We're all mad here.

On the Same Team

Do you have a favorite sports team? If ‘yes’, give us reasons why you are a die-hard, take us through the highs and the lows. Also let us know a team that you simply cannot stand. Create a blog entry (or static item) about this. (<1000 words)

This is a complicated question because the answer is “no.” I don't have a favorite sports team. I rarely watch sports. Therefore, I also don't have a team that I simply cannot stand. I am completely apolitical when it comes to sports. I generally know when the Superbowl happens. Because you can't avoid it, here in the US. And March Madness (which is complicated this year because of various quarantines).

I do like the Olympics. And I tend to watch non-team events like gymnastics and swimming. I participated in a Ballroom Dance competition, twice. Does that count? I don't follow those teams either.

I have gone to football (American football for the rest of the world) games and soccer (football for the rest of the world) games and basketball (I don't think this one has a separate title outside the US) games and baseball games. Mostly, I went because someone else dragged me there or because I had siblings in the band. I usually brought a book to the games and got two to three hundred pages before halftime when I would watch the marching bands and then go back to the book (or another—I always bring an emergency backup book or two when I go to a game). Occasionally, the people around me would stand or make some involuntary exclamation which I would look up for.

I have gotten to know the various types of games. For example, in American football, the basic idea seems to be standing in two lines facing each other, before the whistle blows, whereupon, everyone on the field falls down, forward. And the whistle blows again. In soccer, the idea is to play with the ball for as long as possible while moving. I'm always worried that someone will trip over the thing. In basketball, the idea is to rush from one end of the court to the other as many times as possible over the game, which as always struck me as the kind of exercise that eighteenth century prisoners would have been given as torture. I'm not sure what happens at a baseball game, because all the action seems to happen in the stands. They really are not restful or conducive to serious reading.

It has always struck me that not being a sports fan was the only sane way to go. I've seen people who are generally as introverted and non-offensive as they come turn into raving lunatics because of some rabid fandom to which they belong. I'm talking random shaved chests, body art (most of which is not permanent), shouting, drunkenness, and (of course) weeping, wailing, and the gnashing of teeth. And that's just at the after party. Somehow, on game days, behavior that one would not expect from fine, upstanding, sane members of the community becomes normal and expected.

After all, as I told a friend, who was trying to convince me that I really should go to another football game with him (the first was as a return favor—he came with me to see Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing) because it was so much fun, which was ridiculous because in that first game, his team had lost, and I just didn't want to go through that drama again. After all, I am glad that I personally don't get suicidal depression when “my” team loses. My eternal happiness does not depend on any kind of sport.

And I think that's a good thing.

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