The Sports Fanatic: Evolution at its Finest
(Do the Dodgers Really Suck?)
by Jamal Bernhard
The idea that a person sucks because the team he or she roots for loses is pretty sick and twisted when you stop and think about it.
Similar comments about the other team's fans are even more ridiculous. The idea that a person sucks because the team he or she roots for loses is pretty sick and twisted when you stop and think about it. Of course, I believe certain individuals and/or groups in professional sports (wife-beaters, racists, Turner, Disney, etc.) do indeed "suck", and the issues I have with them can make it difficult if not impossible to root for their franchise. (Don’t bother asking my opinion on resigning Kent.) Sometimes I even find myself questioning the psyche of those who do root for such teams, just as many ignorant people question how I could root for the Giants because of Barry Bonds.
But these feelings are all based on genuine philosophical and moral differences, and have nothing to do with winning and losing. It's similar to how I feel about those whose political views are different from my own -- my opinion of them does not change based on which candidate wins the election. And, I don’t generalize my hatred for Disney, for example, into a broad statement like, "The Angels suck!" or, "Angel fans are retards!" I just choose not to root for them and would rather they not win.
The obvious short answer, at least for me, as to why the real asshole fans make these types of statements is that they suffer from various forms of self-esteem crises and feel the need to put others down in order to feel better about themselves. But for the typical fan who gets overly caught up in the emotions of the game, the underlying psychology goes much deeper. I consider myself a rational, well-adjusted individual and I never, ever initiate any kind of smack talk, but damn if I don't get caught up in it when someone else decides to bring it! Some small part of me just will not stand for it, even though I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what the guy in the Dodgers jersey clutching a beer in each hand thinks of me or my team.
Healthy Emotional Involvement
As this year's baseball playoffs progressed, I began asking myself why I take Giants' successes and failures so seriously. I wasn't up for some big cash bonus if the Giants had won the Series. I got up and went to work on Monday after game 7 just as I would have had Rodriguez got Speizio out in game 6 (though I was probably more rested and less hung-over than I would have been). In fact, most people's daily lives don't change at all based on who wins. And, since no team wins the championship more than 50% of the time, getting so emotionally involved seems to be a recipe for more pain than happiness. Given that we know all of this, why do we continue to care so much?
After some soul searching, I came up with a handful of reasons why I get so emotionally involved in sports. I have listed a few of the reasons below that hit particularly close to home for me, and they may ring true for you as well. Of course, you may have other valid reasons for emotionally investing in sports, but the key point is that the responses below are natural, human reactions and can be very healthy ways to enjoy sports.
Increased Excitement
Watching sports is obviously more exciting when you have an emotional investment in the outcome. Your heart beats a little faster, and you move a little closer to the edge of your seat. It isn't often I watch a sporting event when I have no attachment to the outcome. I sometimes do it with baseball during the regular season, usually because someone is pitching that I want to see. Other sports I will watch during the playoffs without a vested interest because I enjoy seeing the sport played at its highest level.
But even in these cases, about half-an-hour into the game I often find myself emotionally invested in one of the teams (usually the underdog, but not always). Why do I do this? When it comes right down to it I don't care who wins, and yet my brain picks a side for me to sympathize with. I guess my brain knows that emotional investment leads to more excitement.
Sometimes halftime comes around and I still have no attachment to either team. In these cases I will continue to watch if the level of play is high. I got sucked into the World Cup for hours without any emotional attachment, for example, because I found the play so exciting. But often I will just turn the TV off at that point, even if it's the World Series.
More Familiarity = More Compassion
There are several reasons why we get to know some teams more closely than others. Location probably plays the biggest role. Local teams get more media coverage and their games are broadcast more often, so we naturally get to know them better whether we’re trying to or not. If it is a small town or a school team, we are more likely to actually know some of the players personally (or know people who know them).
Many fans also get increased enjoyment from knowing details of players' strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, and so forth, allowing them to get more involved in the mental aspects of the game and "play along at home". (This seems especially true in baseball.) Paying more attention to these details makes one more familiar with the team they are following.
Of course, being more familiar with a team does not necessarily imply increased emotional involvement, but it’s a natural reaction. The more we know about and understand the personnel of a team, the more likely we are to identify with and have compassion for them (just as we are more likely to have compassion for a friend who goes through a tragedy rather than a stranger who goes through the same tragedy, even though both tragedies may be equally deserving of compassion).
I have nothing against the Angels players and actually grew to like and respect some of them during the playoffs. But at the same time I felt much worse for the Giants players when they lost than I would have felt for the Angels players (which wouldn't have been much at all), because I didn’t have as much compassion for them.
I first came to grips with this phenomenon when I was in San Diego for ten years after being a die-hard Giants fan during my childhood. I attended games regularly at Jack Murphy (now Qualcomm), and after a few years of getting to know a lot about the San Diego players found myself rooting for the Padres (when they weren’t playing or threatening the Giants, of course). It wasn’t a conscious decision, and I was as surprised as anyone, but there you have it.
Of course, all of this is relative. I am more familiar with the Dodgers than I am with the Tigers, but you hopefully know how I feel about the Dodgers. Still, after getting to know more about the Dodger players (which happens when you live in Southern California), I found it harder to hate them as individuals (except for the assholes, of course) and fell back more on just hating the Dodger organization in general as an icon. So, I guess you could say I had more compassion for them because I was more familiar with them.
The Great Escape
Some people try to live through their kids, some try to live through their D&D characters, some try to live through Hollywood stars, and some try to live through professional athletes. Do you remember that TV ad for Upper Deck trading cards where the narrator talks about the greatness of pro athletes while showing great moments in sports (including a shot of Joe Montana with arms raised) and then the narrator ends with, "That's why we root for them...That's why we believe in heroes."? We love to live through our athletes.
In any case, the point is that Sports provides not only drama but also an escape from our everyday lives, where we can forget about who we really are for awhile and try to identify with those that do incredible things we wish we could do. When Barry hits that home run, it feels like I hit the home run. Man, I wish I could hit like that! Well, I at least I can get a partial feeling of what it's like to hit like that, because I can share his feelings.
I don't mean to portray this as a negative thing. Spending some time living through someone else can be fun and quite healthy, in fact. I'd certainly rather someone lives through professional athletes than through their kids!
Rational People, Irrational Behavior
So how does a healthy interest in sports and a celebration of competition denigrate into a narcissistic bashing of the other team and its fans? Why do well-adjusted individuals get caught up in the "us versus them" mentality (or even the "good versus evil" mentality) to the point where compassion for their team transforms into anger and hatred towards people they don't even know?
The short answer is: evolution.
At the risk of getting a little philosophical, let me explain what I mean. All humans go through various stages of psychological development on their journey from infant to adult. There are many ways to characterize this process of development -- let me briefly present one categorization of the different stages with a short description of each stage. I am not trying to over-generalize here. However, as the research on psychological development both around the world and throughout history continues to grow, a large body evidence supports the following two important points:
(a) Despite cross-cultural differences around the world, some fundamental stages of psychological development appear to be universal. (We are all human, after all.)
(b) The path of psychological development that individuals go through from infancy to adulthood tends to closely resemble the historical path of psychological development for humanity as a whole.
So anyway, here is one possible way to describe psychological development [1]:
Instinctual
Where seen: first human societies, newborn infants, starving masses
Magic
Where seen: young children, voodoo, superstitions and good luck charms
Egocentric
Where seen: feudal empires, the "terrible twos," "the Me generation," rebellious youth, gang leaders, James Bond villains
Mythic
Where seen: early nation states, totalitarianism, codes of chivalry and honor, religious fundamentalism, patriotism
Rational
Where seen: corporate states, the Enlightenment, colonialism, liberal self-interest
There are also additional levels of development beyond the "rational" level -- any time you analyze rationality itself, for example, you are operating from a higher level -- but for now I'll just stick to the ones above.
Here is the key point about these levels of development in relation to the psychology of sports fans: people are not simply at one level of development or another. A large percentage of the population believes both in rational science and the existence of a mythic God. Many people (especially sports fans) have superstitions that are Magic in nature. Lots of people preach universal principles of equality but act very Egocentrically in certain situations. Rational people frequently have non-rational emotional responses.
This type of seemingly contradictory behavior is so common because when we move to a new level of development, it's not like we just throw away everything from the previous level. That stuff remains a part of us and can still be triggered in various situations. People who have been stranded in the wilderness for any significant amount of time, for example, often show increased sense perception -- their "instinctual" level comes to the foreground.
Similarly, other types of situations can bring other parts of our psyche to the foreground. Perhaps you noticed while reading through the levels of development that many of the behaviors shown by intense sports fans and athletes -- belief in superstitions and good luck charms, the narcissistic bashing and devaluation of others, the "us versus them" or "good versus evil" mentality -- originate primarily from the Magic, Egocentric, and Mythic levels of development. Heated athletic competition seems to bring aspects of these levels to the foreground. But why?
I believe it is because both competition and physical challenges have a certain primitive nature to them that awakens these levels. I don't mean to use the word "primitive" in a negative sense here. By "primitive" I just mean that they trigger more instinctual, survivalist emotions, because physical competition has psychological links to times in our past where humans literally had to fight to survive.
When the athletes and teams that we identify with are threatened, we feel almost a personal threat to ourselves that influences our reactions. In a way, athletes are the gladiators of our time, and getting emotionally involved in athletics brings out a lot of the same feelings that were common throughout humanity during the period that gladiators were so popular. Of course, we sometimes see the same type of Magic/Egocentric/Mythic behavior in non-physical competition, but it certainly seems to be more common in athletics than it does in things like chess competitions or The Iron Chef.
Can We Avoid the Pain of Being a Sports Fan?
So does this mean that as sports fans we are all doomed to regressive behavior, and we'd be better off if sports didn't exist? Quite the opposite, in fact. Trying to repress or deny the existence of lower levels of development that are still a part of us can be just as unhealthy and dangerous as overly embracing them. In addition to the rational aspects of sports (one of the reasons I love baseball so much), sports help us get in touch with these other aspects of our psyche and "exercise" them, so to speak, which can be very healthy.
By the same token, as rational beings that have developed past these levels, we can recognize that our natural reactions when participating in sports are just that -- reactions. We know that our superstitions don't really alter the outcome of games. We know that the Angels are not really "evil" or less deserving of compassion. So, we can have these reactions, recognize them as natural and valid, and not get caught up in and persuaded by them to the point where they lead to narcissism, hatred, and so forth (which ultimately leads to our own unhappiness).
So, by being consciously aware of our thoughts while involved in sports, our involvement can be quite healthy. Being persuaded by all of our thoughts without analyzing them, however, can become unhealthy and lead to more suffering than happiness. Both the healthy and unhealthy aspects of being a fan, I believe, are a natural part of being human and should not be condemned per se, but this doesn't mean that we must become a slave to the unhealthy aspects and allow our involvement in sports to make us miserable. Life is hard enough as it is, and sports are supposed to provide us with entertainment and an escape from the drudgery -- they certainly don't have to add to it.
Footnotes
[1] This particular categorization of psychological development comes from the modern philosopher Ken Wilber, in particular his book A Theory of Everything. Wilbur's work centers around bringing together significant research from all fields of study to form a more integral theory of how the universe (including human psychology) operates.
Copyright ©2002 by Jamal Bernhard
Last updated 12/29/02