New sports editor bares all
It’s tough trying to fool everybody all the time. In fact, it’s impossible, somebody once said. And that somebody, I think, was P.T. Barnum. Or possibly Abraham Lincoln, but let’s not quibble. At any rate, it was somebody smarter than you or me.
So now half the readers are scratching their heads, thinking, “New sports editor, new sports column, and the first person he quotes is P.T. Barnum? Where’s this going? Honey, can you double-check that subscription bill? Just to make sure they’re not overcharging us?”
The point, though, is that there is indeed a sucker born every minute, and he is us. The sports fans. Which, paradoxically, makes us so tough to fool. You see, we sports fans are not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill suckers. We’re deeply loyal suckers, and that’s an important distinction.
As a sports columnist, I’m supposed to be fairly objective. But as a human, I’m not. And as a fan, I’m as subjectively loyal to my home team’s cause as a Basque separatist is to his. Except that to enemy fans I’m probably less likeable than a Basque separatist. And I don’t speak a mysterious language with no known antecedents.
That said, if I were to, say, write a positive column about the A’s, Oakland fans would see through it immediately and peg me as the Giants diehard that I am. And I shudder to think what it would be like to attempt a glowing account of the Dodgers. If only because I have no desire to clean vomit off my keyboard.
A quick example of the mentality of the loyal fan, the sucker for the home team: I’m at the Niners-Cardinals game a few weeks ago. Thrilling San Francisco comeback win, bright spot in an otherwise dismal season, etc., etc. So I’m there with my buddies Jeremy and Simon, who are like solid rocks of San Francisco fandom. These guys, who I’ve known since high school at St. Ignatius, have attended hundreds of 49ers, Giants and Warriors games while I was out of the country for years. I’m like the prodigal son returning home – welcomed back to the fold, sure, but there will always be a little suspicion about my dedication to the cause.
Anyway, about halfway through the third quarter, I notice Jeremy is bristling and muttering under his breath. I follow his gaze and see the apparent object of his wrath, the banjo guy who shows up at all the Niners home games. You know that guy, right? Tie-dyed shirt, big bushy beard, banjo? The Raiders have fans who look like they’re taking a break from chasing Mad Max. The Packers have an army of Midwesterners wearing fake cheese on their heads. Browns fans dress up like dogs and chew on bones. Our iconic fan is a guy who makes a mean cup of “chai” and believes in the therapeutic power of yoga. Hey, it’s San Francisco.
So Banjo-man comes closer and Jeremy is cursing him out loud. I’m a bit perplexed until Simon reminds me that, way back in 1989, Banjo-man was one of those mixed-up souls who decided it would be a cool thing to root for both the A’s and the Giants in the World Series. You remember – the buffoons who sported bifurcated baseball caps that were SF on one side, A’s on the other, and who deserved to wear neither.
This happened 15 long years ago, with an earthquake to muddle everything up to boot, but it’s still the enduring memory of that Series for Jeremy. We managed to calm him down, but it’s one of those situations where, if the 20 beers we’d each consumed since 9am in the main lot had been an even two dozen, we might not have been able to.
The lesson? Sports fans are very loyal and they have long memories.
This is why my colleague Brett Edgerton is such a well-liked columnist for the three papers his column appears in, the Gilroy Dispatch, Hollister Free Lance and Morgan Hill Times. Brett’s from Tennessee, so he doesn’t have any specific loyalties to any area teams. He brings an outsider’s perspective and a longer view to the subject. Inwardly, he probably chuckles that Joe Montana’s got nothing on Davy Crockett, but he’s willing to let us have our illusions.
But even Brett can’t please everybody, all the time. As I say, his column appears in three papers with three very different, but equally loyal fan bases. When he writes about the Hollister Haybalers, fans of the Live Oak Acorns and Gilroy Mustangs are going to grumble. And vice-versa, three ways. All he can do is try his best to be fair and cover each team as equally as possible.
As for me, well you should know where your new sports editor and columnist stands as a sports fan. I’m not going to pretend be a member of the Raider Nation. I’m not going to hide my disgust with the Warriors ownership. I’m not going to mask my glee when the wealthy alumni of Stanford see their hopes of basketball glory crushed yet again in the NCAA tournament.
As for the area high schools, I don’t have a personal stake. I want to see the local kids do well for themselves and their communities just as much as any of you, because they’ll be out in the real world of recriminations and bitter criticism soon enough.
Unless any of them wind up facing St. Ignatius in the CCS playoffs, that is. In that case, it’s GO CATS!
