Root, Root, Root for the What?

(9/19/00)

Some people will tell you that, while sport-watching is good for promulgating the patriarchy and furthering the consumption of resources that might be better used to improve the lot of (for example) impoverished children, it lacks the complexity and depth of other leisure-time activities such as decoding modern poetry or analyzing intervals in Californian minimalist music or accusing other people of having unfair resource-sucking leisure-time activities. Besides being Communists, these people do not have a proper appreciation for the numerous judgments and mental leaps that are par for the course, as it were, for any veteran sport-watcher. The playoffs loom for major league baseball, and professional and college football have begun once again to suck up my weekends, and I (for one) have found myself in more dilemmas than I can count.

It is true that when one's own team is playing, there is rarely a question about whom one is rooting for. For example, I support the Detroit Lions whether they are winning in a pathetic manner, as when they beat the New Orleans Saints and Washington Redskins this season, or losing in a truly pathetic manner, as in last Sunday's Tampa Bay slaughterfest. Those of you who recall my not-so-veiled desire to annihilate myself in the wake of our 13 total rushing yards (from a running back we spent $25 million to sign on the free agent market, which sum of money would undoubtedly nourish a bunch of impoverished children who could then put up similar numbers) undoubtedly understand the depth at which these loyalties operate. You may not approve, but at least you understand.

Strangely enough, however, there are more teams in the National Football League than the Detroit Lions. (It's true!) To take two examples of such teams, there are the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys. The Philadelphia Eagles have had a special place in my heart ever since the famed "body bag" game versus the Redskins in which the Eagles mocked the Redskins' mounting injuries--the place in my heart where the deepest reservoirs of hate fester and coagulate and make vague plans for humiliating revenge. Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys this season continue to fill their roles as Satan's minions.

Normally, nothing fills me with greater delight than seeing one of these teams lose 41-7. But what about when they play each other, as they have already done once and will do again? What can I root for? My normal glib remark is that I am rooting for a terrorist attack, like the one which ruined the Stanley Cup for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the movie "Sudden Death." (This film, which in most respects is one of the worst I have ever endured, ended with Jean-Claude Van Damme having saved the day and having put the Penguins mascot through a cafeteria-tray drying machine. At least its heart was in the right place--the place I mentioned earlier.) Sadly, however, these terrorist attacks are few and far between in the real world. Furthermore, such attacks would no doubt result in the deaths of impoverished children, who could become Detroit Lions wide receivers when they grow up. So normally I just try not to think about these games.

It becomes impossible to avoid thinking about these teams, however, when they play opponents from the Detroit Lions' division, the NFC Central. If Detroit and rival Tampa Bay are both 10-5 entering the last day of the season (I wish, but this is just illustrative) and Dallas is playing Tampa Bay, I am forced to make a difficult decision. To root for Tampa Bay would be rooting to deny Detroit an uncontested division title. Still, rooting for Dallas is rooting for the Dark Lord.

The upshot? I am probably not prepared to sell my soul to the Devil for a Lions Super Bowl victory, but I may be prepared to rent it for a little while.

Yet the problems of rooting are not confined solely to teams sponsored by Beezelbub. Sometimes, one must deal with the idea of rooting for one's own team to lose. For example, the Detroit Tigers have played way over their heads for the last couple of months to come close to the fabled .500 mark, a basic level of mediocrity the Tigers have not attained for a long time. The Tigers have done this despite the fact that they have a general manager named Randy Smith whose talent-managing record, on the whole, could have been surpassed by a calculator soaked in warm spit. We are currently saddled with a bunch of mediocre veterans using up valuable money that could pay for impoverished children to pitch and hit for us in A-ball. Furthermore, Smith traded six talented young players for an outfielder named Juan Gonzalez who gets mysterious foot injuries that no orthopedist can substantiate, who contracts "flu-like symptoms" that keep him out of the lineup for weeks at a time, and who has shown no distinct inclination to sign with us at the end of the season when his contract is up, even for the ludicrous amount the Tigers are willing to overpay him.

Every victory the Tigers earn validates Smith's record as GM, and helps doom us to another year of what has largely been mismanagement. A cold-blooded, long-term perspective would dictate that I root for the Tigers to lose, as each loss helps usher the incompetent Smith out the door. But rooting for the Tigers to lose...it feels like I'm drowning, yet I'm continually opening my mouth for some more water. It is alien and sick and I cannot do it.

Moral dilemmas? Complex mental algorithms? Deep structures to be teased out and discussed? Overwhelming passion? Sport-watching, as you can see, has it all. (And I haven't even discussed watching the hated New York Yankees play the hated Cleveland Indians at Yankee Stadium, where certain decisions could have posed risks to life and limb.) So root, root, root for whatever teams you can or want to; live both the triumphs and the agonies; and remember that sports have lifted more impoverished children into the upper tax brackets that any Marxist vaporizing ever has. And if you don't like sports, go read a poem and root for the symbols.

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