Mar 31 2009
A Salute to Mike Rice
A week ago, when I joined all of the fans in the Rose Garden in the “Javie Sucks” chant, a minuscule thought traced through my brain in between angered beer-fueled yelling. It was I wish I could hear what Mike Rice is saying right now. I don’t think I’ll ever know what he said or what he was thinking at that time. My imagination tells me that Rice took a swig of whatever was in that plastic souvenir cup, drew in a breath with a brilliant thought at the ready, and just held it. He knew he didn’t need to say anything. He’d finally done it. His incoherent ramblings over the past two decades finally succeeded - for about two minutes, the Rose Garden was Mike Rice.
It’s scary to think, isn’t it? How rare is it when a golf-fiend senior citizen becomes the voice of a generation? The list must be two people long: Johnny Cash and Mike Rice. My generation of Blazer fans grew up on the man. He was the one telling us the stories on the radio when Blazervision held the games hostage, and he’s since moved on to amusing us on the television. For a generation of Portlanders under 25, Mike Rice is our friendly uncle. He shows up at our houses a few times a week, sits down, throws back a gin and tonic, and spins yarns (yeah, I said it, yarns) that composed of 10% fact, 20% BS, and 70% half-baked incoherence. He’s just a delightful scoundrel, always telling tall tales, and trying to figure out a way to golf for free. Sure, he occasionally embarrasses himself, pronouncing names wrong or descending deep into the woods of homerism, but that’s just the charm for us.
It was his history both with Portland fans and Javie that created that situation a week ago. He’s been wearing us down for years and years, constantly ingratiating himself through a series astute observations, X-factors, and vaguely sexual game commentary (”I love Jack off the bench,” “I’d love to get a better look at that young man’s legs,” anything about penetration) until everyone that enters the Rose Garden understands where he is coming from: the NBA is fun, it shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and any referee that screws up deserves to know about it. Rice did his part fifteen years ago, becoming the first announcer to be ejected from an NBA when he was kicked out by Javie. We continued his tradition that night. He’s done enough jeering and needling on our behalf through his career, and on that night, we returned the favor.
