Champions
As I am writing this, the Detroit Red Wings have just won their third playoff finals game against the Pittsburgh Penguins and are one victory away from winning the 2008 Stanley Cup. If they win, we here in Michigan intend to annex South Dakota so we can put Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Lidstrom and coach Mike Babcock (a Russian, two Swedes and a Canadian) on Mount Rushmore.
At the same time, the Detroit Pistons players are all dusting off their golf clubs after being knocked out of the conference championship by the Boston Celtics. A lot of Detroit fans are calling sports talk shows to debate whether Pistons coach Flip Saunders should be fired, shot, poisoned, burned at the stake, fed to hungry alligators, or given a public relations job in the Bush Administration.
And the Detroit Tigers are… well, they’re the Tigers.
As you’re reading this, you probably know quite a bit more than I do about how all that stuff is working out. But I can’t help wondering why we sports fans even care. After all, whether Darren McCarty gets to float around in a swimming pool sipping Crown Royal and Red Pop out of the Stanley Cup or not, my life will be pretty much the same.
And boy, do we fans ever care! We drive around with team flags flapping themselves into colorful shreds by our car windows. We sit for hours in front of the television set, screaming helpful coaching tips at the screen. We paint our cars, our boats, even our homes in team colors. We name our pet hamsters after the team’s equipment manager.
Well, some of us do.
In return for all this unbridled adulation, we expect championships. If our team doesn’t happen to win it all, we pull for them to come close enough that we can accuse all the other teams of shameless cheating and assure each other that we’ll get ’em next year.
Just what is it that gives us the right to demand so much of our teams? On the surface, I think it’s all about wanting some return for our commitment. After all, if I’m going to spend eight bucks on an adjustable billed cap with a team’s logo on it, I have a right to expect every member of that team’s organization to lay down his or her life to live up to my idea of success.
But it may be a lot more than that. I think that at some level we each imagine ourselves to be the one on the ice firing a slap shot at the net, or driving the lane for a lay-up, or getting hit in the butt with a knuckle ball.
That being the case, it seems like people who have participated in one sport or another, especially those of us who have been fortunate enough to have been involved with winning any sort of championship, would have a more realistic attitude when we toss our athletic supporters in the laundry and sit down to become fans. We all know from experience that no matter who or how skilled (or lucky) you are, for every time you hoist a trophy, there had to be a lot more times when you shake the winner’s hand and hoist a conciliatory beer.
As I write this I don’t know for sure how the Stanley Cup Finals will turn out. At the moment the Red Wings’ odds look pretty positive, and within the next few days there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll get to see my boys skating around with the Cup held over their heads. At the same time, I try to remember that in every contest there is one team that gets called “champion,” and all the other teams have to wait until next year.
But you know what? This year, it really better be my Red Wings. After all, I did buy a cap…
Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball
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