SCHEITRUM: Words from the wise

PHILADELPHIA (by way of New York) ‘- We won the World Series. As of right now, one week after Brad Lidge’s slider sliced the cold Philadelphia night, falling under Eric Hinske’s flailing bat and sending the residents of the city into a long-awaited exorcism in the form of screaming and drinking anything they could get their hands on, climbing light poles, falling off those light poles, tipping cars, crying and hugging and calling every single person they’d ever watched a game with to tell them they love them and how they were, setting fire to various sections of the city, those five words still don’t feel right to me. Like new jeans. Or, in the case of an old baseball teammate who had to rush to catch a van in the morning, the wrong jeans.

As a lifelong Philadelphia fan, I’d known nothing but losing, like so many of the people I grew up with. Well, that and spite. Lots of spite. The kind of spite that makes any fan in a Mets, Cowboys or Giants jersey a likely target for a nacho cheese attack. And now, as non-losers (not yet winners, of course ‘-‘- you need more than one for that), we’re not quite sure how to deal with it.

But we’re getting there, slowly. And one of the best ways to deal, we’re finding, is to look back and take stock of what’s come before, to ‘own’ those losses, as shrinks tell people on couches. To pump up the good with pain of the bad, but also to try to digest the wisdom gained from our time as losers ‘-‘- wisdom gained in the time when we weren’t throwing nacho cheese at things ‘-‘- that brought us to where we are now.

So this column ‘-‘- this borrowed space in a place where I used to write stuff this bad a lot more often ‘-‘- isn’t about the Phillies, after all. That was always our policy at DFP sports: Keep things local, keep things relevant. So here, looking back on the last 23 years of life, I’ll focus on the things I learned in the four that were the most enjoyable and, because of that, by far the most blurry.

If there’s any supreme rule in Boston University sports, it’s go to hockey games. As many as you can, as often as you can. It doesn’t matter if you’re CAS, CFA, SMG or on the two-schools-a-year track. Doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen hockey before. Doesn’t matter if you don’t even like sports, although if that’s you, you should reconsider. It’s an experience you won’t ever have again.

Go to as many hockey games as you can because almost nothing for the rest of your life will mean so much to so many people in a small area and absolutely nothing to most people outside of it. Unless you join a really extreme book club. The people here are those, as Kerouac said, ‘the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk,’ and nobody talks like a BU hockey fan.

And don’t just go to BU/BC and the Beanpot. That’s like going to just Christmas and Easter Mass and pretending to be a good Christian, or watching only the second season and pretending to be a real fan of The O.C.

Also, on the note of hockey: If you can afford it, buy a BU jersey. If you can’t afford it, make a friend at the bookstore and have them buy it with a discount. One of the best compliments this fanbase ever got was after the 2005 Beanpot when Jack Parker said in the press conference that he was amazed at how everybody in our section was wearing jerseys and all they had in the BC section were those Superfan T-shirts. BU jerseys are the difference between obsession and interest.

After hockey games, go to Ashford Street (or thereabouts) parties. Nothing so teaches someone the art of sales as when you’re one of 10 guys trying to negotiate your way into a party. I think I once offered to do a guy’s stats homework.’

Seriously, go to Ashford Street parties. The stories you’ll tell about the filth and joy of these debacles will far exceed any that you’ll get from skipping over to MIT parties or trying to use your older brother or sister’s fake ID and getting into The Joshua Tree.

And study. But not too hard. No amount of cramming will keep Chaucer or Thucydides or the makeup of organic compounds in your head longer than a good story.

You’ll never have a time in your life that’s better suited to making friends. A lack of responsibility, only about 20 hours of commitment a week and a pretty awesome meal plan all amount to incubators of friendship.

But above all at BU, do something. Anything. Don’t expect people to create a life for you. Do anything, really, anything that gives you joy as long as it involves working with people who also have a passion for it. Join a club. Join six of ’em. Hell, write for this paper. This isn’t a school, as you’ve found out, where you’ll be coddled ‘-‘- where you’ll have your hand held for four years as frats and sororities and student activities committees plan every moment of your social life.

That’s where this school is at its best: It forces you to craft a life for yourself. And if you’re up to the task of going out and doing that, you’ll thank BU for helping you grow into yourself ‘-‘- even if you don’t oblige its weekly requests for money.

Kevin Scheitrum, a 2007 graduate of the College of Communication, is a former sports editor and men’s hockey beat reporter for The Daily Free Press. He currently lives in a tiny apartment in New York and can be reached at kevin.scheitrum@gmail.com.