Why I Watch Them Play the Games
I’m starting this essay while waiting for the start of a Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the San Francisco 49ers. Since the Eagles’ franchise quarterback Donovan McNabb broke his ankle last week, there’s a very good chance that the Eagles will lose and I will be a sullen, morose individual by the time I’m finished. Because while intellectually I can accept that the odds are against my team, I still believe they can win, and I certainly hope that they do.
You may ask yourself at this point why I’m going to spend three to four hours absorbed in something that’s likely to disappoint me. Besides a healthy dose of masochism, there’s something uniquely compelling about sports, because you can’t help but be aware that no one really know what’s going to happen next. It’s one of the greatest proving grounds for the notion that truth can be stranger than fiction. Last night I watched a football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos, played in Denver, in the snow. Indianapolis’ kicker, Mike Vanderjagt, had missed field goals attempts in each of his last three games, but he hit a 54-yarder in the final seconds to tie the game. Then he hit a 51-yarder into the wind to win the game. All of those late heroics were only possible, however, because Denver’s placekicker had missed an extra point earlier in the game – his first miss in over 300 attempts. You write that in a script, no one believes it. But to see it unfold live was exhilarating.
Of course, in that game, I didn’t really have any emotional interest in who won. Denver fans were probably not basking in the improbability of it all. Which raises the question of why presumably-rational people would invest so much of their emotional energy into the performance of a bunch of strangers solely, as Jerry Seinfeld says, based on the uniforms they wear. Part of it, I’m sure, is the emotional catharsis and diversion that comes from the thrill of victory and agony of defeat.
More importantly, I think, is the very real impact that sports teams have on a community. Total strangers might see each other wearing Phillies caps, and that’s immediately something they have in common. My freshman year at Fordham, a bunch of the people in my dorm were also from the Philadelphia area. As fate would have it, the Phillies chose that year to make one of their extremely rare appearances in the World Series. Watching those games together in the dorm lounge made the adjustment to life in the Bronx a lot easier, and helped build some permanent friendships. The same thing happens on a larger scale in local and college communities all over the world. Now, I’m not sure this argument works to justify the enormous amounts of money colleges and governments spend on athletic facilities, but that’s an argument for another day. I’ll gladly take the anguish from Mitch Williams giving up the Series-clinching home run in ’93 along with the friendships that watching that homer helped provide.
There is one other interesting thing about sports. We spend so much time observing and analyzing sports that we generate an enormous amount of information about human behavior and about the world in general. Especially with the internet, it’s possible to spread that information to people who might not necessarily be as receptive to it in a more traditional academic setting. I’ve brought him up before, but ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer is one of my must-reads not only because he’s a talented writer, but because he takes an empirical approach to the game. If the conventional wisdom says something, he’ll check into the numbers and see if there’s any evidence for the claim. So what you have is a sportswriter making the argument for open-minded objectivity, for the idea that ‘because this what we’ve always done’ is not sufficient justification for any action or belief. That’s powerful stuff, and if reading about 90-mph fastballs helps get it through to people, then more power to the fastballs.
(Postscript: The Eagles blew away the 49ers, 38-17. Backup quarterback Koy Detmer played an absolutely magnificent game – until he dislocated his left elbow toward the end of the game. See what I mean about not being able to write this stuff?)
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.