Sports
Every off season, a rotating cadre of sports fans braces themselves for 32 flavors of the what-if game. What if the New England Patriots went out and got Randy Moss? What if the Washington Capitals draft Sidney Crosby? What if Billy Beane worked for an owner with a checkbook worthy of the General Manager of the Oakland A’s’ sporting genius? What if the Boston Celtics, only one season removed from championship glory, went out and got themselves a perfect complement to their already impressive — some might say imposing — lineup?
‘Bout that last one: Frankly, I couldn’t tell you why — or even whether — ‘Sheed (as they apparently call him) is the perfect complement to the Celtics lineup. I probably couldn’t even tell you whether the Celtics lineup was actually really all that impressive. This is because I fit into that category of sports enthusiasts who root for the home team (at least in basketball) whenever it seems convenient — which is to say that I root for the home team (at least in basketball) whenever I don’t have to watch the emotional investment that I make over the course of an NBA season fizzle like the latest version of the mortgaged-backed security. The … ungenerous sports fan might (if he or she were in a delicate mood) term my fickle interest in the fortunes of the Boston Celtics to be of a fair-weather quality. And, if we were to compare the literal meaning of that word to the way I follow the NBA’s most storied franchise, it could be argued that they have a point. Still, the implication here — that the way I root is somewhat lesser than the way that they root — is, while not being entirely incorrect, also not entirely fair. After all, it’s the folks like me who, by invoking our capitalist privilege to withhold interest and funds should our team(s) not live up to their end of the bargain, keep folks like them in superstars.
Let’s face it: It’s the fair-weather fans that ownership and its marketing department have to focus on. Those guys on the message boards and their ESPN-addicted basement-bound kin? They’re always going to be there — so long as they can afford it — cheering on their favored side from the revenue-boosting confines of whatever stadium it calls home. They are the season-ticket holders, the wanna-be season ticket-holders, the at-least-a-ticket-plan-buyers who can be counted on to, year-in-year out, buy directly into their respective franchise’s plans. No matter the quality of the product on the court. Us unpredictable types — the sort of guys and gals who follow when the climate seems right, who only show-up when their team is playing well enough to demand our attendance, who won’t ever catch a whiff of our outfit’s team store — we’re the audience that needs to be targeted. A good season? We show up in droves, making that mega-free-agent offseason deal suddenly affordable (sort of) and otherwise pushing revenue expectations into the black. A bad one? We stay home with our section 215 tourist dollars, which are, thanks to the quality of the product at play, better spent elsewhere — a move which forces management, who, though they may come up with all kinds of marketing schemes to get us back, know that the only way to recover this particular stream of revenue is to field a better ball club.
Sure, it could be argued that when our teams do cave to the pressure provided by our lack of interest, we are undeserving recipients of their success thanks to the fact that we ducked out on the lean times. But really, is this not a ploy by a fanatical wing of the base to make keep order in their ranks? I’ve been a Red Sox diehard since childhood, hanging on through Buckner, through Clemens’ departure, through Carl Everett, through Aaron Boone, through the inability of certain sportscasters to — until one perfect October — stop reminding me of all that. And though the reward at the end was exponentially more valuable than it might have been had I tuned in ’round, say, late August 2004, it came at a certain personal cost. A certain … fated mind-set that managed to percolate to the surface of my daily life. My fellow fanatics would like me to remind you that this is the one true way to experience ultimate sporting success. You god-damned agnostics just don’t get it.
The problem with that is that you do — I do. Your relative distance from all things unreasonable (at least in terms of fandom) leaves you with the ability to not just drive management goals and escape being tethered to the anchor of failure that drags and holds so many of us true fans down, but you — and, in some cases, I — manage to free up mental resources best spent elsewhere. Like in real life — far away from the shallow offseason what-if debates.
So, I say, go Celtics (so long as you keep winning).
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