Why Sports?
And not…politics.
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot over the past month. It has led to more questions. Why use up precious nights and weekends staring at a TV? Why walk around in a daze after sleepless nights of sport watching? Why get a warning from your watch that your heart rate is too high even though you haven’t moved from your couch for two hours? Why yell at the TV as if they can hear you? Why stick to a psychotic superstitious ritual (like a taking a shot every time Aaron Judge is due up, for instance)? Why put so much weight of your joy and happiness on the outcome of an event you have no control over? Why invest? Why sports?
I’m not writing this to convince anyone to put down politics, or video games, or anything else people become rabid over to pick up a favorite sports team. I do not recommend falling in love with anything you have no control over (except if it’s a person, of course). I’d rather use my spare time to write, to do something I love that I can control, but I am riddled with the disease of sports addiction. I wouldn’t want anyone to end up like me - that being someone who has found themselves checking their phone before they go to bed and when they wake up to see if Juan Soto has signed with any major league baseball team. Yet, I feel the need to come to my own, and sports, defense.
Maybe I am writing this to make myself feel better. To convince myself that time wasted watching sports isn’t time wasted at all. To spell out why there is something deeper to sports than just cheap athletic entertainment. We’ll see if I can prove it in the following paragraphs. But as every fan knows when they tune into a game, there is a feeling that what they are about to watch is bigger than sports.
Love & Hate
Sports undoubtedly give us the two deepest emotions we know as humans – love and hate. A detractor might say us sports fans are just loving or hating different colors, jerseys, cities, states, or players – but this isn’t the case at all. Us sports fan know different. When I turn on the TV to watch a Philadelphia Eagles game I am not rooting for my colors to beat your colors or I suddenly became an Eagles fan because I am a Saquon Barkley fan and followed him to the Eagles when he left the New York Giants. In fact, just a short year ago I rooted against Saquon Barkley for being a New York Giant. And it’s not like I personally know the owners of the Philadelphia Eagles. At any point they could up and sell the team and ship them out to Las Vegas like they did to those poor Athletics.
Sure, my dad growing up in Pennsyltuckey had something to do with my Eagles fandom, but I don’t live there and I am still a die hard. Why?
I think it has something to do with memories and experiences. I don’t remember when I “became” a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles. But what I do remember is the fire burning every Sunday in the home I grew up. The house smelled like my mom’s cooking. The comforting voices of the Eagles television announcers rang out and my dad and I sat in front of the TV watching a game that equally meant everything and nothing to us. We had all we needed around us. A house, food, comfort, family – and yet we both worked ourselves up into a frenzy based on whatever was going on during that game. And, as a kid, I yearned to see the joy on my dad’s face when the hapless Eagles finally won a ball game. I hated to see him dejected in his recliner like the dad in Silver Linings Playbook on many occasions. It was Go Birds for him and it’s Go Birds for me. Forever.
Knowing all that, what could make me hate another person for having the same memories and experiences for another team? What could make me hate a player on an opposing team? Well – my experiences vs. theirs. My memories vs. theirs. My fandom vs. theirs. My ideas vs. yours. My vision vs. yours. My team vs. yours. Me vs. you. It really gets down to the heart of human experience. Sure, at the end no one dies, but if that doesn’t sound a tiny bit like tribal warfare, I don’t know what does.
Just as with politics, any good rivalry has two teams and fanbases that hate each other, but the difference is that the two teams in politics SHOULD come together at the end for the good of the greater team, for the country itself. This never happens with sports. There is no good of the greater team. It is always us vs. them. For now, forever. And so, I would never hate someone for who they voted for…but I can’t promise I won’t hate you if you route for the Dallas Cowboys. Yuck!
The Fruition
As an ex-athlete I understand that maybe, just maybe I’m taking the fandom thing a little too far. The people on the field usually work their ass off, try as hard as they can to win, and if they don’t they move on. The professional athletes also get paid a bajillion dollars to do what they do, so why should they care about winning and losing? They’ll be rich before, during, and after the game and that’s all that matters, right? Wrong.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
Because why do grown ass men cry after winning a big game? Why do they sulk in interviews after losing? You think they do it to play nice for the fanbase? To show random people that watch them play that they really do care? Abso-fucking-lutely not. These professionals give a shit because THEY feel what WE as fans feel. They feel it even more so. They are in it. They are the ones in the trenches. They are the ones putting their bodies on the line. And they are the ones that have given their entire life to be the best at what they do and then, after hundreds of thousands of hours of sacrifice, when they finally accomplish the biggest feat they have ever dreamed of (or fall short) they are overcome with emotion. Shit, if I ever got that email that my novel was going to be published I’d look like this too…
But sports are even different than that. Sure, I sacrificed hundreds of thousands hours to write, but no one else did. There wasn’t the team aspect where everyone sacrifices to come together to make this one thing happen. Fanbases are just teams, rooting for teams. It doesn’t matter how old, experienced, or how much you get paid to really understand The Fruition of which I speak. An example occurred yesterday.
My wife and I were driving and she randomly said, “I can’t believe she did it.” Her eyes were wet and she got so choked up that she could barely finish the sentence. The day before she had received pictures and videos of her niece making it to nationals for cheerleading. My wife has never cheerleaded (cheerled?). My wife never so much as attended a team sporting event until I dragged her ass to a Notre Dame game. Yet she was still overcome with emotion when she saw two separate videos:
1 – my niece bawling her eyes out because her team of bases dropped a flyer, ruining a perfect routine.
2 – my niece’s team losing their mind in joy when they came in 3rd, despite the mishap, sending them to nationals.
My niece is 9.
The lows, the highs, The Fruition of all the work and sacrifice coming together. Falling. Getting up. You can’t write better theatre than sports.
Sports Don’t Lie
The most important case for sport is the truth of it. That’s right. Sports are the truest form of entertainment there is. Sports are truer than the news (LOL), than history, than books, than movies, than television shows, than all of it.
I remember when I would get high in college (sorry mom) and watch a movie and think, this is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. That’s just Denzel Washington PRETENDING to be a gangster. That is just Russel Crowe PRETENDING to be a cop. This isn’t real.
There is none of that feeling when you’re watching sports. The highs, the lows, and most importantly the outcome are exactly what they are. There is no contesting it, there is no changing it, the final stat line is what it is and it stays that way forever. No one remembers second place. You win or you lose. Binary as computer language.
And if you compare sports realness to political realness, well that’s where you get the biggest laugh of all.
Two candidates get on stage and lie continuously and everyone says, well, that’s just politics! Nothing to see here! Whoever tells the better lies get elected and runs the country! Woohoo! Sure, politics is a competition. Whoever has the better lies vision for the country wins. And sure, some wackos can be seen crying when their candidate loses.
Though the lady above looks pretty upset, you can tell this is fake. If you saw me staring at the ceiling during the top of the 5th inning in game 5 of the World Series, spiraling into a comatose like state, you would have at least seen honesty. Nothing pulls a truer emotion out of people than sports. And as a sports fan, we know this intuitively. Why else would we watch? Why else would we let it overtake our lives? Why else would we come back, year in and year out, to put all of our emotions on the line? Because sports are real and people like real.
P.S. – Sports don’t lie…except when the Astros cheated
P.P.S. – I know as an Eagles fan many of my compatriots have been absolutely grotesque in their fandom behavior. Though I do NOT condone throwing snowballs at Santa or pummeling an opposing team’s bus, I certainly understand the feeling…
P.P.P.S. – Yes, I’m still reeling over the Yankees World Series loss.
P.P.P.P.S. – But I think I am finally mentally over it (and physically over taking a shot every time Judge was due up) enough to get back on my regularly scheduled posts. Thanks for reading.
I didn't know you were a Philly fan... I take back all the nice things I said. 😂
Another member of the bird gang Alex, awesome! And I really enjoyed reading this. FWIW whenever some Midwesterner uses the “you guys threw snowballs at Santa” argument for how bad we Philly fans are I am happy to inform them that Santa was drunk. And therefore deserving of said snowballs!