On Roots and Rooting
posted in Scholar Athlete |
It’s been a week, but I still might not be able to talk coherently about it. Every once in a while, something comes along and you just can’t wrap your head around it in the way that you want to, you simply can’t come up with a pithy, overly-smart, no one’s written this yet sort of explanation. Instead, there’s only the absolute truth, which is pretty disturbing for a multitude of reasons. But, sometimes it can’t be ignored.
If you’ve ever taken a gander at the Steve’s Word Biographies page, or if you read Nate’s account of me crying, then you know that I’m a Mets fan. And maybe you’ve heard that last week, last Tuesday at 3:15 am eastern time, the Mets fired their manager, Willie Randolph. This was for me a heartbreaking event, even though it was probably long overdue. Ever since last year’s collapse, the writing has been on the clubhouse wall. The details and reasons and reactions truly aren’t that important. What is important is that, devotion be damned, the Mets showed their true colors. By firing a high profile and successful manager one game into a road trip, after a win no less, and in the middle of the night, the Mets showed just how much of a classless organization they truly are. They showed that there are the same idiots and peons who lost a Major League record number of games in 1962, the same team that squandered the primes of Keith Hernandez, Doc Gooden and Daryl Strawberry, the same team that continually goes ten years between winning seasons. All the flash of the new generation, the homegrown talent like Jose Reyes and David Wright and the big time signings like Johan Santana, in the end mean nothing. The Mets are as they always will be, classless and disorganized. Rotten from the top down.
A certain part of me wants to be rid of them, truly. There are times when I can’t take the anguish, the humiliation, or the heartbreak. But I can’t let go. Being a Mets fan is maybe the most essential part of my being, the fact that they can’t get it together maybe makes that even more true.
I was born a Mets fan because my father was born a Dodgers fan. I know that sounds weird, but it actually makes a lot sense. My father was a kid from Brooklyn and he grew up loving the Dodgers - Jackie Robinson, Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, all the greats. And then they left. And whether you believe it was the fault of Walter O’Malley, Robert Moses, the city of New York, or the city of Los Angeles, a whole borough-full of kids were suddenly without a team to call their own. Some of them switched to the hated Giants, who skipped town soon after (not coincidentally). Some switched to those despicable Yankees. Some waited. My father waited. And when the Mets were invented, he became a Mets fan and, ever the dutiful son, I followed suit.
My mother knows not to ask me for something on a day they lose because she probably wont get what she wants. My girlfriend has even learned to zip it during important at-bats. And even though she wont kvetch at the sight of the TV tuned to SNY, there’s still something about my own devotion that nags at me. Isn’t it necessarily and inherently juvenile to be so devoted to a sports team? Isn’t it childish to care about the number of times a bunch of millionaires circle some pieces of plastic we all call bases? Especially at a time like this, shouldn’t there more important things in life?
In sports, as it’s been pointed out many times, we mainly root for laundry. The players don’t give a shit about the fans. The use of “we” regarding success is totally ridiculous. “I didn’t see you out there in pinstripes,” I like to tell friends who use the first person plural when gushing about a win. But there is something here. It’s history that we pull for, it is identity. As difficult and painful as it may be sometimes, I can’t not root for the Mets. I am compelled to do so because that’s who I am. I am the struggle, the humiliation, the classlessness. I take heat when they lose and feel awful when they pull something like this. I feel great when they win. Even though I have nothing to do with causing any of it, there is no “we,” there is still an inherent and close connection. It can’t be shaken. And it shouldn’t be, because these are the things that truly define us.
The money that we make, the job that we do for a living, how many degrees we hold, none of that is as important as the sports and the teams we follow. This is, most certainly, not a very “adult” way of thinking. Being “adult” means worrying about finances and the future, mortgage rates and stock indexes. But all of that is misplaced. We are who and what we root for, and as we struggle to find our place in the world, it makes perfect sense that we should go back to and elucidate the source, the source of ourselves. Maybe I should be thinking about marriage, kids, and down payments, but I’d rather think about wins and losses. And, as a Mets fan, the losses just keep coming.
