Why Do I Care About Sports?

A few days later, I’m still upset/annoyed/demoralized/pick an adjective about the World Series Game 7 result.  

It was an absolute gut punch. If you’re a Toronto (TOR) fan. 

It’s pretty fantastic if you root for the Dodgers (LAD). 

TOR was two outs away from the win, their first WS in 32 years, when possibly the worst hitter in the LAD lineup (Miguel Rojas) hit a game tying solo home run.  The game went to extra innings, TOR squandered more opportunities, there was a double play by somebody, another solo LAD home run, something, something, one more double play (it was after midnight by now; thank goodness for clocks falling back an hour that night) and LAD won.  

Arghh.  

I left my friend’s house at 12:30am feeling distinctly depressed.  Incidentally, my friend repeatedly dozed off, snoring and everything during the last few innings, leaving me to commiserate with his wife, who had come down to the basement to fold laundry (that her husband still hadn’t gotten to folding because of my visit) in the 7th inning, but got sucked into the game drama herself and ignored the laundry.  

Here’s the thing.

Although I am a baseball fan, before this World Series I was not a TOR fan. I could not have named any of their players besides Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (who had a historically great postseason). Also, maybe I had heard, but then forgotten, that 41 year old future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer had signed a one year contract with TOR to eke out one more year. But that’s it. Bo Bichette, Alejandro Kirk, all these players I’ve now seen dozens of times in the last week — barely heard of them before.

Not only was I not a TOR fan and never had been, but before the World Series (WS) against LAD, just a few days earlier, in the preceding AL championship round,  I was actively rooting against TOR.  

I wanted them to lose to Seattle (SEA) in the prior championship round and was quite disappointed when SEA did not prevail. I did not cheer TOR star George Springer’s amazing go-ahead home run in the 7th inning of Game 7 against SEA. I was unhappy. (Even though I was very much cheering for Springer to pretty much do the same thing against LAD a week later!)

Why did I want TOR to lose in the prior playoff round?  Because SEA, yet another team I didn’t care very much about before that particular week, was trying to get to their first ever WS.  Not win a WS, mind you, just to play in a WS.  They are the only MLB team that has never gotten to the WS despite nearly 50 years of existence.  It only seemed fair that SEA should have that opportunity instead of TOR who had played in, and won, two WS in their history back in the early 1990s. But sports does not care about fair, and SEA can now add one more year to their “never been to a WS” pain cave because TOR beat them.

And yet, in another twist, the series before the league championship round, I was rooting for TOR because they were playing the Yankees and well, unless you are from New York City, you should be cheering for whoever is playing the Yankees – that’s just baseball 101, right?  

So, yes, my rooting interest in TOR this October was highly conditional.  It was only because TOR was playing against LAD and since LAD had won the WS last year, I didn’t want to see LAD win it again.  That was my only reason to root for TOR. After rooting against them.

In fact, just to further illustrate how conditional my TOR fandom was, if they would have instead been playing against Bob Uecker’s never won a WS Milwaukee (MIL) Brewers – which LAD mercilessly smothered in a 4 game sweep – I would have been actively rooting for MIL and against TOR. Yes, the very same players and team, and even city, that I am sad about this week. 

Or if not MIL, if TOR had been playing in the WS against Philly (I’m a Bryce Harper and Trea Turner fan) or against SAN (another never won a WS team) I would have actively rooted against TOR.  Honestly, LAD was one of the few NL teams that could go up against TOR and make me root for TOR.  Otherwise, I don’t care much about the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Club either way and never have.

If all this sounds stupid, it absolutely is.  Why do I care?  Heck, why did my friend’s wife care?

I doubt I could explain it to an alien visiting EarthAlienHow would I try to explain this to an alien?” has increasingly become my go to mental exercise for complex issues. In other words, how would an alien -- who in my mind represents the non-existent 100% rational, logical person -- react to some of the situations we humans have gotten ourselves into? Say, why does the US seem okay with so many school shootings but goes nuts about an average of 4 people a year killed by foreign terrorists? or chattel slavery? or Qanon or God or why we eat oysters or, yes, why I was rooting for TOR after I rooted against them .

Or even another human from a few centuries ago.  

Although maybe the human could understand.  Because they are human also.  They could understand the connection that one makes with another human, even one they’ve never met but just seen on TV.  They could maybe understand a sports fan’s irrational hope.

They could maybe relate that being a fan nearly always ends in frustration because there is only one championship but many teams.  And that luck in sports plays a much bigger role than we ever want to admit.    

Although as I’m typing this, I’m starting to doubt my thesis a little.  Could a random guy from, say, the 1700s, hoping to grow enough food to make it through the winter, knowing lots of his kids might die young, really understand a sport’s fan’s hope?  Well, maybe he would understand the luck part. 

Jerry Sienfeld said that when we cheer for sports teams we are just rooting for laundry and he is right.

And yet we care.  It’s real life drama and we don’t know what will happen and we keep watching each night to find out. And I’m going to be disappointed for a while that the TOR team and players I really liked for one week of my life lost the WS.