God Save The Fan, a sort of review, and unveiling FenSheaParkway's new motto
I stayed up all night Tuesday reading the new book that has the entire sportsblogging community buzzing (and me, who is not a member of the sportsblogging community) - "God Save the Fan", by Deadspin's Will Leitch. I don't think I've ever bought a book on Opening Day before (wait, that can't be what you call the day a book comes out) and I'm still not sure why I did this time. I guess I figured if it did turn out to be a big deal, then I'd have to read it before every single other sports blog in the world had read, reviewed and spoiled it for me.
Which is sort of ironic in that, BECAUSE I do read a lot of these blogs, the book's message and humor has already been spoiled before the book ever came out. If you already read and enjoy Deadspin, GSTF is like getting a box set of a TV show you really like. There are some episodes you missed, and the bonus features are going to be good, and you'll still laugh at all the stuff you've seen before. But you're not going to be blown away by anything since you got the box set for the explicit reason that you already like the program.
Now, if you don't read or have never heard of Deadspin, but you enjoy sports, sarcasm and probably Arrested Development, you'll get a kick out of it. If you only enjoy sports, have an on-and-off relationship with sarcasm, and have never heard of Arrested Development, you might think GSTF is a complete waste of time. The author is charming and mostly writes with aplomb; he is one of the few writers I know who can be philosophical and include a dick joke in the same sentence, which sort of makes him the Kurt Vonnegut of sportswriting. But other times you may wonder how much more mileage he plans on getting out of the whole, "I'm just a New York City hipster from the Midwest who became a literary icon and who's also a huge sports fan. Check out the layers of contradiction there!", set of flourishes and mannerisms. It's cute, but one might go so far as to say it's also precious. I mean, it's totally okay to rock out to Belle and Sebastian before Monday Night Football, but it'd be something else entirely to send Stuart Murdoch to the post-game press conference.
Once you either enjoy/come to terms with/ignore these tendencies, there's quite a lot to the book, even if it falls short of the tag some have given it: a manifesto. I guess if you only read the title and the introduction it might come across that way, but the book is really a collection of essays about sports fandom. Which is great, I think it's a topic that can be extrapolated upon in innumerable ways. The book does have several successful meditations on what it means to like sports, but really the biggest thing it has in common with a manifesto is the wild swings in subject matter. To really be considered in broad terms, aside from just being a very funny collection of essays, it's best to think of GSTF as Appendix I to a larger book. That larger book is the proliferation of sportswriting by non-professionals, and it's through that prism that GSTF makes the most sense and the biggest points. Even though GSTF could not logically have marked the true beginning of this post-modern examination on the state of sports, the fact that it can fit on a bookshelf better than, say, the Web, and that it covers a variety of topics, from the timely to the timeless, means that it could some day be considered the semi-official advent of sorts for the phenomenon.
It's tempting to say that the recent explosion of amateur sportswriting has as much to do with the attitude of of the writers as it does their access to new media. Part of any critique of how things used to be done is going to reflect a change in prevailing attitudes in any part of culture. Such as that is, modern sports fandom (at least the part that is drawn to Deadspin and it's progeny) often gets described being voyeuristic, detached and ironic, as compared to what used to be about authentic, devotional hero-worship. I can't speak for other fans, and certainly not for previous generations of them, but I digest, and sort of contribute to, a share of this sports fanalysis, so God Save The Fan did provide a fresh excuse for me to ponder my own brand of fandom. After some careful consideration, I've come to the conclusion that: It's all true, at least with respect to myself.
Which isn't to say that I watch sports the same way I would watch a Michael Bay movie; my appreciation of sports isn't dispassionate or ironic. I care about sports, or I wouldn't currently be writing a 1,000+ word essay for no other reason than one day to re-read it as a much older person. But I fully admit that there is no rational reason for me to care about a bunch of men (90% of whom I'd most likely despise, if I got to know them) performing arcane feats of physical dexterity, and especially not when it costs me plenty of money for the privilege of doing so. Yeah yeah, there's the whole escape angle, but there are plenty of ways to escape from the drudgery and misery of daily life; why did I pick one that actually causes me ADDITIONAL stress? The answer, and FenSheaParkway's new motto is:
SPORS GRATIA SPORTIS
That's all sports needs to be about, really.
Why am I a fan of my teams?
I have four different reasons for four different teams. The Rainbows because I was born in Hawai'i. The Mets because they had two star pitchers from Hawai'i when I was growing up. The Bills because I liked how they played even though I'd never been to Buffalo. The Red Sox because I got attached to them after living in Boston for a couple years. Sure, those are reasons, but there's no rhyme to it. I'm indifferent to or despise all non-Mets teams in New York City and that isn't likely to change even if I live here 10 more years. There are other teams I enjoy watching play but will unlikely become as attached to them as I am the Bills. And I'm not going to be FROM anywhere else in particular enough to like their local team. I'm a fan because I'm a fan, at this point.
Who are my favorite players?
Well there's Sid Fernandez. I call him the patron saint of FenSheaParkway because if not for him, not only would I almost certainly not be a Mets fan, but there's a pretty good chance I would never have cared about Baseball at all. But he's no 'hero' of mine, even in a strictly non-hyperbole sports sense. I hardly know anything about the guy. I know he went to Kaiser high school and because I had his rookie card, I know he played for the Dodgers before the Mets, and I know, for no other reason than he wore #50, that he was proud to be from Hawai'i. But I can't rattle off any personal details about the guy. Nor would I want to. He's my favorite player; that's really the only pertinent fact I need to know and it's sufficient even for someone who forms the very basis of my being a sports fan. Everyone else, from Billy Mueller to Bruce Smith, can stand in line behind even that loose relationship. I like what they do fine enough. I might even make a comment about them seeming like a good person, but I'm no expert. And it isn't like I'm so jaded as to be in a perpetual condition of steeling myself against one of my heroes defiling my expectations of him. I probably just don't have any expectations. (Note: This does not mean my favorite players are free to do as they wish. It's way easier to become an asshole in my book than a good guy.)
How to I properly appreciate the history and grandeur of the game?
Well, I do have the entire box set of Ken Burns' Baseball, which my dad bought off of someone for $20, and there were some parts of that I liked. (The best part: When they slow-motion panned across an old photograph while some historian talked about what Baseball meant to them. Oh wait, that's EVERY GODDAMN SECOND OF THE ENTIRE SERIES!!) And I follow stuff like the Hall of Fame voting and record-chasing because I'm forced to do so if I want to stay in touch with the sport at all when those things are happening. And I can be a sucker for poetic philosophizing about the game, if it's done with the proper tone and diction. But I don't read a lot of Baseball history and I certainly am no good at memorizing stats. "Q: Quick, who led the American League in runs in 1970?" "A: Please fuck off and die."
(Side Note, even though I've said it before: This is probably my biggest gripe with the whole steroids thing. People, please - stop being so concerned about which records belong to whom. No matter how much goes into the Baseball almanacs, Baseball is still primarily an oral history. If your grandkid wants to know who hit the most home runs in Baseball history, he's probably just going to ask you while you're watching a game, instead of walk to the library and open a book. Or a wavechart, or whatever they're going to call books in 2057. And as such, guess how you get to answer his question? ANY FLIPPING WAY YOU WANT TO!! [Note: I'm going to presume Barry Bonds still holds the record, because I'm too lazy to think of some clever name of a new record holder.] You want to tell him Barry Bonds has the record, no doubt about it? Sure. Want to say that Barry Bonds *technically* has the record, but that he was a lying sack of shit? Go right ahead, though you shouldn't swear in front of your grandkids or your kid will send you to the old folks home. You want to say Hank Aaron will always hold the real record, is a levitating demi-god and that's why our National Capital is named after him? Be my guest, though you might be reinforcing your kid's argument to send you to the old folks home at this point. MY point is that we can appreciate Baseball's history in whatever fashion we care to. Facts are facts, but heritage is a human fabrication of whatever the fuck you want to believe in.)
If I want to be even more embarrassingly honest about it, I usually can't even remember the factual events of most individual games I've been to, and I've only been drunk at a very small percentage of them. I remember the time that Mo Vaughn and Frank Thomas had a two-man home-run derby in a White Sox-Red Sox game when I was in college. And I remember Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. And I remember Richie Sexson hit a rope around Pesky's Pole off of Cla Meredith, which totally sucked, by the way. Can I stop yet? It doesn't matter, there's very little else in the tank. The point is, I just enjoy being at a Baseball game. It matters who won, but that becomes a matter of public record as soon as the game is over. I'll be able to look it up if I have to. But if I spent the whole time cataloging every detail of the event, I wouldn't be able to enjoy it. Actually, that's one of the reasons I started this journal, so that I could write down what I remember, in case I ever wanted to. It's entirely possible for someone to watch a game with me and then hours later reference something that went on in it, and I might have no idea what they're talking about. Baseball games do not get stored in my long-term memory. I'm just happy to be there.
So that's what SPORS GRATIA SPORTIS means. Sports for sports' sake. I like watching it as an improvisational art, one that I just so happen care how it ends. Or not even that sometimes. Why else would I bother with watching darts, or bowling, or doggie long-jumping, or the Olympics, or curling, or any of the other events that I could stop and watch on TV? It's just fun. You got two or more people who are trying to accomplish something better or faster than each other? Fan-fricking-tastic. I don't need elaborate reasons for watching it. I don't need to get to know the players better. I don't even need to know a lot about the context or history of what I'm watching. (Unless people fall down in it, then gimme, gimme, gimme.) Sport is fun because it's real and fantastic at the same time. Because you don't know what's going to happen next and yet it isn't just a parade of completely arbitrary moments strung together. It can replicate any pinnacle of comedy or drama but it's okay if it doesn't, because they'll just do it again tomorrow. (Take THAT, striking writers!) Sports can give you a lesson in sociology, economics, history or any other subject (okay, probably not English), if you WANT that. But if you just want to see someone eat it while trying to ski the Super-G, you can probably get that too.
Or you can have all of that stuff that I hate too; there's plenty to go around.
Which is sort of ironic in that, BECAUSE I do read a lot of these blogs, the book's message and humor has already been spoiled before the book ever came out. If you already read and enjoy Deadspin, GSTF is like getting a box set of a TV show you really like. There are some episodes you missed, and the bonus features are going to be good, and you'll still laugh at all the stuff you've seen before. But you're not going to be blown away by anything since you got the box set for the explicit reason that you already like the program.
Now, if you don't read or have never heard of Deadspin, but you enjoy sports, sarcasm and probably Arrested Development, you'll get a kick out of it. If you only enjoy sports, have an on-and-off relationship with sarcasm, and have never heard of Arrested Development, you might think GSTF is a complete waste of time. The author is charming and mostly writes with aplomb; he is one of the few writers I know who can be philosophical and include a dick joke in the same sentence, which sort of makes him the Kurt Vonnegut of sportswriting. But other times you may wonder how much more mileage he plans on getting out of the whole, "I'm just a New York City hipster from the Midwest who became a literary icon and who's also a huge sports fan. Check out the layers of contradiction there!", set of flourishes and mannerisms. It's cute, but one might go so far as to say it's also precious. I mean, it's totally okay to rock out to Belle and Sebastian before Monday Night Football, but it'd be something else entirely to send Stuart Murdoch to the post-game press conference.
Once you either enjoy/come to terms with/ignore these tendencies, there's quite a lot to the book, even if it falls short of the tag some have given it: a manifesto. I guess if you only read the title and the introduction it might come across that way, but the book is really a collection of essays about sports fandom. Which is great, I think it's a topic that can be extrapolated upon in innumerable ways. The book does have several successful meditations on what it means to like sports, but really the biggest thing it has in common with a manifesto is the wild swings in subject matter. To really be considered in broad terms, aside from just being a very funny collection of essays, it's best to think of GSTF as Appendix I to a larger book. That larger book is the proliferation of sportswriting by non-professionals, and it's through that prism that GSTF makes the most sense and the biggest points. Even though GSTF could not logically have marked the true beginning of this post-modern examination on the state of sports, the fact that it can fit on a bookshelf better than, say, the Web, and that it covers a variety of topics, from the timely to the timeless, means that it could some day be considered the semi-official advent of sorts for the phenomenon.
It's tempting to say that the recent explosion of amateur sportswriting has as much to do with the attitude of of the writers as it does their access to new media. Part of any critique of how things used to be done is going to reflect a change in prevailing attitudes in any part of culture. Such as that is, modern sports fandom (at least the part that is drawn to Deadspin and it's progeny) often gets described being voyeuristic, detached and ironic, as compared to what used to be about authentic, devotional hero-worship. I can't speak for other fans, and certainly not for previous generations of them, but I digest, and sort of contribute to, a share of this sports fanalysis, so God Save The Fan did provide a fresh excuse for me to ponder my own brand of fandom. After some careful consideration, I've come to the conclusion that: It's all true, at least with respect to myself.
Which isn't to say that I watch sports the same way I would watch a Michael Bay movie; my appreciation of sports isn't dispassionate or ironic. I care about sports, or I wouldn't currently be writing a 1,000+ word essay for no other reason than one day to re-read it as a much older person. But I fully admit that there is no rational reason for me to care about a bunch of men (90% of whom I'd most likely despise, if I got to know them) performing arcane feats of physical dexterity, and especially not when it costs me plenty of money for the privilege of doing so. Yeah yeah, there's the whole escape angle, but there are plenty of ways to escape from the drudgery and misery of daily life; why did I pick one that actually causes me ADDITIONAL stress? The answer, and FenSheaParkway's new motto is:
SPORS GRATIA SPORTIS
That's all sports needs to be about, really.
Why am I a fan of my teams?
I have four different reasons for four different teams. The Rainbows because I was born in Hawai'i. The Mets because they had two star pitchers from Hawai'i when I was growing up. The Bills because I liked how they played even though I'd never been to Buffalo. The Red Sox because I got attached to them after living in Boston for a couple years. Sure, those are reasons, but there's no rhyme to it. I'm indifferent to or despise all non-Mets teams in New York City and that isn't likely to change even if I live here 10 more years. There are other teams I enjoy watching play but will unlikely become as attached to them as I am the Bills. And I'm not going to be FROM anywhere else in particular enough to like their local team. I'm a fan because I'm a fan, at this point.
Who are my favorite players?
Well there's Sid Fernandez. I call him the patron saint of FenSheaParkway because if not for him, not only would I almost certainly not be a Mets fan, but there's a pretty good chance I would never have cared about Baseball at all. But he's no 'hero' of mine, even in a strictly non-hyperbole sports sense. I hardly know anything about the guy. I know he went to Kaiser high school and because I had his rookie card, I know he played for the Dodgers before the Mets, and I know, for no other reason than he wore #50, that he was proud to be from Hawai'i. But I can't rattle off any personal details about the guy. Nor would I want to. He's my favorite player; that's really the only pertinent fact I need to know and it's sufficient even for someone who forms the very basis of my being a sports fan. Everyone else, from Billy Mueller to Bruce Smith, can stand in line behind even that loose relationship. I like what they do fine enough. I might even make a comment about them seeming like a good person, but I'm no expert. And it isn't like I'm so jaded as to be in a perpetual condition of steeling myself against one of my heroes defiling my expectations of him. I probably just don't have any expectations. (Note: This does not mean my favorite players are free to do as they wish. It's way easier to become an asshole in my book than a good guy.)
How to I properly appreciate the history and grandeur of the game?
Well, I do have the entire box set of Ken Burns' Baseball, which my dad bought off of someone for $20, and there were some parts of that I liked. (The best part: When they slow-motion panned across an old photograph while some historian talked about what Baseball meant to them. Oh wait, that's EVERY GODDAMN SECOND OF THE ENTIRE SERIES!!) And I follow stuff like the Hall of Fame voting and record-chasing because I'm forced to do so if I want to stay in touch with the sport at all when those things are happening. And I can be a sucker for poetic philosophizing about the game, if it's done with the proper tone and diction. But I don't read a lot of Baseball history and I certainly am no good at memorizing stats. "Q: Quick, who led the American League in runs in 1970?" "A: Please fuck off and die."
(Side Note, even though I've said it before: This is probably my biggest gripe with the whole steroids thing. People, please - stop being so concerned about which records belong to whom. No matter how much goes into the Baseball almanacs, Baseball is still primarily an oral history. If your grandkid wants to know who hit the most home runs in Baseball history, he's probably just going to ask you while you're watching a game, instead of walk to the library and open a book. Or a wavechart, or whatever they're going to call books in 2057. And as such, guess how you get to answer his question? ANY FLIPPING WAY YOU WANT TO!! [Note: I'm going to presume Barry Bonds still holds the record, because I'm too lazy to think of some clever name of a new record holder.] You want to tell him Barry Bonds has the record, no doubt about it? Sure. Want to say that Barry Bonds *technically* has the record, but that he was a lying sack of shit? Go right ahead, though you shouldn't swear in front of your grandkids or your kid will send you to the old folks home. You want to say Hank Aaron will always hold the real record, is a levitating demi-god and that's why our National Capital is named after him? Be my guest, though you might be reinforcing your kid's argument to send you to the old folks home at this point. MY point is that we can appreciate Baseball's history in whatever fashion we care to. Facts are facts, but heritage is a human fabrication of whatever the fuck you want to believe in.)
If I want to be even more embarrassingly honest about it, I usually can't even remember the factual events of most individual games I've been to, and I've only been drunk at a very small percentage of them. I remember the time that Mo Vaughn and Frank Thomas had a two-man home-run derby in a White Sox-Red Sox game when I was in college. And I remember Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. And I remember Richie Sexson hit a rope around Pesky's Pole off of Cla Meredith, which totally sucked, by the way. Can I stop yet? It doesn't matter, there's very little else in the tank. The point is, I just enjoy being at a Baseball game. It matters who won, but that becomes a matter of public record as soon as the game is over. I'll be able to look it up if I have to. But if I spent the whole time cataloging every detail of the event, I wouldn't be able to enjoy it. Actually, that's one of the reasons I started this journal, so that I could write down what I remember, in case I ever wanted to. It's entirely possible for someone to watch a game with me and then hours later reference something that went on in it, and I might have no idea what they're talking about. Baseball games do not get stored in my long-term memory. I'm just happy to be there.
So that's what SPORS GRATIA SPORTIS means. Sports for sports' sake. I like watching it as an improvisational art, one that I just so happen care how it ends. Or not even that sometimes. Why else would I bother with watching darts, or bowling, or doggie long-jumping, or the Olympics, or curling, or any of the other events that I could stop and watch on TV? It's just fun. You got two or more people who are trying to accomplish something better or faster than each other? Fan-fricking-tastic. I don't need elaborate reasons for watching it. I don't need to get to know the players better. I don't even need to know a lot about the context or history of what I'm watching. (Unless people fall down in it, then gimme, gimme, gimme.) Sport is fun because it's real and fantastic at the same time. Because you don't know what's going to happen next and yet it isn't just a parade of completely arbitrary moments strung together. It can replicate any pinnacle of comedy or drama but it's okay if it doesn't, because they'll just do it again tomorrow. (Take THAT, striking writers!) Sports can give you a lesson in sociology, economics, history or any other subject (okay, probably not English), if you WANT that. But if you just want to see someone eat it while trying to ski the Super-G, you can probably get that too.
Or you can have all of that stuff that I hate too; there's plenty to go around.