I love sports. I play, or have played, a whole range of sports. From American football to regular football to badminton to ping pong to ultimate frisbee to fricking dodgeball. And I've enjoyed them all. But, the only two sports which I can say I consistently watch, as a fan, are football and basketball.
However, this past Monday, I got to catch the Superbowl. For those of you who don't know, the Superbowl is the Final of the American Football Playoffs in the US. And my adopted hometown team was playing - the New England Patriots. The Patriots were going against the New York Giants, a team that had beaten the Patriots in the Superbowl in 2008. So, this was a measure of revenge in so many ways. The Patriots wanted to avenge their broken potentially-undefeated season record. Tom Brady, the Quarterback for the Patriots, wanted to avenge a loss he claims he still isn't able to watch today.
Anyway, with all that good stuff in mind, I watched the game. And proceeded to watch as the Giants, again, beat the Patriots, 21-17. And I remember just feeling kind of dumbfounded. I wouldn't say I was bitterly disappointed but I was disappointed. Which made me think, "If I, and I hardly watch any Patriots games at all, could feel this way about this Superbowl loss, what about the real Patriots fans, the ones who grew up in New England supporting the Patriots their entire lives?"
And true enough, Bill Simmons, my favourite sportswriter, was devastated. He wrote, "This was a night that made you say, "Why does this matter to me so much? Isn't it fundamentally stupid that this matters so much?""
And you know what, from a rational, logical perspective, it probably is fundamentally stupid that this matters so much. Why do I care? And this isn't a team that I particularly care about. What about those teams whom I really actually do care about? Liverpool and the Celtics? Why do I care so much? According to Simmons, he says that the Superbowl loss was a night where a fan should keep things in perspective by going through the checklist of reasons why one shouldn't be depressed. According to him, the checklist is:-
1. Are my kids healthy? (No kids, so NO CHECK).
2. Do I love my significant other? (No significant other, so NO CHECK).
3. Are my parents still alive and healthy? (CHECK)
4. Do I like my job? (CHECK)
5. Do I have a good group of friends? (Well, QUARTER CHECK).
So, essentially, I should be happy that 45% of my life is going well, assuming equal weights on each factor. And so, just by going through the checklist, feeling bad for the loss of a team I care about should make me feel like the biggest moron on the planet.
But guess what, it doesn't. I remember feeling utterly devastated in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals when the Celtics lost to the Lakers despite Kobe Bryant having an absolute stinker of a game. I remember feeling numb when Liverpool lost 2-1 against Milan in Athens in the Champions League Final. I remember wanting to jump off the Mather towers when Chelsea knocked Liverpool out in the 2008 Champions League Semifinals by winning 3-2 at Stamford Bridge.
So, why does this matter so much to me? Especially Liverpool. I've never been to Liverpool. I've never watched them play a competitive game live. I've never been to Anfield. Why should a team, with whom I have zero affiliation, mean so much to me? To sort of paraphrase Simmons again, I started being a Liverpool fan when I was about 9 years old. Since then, I've been through puberty, I've been through secondary school, I've gotten beat up by life, I've met a whole bunch of different people, I've started working, I got through college, I've moved houses, whatever. But one thing never quite changed - how I truly care about sports. There are hardly any emotions that compare to watching your team lose a critical game. It's absolutely tormenting. And I like this Simmons quote - "It's the only feeling that a 6-year-old, a 42-year-old and a 64-year-old can share exactly. You never get over it. You never stop thinking about the three or four plays that could have swung the game. It becomes something of a sports tattoo. You live with it forever, and then you die."
Simmons also once quoted Roger Angell, a former writer at the New Yorker, who said this:-
"It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift."
And if you think about it, that's what caring about sports is really like. When the joy that comes from being involved in a big win for your team far outweighs the fact that you care about something that, in the big scheme of things, hardly matters. I care so much because the memories that I've built from watching my teams over the years are memories that no one can take away from me. The knowledge that, at that moment, the world was a fricking playground.
Look, the single most joyous, ecstatic, moment in my life wasn't a moment where I achieved something I badly wanted to achieve. It wasn't a moment where I had my biggest victory. It wasn't the moment when I had my first girlfriend. The most ecstatic moment of my life happened when Jerzy Dudek saved Andriy Schevchenko's penalty kick and Liverpool won the 2005 European Cup. The Liverpool team was a massive underdog throughout the whole competition. They beat Juventus and Chelsea along the way. Then they went 3-0 down to Milan at halftime, came back to tie the game at 3-3 and win on penalties. When Dudek saved the spot kick, I went berserk. Seriously, I think I had reached nirvana or something and my mind blacked out. I don't remember what happened in the ensuing 2 minutes from the Dudek save. I know I leaped into my buddy JY's arms. But everything gets hazy after that. The most joyous moment of my life happened because of something that was entirely beyond my control. How does that make any sense?
But, you know what, this is precisely why sports fans care so much. Think about it. I was delirious. And I'm just a kid who grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Not someone who grew up in Liverpool. Who went to every home game. Whose dad probably supported Liverpool. Whose granddad probably supported Liverpool. Whose community revolved around Liverpool. Imagine how that kid must feel. And this is why we care. The memories that we get from caring stay with us forever. Even if we endure 999 moments of utter crap, that 1 moment will make us feel like it was all worth it.
Which is why, no matter what the reasoning or logic, I will refuse to support anybody who tries to relocate a sports team. A sports team provides a unique and valuable connection platform for an entire community. A sports team has always, to me, been a community thing. No matter how ardently I support Liverpool, I will never be able to match the ferocity of fanhood by someone who grew up in Liverpool who supports Liverpool. This community thing matters. And to take away a team from a community not just robs the community of their mutual connectivity platform, it robs the community of future great memories.
So, this is why sports fans care, even if it makes absolutely no sense at all. And we will continue caring. And I know that at a given moment while watching sports, a 12 year old, a 42 year old and a 75 year old person will be feeling the same things I'm feeling. Even if it is completely and utterly irrational, I will never stop caring.
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