteer officiating at the starting line as he had done for fifty years. In her life she had known great happiness and extreme sadness, having lost two sons to traffic accidents. Mrs. McChesney was softspoken then, she had battled Parkinson’s for years. I knew of her family and what they meant to Eugene and Track and Field, but we didn’t talk about any of that. We sat together and watched the meet for three hours. We talked the results of each race, what was happening on the infield from time to time and what I was doing in Portland. At one point, her husband, Bill came up to check on her and she introduced me to him. He seemed a little confused by what I was doing there. After the meet was over, we said our goodbyes and parted ways. I never saw her again after that but remembered watching the meet with her every time I passed that spot in the East Grandstands at old Hayward.

I grew up going to Raider games at the Alameda County Coliseum with my parents, sitting in the south endzone, known as ‘The Black Hole’. It’s where Skullman and Darth Raider sat, grown men and women dressed in black, covered in body paint and tiny plastic skulls. When the tolling of Hells Bells blared over the stadium PA, spit flew from the lips of fanatically drunken Raider Nation as they let out a primal yell of pride and aggression, welcoming their team out of the tunnel and onto the field.

Before the Raiders moved to Las Vegas, the Coliseum in Oakland was well-known to be the worst facility in the entire National Football League. It was a concrete crater in the earth connected to the BART station by a quarter mile long cement skybridge arced by cyclone fencing and concertina wire. The only remaining stadium in the United States to house both football and baseball, for half of the season, a good portion of the football field’s chalk lines ran through infield dirt and players would get tackled in a cloud of dust. The Oakland A’s still play there and at the beginning of this season, a possum had taken up residence in the visiting TV box forcing the commentators to find a different space.

It was believed unsafe for opposing fans to wear their team’s colors inside the confines of the bayside concrete fortress. In the early 80’s, Hunter S. Thompson called Raider fans: “beyond doubt the sleaziest and rudest and most sinister mob of thugs and wackos ever assembled.” it was a statement made with love as he was one of them. In the late 90’s and early 00’s, not much had changed. I was a fresh-faced 10-year-old surrounded by grizzled wackos. The lessons came fast. Following halftime during one game, a twentysomething guy came back to his seat near us and shouted at his buddy: “dude, you missed it, some chick jumped up on top of the dumpster and took her shirt off!” Throughout games, the ‘Oakland Salute’ was deployed as much of the section aggressively thrust their middle fingers toward the field and screamed obscenities for calls against the home team, opposing players scoring touchdowns, or any time a ref got close enough. During one game when a storm pressed toward the stadium, a man sitting in front of us fell into a blissful drunken slumber as his plastic bowl of nachos filled up with rainwater in his lap. Upon waking, he glanced down at the dish, raised it to his lips and proceeded to drink the surprise concoction.

I saw many instances where arguments between patrons descended into violence as they grabbed each other’s silver and black garments and attempted to land punches as they tumbled over the glossy green chairs to the sounds of their partners’ admonishments.

Despite all of this, there was a kinship.

As a kid, I felt part of the group because I too was a Raider fan. I did not look up to these people or want to be like them to the point that I was ready to resort to violence over trivial matters or drunkenly consume nacho water or shout “upgrade” as a season ticket holder who had just received a breast augmentation proudly walked down the aisle to her seat at the start of a new season but I did admire their loyalty to their kind, and their welcoming nature. Following every big play, it was ritual to high-five every hand within reach and to extend one’s reach as far as it could stretch. No one was above celebrating. None too good to take part. All were bound together by their collective fandom. As a 10-year-old, I was looked in the eye by a full-grown man in face paint holding a crooked staff and wearing armor adorned with shrunken plastic skulls. We clasped hands as I saw the sheer joy in his face and he saw mine.

I have never been to the shiny, new Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas where the Raiders now play, but I imagine it is more an homage to the thing than the thing itself.  Only the thing can be the thing, and its hard to describe. Things fall apart. Progress rolls on. Relics are encased and memories transform into stories that inspire shrines.

There is a Japanese teaching called wabi-sabi. The concept centers on aesthetic imperfection and the meaning derived from it. It recognizes beauty as being incomplete and imperfect as it is in nature. Wikipedia says that Andrew Jupiter says: “If an object or expression can bring about within us a sense of serene melancholy and spiritual longing, then that object can be said to be wabi-sabi.” Wikipedia also says that Richard Powell says that: “Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect”. Things that can be considered wabi-sabi are a misshapen ceramic bowl, an imbalanced wooden stool, a stadium with exposed warped wood boards or a hole in the ceiling made by a burrowing possum.

Wondering how these items and places become beautiful is an exercise in search of meaning.

If I were to design a track, it would sit in a grove cut into a dense forest. Lanterns would hang in the tree branches that surround the oval. The entry promenade would be lined with Birds of Paradise flowers because they look like cracking starting pistols. It would be a place that feels imaginary, an escape from reality. The problems of the outside world fade away for a time and everyone there is bound by their collective excitement to be in the place and experience the thing. No phones, no scrolling. No one is too cool or not cool enough. They say hi and are happy you are there, and you are one of them simply by showing up. They look at you in the eye and smile and you do it back.

Phil Knight’s vision was more Spielbergesque- a glistening spaceship lands in a small logging town. Your vision may be different. When it comes down to it, I don’t think any object has inherent meaning to us aside from what we give it. The meaning grows unexpectedly, from us living our lives tangentially to the thing and having it become a reminder of the things that happened.

Maybe reimagined Hayward Field can be that place, in spite of its glistening edges. I think it can, but it will have to be its own. Maybe it’s up to us. Because the places of meaning aren’t manufactured in our minds before we experience them, only My advice is to shake hands with everyone you meet on Saturday and Sunday. If that’s too much, smile and give them a nod, acknowledge their presence and their shared enthusiasm for the thing you both love. It binds you together. And that gleaming replica of a Matthew Centrowitz bib embedded into the floor next to the urinal will serve as a reminder of the place you made eye contact with your new friend.

Don’t be afraid to sit next to a stranger and make a genuine connection with someone you would otherwise brush past. All are people of the books, and so are you. The connection is all we’ve ever had. The stories we tell are just wishes for that.

Eugene Sept 16th & 17th

6 Bet Parlay

1. Women’s 1500m: Faith Kipyegon to win (not WR- the short odds at this point)
2. Men’s 100m: Marvin Bracey-Williams to win
3. Women’s 100m: Sherika Jackson to win
4. Bowerman Mile: Jakob Ingebrigtsen to win
5. Women’s 800m: Keely Hodgkinson to win
6. Oregon Ducks to cover (-38.5) against Hawaii