Gathering Speed

A day after a historic collapse by the Arizona Cardinals, I realized this old article I threw together for the New Yorker wasn..t up anywhere. It is now.
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It was the first time all year that I hurried to get out of the cold, rushing with short, slip-proof steps toward a bar in Baltimore’s Federal Hill. It was the first round of the NFL playoffs, but I wanted to make sure I got to hang out with a few friends from college before people truly started going their separate ways. The conversation broke at one point as the San Diego Chargers forced the game into overtime, and one of my compatriots asked me, “What is it about sports? I mean, do you really care about this?” It was like that scene in The Godfather when Kay asks Michael countless questions at his sister’s wedding, and you can tell in his face that he’s never had to give answers before. It’s tough to explain what you know when you haven’t known anything else.

I gave some short quip of an answer to appease my friend, who wasn’t looking for an actual detailed response (in fact, it was probably just a rhetorical question aimed at getting me to stop looking past her head to the TV as the Jets kicker lined up for the game winning field goal). But it was a reasonable question; far more reasonable than even she recognized, I’m certain. I distinctly remember the feeling after watching my alma mater capture the national championship in basketball; the jubilation on campus mirrored old tape I had seen of G.I.’s returning from the second World War to grateful, welcoming masses in Times Square and all over America. These people had just defeated the Third Reich; we had just beaten Indiana. There’s no logical reason whatsoever that these two events should yield remotely similar results. But in the minds of 10,000 celebrating college kids, they were on the same exact same level.

Why, though? Why is it that so many people cried their eyes out after Boston won the World Series? Why do people have such spiteful views of cities they’ve never visited and people they’ve never met because of their athletic allegiances? How is it that a game we’re not even playing can be so important to us?

We’ve found a way to make it about us and our place in history.

The sports fan is a lover of history, but would never admit it. The fan chooses to separate his passion for sports from the stereotypical historian’s lifestyle, which is built on speculation and the accounts of others. A historian spends hours in dark libraries, reading the dusty personal accounts of people who had no idea someone would be studying their words this far into the future. A sports fan is a historian who needs concrete proof to back up his claims, and would prefer to obtain that proof via his own perception. There are no primary sources with sports; there are NFL films, records books, and the Hall of Fame. Instead of illustrations, there are photographs, from Ali knocking out Liston to Bobby Orr’s airborne game-winning goal. There are also, of course, “I Was There!” commemorative t-shirts.

The games at their core are all incredibly basic, but the assembly of statistics is as complicated as the most abstract sciences. I honestly believe that if a sports fan’s knowledge and study of statistics was instead directed at the study of medicine, most of this country would hold a Ph.D. We know how batters do in hot weather, cold weather, against lefties, against knuckleballers. We know how well quarterbacks play inside, outside, against a zone, against a constant blitz. We know which player on our basketball team has the highest free throw percentage in games with a 5 or less point differential. More importantly than all of this, we know who was the best. At least we think we do, and will argue our side like Clarence Darrow covered in face-paint.

Competition is often measured with the winner’s calculator. In warfare, the two sides tally up enemy casualties and their own, although neither really can definitely decide the outcome. For example, the Allies sustained seven million more total casualties in Europe than the Germans did. War is not as cut and dry, as pure, as sports are. There is no question who won, because the rules are set in stone more solid than the Ten Commandments. But debate can still exist, however, in a different form.

The New England Patriots had just played in their third championship game in the last four seasons. But the questions leading up to that game were not “Will they win on Sunday?” or “How did their preparation this season help them win the Super Bowl.” The main question on every sportswriter’s lips was, “If they win, are the Patriots a dynasty?” This term carries incredible weight and not because of the Ming Dynasty (which did not field a particularly competitive football team despite scattered effort). A ‘Dynasty’ in sports is a period of time in which this was the best team in the league. The term is most associated with the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 70’s and the San Francisco 49ers of the 80’s, which are both remembered as being legendarily dominant teams. Breaking this down and really looking at the literal questions being asked, everyone’s concern approaching and immediately following the Super Bowl was, are we witnessing history? Are we seeing a milestone of human achievement, perhaps another Shot Heard ‘Round The World (Bobby Thompson edition)? Of course, three championships in a sport is going to pale in comparison to an actual milestone (the landing on the moon, for example). But in a way, sports fans are trying to put them on the same plane. They feel that they are somehow validated by it, that they had been alive to see something truly amazing.

There is a distinction that clarifies the need to create history through sports. The majority of events that qualify as milestones of civilization, as history flashing before our eyes, are not positive events. History is Pearl Harbor and September 11th, the Kennedy Assassination and its sequel. History is the collection of events that knock everyone out of their comfort zone and change the world forever. Sports give us a taste of difference, but there’s another season to start it all over again. We remember the purity of the games, the simplicity and uniformity of the goals involved; what could be simpler than two groups trying to run around in a circle a greater number of times than their adversary (the quick-and-dirty rules of baseball). We get the feeling of believing in something that we can see with our own eyes and satisfy our spiritual needs vicariously through the players’ actions.

Because of the spiritual quenching found in the following of teams, sports can be as comforting and divisive as religion. It’s a rare feeling to be stuck in an airport in a foreign country, waiting patiently with a gaggle of Americans trying to get back to their home, and seeing the insignia of your favorite team on someone else’s luggage. You’re no longer alone in the airport, even if you don’t know anyone’s name. In a world of strangers, you are among friends. Religion exists in many cases to give people a sense of community and belonging, feelings which are never thicker than in the deafening cheering unity found in a stadium.

It is not all in the pursuit of historical validation, however. We as fans depend on this escape to hide ourselves from the grim realities of death, taxes, and loneliness. I think about the 1980 Lake Placid Olympic Games, when a single American victory over an unbeatable Soviet hockey team pushed the “woe-is-me” 70s into the “Ronald-Reagan-blind optimism” of the 80s. I think about the faces of the crowd at the Superbowl in 1991, as Whitney Houston belted out the National Anthem during the opening weeks of Desert Storm. I think of the Yankees wearing the colors of the NYPD and FDNY at the close of the 2001 season. We needed them then, to take our minds off of chaotic reality, and to believe in purity and simplicity again.

I wish I had been aware of this at the time the question of “why” was posed to me, because the answer is clearer than I originally thought. Sport is history with undeniable proof and religion with immediate results, without the unpleasant side effects of either. There is no death, no genocide, no treaty violations, and no slavery. There is no original sin, no infidels, no excommunication, and no crusades. But there are true believers, and there’s always next year.