The reasons I'm grinding my teeth
I'm feeling a wide range of emotions this morning, all of them annoyed.
...The Red Sox won. Um, good for them? It's an irritated indifference I feel about this, with a dash of actual gladness, mostly because now Sox fans have no foot to stand on in the obnoxious contest of "my team chokes more than any other". News flash to everyone out there: if your team has won a championship in the last 20 years, you forfeit the right to complain about them choking.
...While I don't feel bad for Cardinals fans, watching what they now have to go through in the national media makes me almost glad that the Astros didn't make it. Losing the World Series is bad, getting swept is worse, but then having to read tons of articles about how the team that won was destined and blessed to win is the worst thing of all. One team wins, one team loses. There are no curses and no destinys; only winners and losers.
...I've seen more brand new Red Sox hats on the streets and metro trains of DC in the last week than you could find in any hat store in the country. I actually don't mind bandwagon jumping for the most part, but good Lord...be a little more subtle about it.
...I have an addition to the "worst noises in the world" list, along with dentist drills and alarm clocks and nails on a chalboard: the beeping of your cell phone to alert you that the battery's dying...at 4 am.
...I just got my land line phone hooked up a week ago and I've already started getting solicitation calls on it. Let's pray that the Do Not Call registry still works.
...Some Spanish scientists helped absolutely no one by announcing that red wine slows lung cancer and white wine increases the risk. It's good to know that there are people out there studying the science of pure, unadulterated coincidence.
And I wonder what else today will bring.
12 comments:
I'm not comparing my pain at all. That's the whole point. Every fan of every team feels like crap when their team loses and feels great when their team wins. Every team, whether they win all the time or have lost all the time for their entire existence, deserves to win and there's a losing team on the other end, and their fans and players are going to feel like crap regardless of the odds beaten by the team that beat them.
Accepting that something magical about the Red Sox (or anyone else) winning it all is like the athletes who say that God blessed them with a win. I'm glad that they're happy about winning, but saying that it's magical or mystical implies that the other team doesn't deserve it, that if they had won, they would have been standing in the way of destiny.
Is it amazing that the Red Sox won 8 in a row to with the WS and came back from 3 down to beat the Yankees? Of course! It's absolutely amazing...we watched history. But they just won. They were a team that won. They won in an amazing way, but they just won.
I guess another thing that really gets me is that it's only "magical" when it's a team from the northeast. Who thought the Marlins winning last year was magical? Or the Angels the year before? Both of those teams had amazing seasons and beat some really long odds to win it all. But because they're not the Cubs or the Yankees or Red Sox or Indians, it's not considered magic. I understand why those teams get the attention they do...that makes perfect sense. But what I don't understand is why everyone else is supposed to forget about their own fandom and be happy for teams that they have absolutely no connection to.
Hey, I'm really happy for the Red Sox. It's nice to see a team that hasn't won in a long time win it. But this idea that everyone else in the country is supposed to be thrilled for them is really wrong.
Living in an AL East city other than NY or Boston (the baseball equivalent of being in the Green Party), I have to say I'm glad the Sox won solely for the fact that their fans can stop whining about the curse, and Yankees fans can stop rubbing it in. (Of course, Babe Ruth came from Baltimore and the Orioles were actually his legal guardian when he was a teenager, but we don't complain about trading him to Boston.)
The lunar eclipse did add an element to the win as Red Sox "destination" (as Manny Ramirez calls it).
The headlines for that wine story fail to mention that the lung cancer risk is tied to inhaling the wine, not drinking it. Of course next week they'll come out with a study saying red wine causes impotence while white wine is a natural viagra...and we'll have to start evaluating our priorities.
-Scott
FIRST OF ALL PLLBBBBBLLB. Believe me you, all red sox fans have ever wanted to do for the last 86 years, is stop whining and complaining!!!! now we dont have to!!! It's beyond exciting to feel victory. And I never have to hear fans chant 1918 EVER AGAIN.
And Reid, to explain the phenom with the new red sox hats in DC, I dont think its actually a bandwagon effect. For the last 4 years of my DC area life EVERY time I have been to a red sox vs. Orioles game, there are WAY more red sox fans in Camden yards. Massachusetts has a LOT of representation here. Take my highschool class, which graduated 188 kids in 1989 and 8 of them live in DC or NOVA. Those numbers are impressive. Plus, its election year with a dem from Mass so there are alot of political weenies from Mass walking the DC streets.
Sorry about your AStros, but this is RED SOX NATION!!!
love and red sox hugs,
pk
I still would have preferred an Astros-Red Sox series (esp. if the Astros won). Think of the tie-in with the election. Instead of designating everything in red and blue, you could have had Republicans wearing Astros hats and Democrats wearing Red Sox hats. Kind of like gang colors.
Speaking of which, I read somewhere yesterday that in Dallas next Tuesday they're not allowing anyone wearing Cowboys gear inside the polling places. There's a ballot referendum for financing a new stadium, so they've equated the Cowboys logo with political advertising, which can't be brought within a certain distance of the polls. So wearing a Michael Irvin jersey, for example, could get you thrown in jail for violating voter intimidation laws.
-Scott
Oh, yeah...forgot there was a Sox fan looking at this stuff.
To be filed under "There's No Way You're Going To Believe This But Here It Is Anyway": This has nothing to do with the Astros. They didn't lose to the Red Sox, they lost to the Cardinals. As matter of fact, I don't believe that the Astros have EVER played the Red Sox, even in interleague play.
No, it was the Cards that beat the Astros, and trust me: I wanted them to lose. Bad. After game 7, I hoped like hell that the Red Sox would do exactly what they did to them: beat the crap out of them.
What I'm talking about is the idea that everyone in the world should understand and sympathize with teams like the Red Sox and Cubs, and somehow, even though we have virtually no connection to the teams or their cities and even though the team may be a rival (talking about the Cubs here), we're supposed to revel in their victories and be crushed by their defeats. Why?
Last year, there was actually a guy who posted to one of the lists that I'm on that "anyone with a conscience would root for the Cubs." Um, anyone with a conscience and fans of their division rivals and fans of whoever else they're playing.
Again: people have their teams and have them for a reason. But I'm not going to revel in one of the most boring World Series I've ever witnessed just because a team I'm indifferent to hasn't won in a really, really long time, any more than I would expect anyone with no connection to Houston or Texas to root for the Astros. Why would you?
I'm really happy for the people who have been waiting their whole lives for the Sox to win a World Series. I've been there...it feels great. And to do it after years of frustration is an incredible feeling. I'm not trying to take any of that away. I'm just saying that I get irritated that we're all expected to be jubilant over something that doesn't really mean much to us.
Also...It doesn't matter the city or the team, the people who wait until a team is in the championship to buy merch are bandwagon jumpers, even if they're from that city. If you're a huge fan, why didn't you have anything before? Why wait until they're at their peak?
Also, also...I can't really get on board this 86 years thing. I know, I know...people inherit frustrations from their parents and grandparents to some extent, but at the same time, you're a fan from the time you're born, or the time you move to the city, or wherever. I believe that frustrations start then, not at the beginning of the fanchise. Just my belief(s)...
Pulling against the Cards? But, but Tony Womack?! Okay, I got nothin'...and you're Astros fandom probably trumps guy-we-went-to-Guilford-with-yet-never-knew-dom.
The comments have been all screwy today. All of the deleted posts are multiple posts. So no censorship or anything...
I'm afraid that my 23-year Astros fandom does indeed trump rooting for Tony Womack, Guilco alumni though he may be. He was a great story this past year, though...no one picked him up, he didn't begin for the Cards at the start of the year, and he ended up being one of the keys to their World Series run. Now THAT's some Quaker perserverence for you!
Also, he's already won a World Series, so...
On the subject of having no right to complain if your team has won a championship in the last 20 years (I'm a Braves fan, so you know I have to chime in): I have just as much of a right to complain about the Braves consistent choking action as you do about the Astros not having won one ever, or as a Red Sox fan has about the fact that it's been 86 years, or as a Marlins fan does that they won it all last year and are nowhere to be found this year. That's part of the fun of sports - complaining is the flipside of cheering, and if there's nothing to complain about, there's nothing to cheer about. Certainly, some fans are obnoxious about their teams, and it seems like there are plenty who can't be pleased either way, but each person's fandom is their own. Hate 'em if you want, but short of throwing batteries on the field, most fan cheering and whining is perfectly valid, even if it bugs fans of other teams.
Come on...it's not about being "bugged" by it. It's that it's wrong. If the Braves have won a World Series, then they don't "consistently choke." It's not that it's just annoying...it's just flat-out incorrect.
There's also a certain "eating in front of the starving" element to it. The Redskins have won three Super Bowls, the most recent one eleven years ago, but I'll still hear folks complain about how long it's been. Is this valid? As a point of view, of course. If you follow a team every year, eleven years is a long time. But it's pretty obnoxious to complain about how long and hard eleven years is to someone who's never had it ever.
Y'all act like I'm saying that my teams always lose and boo-hoo me. Not true. I was in Chapel Hill in '93 when the Tarheels won the NCAA tournament. The back-to-back Rockets titles in '94 and '95 are still two of the greatest sports moments in my life. Do I get bummed that neither the Heels and Rockets have never gotten to the title game since then? Yeah, of course. It stinks to have your team lose, and it always does regardless of how many times they win or lose. But it takes a lot of the sting out of it to know that, for that one shining moment (sorry), you had the glory of the title. And I'm sure as hell not going to complain to a Wake Forest fan or a Clippers fan about the Heels/Rockets futility and inability to win a title. They have the ability, they did it before, and that does--or at least should--make a big difference.
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