Sports Fans are Irrational

161 Sundays to go.

• 161 people died in the earthquake in the Philippines on October 17, 2013.   Can you imagine if 161 Americans had died in some disaster?   It would be wall-to-wall 24 hour coverage for months.   It happens somewhere else or to others who are not Americans, it isn’t that important.   Well its worth about 5 minutes if there are particularly gory pictures but it usually gives way to some celebrity scandal.
• Liechtenstein has a land area of 161 square kilometers.

 

Sports fans are irrational.   At least this one is.   If you don’t follow a sports team, I envy you.    If you do, you know the pain I am suffering.  Or if you’re married to one, like my wonderful wife, you’ve seen this pathetic B movie before.   “Oh, jeez, he’s lying in a fetal position, hugging his jersey, shaking and crying his eyes out.  I better at least get him in the house before the neighbors see him.”   Maybe you’ve escaped this dark night of the soul because you’re a bandwagon jumper and only openly root for teams that win year after year.    My suffering is not rational. Why should I care.  I don’t own the team.   I don’t personally know any of the players.   It really has nothing to do with me.    But I’m suffering.  And damn it,  let me stay out here in the yard if I want to and show the world I support my boys. 

I have a few favorite teams but my personal favorite is the hockey team, the San Jose Sharks.   They were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs this past week.    They have never won the Stanley Cup.     They have never been to finals.     They have a reputation for underachieving, what some may call choking.     And if ever a team’s loss could be labeled as choking, the Sharks this year are too late for a saving Heimlich maneuver.     The Sharks held a 3-0 lead and needed only one game to win the series.    Only 3 teams in the near 100 year history of the National Hockey League had ever been eliminated after holding a 3-0 lead.    Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the fourth team in that proud lineage:

 Your 2013-2014 San Jose Sharks!

 I have been a Sharks fan since their NHL inception in the 1991-1992 season.    They were not only bad early but historically bad.     They still hold the record for most losses in a season, having gone 11-71-2 the following year.   Digest that for a minute.   71 losses out of 84 games.   Still I watched every game that was on TV.    This was before today’s era of every single game appearing on TV.    So probably more than half of those demolishings the Sharks were only available to be enjoyed on radio.   I listened to all of those too.    I remember one really fun game when they were beaten 13-1 by the Calgary Flames on the road.      It was such a bad year that I remember a particularly bright moment and cause for massive celebrations was when they tied, not beat, but only tied the powerful Montreal Canadiens at home on a goal in the last minute.  That was David not beating but just kinda walking away from Goliath  before he beat the crap out of him.   This was before overtime and the shoot  outs that today’s game has to avoid ties.    So that was huge.    A couple of years later when the Sharks had risen to mediocre status, I had a really bad flu.  So bad that my wife was lobbying hard for me to go to the hospital.   I’m like a lot of men.    I refuse to go to the hospital unless a priest is being summoned for the last rites.     They were playing in St.  Louis against a team that was one of the top teams that year.    They were gunning on all cylinders that night and shut them out 2-0.   Almost immediately after the game I could feel my fever breaking. Other than at my wedding,  I have never felt such a warmth and rush of well being and euphoria that wasn’t alcohol induced. I remain convinced to this day that the win had a lot to do with it.

The more recent Sharks’ teams have been contenders and own a spot in the top 10 of winning percentages among all 30 teams the past 10 years.    They are expected to win and also expected to win the Stanley Cup one of these years.  They’ve gotten close only to be eliminated usually by the team that put it all together to eventually win the big prize. 

In April right before game 1, I have my usual Stanley Cup shrine going.  In years past,  I have a little mini Stanley Cup and I arrange a couple of framed autographed pictures of Sharks players around it.   My wonderful wife isn’t crazy about this since she has great taste and busts her tail to maintain a house that is the envy of all who see it. But she allows me a little corner in our upstairs bedroom.   To change things up this year I scrapped the pictures and instead went with The Cup along with a couple of bronze hockey figures that were made in Russia during the  Soviet era.  There is no correlation between the pictures and the Soviets,  I just like those bronzes.   Right before they dropped the puck, I changed into a Sharks Stanley Cup shirt I got a few years ago.    I walked over, kissed my pointing and middle fingers and laid them mindfully into the bowl of the Cup.    I did that the first 3 games and they were up 3-0.  Just blew them out.    For some reason I got complacent and totally forgot before Game 4 and they lost.    No problem, they have 3 more to go.    Each time I did the deed with the shirt and the kissing and it was 3-2, then 3-3 and now I’m getting worried.   I wore a Sharks pin to school before the next one, hoping for a little game 7 mojo.     Nope.   They lose and they are now part of NHL history.    I had trouble falling asleep that night.   Again nothing to do with me, but its like you feel bad when your friends or relatives are suffering.

The next day, I did laundry, washing all of my Sharks stuff that I had been wearing that week.   Luckily the salt from all the tears did not leave any bleaching marks and I put them away tenderly in the back of the closet and  brought  the San Francisco Giants stuff  to the front of the closet.   I’m now in orange and black as we speak.    

I was really brutal in my analysis to those asking this week in my  assessment of their loss.   I called them chokers.   I said they were soft.   I said they need to blow up the whole team, fire the coach and the general manager.   I’m never that brutal but a monumental, historical loss such as this called for a monumental, historical over reaction.     I have since then come down off the ledge and realize as  I did during the games they were letting slip away, that the reason they lost was not because they choked but because the other team was better the last 4 games.   In particular the goaltender was out of his mind good.     In hockey, a goaltender playing out of his mind can put a team on his back and win a series all by himself.     That’s what happened.    My brother also told me one statistic that made me feel better.    I told you that only 4 teams in the history of the NHL have lost a series after being down 3-0.    But he told me to keep my chin up because of those 4 teams, 2 of them went on the next year to win the  Stanley Cup.    That’s pretty cool and I’m going with it.     Right up until next April or May when they crash and burn during another unsettling, shocking stretch of underachieving at just the worst time possible.

March Madness

167 Sundays to go.

• 167 million people were expected to shop online on Cyber Monday, the first Monday day after Thanksgiving in 2013 according to cbs.com news.
• Martina Navratilova won 167 tennis titles, a record for both men and women.

         March is my favorite time of the sports year.   The hockey games are now meaningful with teams trying to make the Stanley Cup playoffs in April.    The baseball season is only a couple of weeks away and the NCAA basketball tournament is beginning.    But it is also the time  of some of my worse relapses in alcoholism.

        I really love the beginning of the tournament.   I don’t watch a single college game all year and don’t even follow the rankings.     I really have no idea what is happening until the weekend before the tournament  starts.   I’m too busy following hockey, my first sports love.   On the Sunday before they have a big show on CBS in which they announce the schools and the seedings.    This is when the mania starts.    For four straight days,  I am watching the expert analysis shows and when those are over I am scouring the internet for more expert analysis.   I feel like I’m going blind by the time they actually start playing games.

      I always take the opening Thursday and Friday game days off from work and watch basketball literally all day, from 9AM until 10PM.   I run a tournament pool and I always think this is the year I finally contend.    But by the second day I am once again out of it.    Seriously, every year, I am out of it breathtakingly early.   All of my sheer fire brackets have been blown to smithereens.   I’m not sure where The Smithereens are but I’m pretty sure its not too far from my hometown of Loserville.

     This year was no exception.    My wonderful wife and I went out to lunch on Thursday the first day.    We went to a restaurant that had a TV so I could watch  the games.    This year I was losing every close game or every game that was a tossup.    I was whining and moaning about this cruel fate.  My wife looked up from flipping through her parmesan crusted chicken salad and said, “Doesn’t this happen every year?”   I dabbed barbecue from the corner of my lip with a napkin and muttered, “I guess.”    Then she says,  “Maybe you’re not all that good at it.”    She wasn’t trying to be mean.    She has been watching me for years get all excited about the tournament.    Then by the second day I’m moping around the house, difficult to be around and she finally said the obvious.   “Maybe you’re not all that good at it.”  That’s not true.  The truth is I totally suck at it.    And I look forward to going through it all again next year.

       The tournament also has a dark side and plays bookend settings in my addiction/recovery story.     In the late 80’s I was doing office jobs and going back to school for my teaching credential.    I had stopped drinking for awhile after a not so gentle suggestion  from my wonderful wife.   The suggestion came with the idea that if I didn’t care for her plan I would be recovering from my hangovers somewhere else.

        This night was the championship game and I had a night class.    I decided to blow off the class and go to a bar to watch the game (of course without telling my wife).     As usual, I thought I could watch the game, just have a couple of beers and pull it off.   But as usual, I had way more than one or two beers and was three sheets to the wind by the time the game was over.    I did not get away with it and it was the beginning of 10+ years of sobriety after the suggestion was changed to a demand.    I called it a bookend role because the tournament was also the scene of the end of that long, long period of sobriety.

         Fast forward to the March, 2000.    I had been privately congratulating myself that I had gone all of the 90’s without drinking.    The subtle idea began to emerge that maybe I was cured and could drink normally.  This is alcoholic thinking and should’ve been a warning of bad times to come.   My wife would never agree to me doing “normal drinking” to see how it goes.    She knows.   You’d think  I would know.    So that year I decided when she went off to work when  I was at home the first day of the tournament I would give it a go.  My thinking was that I could drink a six pack, get drunk, sleep it off, get up, get rid of the evidence, shower and be and look normal by the time she came home about 4.  More alcoholic thinking and the mere thought should have screeched like a fire alarm.    I bought a six pack and stashed it in the garage.    The second she left I popped that sucker in the freezer to be cool in  an hour.

       I started drinking about 9AM, another serious alcoholic red flag.    By the time I had drank 4 beers about an hour or so later,  I was lit up.  On 4 beers!  Ripped and feeling like I was on top of the world.   10 years previous that buzz would’ve taken close to a 12 pack.   And I did get away with it.   I polished off the 2 others, passed out, got up about an hour before my wife was coming home.   I showered and got rid of the evidence.

        But a month or so later, I sneak drank again and then what I always heard in AA about relapse drinking began to come true.    My periods of sobriety became shorter and shorter and when the dust had settled,  I was drinking every day again.   I  never drank during the day but as soon as I came home I was plotting how to sneak alcohol into house and how to drink it.   My only conscious thoughts were about drinking.    And the next morning I was hung over and miserable because I knew I had reached the point of no return.   I couldn’t stop drinking and I  didn’t know how to stop.  I had no one to confide in or so I thought.   I know now that my wonderful wife would have been very understanding and supporting.   She initially would be angry and disappointed but she would do anything to help me as long as I wanted to get help.   And members of AA are always there to listen and help.    I was still going to weekly AA meetings as I always did but I was lying my rear end off and pretending to be Mr. 10 Years of Sobriety.   What the H, E,  Double Toothpicks happened.    What happened was I forgot the Cardinal Rule of AA:   Don’t take the first drink.

         A few months later I over did it and got really drunk at home and my wife confronted me.    At  first I denied as any self-respecting lying piece of crap alcoholic would do.    But I realized suddenly that the jig was up.   She was steadfastedly not going to listen to my lies.  It was over.     I admitted what was going on and cried like a baby.    Crying with shame and relief.   The psychological horror of the last few months was over and I was going to be Ok.   I went back to AA and admitted what I had done and was welcomed back with open arms.    I had always seen people in AA relapse and announce themselves as newcomers.   Everyone gets really happy and the love just pours out for that person.    I never considered that they’d do that for me.   I am forever grateful to the rooms and people of AA and of course for my wonderful wife who I absolutely do not deserve.   I’m going to post this and go off some place and cry with gratitude.