Pressdog.com

Sports Freaks Need to Get a Grip

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 10/20/03)

To all sports fans who think they know everything about everything and that the outcome of a three-hour game comes down to one decision/action/inaction by a fan/coach/player/referee:

Shut up.

You’re embarrassing yourselves, OK? But, on second thought, thanks for reinforcing my growing belief that sports have gotten way, way, way, way out of perspective in American life.

Just look at all the caterwauling and bawling and self-flagellation going on in Boston and Chicago. You’d think the Pope had been assassinated on the steps of City Hall or something.

Geez. Get a grip. It’s just a game. Simmer down. Sun still rises if your team doesn’t win. If they do win, the fans get drunk for a night, buy a ton of WORLD CHAMPION logo merchandise and then immediately start obsessing on winning it all again.

Besides, this way the Cubs and Red Sox fans will continue to get the huge pub they’ve been getting about this and that "curse." From a pure publicity standpoint, losing probably will get the Cubs and Sox much more media than winning. Winning the World Series would pretty much end the Cubs' reign as the best bad team in baseball. They’d have to get rid of that goofy clock thing they have at Wrigley that reminds everyone just how long it has been since they won this or that.

Same deal for the Red Sox. It seems to me maybe some of their fans don’t want to give up that certain cachet that comes with being one of the "long-suffering." In my 30 years as a Minnesota Vikings fan, I got very into being a "long-suffering" fan. Four-time losers in Super Bowls, the Vikings managed to gag away every chance to even get back to the big game for the last 25 years.

It finally got to the point for me that the potential benefits no longer outweighed the costs. As a reformed sports freak, I currently hope the 6-0 Vikings win the Super Bowl (if only to relieve their long-suffering fans), but I don’t care if they do or don’t. I rarely watch big-deal football any more and can’t say as I miss it. The freakish, fantasy-football-intensive, 6-days-of-trash-talk-between-games fans and it’s-all-about-me players have screwed it up for me.

Another unattractive thing about the hardest-core American sports fan is their incessant and often creative search for scapegoats. Some one thing or person MUST be to blame for the team’s loss because it couldn’t be that the team just lost because of a series of mistakes. Or that the team did their best and was beaten by a superior opponent. No, because we KNOW that our team is the best. There must have been some outside agent that affected the outcome. Like crappy refs! One bad coaching decision. Some idiot in the stands.

It certainly wasn’t just random chance that did our team in either. No. That would mean that the outcome of sports is uncontrollable. And the sports zealot lives in denial of randomness. If only this manager had a clue, we would win. If only this player didn’t suck, we would win. Right.

There’s something wrong with people willing to string up fans like Steve Bartman, the guy who -- what was he thinking? -- thought it would be fun to catch a foul ball in game 6 of the Cubs-Marlins series. Those nutty fans! Getting in the way of what’s REALLY important. It’s like the fans think they’re there to do more than offer their ticket money as a fragrant offering, pleasing to the player deities.

So the guy -- along with about 50 other people -- reached for a foul ball, touched it and screwed up a chance for the Cubs to catch it for an out. You’ve heard this story. Now the guy is going to have to move, change his name, get plastic surgery and rearrange his whole life just because other "fans" and sports commentator freaks don’t mind dicking up his life to justify their team losing.

That’s just wrong, OK? It’s wrong to treat another human being that way. And fans’ extreme disappointment certainly does not excuse the death threats, hurled beer and profanities. It’s wrong to say that that one play turned the whole series. The Cubs were still ahead when Bartman touched the ball. But Bartman apparently had so much power that by merely touching a foul ball he altered the course of time itself.

His amazing personality overwhelmed the $14 million-a-year athletes, crushing their spirits, and causing them to serve up meatball pitches and boot routine ground balls. And the Cubs lost Game 7 a day later because, well, they were just too devastated to go on. "He TOUCHED THE BALL and all the energy just flowed out of us," the Cubs lament. "Our very will to live was eviscerated."

Again: just shut up. The Cubs lost because the other team beat them. Simple as that. Deal with it.

Same deal with the Red Sox, who lost Game 7 allegedly because their manager didn’t pull the starting pitcher fast enough. If only Grady Little had pulled Pedro Martinez a couple batters earlier, the Red Sox would have won.

Yeah, and if only Columbus wouldn’t have discovered the New World Indians would still be in charge of everything. Every action and decision alters future actions and decisions. That’s the way time works. It is impossible to know what would happen if something else did or didn’t happen. Maybe Little pulls Martinez and the reliever comes in and gives up five home runs. It is impossible to say.

Real life isn’t some fantasy sports league where you can yank everything out of context and assign values to stuff after the fact. It’s far, far, far too dynamic to say if not A, then B.

Just please get a grip on yourselves. Get over it. Chill. The results of a game are never worth smearing or belittling or threatening another human being. If that’s the American pastime, I’ll just take a pass.

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