MICHAEL ATCHISON

A Cure for the Mizzou Blues

Michael Atchison

Missouri’s basketball season got you down? Has a tidal wave of expectation become a hundred-year-flood of disappointment? Do you find yourself muttering about turnovers and dribble penetration? Are you losing hair or sleep or both? Would you like something to ease the pain, a little Percocet for the soul? If so, I have a suggestion that’s a sure-fire cure for the Mizzou blues.

Have a baby.

Extreme? Certainly. Outrageous? Perhaps. Effective? Absolutely, and for me it has made all the difference.

A gush of fluid awoke my wife at 4:00 a.m. on January 2, and a fling of her elbow awoke me moments later. Four hours and one Caesarean section later, we welcomed a second child into the world, completing our set with one of each gender. This blessed event has nothing to do with basketball, and therein lies the beauty.

The baby came 32 hours too late for a 2003 tax break and 31 hours too late for the big basket of bounty bestowed on Baby New Year, but he came just in time for a Missouri basketball fan in need of the Big Distraction. Less than 60 hours after Belmont made like Secretariat and thundered past the Tigers, the Little Dude (as he has come to be known) thundered into our lives, rendering me incapable of devoting much energy to despairing over a game. When every moment of your life turns into a sort of joyful chaos, that other stuff gets left behind.

Our first child (who is not yet three years old) is a girl, and while changing her diaper is never a beach vacation, it is mostly uneventful. But the new baby came equipped with a water cannon, a weapon of impressive range, able to shoot a stream well in excess of his height. As it flies over his head, off the changing table and on to the unsuspecting dog, I can hear Mike Kelly call “From way downtown! Splash!” You don’t worry much about three-point defense in the Hearnes Center when you can’t contain a shooter in your own home.

Like me, by having your own baby RIGHT NOW, you can put your misery out of its misery. If the previous evening’s box score causes consternation, try reading the morning paper through your eyelids after a sleepless night of colicky rage. If you think Mizzou’s passing is sloppy, crack open a diaper and see what the little nipper is passing. If you think the Tigers are slow to help on defense, try leaving the baby to cut off the two-year-old who whizzes by, naked, screaming “I don’t wanna take a baff!” If watching the game is too much to bear, fear not – you’ll have no time to watch.

While this means of distraction has worked for me, I understand that it can do little for you unless you or your beloved happen to be well into the third trimester, or unless you have some inside track on a quickie adoption. Given the human gestational process, if you get to work right now, the only thing that procreation could do is to ease the pain of a bad start to the 2004 football season (knock on wood). But childbirth is more example than suggestion. There are lots of things you can do to keep your mind off of Quin Snyder’s problems. You could try incarceration or elective surgery. You could join the Peace Corps or a monastery. You could be transferred to Kansas. You are only limited by your imagination.

It’s not so much that I don’t care anymore. I do, a lot. But for the time being, I’m caring a little more passively, like the way I care about global warming or the Iowa Caucases. Still, even as I care less actively, the Little Dude reminds me of Missouri basketball. He has Norm Stewart’s hair and Jason Sutherland’s temperament (stand between him and a productive nipple at your own risk). He has Jevon Crudup’s vertical leap and Evan Unrau’s first name. And he has a solid Missouri lineage, from his grandfather’s exploits on Dan Devine’s 1960 squad to his parents’ slew of Mizzou degrees. He doesn’t yet have his sister’s devotion to Truman the Tiger, but he possesses an all-purpose growl that sounds strikingly like the cat’s cry that snarls out of the distortion-heavy Faurot Field speakers whenever Brad Smith makes a big play.

Two weeks old and a Tiger through and through. That’s my boy. The Little Dude even watched most of the Syracuse game with me on Monday night, a ritual likely to be repeated hundreds of times over the years. And despite his devotion to the Tigers, he expressed no great anguish at the outcome. I’m not that good at reading his signals yet, but he seemed a little disappointed, or maybe just gassy. Still, he didn’t fly into a rage or call for anyone’s head. He didn’t perpetuate ugly rumors about anyone’s personal life, and he didn’t vent his spleen on talk radio. He just gave a scrunchy-faced look that said “we’ll get ‘em next time” and then he slept, well, like a baby, until his 3:00 a.m. feeding. Obviously, the kid has a lot to learn about being a fan.