I thought these two amazing articles about the redemptive power of sports were appropriate considering my last two posts. Happy holidays.
"There are some games where cheering for the other side feels better than winning"
The San Quentin Giants are no ordinary baseball team
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
We Miss Our Tribes
I need to get away from politics for a minute. Yes, I know, it's been almost a month since I last posted, but I've been mired in end-of-the-semester hell. Now I'm back and I need a break from Obama, especially because he's pissed me off again. If you don't know why, click here. Moving on...
I've finally found a legitimate sociological reason to justify my obsession with sports. It's because I miss my tribe, whatever that tribe might have been back in the day. I think all sports fans miss our tribes. People from every culture can appreciate this, because at one point we were all in tribes. For those of us who prefer sports to say, I dunno, WAR, but who do love some good healthy chest-thumping on occasion, sports fills a gap in our ancestral link. Specifically, the one where we used to suit up, paint up, armor up, dress up, drug up our best warriors and send them howling into mortal combat against the neighboring tribe's best warriors to defend turf, women, cattle, bragging rights. Just as it was back then, we cannot all be warriors, but we admire our warriors. Sports fans are wannabe, modern-day warriors. Why else would we paint our faces, don our tribal colors and throw rocks at each other in stadium parking lots? (Dodgers fans, insert "throw shanks at each other in stadium parking lots" here.) Sports brings together a whole spectrum of different types of people by the hundreds of thousands for one unified purpose: KICK THEIR FUCKING ASSES! And our warriors are kicking ass on our behalf, because in our day-to-day lives we can get arrested for kicking people's asses. Witnessing semi-authentic violence is wonderful catharsis, especially when we can imagine that, as representatives of a specific a geographical region, the players are doing it for us. Also in our day-to-day lives most of us haven't reached the highest level of, well, anything. It's a thrill to watch insanely skilled people match wits and athleticism with others of similar caliber. (This last point is the only reason I can fathom that anyone watches golf. Minus athleticism.)
Sports is social networking. Nothing else prompts us to spark up conversations with total strangers like sports. I wouldn't talk to half the straight white guys in the world if it weren't for sports. Guess what I discovered? They're not all morons! (They're also not all straight, but that's another story.) Sports helps us reconnect with our hometown roots, especially when we're living away from the city in which we grew up. I hated Philadelphia when I lived there, but don't let some nimrod in a sports bar start bashing Philly, 'cause it's on like Donkey Kong then. It warms my cockles when someone peeps my colors and runs up on me like, "Are you from Philly? I'm from Philly, too!" Then it turns out they're from some weird suburb I've never heard of 30 miles outside of Philly or like, Camden, New Jersey, but I wouldn't admit being from there, either. Whatever. You get my point. If you're from Philly and you are a Philly sports fan, you're part of my tribe. Together you and I can recreate that lost link to our ancestors that make us feel a part of a larger family unit, a common mind, and a whole lot of bragging about shit that we had absolutely nothing to do with.
Other, Non-Tribe Related Bennies of Sports:
I've finally found a legitimate sociological reason to justify my obsession with sports. It's because I miss my tribe, whatever that tribe might have been back in the day. I think all sports fans miss our tribes. People from every culture can appreciate this, because at one point we were all in tribes. For those of us who prefer sports to say, I dunno, WAR, but who do love some good healthy chest-thumping on occasion, sports fills a gap in our ancestral link. Specifically, the one where we used to suit up, paint up, armor up, dress up, drug up our best warriors and send them howling into mortal combat against the neighboring tribe's best warriors to defend turf, women, cattle, bragging rights. Just as it was back then, we cannot all be warriors, but we admire our warriors. Sports fans are wannabe, modern-day warriors. Why else would we paint our faces, don our tribal colors and throw rocks at each other in stadium parking lots? (Dodgers fans, insert "throw shanks at each other in stadium parking lots" here.) Sports brings together a whole spectrum of different types of people by the hundreds of thousands for one unified purpose: KICK THEIR FUCKING ASSES! And our warriors are kicking ass on our behalf, because in our day-to-day lives we can get arrested for kicking people's asses. Witnessing semi-authentic violence is wonderful catharsis, especially when we can imagine that, as representatives of a specific a geographical region, the players are doing it for us. Also in our day-to-day lives most of us haven't reached the highest level of, well, anything. It's a thrill to watch insanely skilled people match wits and athleticism with others of similar caliber. (This last point is the only reason I can fathom that anyone watches golf. Minus athleticism.)
Sports is social networking. Nothing else prompts us to spark up conversations with total strangers like sports. I wouldn't talk to half the straight white guys in the world if it weren't for sports. Guess what I discovered? They're not all morons! (They're also not all straight, but that's another story.) Sports helps us reconnect with our hometown roots, especially when we're living away from the city in which we grew up. I hated Philadelphia when I lived there, but don't let some nimrod in a sports bar start bashing Philly, 'cause it's on like Donkey Kong then. It warms my cockles when someone peeps my colors and runs up on me like, "Are you from Philly? I'm from Philly, too!" Then it turns out they're from some weird suburb I've never heard of 30 miles outside of Philly or like, Camden, New Jersey, but I wouldn't admit being from there, either. Whatever. You get my point. If you're from Philly and you are a Philly sports fan, you're part of my tribe. Together you and I can recreate that lost link to our ancestors that make us feel a part of a larger family unit, a common mind, and a whole lot of bragging about shit that we had absolutely nothing to do with.
Other, Non-Tribe Related Bennies of Sports:
- Sports gets us free drinks. Just ask all the lucky bastards who happened to wander into the Overtime Sports Bar the night the Phillies clinched to move into the World Series this year. That's all I'll say about that.
- Sports is the safest hot button topic. It's actually fun to argue about sports, unlike arguing politics and religion, which sucks. You can definitely get a chair broken over your dome in a sports argument, get cheap beer poured on your autographed authentic Mitchell & Ness throwback, but generally you won't get a cross burned on your lawn or labeled a baby-killer.
- That's about it.
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