Why Does it Matter So Much?
by Gregg Pearlman
You really think you have an effect on the outcome of a game based on the sheer mental power of your will, don't you? What a bozo you are!
Now, sure, I could go on about what being a Giants fan means, or the tiny, dull ache that still lingers as a result of the nightmare ending to the 1993 season (to say nothing of the excruciating 2002 World Series), or the EEEEEE! philosophy, or even how awful Major League baseball has become in some ways, but I'd rather explore the subject of why one's rooting interest can be so all-consuming. And the answer is, I don't know.
Look, we all know -- and we don't have to dig deep to figure this out -- that sports and their teams and players really aren't all that high on the priority list. Among the billions of things that are more important to people are regular intake of oxygen, the requisite amount of sleep, and a reasonable sex life -- not that achieving all of these goals is a cakewalk for everybody. And we're not even talking about how important our loved ones are, or having an income, or just staying healthy. Indeed, there are places -- Spretzgrechknebtvisk, Switzerland, and Nokbukplang, Thailand, to name but two, assuming they actually exist -- where sports aren't even on the priority list. And yet to many, especially many Americans, sports is life or death.
You know something? I'm still pretty bent out of shape about the San Francisco 49ers' most recent heartbreaking loss. Trying to put it in perspective -- "It's only sports, for crying out loud!" -- doesn't help. Nor does applying one of the many watchwords of EEEEEE!, namely "Relevance problem: it's not the Giants." And that's the big one: It's not the Giants. It's only the 49ers. It's only football -- it's not like it's baseball or something. But I'm still very peeved at a loss that I pretty much expected anyway, and if I'm peeved, imagine how the serious die-hards feel.
Now, it's not like I'll hang onto that feeling for much longer. I won't be kicking my kid and yelling at my wife just because the 49ers lost -- nor indeed would I behave that way if it had been the San Francisco Giants -- but some people would. (Well, they'd kick their kids and yell at their spouses.)
Indeed, I managed to recover reasonably quickly from the Giants' horrific World Series loss. Granted, I was going nuts throughout the Series, and it's probably a good thing my bosses didn't require me to function at even a remotely adequate level in my job, because there was no way I was going to.
The funny thing was that my head was buzzing with, "What will I do if the Giants lose the World Series?" I asked myself this question with the same intensity I might wonder, after having awakened in the Arctic Ocean with no land or sailing vessel in sight, just what I would do if suddenly I was dragged under by my new pair of 250-pound cement overshoes.
"What will I do? What will I do?"
I didn't stop to think that the Giants had lost two World Series in my lifetime, so I had two experiences upon which to draw for guidance. I could've chosen the tack I took in 1962, which was to be two years old and not care about baseball in the slightest. Or, more realistically, I could have relived 1989 and said, "Well, we were never gonna beat those guys anyway." Either one would have been fine.
I finally came to the conclusion -- during the eighth inning of Game Six -- that if the Giants failed to win the World Series, I'd do exactly what I've always done: live my life. Nothing about the Giants or baseball would change, so why should my mindset or my sense of urgency? The Giants have always not won the World Series. The sun is always hot.
Yes, I still am plagued, two months after Game Seven, by the occasional stab of pain: "We had it in the bag! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!" And indeed the memory of the World Series loss is still painful. Still, somehow the loss didn't put me into the funk I expected. That's probably good.
This Way to the Ballplayer Canonization Ceremony
Sports and the teams and players who play them are capable of evoking such strong emotions in many of us that go way beyond mere star-struck hero worship. Years ago, EEEEEE! Contributing Editor David Beck and I went to a little brunch place where we saw Giants players Mike LaCoss and Mike Aldrete eating omelets, just like regular people. "My God," we thought, "that's Mike LaCoss! And Mike Aldrete! Wow!"
I mean, they may be great guys, for all we know, but they're just guys -- on this occasion, just a couple of hungry guys. Dave and I didn't attempt to talk to them. Was that because we didn't want to bother them? Or because we respected their privacy? Or because we were too shy? Or because we were starstruck? Maybe all of these. But these guys weren't superstar athletes. More to the point, they weren't (and probably still aren't) Nobel Prize winners; no cancer cures here. These guys didn't travel to the moon and map uncharted lunar territory, or scotch a potentially catastrophic outbreak of Ebola. They're not the guys who saved the lives of American presidents by wrestling James W. Hinkley or Squeaky Fromme to the ground.
These guys, and all other professional athletes, are not the guys who took six action-packed days and created the heavens and the earth and all therein -- but they're treated as though they are. And why? I don't know. Maybe we think that the better we treat them, the better they'll treat us. Of course, when all is said and done, we don't much care whether Mike LaCoss and Mike Aldrete are particularly nice to us; what we care about is whether they deliver on the field of play. That's how they make us feel good about ourselves -- or bad, as the case may be.
Which means, naturally, that we're a bunch of ninnies. Mike LaCoss, Mike Aldrete, Barry Bonds, Rich Aurilia -- these are just people who have families and jobs, just like the rest of us (who have families and jobs); these are just people who eat and sleep and walk and talk and burp and occasionally miss the cutoff man, just like the rest of us. These are people who are just as rude, crass, and flatulent as anybody, especially Aurilia. (Maybe. I don't know. I just made that last part up.) And yet we nearly deify them, all because they play a sport that matters to us more than attending PTA meetings and making sure we have adequate air pressure in our tires and cholesterol levels that don't worry our doctors.
What factors go into fandom? Love for a sport? Certainly. Regionalism? Sure, in many if not most cases. Wanting to fit in with family or peers? Absolutely. Vicarious thrill? You bet. Validation of oneself? Aha.
And the question remains: Why? In what way does a victory for the San Francisco Giants mean a personal victory for me, or you, or anyone else who isn't a San Francisco Giant? It doesn't. We just choose to attach such a meaning to it, even though we know it doesn't rate one.
Make a Wish
These are some traits of fandom I recognize in myself and others, to varying degrees:
Really. How many times have you sat there going, "C'mon, Barry! (Assuming the batter's name is Barry.) Park one! Pump one! Smoke one! Go deep! C'mon, dammit, hit a frigging home run, dammit! C'mon!" in your most earnest, pleading manner? And then you felt vindicated when Barry came through, didn't you? And when he didn't, did you blame him or yourself? (Try this one during Niners games when the other team has the ball: "Turnover... turnover... turnover....") You really think you have an effect on the outcome of a game based on the sheer mental power of your will, don't you? What a bozo you are!
Then again, when your team fails despite your best efforts, it's you who have let the team down, not the other way around, right?
"This Guy Sucks!" Boom!
Dave and I have this thing called The Earnest Ragging Principle, which we postulated in about 1987. It goes like this: In any given sporting event, if you criticize a player earnestly, he will, sometimes within seconds, come through for his team in a big way. The key here is that the criticism must be earnest and without forethought. It doesn't work if you just trash a player in a deliberate attempt to "wish" a positive result out of your team. It's useless to think, "Maybe if I rag on the guy, he'll hit a home run. You dork! I never liked you! You're a bum!" because you don't mean it, you know you don't mean it, and the criticism is premeditated. The god of the relevant sport will turn his or her back on you wrathfully, and your penance will be the failure of that player to further your team's cause. And believe me, the penance will be yours, not the player's.
You have to honestly think, or say, something like "Dammit, why won't you just produce? Geez, you've had, like, one clutch hit all year. Aah, forget it. This is a lost cause." Then you have to sulk a little. Then the Earnest Ragging works. But there is a caveat: Earnest Ragging won't work if you realize in midstream that you've been genuinely ripping someone; the mere realization immediately renders the criticism useless -- it's now contrived, even if it started off as deadly earnest. The gods of the relevant sport suss you out right away, go "Ha!" and roll a double-play ball, or an interception, or whatever will annoy you the most, with their celestial 12-sided dice. (Yes, they're 12-sided dice. Trust me.)
The corollary to this is the Earnest Praising Principle, which states that if you earnestly say nice things about a player without forethought (i.e., a conscious, up-front wish to suddenly extract a result that helps your team), he will fail miserably. A fine example is a genuine "Man, that Bonds can sure hit! Yes, sir, he can really wallop that ol' horsehide! No wonder pitchers are so afraid of him!" Strike three. Here's where this does not work: You're a Giants fan saying, "Boy, that [REALLY GREAT OPPOSING PLAYER]! I tell you, if I were starting a baseball team, he's the guy I'd start with. Yeah, that guy sure is a stud!" Next pitch: Boom! See, you've tried to confuse Baseball Gods, which is a no-no; that pesky god can see through your pathetic charade and will punish you tenfold. Trust me. I must say, though, that it works great if you honestly say, or think, "Man, I'm afraid of [SO-AND-SO]. Criminy, the guy's so good, and this team just can't get him out." That's when the guy will slap a grounder to second, thus signifying that the Baseball Gods have heard your prayer and were touched by it (not that you've won their favor for long).
This leads to Rule Number One (and this may be the only rule of being a sports fan): If you want your team to win, you must know how to appease the gods of whatever sport your team's playing -- but you must not be aware of the appeasement when you do it. Sports gods don't like being appealed to directly; nor do they appreciate attempts to ingratiate oneself. Sports gods are heartless, unfeeling bastards who dislike being called names and whose main goals in life are (a) to make you miserable, and (b) if they accidentally please you, to do so by making you look stupid -- i.e., by causing some guy about whom you've just said "What a leak!" to hit a home run or score a touchdown. Don't ask me how I know this. Just accept that I do, and move on.
Why are sports gods like this? Probably just to point out the enormous discrepancy between the importance we place on sports and the actual importance of sports. It's just the sports gods' way of telling us, "Look, screw this next pitch to Marvin Benard. Go memorize your kids' Social Security Numbers." The sports gods also know that they themselves are not very important; they occupy roughly the same place on the god scale as Dilbert's pointy-haired boss does on the corporate scale.
The difference between how important people think sports are and how important they actually are is still the crux, and we're still no closer to explaining it. Why are they so important to me? Well, I figure that an interest in sports, starting when I was around eight, was one way of maintaining a closeness with my dad. And let's not forget my peer groups. Back then it was important to the top dogs in my class that you played sports; being good wasn't a prerequisite -- being good was the top dogs' job. By the time I was ten, however, it became imperative to be good at sports -- at least good enough to be invited to play so that you could be ridiculed for not being good enough. And once the teen years hit, it became a little important to impress girls (as if), but that still wasn't a major motivator; the desire to be "one of the boys" was, along with genuine love for a sport. And underlying all this was the desire to prove -- with varying degrees of success -- that I was a reasonably good ballplayer, or at least not a terrible one.
As may be the case with millions of other guys, once I realized I wasn't really going to be a ballplayer -- and just because I've realized it doesn't mean I've fully accepted it, despite the fact that I rarely participate in sports anymore -- suddenly the professional teams I'd always rooted for became very important, especially the Giants. In fact, at age 21, I was shocked to find myself referring to the Giants as "we," which is a relatively recent affectation among sports fans.
"We"
So many people object to "we." I myself object strenuously when I hear a sportscaster drop a "we" when talking about the team whose games he's broadcasting. (I'm talking about, "Well, we need to win at least three out of four in this series to stay in the hunt," as opposed to, "Well, it was bad enough when our plane did a belly-slide across the runway, but the worst part was when we had to hang out at the baggage carousel for six hours and then come straight to the ballpark.")
Here is one of life's little certainties:
And here is another:
Where did the "we" affectation come from, anyway? Probably from high school or college sports, where it sort of makes sense because the players represent their school. But when we, the fans, say "we," is that what we mean? Do we really consider ourselves part of the team? Apart from the truth being more likely the other way around, I think we mean us, the fans. When we say, "We've got to win three games in this series," we mean, "We, the fans, need for our team to win three games in this series." We're talking about what we the fans want for us. And our team reflects us.
But rather than the fans being part of a team, I feel that the team belongs to the fans. That's why Dave and I often use the expression "Our Boys" when discussing the Giants. "Our Boys" is certainly proprietary, but at least it's less so -- or at least less vicarious -- than "we"; "Our Boys" carries, I'd say, roughly the same affection and proprietary feelings as when teachers refer to their students as "my kids." Won-lost records aside, we're proud of Our Boys; that's why we wear caps like theirs. We call them Our Boys because they're ours.
I do believe there's some level on which people treat you based on the success of your team, even though these people know as well as you do that your contribution to such success is nil. Maybe this is naive, but I'm guessing that such treatment is an attempt to relate on a personal level, to strike up conversations about a subject of interest, even if all they're going to do is give you some kind of grief about your team. (However, factor out the nonsense from invading trolls in team oriented Usenet newsgroups. That's almost excusively "You SF guys are a buncha homo losers!" -- only spelled much worse.) This makes us, for the purposes of such discussion, reflections of our teams.
That's why, for instance, I get annoyed when I hear, "Hey, Gregg, how 'bout them Giants? Hahahahahaha!" The team's success or failure, especially failure, is in some way a reflection on me, as if I have anything to do with it. When the team goes bad, my inference pretty much echoes, albeit more mildly, the sloped-foreheaded sentiments of the aforementioned trolls: "Your team is a bunch of losers, and if you root for them, you must be a loser." And it's not just my perception of what a taunter is saying; sometimes that's what he or she actually is saying. It's as if they're just as guilty of equating my interest in and support for a team with its success.
But the other side of that coin is, for example, people calling me on that October day in 1989 (no, not the day of the earthquake; not yet) to congratulate me for the Giants winning the National League pennant -- again, as if I had Thing One to do with it. (And it happened again in 2002, only this time I received some congratulatory e-mail as well.) Still, my response was, "Thanks." Some part of me felt appreciated for a job well done: I had supported my team through thick and thin, and now the fruits of my labor were realized.
And God knows I do whatever I can to help Our Boys win. When my team is at bat and the center-field camera shows a full-on view of the catcher giving signals, in my head I'll be shrieking, "He's gonna throw the fastball, Barry! He's gonna throw the fastball!"
Winnerism
I've come to believe that the main reason for the importance we attach to our sports teams and their players has to do with winning. It's like horse racing: we buy a racehorse, feed it, ride it, pet it, curry it, suffer tremendous asthma attacks (that's just me; I'm terribly allergic to horses), and grow to love it very deeply. But this is a racehorse, remember, so it's not enough to love the horse for itself; now that horse has to win. The horse'll lose sometimes, but the losses won't diminish the love you've already established. But you want it to win, partly so you can believe that the horse's success is due in some way to the love and care you've shown. (Then again, it's far more likely that you bought the creature in the first place solely because you want to win and make money, and that you have no actual feelings about the horse. Creep.)
More importantly, perhaps, we all want to win. Winning makes us feel special, even if it's a vicarious victory, one where you are not even the tiniest factor in the action. Remember when boxing was still considered a sport and used to be televised regularly? Otherwise gentle, peace-loving people would sit in front of their TVs, making little ineffectual punching motions, and exhorting their boxer of choice to knock the hell out of his opponent. When their boxer won, they won; when he was knocked out, they were knocked out. Winning was all that mattered.
Most of us work 40, 60, 80 hours a week. On Monday morning, after our two-day respite that seemed to last maybe twelve minutes, we're six feet tall, six-two in some cases. But come Friday afternoon, we return home to find that we've been beaten down to five-foot-three, and the last thing we want to do is lose at home, too. So we watch TV shows featuring attractive people doing interesting things and resolving problems in 30 or 60 minutes, firing off rapid quips, getting out of danger, and maintaining absolutely unrealistic standards of physical loveliness. And somehow we identify with these people whose lives are not at all like ours. Just as we don't want to work a full day and come home to watch stories about losers, we don't want to come home to watch our teams fail, either.
But this latter scenario is even more pronounced. It's way more important for, say, Kirk Rueter to drop a successful sacrifice bunt than for Ross to finally ensnare Rachel, or for Captain Whoever to defeat those harsh-skulled aliens while still managing to forge a bond of understanding with them, or whatever. And I don't know whether this is because we spend too much time losing, or just not enough time winning. All I know is, we just need to win, or at least to feel as though we've wone, and one of the most realistic ways to do so, no matter how much it skews our priorities, is to identify with a sports team that wins.
Giantsism
Unfortunately, we don't -- or can't -- all do that. (I'm a Giants fan, so I should know.) So here's where regionalism comes into play. Now, aside from the fact that the San Francisco Giants are the only baseball team it's absolutely correct to root for, why should I be a Giants fan? I mean, they hardly ever win anything close to a championship, and they always have inadequate pitching despite playing in a pitcher's park; in good years, they're a year or two away from winning it all. So what would make me a Giants fan? Well, I was born in San Francisco, as were my parents and sisters. Except for a school year in San Diego, I've always lived within about a hundred miles of San Francisco. The Giants were always on the radio when I was a kid, and after a while I was the one tuning in the games. My earliest memories involve the Giants in some way -- this was, after all, a time when the team was fairly new to these parts. The Giants clearly were a part of the family dynamic in some way, and today they're a family tradition. One of the first songs my son learned was "Bye-Bye Baby." I'm a Giants fan 'cause that's how it is. It's the only way.
My father recalls fondly that one day in the early to mid-'60s, as he'd just gotten home from work, and my mother made the point of saying, "Hey, Cepeda's batting cleanup." That's the story. And the reason it's a story is that it mattered to my mom who was batting cleanup, and she passed that information on to my dad because she knew it mattered to him. This story still warms his heart. I couldn't for the life of me imagine my wife, Kimberly, saying, "Hey, Santiago's batting cleanup," because her interest in baseball is almost entirely nonexistent. But this was my mom, whose interest in the sport existed but was peaked by my dad's, certainly, and also largely by the fact that the Giants were relatively new to the Bay Area -- and a good team.
(I should interrupt myself here to be more fair to my wife. She was -- inexplicably, even to this day -- caught up with pennant fever in 1989, and she used to enjoy going to the games with me, mostly so she could chat with someone else while I was watching. But she's very observant and insightful in general, and one day in 1990 she came into the living room to see that the TV was showing a closeup of Steve Bedrosian, who was trying (and failing) to pitch his way out of trouble. "He's got the Atlee look," Kimberly said. And she was dead on. Bedrosian looked scared, confused, diffident, and panicked -- in other words, just like Atlee Hammaker with a fast runner on first base. And now "the Atlee look" is lodged permanently in my lexicon of baseball expressions.)
I truly believe that a sports team represents its community, whether the actual players feel that way or not, and I just as truly believe that this is the primary reason teams should not move. I even believe it's wrong for the Giants to have come here after the 1957 season, because you just don't leave your community (not that I mind the Giants actually being here). The worst baseball offender -- the worst football offender, clearly, is the Raiders -- has to be the Dodgers, who so strongly reflected Brooklyn, and whose exodus, near as I can tell, ripped that community's heart right out.
But how do you explain a Pittsburgh Pirates fan who grew up in central California, had never been to Pittsburgh, and had no family members from Pittsburgh? That was Matt, my oldest friend, who passed away recently. He was a Dodger fan as a small child -- because his older friend Larry was. But when it came time to join the neighborhood baseball-card/dice-game league, Matt couldn't have the Dodgers because Larry already had them, so Matt opted for the Pirates, and rooted for that club for the 35 years that constituted the rest of his life. (I never joined the league, because if I couldn't have the Giants, I didn't want to play.)
So how did Matt's brother, Patrick, grow up a St. Louis Cardinals fan? Well, Pat's favorite player was Matty Alou, and his favorite team was the Pirates, like his big brother -- until Alou was traded to the Cardinals. And though Alou played for at least three other teams after that, Pat has remained a staunch (if vastly misled) Cardinals fan.
Not that either of these guys, as far as I'm concerned, ever had a leg to stand on in terms of rooting interest.
Armageddon
So we've explored regionalism and the influence of friends and family. But why does the Giants' success matter to me way more than to the rest of my family, including uncles, aunts, and cousins I've never met? I still don't know. Maybe my family needed a psychotic Giants fan, and I assumed that role. My dad is certainly very interested in the Giants, but especially sports in general, and we talk baseball a lot; I learn from him, he learns from me (I hope). My mom has more than a passing interest, and she certainly wants the Giants to win, but she doesn't exactly craft suicide notes when they don't. Of my two sisters, Deb is by far the bigger fan, but Karen enjoys going to ballgames also. But I'm the one who gets phone calls when the Giants do something good or horrid -- not them, unless I'm the one calling. Perhaps the best thing for me, recently, was learning from my dad that he's just as superstitious and nervous about the Giants as I am -- the difference between us being that he is able to exhibit at least a modicum of decorum. That is to say, he's far less likely than I to wear a Walkman in a staff meeting.
Maybe all this matters so much to me, and to many of us, because of a strong feeling of Good vs. Evil. To me, of course, Good is what the Giants represent; every other major league team, especially the Dodgers (but followed closely by the Diamondbacks), represents Evil. You think it's any accident that some broadcasters (I'm thinking here of Monte Moore, though I wish I weren't) refer to their team as "The Good Guys"?
There's Evil all around us, as we all know. The papers are full of murders, rapes, conspiracies, horrendous acts of terrorism, political maneuverings -- we can't get away from Evil. Now, granted, most of us don't think in terms of Good and Evil, and for the most part, neither do I. But except for those of us who are evil, we all want Good to triumph -- and that doesn't seem to happen, at least not enough. I mean, some evil murderer is brought to justice and executed; has Good triumphed?
And this, I think, is part of the desire to win, the desire for Ross to finally secure Rachel, or for Captain Picard to get de-Borgified, or for all the townsfolk of Bedford Falls to help out George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. We want good things to happen to good people -- or, at least, to reasonably good people, which is how I imagine many of us envision ourselves. Now, granted, in the long run, no one cares about these fictional people, maybe because their stories have discernible beginnings, middles, and ends.
Ballgames, and seasons, also have discernible beginnings, middles, and ends, but at the end of a game, no one lives happily ever after; nothing is settled. Either there's another game tomorrow (or next week), or there is no tomorrow, as with a Super Bowl or the last game of a World Series. And even after that last game, it's time for a team to stow its gear and prepare for next year. Whether they're the players or the people calling the shots, they still have to go to work. So there's a feeling of perpetuity to sports that you just don't get with, say, a fictional TV series or a movie.
Professional team sports are like those cultural myths where sunrise, sunset, and the passage of days are represented by some guy chasing the sun goddess across the sky. Or something. Or maybe the whole thing is like planting crops, nurturing them, harvesting them, then letting your field lie fallow for a while. In other words, for continued want of a really effective simile, they're cyclical. And every new sports season brings with it new hopes and expectations -- which, if you're a Giants fan, are usually dashed pretty early (or if not early, as painfully as possible). And every year our heroes prepare to do battle. Sure, they may be different from last year's heroes, but they're wearing the appropriate uniforms, and that's what counts.
And maybe we think of our teams as Good (assuming we do; I mean, I can't speak for everybody) because of the way we feel they reflect on ourselves, and we like to think of ourselves as Good. And if you're not part of our team, or our fan base -- that is, if you're not "of the body," as Star Trek's Landru worshippers said -- then you're the enemy. And the enemy, basically, is Evil.
Look at war, why don't you? (And while we're at it, let's note that the lack of "popular" wars may well contribute to the importance of professional sports in society.) Not that I'm suggesting this as a course of action, but let's say (first pretending not to have rather more pressing international problems as it is) we go to war with, oh, a triumvirate of countries whose inhabitants speak Romance languages. Now, here, today, in 2002, we don't have much against the French, the Italians, the Spanish, but when this war starts, all of a sudden the people of these three nations (which we may call The Evil Empire) will be The Enemy, and we'll call them the Spluds, or something, in an attempt to dehumanize them and ignore the fact that they bleed just as red as we do.
Same thing with sports, really, only the word for The Enemy or Evil is "Dodgers." Now, after Giants-Dodgers games, I don't personally hang out near the Dodgers' team bus, glower at Dodger personnel, and screech, "Fester in Hell, you malevolent, pus-ridden subhumans!" No, I just exhort Our Boys to kick some Dodger butt. I have nothing personal against any players on the Dodgers, or any other team; but while they're out on that playing field, I have these feelings of xenophobia: while it's just not my style to boo or otherwise verbally abuse any ballplayer, sometimes I do actually narrow my eyes at opposing players with distaste -- even while watching the games on TV. The reason for that is very simple: in my primitive Good vs. Evil mindset, if you ain't with us, you're agin' us. And I've often said, more or less, that when a player joins the Giants, he immediately becomes one of the beloved; the second he leaves, he immediately becomes an outcast, one of the untouchables -- or just somebody to ignore. And I will feel this way no matter how well I know rationally that these are just a bunch of ballplayers, and seemingly mercenary ones at that. It's just force of habit. (And the truth is, I continue to follow players I like with mild interest. For a little while.)
In fact, it's kind of a game, and I participate by putting on a mask, or a whole uniform, of hatred -- or, at least, extreme dislike. Two friends and I actually went to the trouble of donning eye-black for one of the 1989 NLCS games. Sure, we looked ridiculous (especially Ed), but we felt we had a role to fulfill, and uniforms to wear, just like Our Boys. It was kind of like dressing up for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Now, why did we really do this? Did we undergo some elaborate, prebattle tribal ritual in dabbing shoe polish (really!) on our faces? (And my skin reaction couldn't've helped in my job interview the next day.) Were we trying to somehow impress anybody, either the Giants or their fans? Nah; we did it for us. We were just being supportive. Sure, we showed that support in a monumentally silly way, but we showed it nonetheless. But the support was partly manifested in extreme dislike for the Chicago Cubs for that day.
And said dislike extends to fans, of course. When I see someone just wearing a Dodger cap, I instantly lose a little respect for that person, even if that person is a total stranger. I often joke about how, if I were a hiring manager, all a candidate would have to do is claim Dodger fanhood, irrespective of positive qualifications, and I'd start typing up the rejection letter as he or she sat in my office. Even though I know that's silly, I still feel that way. I used to have a fairly frequent correspondence with a former Giants newsgroup regular, someone I'd characterize as funny, kind, and positive. He was always supportive of EEEEEE!, which never hurt my feelings any. This is a nice, rational, intelligent person, a passionate baseball fan who knows his sport very well, and someone who's not afraid to tease me or give me grief when I say something whiny or provincial. He's a Dodger fan, though, and despite all his positive qualities, it required some effort on my part not to reject his opinions out of hand. But that was just my heart talking, not my head. Luckily, I was able to put aside my ancient "racial" bitterness and actually pay attention, with interest, to what he said. But I'm sure -- at least I hope, just because misery loves company -- that many fans experience similar ambivalence.
I do the same thing when I see people smoking. They might have presented themselves as smart, interesting, pleasant, worthy individuals, but the instant I see them with a cigarette, their opinions suddenly matter a little less -- even though my wife, my parents, and some of my friends are former smokers, and other people for whom I have a high regard still smoke. It's just one of my prejudices, and to what I hope is my credit, when I recognize this reaction in myself, I make a conscious effort to knock it off and listen to these people, because I might learn something.
The reason I make that effort is that I know that smokers and Dodger fans are not inherently evil on the basis of being smokers or Dodger fans. But I associate Dodger fans with -- obviously -- the Dodgers, and, on some level, to me, the Dodgers represent Evil, no matter how inherently "good" their employees or fans may be, and no matter how silly such association seems in the light of day.
Because We Want It
Dave and I, over the past several years, have come to the conclusion -- in what we hope is somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion -- that sports-related things don't go our way precisely because we want them to. We want the Giants to win a pennant, then maybe the World Series; "Nope," say the Baseball Gods. "You're Gregg (or Dave, as the case may be), so you can't have it."
It's first and goal at the seven. The 49ers and their opponents are tied at 21. There are two minutes and 48 seconds to play. The 49ers decide to run three plays into the line, then kick the 23-yard field goal. "Why?" I'll whine. "Why the hell didn't they go for the touchdown? Why did they play it so conservative? Why the 'one-run' strategy?" The Football Gods, at ear-shattering volume, say, "Because, Gregg, you want the touchdown."
The Warriors draft Penny Hardaway and trade him to the Magic for Chris Webber. Webber, after less than a season, becomes disruptive to the extent that every single team weakness is exposed, and the team is entirely torn apart and has shown no signs of recovering in the eons since. Why? "Because, Gregg, you want the Warriors to win."
Why must my team keep bunting with fast men on second, or even on first? Why must my team be unable to make player transactions that seem to make sense? Why must my team fail to win with a frequency that I would at least find satisfying? Why can't my team win an effing World Championship? "Because, Gregg, you would be pleased, and we can't have that!"
The sports gods simply don't like me. I know this because the Baseball Gods alone all wear Dodger caps and bear the faces of my second-grade teacher, my high school baseball coach, and my horrific boss from the early '90s.
Now, let's put aside, if we can, the notion that I am evidently raving like a paranoid nutball with unbelievable delusions of what I'm pretty sure is the opposite of grandeur; Dave and I are actually kidding about the "I can't have it because I want it" thing. That is to say, we hope we're kidding. It's just sarcasm and bitterness talking. And in a way it makes it both more frustrating and more fun to personalize the failures of our teams.
Toward this end, I once sent a letter to Dave, ostensibly from the Kansas City Chiefs (who, inexplicably, are his favorite football team, though the Niners rank a close second), thanking him for his long-standing support, but noting that the failure of the team to win championships is due entirely to that support, and asking (in a not entirely nonthreatening way) that he find another team to love. To his credit, Dave has failed thus far to reciprocate with letters from Giants, 49ers, and Warriors brass asking me to leave the San Francisco Bay Area, burn all of my relevant team paraphernalia, and go root for my erstwhile teams' most bitter rivals.
Even so, when Troy Glaus hit what effectively was his Series-winning double, Dave, over the phone, said, "What happened? What'd I miss?" He explained that he'd been hanging up a shirt, and I said, "Well, that's why Glaus got the hit."
"Thanks," Dave said. "After all these years, I finally was able to believe that I have no effect on the outcome of my teams' success, and now you're reinforcing the fact that I have. Thanks piles. I then chuckled, mostly for the purpose of making him believe, wrongly, that I was just teasing him.
Indeed, we're just poking fun at ourselves for the nearly obsessive nature of our fandom and at the very thought that we might have even the tiniest effect on our teams' success or lack thereof. Hank Greenwald once told a story on the radio about his daughter exhorting him to make the Giants win. His reply, of course, was, "I can't. I don't have anything to do with whether they win or lose." Still, I swear I thought, "What do you mean you can't? C'mon, Hank! Get on the stick!" I mean, God knows I can't make them win.
Remember when we nearly lost the Giants after the 1992 season? For many of us, the One Big Wish was that the major league owners would somehow reject the proposed move to St. Petersburg. Our wish was granted, but was that because the Baseball Gods smiled upon us? Of course not. They're heartless bastards; haven't you been paying attention? No, the Baseball Gods know that if our teams move away, we won't be able to agonize over their failures. This is why it's okay to pop someone in the jaw for saying, "What are you complaining about? At least you still have your team." And then you can kick them in the shins.
And, at that, explaining the importance of sports teams is roughly akin to rationalizing feelings. We just can't do it. We'll feel however we're going to feel; it's not wrong to feel any particular way, and we can't really control how we feel, so how do you expect us to rationalize it? But with sports, teams, and players, it is occasionally demanded of us -- well, of me, anyway -- to explain their importance. I can discuss it as I have here, and maybe that will help to understand some of the elements of a "relationship" with a sports team, and maybe it even partly answers the "why?" question, but it certainly doesn't provide a definitive "because" answer.
And what if I ever did encounter a definitive "because" answer that I could really sink my teeth into? Would this change me? Would the Giants matter less? At first glance I tend to think not, but I've noticed that, in spite of myself, they do.Well, it would be more accurate to say that the Giants matter no less than they always have, just that the more important things matter even more. I think, though, that sports teams matter so much because sometimes it's infinitely easier to focus on their problems than our own.
That's a Different Kind of "Bonds"
Dave theorizes that we're put on Earth to form bonds and participate in relationships. In some cases, he says, people "bond" with sports teams because their own interpersonal relationships are too few and unsatisfying. But what about those of us whose relationships are just fine? Wouldn't this suggest a lack of need for a "relationship" with a sports team?
I don't think sports team fandom is as simple as that, or even very strongly related to the degree of satisfaction of our interpersonal relationships. I think it's a different animal entirely, and one -- despite thousands of words of effort so far -- that is difficult to explain, possibly because of the tendency to view it in terms of those interpersonal relationships. That's why admonishments to put things into perspective are so useless. It's not something you can simply relate to how much you love your spouse or kids or parents or siblings, and leave it at that.
Part of the problem is that we know, objectively, that on the grand scale of things in each of our lives, sports and their teams and players aren't at all important, except to the folks in the business of sports. We've all read about players who missed the birth of a child because they had a game that day, and I for one would like to believe that there aren't any fans who'd place a sporting event (or even their own jobs) over their kids' births either, but I don't have much faith in that. I mean, when my wife was in labor with our son, Adam, you bet I wanted to know how Our Boys were doing. Sure, my priorities were my with my wife and son; and I don't remember thoughts of the Giants creeping into my mind while I was in the delivery room. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I'd periodically asked my dad what the score was, but my thoughts, concerns, and prayers were with Kimberly and Adam. At one point Kimberly banished me from the delivery room (no, not because I was driving her crazy with Giants stuff, so stop thinking that) so I could take a little break. I sat on a couch in a waiting room where my father and brother-in-law were watching the Giants lose to the Florida Marlins. About ten minutes later, Dad had to poke me in the ribs because I was snoring too loud. Yes, I was exhausted -- this was at about 4 p.m., after we'd been in the delivery room since midnight -- and yes, I was interested in the game, but I really wanted to be in the delivery room with my wife, at least holding her hand or something, because that's what really mattered.
Still, in one of the first-ever pictures of Adam, he's wearing my ever-present radio headphones.
So while the most important parts of my life are what should be the most important parts of my life, namely my loved ones (and even, believe it or not, my job -- or, at least, the idea of contributing toward the support of my family), the Giants still rank pretty high, no matter how egregiously insane this sounds. Or is. Even though they're just a baseball team, a bunch of guys who, as Dave says, pick their noses one nostril at a time, who play a game for a living, whose function (in my life, anyway) is mere entertainment, they're way further up my list of things to be concerned about than, say, the national debt or the ozone layer.
There's a sort of "thereness" about the Giants that I find comforting. It reminds me of a co-worker many years ago who was upset upon learning of the death of Lucille Ball; "It's not that she was a favorite of mine or anything," he said, "but she was always there." And so it is with the Giants. And so it is with my loved ones, of whom there are many. Even the ones who've passed on are still "there," not that I handle losing them particularly well, but I guess you could say I believe in them, and I consider them a part of me. And somehow the Giants have managed to attain that status as well, not that they did so on purpose. They're not nearly as big a part of me as any given loved one, but they're sort of a loud part, and to deny them that "parthood" would be a lie. I can't help it, and, strangely enough, I enjoy it.
Copyright ©2002 by Gregg Pearlman
Last updated 12/30/02