Sports
Nogochocinco? The NFL Wants To Kill Fun.
At the end of this past August, Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco announced his plan to circumvent National Football League anti-tweeting regulations. For Ochocinco (nee Johnson) — a guy already responsible for an impressive list of self-branding antics — it was just another brilliant marketing move: Each week, in advance of every game, he’d pick one luck fan and fly him or her out to wherever his Bengals were playing so that he could — through a set of pre-arranged hand signals — indeed tweet from the field. But for the NFL it was some kind of threat, and less than a week later they had Ochocinco ready to delete his Twitter account. Critics might argue that this is the worst kind of showboating — that Ochocinco, through his actions (they’d say), so misdirects the focus of the game from the team (they’d say) on to himself that the ultimate goal (winning, they’d say) is lost in the shuffle. This is total horseshit. And, thanks to all of the various anti-showboating regulations put in place by most of the major North American sports leagues — the NFL in particular — fun is fast disappearing from the sporting landscape.
Funny, then, that the sport most associated with spectator boredom remains the last, best hope for truly spirited competition. What the NFL misses in such folly as its ridiculous treatment of Ochocinco, and the NBA loses in similar misguided attempts to control the personalities of its players (the NHL still doesn’t count as a major sports league), Major League Baseball — despite its best efforts — fully, unabashedly exhibits in the brilliant celebrations that often accompany the walk-off home run.
Take Manny Ramirez for example. In his time as a member of the Boston Red Sox, the … mercurial left fielder was overshadowed, at least in the clutch, by teammate David Ortiz, whose ability to orchestrate a walk-off was the main reason that team was able to overcome 86 years of futility in 2004. But orchestrating a walk-off and turning the event into an epic celebration are two different things. And, insofar as the latter is concerned, Ramirez was king — mostly thanks to this. For those of you unwilling to click, that is a photo of Ramirez standing at home plate, arms straight up, feet planted as he watches a playoff-game winning home run sail out of Fenway Park. Best part? He takes so long to begin his home run trot that the opposing team’s catcher can be seen walking off before Ramirez has even left the plate.
Recently, however, big-bat first baseman Prince Fielder and his entire Milwaukee Brewers’ squad surpassed even the great Ramirez. Check out this clip from a game against the San Francisco Giants. Here, after hitting his game-winning shot, Fielder rounds the bases, heads toward a mob of waiting members of the Brew Crew, jumps in the air, and watches as his whole team falls over when he lands on the plate. Brilliant. Simply fucking brilliant.
And — here’s the operative part — it’s wholesome. The showboat haters would have you believe that this stuff is bad for sport — that any amount of extraordinary celebration detracts from the rest of the game in such a way that it cheapens the experience for fans and stars alike. But they’re wrong. This sort of thing is the only way, in this era of instant athlete millionaires and super-agents, that we can all get on the same plane and share in the base-human enjoyment of a brilliant moment. Which is to say: The NFL shouldn’t just reinstate Ochocinco’s Twitter account; it should make every player, coach, and trainer sign up for one, too.
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