For Milwaukee-born writer Ben McCormick, it took moving thousands of miles away from Cream City to become a Milwaukee Bucks superfan.
“It was when I left the city that I really started to pull on some different parts of my identity as a Milwaukeean or a Wisconsinite, and the Bucks were one of those,” McCormick told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
McCormick said the Bucks’ 2021 NBA championship run was a lifeline as his romantic relationship frayed and his brother welcomed a daughter, Kaylee.
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“I was on a futon in the second bedroom of an apartment I was sharing with somebody I had moved to Oregon with. We had only a futon in there and a TV,” McCormick said. “I moved to Portland, and I had this life that was topsy-turvy, but I could close that door and transport myself back to being in Milwaukee in a different way.”
McCormick said this urge to leave — in his case, to write his own “Great American Novel” — is a conflict that goes beyond Milwaukee or Wisconsin.
“I think that there’s a duality that people who are from the Midwest feel about this urgency of things that are happening in New York or in Los Angeles, and that I want to be a part of that,” McCormick said. “But then you also feel this intense pride (that) what’s happening here is really important, and it’s something that is as vital.”
McCormick writes in a new book, “In the Room at the Top of the World,” about heartbreak and change, as he reflects on how the Bucks’ NBA title run brought him closer to family and friends.
He told “Wisconsin Today” about his changing relationship with his hometown and what the Bucks mean to him today, as Milwaukee opens its season Wednesday night.
The following was edited for clarity and brevity.
Rob Ferrett: People may be hearing this and thinking, “Oh, this guy is a fair-weather fan. He jumps into this championship run. He’s a writer looking for something to write about.” As I read your writing about basketball, that is not the case. You are really invested in watching the Milwaukee Bucks play.
Ben McCormick: One thing that I realized during that run, and for every season that I’ve watched them over the course of my life, is that I feel real emotion about those games. And I think fans do get really bummed out if your team has a heartbreaking loss. You get truly elated and it affects you when you win.
What I realized was that the Bucks became this conduit, this highway that I could just go and traverse in an instant between myself and my family and Milwaukee and my own identity in some ways. So yes, I am a guy who has seen every minute of preseason basketball this season. I watch every single game, and it’s something that is always transporting me back to who I think I used to be. Also, it keeps me in touch with the person I am here today. And when thinking about whether or not I’m still a Milwaukeean and or a Wisconsinite, it makes me feel like the answer is always “yes.”
RF: You write how this historic title run for the Milwaukee Bucks brought you closer to your friends and family. How so?
BM: I wasn’t necessarily coached to talk about my emotions or my feelings, or to share those things very openly, especially like growing up as a male. Sports kind of became this filter through which, especially in that run, that you could really strengthen truly real human ties with people through something beyond words. It was beyond language or numbers or social media. It became easy for us to find things that we have in common and be really proud and joyous all together in a community space. That run shapes so much of how I view the world now, in terms of the importance of sharing emotions and joy in community with other people.
RF: Your book is very focused on the changing relationship you have with your home. Your last essay in the book is written in the form of a letter to your niece. In it, you’re talking about home. You wrote, in part, “Home is not a place that’ll always be the same and is never a single person. The way we tend to think about home is more of an area at a specific point in time when it’s really a living organism.” Expand on that.
BM: I’m the only member of my family who lives outside of 10 minutes away from each other. I am not there every single day, and so I leave the city and I’ll come back three months later, things will be so different. And what I’ve also realized is that over the course of the time, I change as well.
So there’s a wrestling that anybody who leaves home has to do. When I go back home, am I in better touch with the place that I left in the memory that I had? Or am I able to love this place on its own terms, for who and what it is? And for the explosion of emotions that I felt over the course of that time — and that I’ve felt since living here in Oregon away from home — I think I’ve gotten a lot better at loving the city as it is and in the way that it evolves, through its people. The people age, the people change, and I think I can love them in their own way.
