Their Loss = Your Win?

As everyone with half an eye or an ear on the sports world right now knows, the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers were swept out of the second round of the NBA Playoffs by the Dallas Mavericks. As I listened to WFAN midday co-host Evan Roberts gloat triumphantly about the Lakers' loss this past Monday (you can listen to the segment here if you wish), some sort of chord was struck inside of me. And before you simply say that it's just a reaction to the Andrew Bynum's deplorably dirty elbow late in Game 4, let the record show that Roberts had been equally cheerful on his show the day after the Mavs went up 3-0. Now, let's get it out of the way that Roberts is regarded by many to be a cliché-spewing clown who (and this a fact) happens to score baseball games while watching them on TV. But his inordinate level of joy taken out of the Lakers' demise is what really got me thinking. As sports fans, we naturally tend to revel in the defeat of teams that we hate. But when are we really entitled to do so, and, more importantly, when are we not entitled to do so?

Of course, I get why any given NBA fan (or sports fan in general) may be happy to see the Lakers go - they're a high profile team with tremendous history and currently sport a collection of some of the biggest, as well as the most polarizing, personalities in the game. But to be up in arms with happiness that they've been eliminated? That's a bit much, unless of course you're a Dallas Mavericks fan, or even a fan of one of the Lakers' chief rivals (i.e. Boston, San Antonio, Houston). I'd even understand it if you happen to be a fan of one of the other remaining playoff teams and you believe your team's road to the championship got easier with the Lakers gone. The problem with a guy like Evan Roberts basking in the Lakers' defeat? He's a New Jersey Nets fan. The Nets are not only from a different conference and the extreme opposite side of the country as the Lakers, but the two teams are on completely different levels. The Nets haven't been in the playoffs since 2007, while the Lakers had been in three straight NBA Finals until this year. I just can't see any logical way for a Nets fan to be able to legitimately take joy in a Lakers elimination.

Here's the deal. You're allowed to bask in a rival's loss if they're exactly that - a rival. If it's a division rival or often-clashing conference rival (i.e. the '90s Cowboys and 49ers, as well as the Colts and Patriots of the past decade), it's fair game. Even then, your level of enjoyment from said rival's loss shall depend largely on how successful your own team is. For instance, you can bet your bottom dollar that I was happy to see the Eagles get bounced by the Packers in the playoffs last year, but since the Cowboys were 6-10 themselves, I wasn't about to head for the rooftops to talk smack either.

The same goes for rivalries that are geographic and little more, i.e. Yankees/Mets - does anyone really think a fan of the fourth-place Mets would have had a leg to stand on if he tried talking trash about the Yankees losing the ALCS last year? And while we're on the topic, I understand the cross-pollination of geographic rivalries (i.e. I'm a Yankee fan who despises the Red Sox and therefore feels inclined to root against all Boston teams), but that line needs to be tread carefully. For example (and forgive my overuse of East Coast cities), if you're a Mets fan, you're allowed to hate the Phillies, but if you're a Jets fan on top of it, then you're not really entitled to hate the Eagles wholeheartedly just because of the New York/Philly dynamic. Since the Eagles and Jets only meet once every four years, there's really very little basis for anything there. You can quietly root against an entire city if you want, but you are not entitled to apply nearly the same intensity as if you were rooting against your own teams' actual rivals. The same goes for a team that has ripped your heart out in the past. Root against them, but if they're not an actual rival, keep it mellow.

My issue in general is with the blanket hatred of the teams that everyone is apparently "supposed to hate" - i.e. the Yankees, Cowboys, Lakers, Celtics, Notre Dame, USC, etc. The successful teams grow to be hated; that's just the way it goes. But one of my favorite truisms of life is that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. I root for possibly the two most hated teams in all of sports, so I have a bit of experience from which to speak. From elementary school up through college, I'd take crap from marginal-quality fans of marginal-quality teams whenever the Cowboys or Yankees would lose or be eliminated (especially in 2004, if you catch my drift). My response would usually be some form of "thank you." Thanks for caring about what happens to my team despite me not giving much of a rat's ass what happens to yours. It's good to know they're on your mind. If the teams you hate truly "sucked," then you'd pay them no mind. So, oddly enough, saying a team sucks or taking undue glory in their defeat at the hands a team that isn't yours is really payment of an indirect compliment. It's a matter of having your priorities and perspective in line more than anything else. For the sake of a more intelligent sports-watching America, remember that objective #1 is seeing your own team win - something for which there is no substitute.

All For One, One From All?

Mercifully, the NBA free agency whirlwind has subsided, and while certainly all the folks in Cleveland are still pretty steamed (see what I did there? OK Lou you can act your age any minute now) about the public-perception suicide that LeBron James committed, the country now focuses the brunt of its attention on baseball, and specifically for this week, the All-Star Game. One of the time-honored debates that begins the moment the All-Star rosters are announced is the "every team gets represented by at least one player" rule. It used to be that people would only be annoyed at this rule because it would deny a more-deserving player or two a spot on the team, that spot instead going to someone merely having a decent year on a bad team. But since 2003, when Bud Selig found it necessary to inject meaning into a mid-season exhibition game by having its winner determine which league got home field advantage in the World Series, the debate has grown larger and larger. Fortunately, o my brothers, I am here today to solve that debate, in the way that all of our middle school English teachers taught us to - with a bit of the old pro and con.

Pro
Mandating that every team be represented in the All-Star Game is one of the few egalitarian things left in a sport that has become the ultimate caste system over the past 15 years. From a visual perspective, the All-Star Game is unlike anything else, in that you will see 30 different uniforms on the field over the course of the game. Since all of the other sports - football, basketball, hockey, etc. - are nearly impossible to play unless the two teams are wearing distinctly different colors, baseball is the one sport that can pull this off. I, for one, take great enjoyment in seeing every single major league uniform on the field during the Midsummer Classic, and sacrificing a Royal or an Oriole just to get yet another Yankee in there does not seem to go along with the way it was originally drawn up. Not to mention, don't you think much of America is sick of seeing the same 7-8 teams on national television all the time? By mid-July we've all had plenty of Pujols, Jeter, and Halladay. It's a nice change of pace, not to mention a fandom-enriching experience, to see guys like Corey Hart, Heath Bell, and Joakim Soria play on a big stage. It's a spectacle that should put the whole league on display, not just the 4 or 5 biggest markets.

Con
Let's start with the name. "All-Star Game." That kind of implies that every participant should be a star, yes? If that's the case, then good luck convincing me that such players as Michael Bourn (hitting .255 for the sad-sack Astros, albeit with 28 steals), Evan Meek (he does have some nice numbers, but he's a setup guy on the Pirates, give me a break), and Ty Wigginton (sporting a sweet .334 on-base percentage for the 29-win Orioles) really belong on that field. You're selling me on a game where I am just as likely to see a matchup of John Buck vs. Matt Capps (the 23 saves are nice, the 49 hits allowed in 39 innings aren't) as I am to see Cliff Lee against Albert Pujols (Editor's Note: Cliff Lee blew Albert away on 3 pitches in the 4th inning. So I at least got that one.)? And what's worse, the deeper the game goes, how much more likely is it that the average fan will not even have heard of many of the guys on the field at crunch time? Under this system, a guy hitting .260 for a last place team can potentially have the at-bat that decides whether the AL or NL gets home field come late October? Has the whole world gone crazy? Do you get what I'm driving at? Did I just end 5 straight sentences with question marks?

The Verdict
Believe it or not, I'm steadfastly in favor of having every team represented in the All-Star Game. It's bad enough that the owners in cities like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Kansas City act like they're trying to kill baseball in their respective towns. The least MLB can do to avoid twisting the knife in those beleaguered fan bases is throw them the bone of being able to root for one of their own guys in the Midsummer Classic. What about all the stuff I just said in the last paragraph, about the every-team rule dragging down the talent level? Well, I really don't think that's the issue.

The issue is with how the game is treated. You can't contrive meaning for an exhibition game. Our parents' generation loves to talk about the days when the All-Star Game was a bitter rivalry and meant just as much or more than any regular season game. They croon about Pete Rose running over Ray Fosse in 1970 to illustrate that point. Well I'm sorry, but everyone is going to have to accept the fact that those days are over. There is too much money invested in the players on the field for the All-Star Game to be treated as anything more than an exhibition. Ray Fosse's career was severely derailed after getting decked by Pete Rose. Can you imagine the backlash if that happened today? And it doesn't even have to involve rough play. For instance, if Charlie Manuel were truly managing to win this All-Star Game, don't you think he'd keep Ubaldo Jimenez in there for a lot more than two innings? I don't think they've even invented the words that the Rockies would have for ol' Cholly if he made their ace throw 100 pitches in an All-Star Game. And that's not even considering the issue of everyone not getting into the game, which pisses people off just as much. You can't ask a manager to try his hardest to win a game while at the same time making sure that everyone gets to play. It's a candle burning at both ends.

You could make the All-Star Game count for whatever you want, but guys from opposing teams are still going to be slapping each other on the back during batting practice and chatting while being held on at first base. It's just the way the game is played now. The new every-year DH and re-entry rules are a much-needed safeguard against running out of players, so the issue of repeating the 2002 tie is moot. Instituting those rules is the league saying "there's no reason that everyone can't get into the game," which stamps "EXHIBITION" in big red letters all over the thing. For those reasons, the best of both worlds is to allow the game to remain an exhibition, and simply award home field advantage in the World Series to the team with the better record. Now, can we simply let some of the most talented men on the face of the planet play a game of baseball, and leave it at that?

It's a League Game, Smokey

As we go further and further into the chasm of adulthood, many of us will try to find any way that we can to give ourselves a taste of being a kid. One of those ways to rekindle the good old days is signing up for recreational sports leagues, either an interoffice league at work or a weekend league with friends. When you get down to it, we're all there to try to recapture the time when our little league games where the highlights of the week, when being the guy who batted third or played shortstop was the most important thing in the world. Of course, nowadays it's just beer-league type stuff, a diversion from the routine, a few hours out of the week to scale back the hastiness of everyday life. And while above all else the name of the game (no matter what game you're playing) is having fun, that does not make it OK to blatantly suck and bear no regard for winning.

There's a few people like this on every team, whether it's softball, basketball, volleyball, you name it. They are there "just to have fun" and will remind everyone of that fact with a goofy smile and a shrug of the shoulders every time a botched play draws their teammates' glare. I'm sorry, but "just wanting to have fun" is not a blanket excuse for habitually poor play and/or disregard for fundamentals and strategy. You don't hear people say "wow, look at that, Joe out there has misplayed 3 fly balls this inning and somehow managed to strike out in slow pitch, but he's just here to have fun so it's OK." No, it's not OK. If you put the uniform on and step onto the field/court/rink, your job is to help your team. Fun is a by-product. You know what's fun? Playing well is fun. Winning is fun. Watching your team lose because a mongo wearing the same uniform as you forgot how many outs there were? That, my friends, is not fun.

I'm not saying to treat winning or losing like life or death, because that extreme is even worse than not caring. But just have a clue and take things somewhat seriously. If you fail to do that, you're wasting the time of others who actually care. You're probably the same guy who plays blackjack and doesn't hit a 14 when the dealer is showing a face card. Not to mention, playing on a company team can be politic city, so you can even be damaging your career. I think that's what grinds my gears the most about this matter - why do you sign up for something where you are, in essence, voluntarily embarrassing yourself in front of people whose opinions may matter? On the scale of office unpopularity, being that guy who everyone hopes isn't up to bat next or doesn't get the ball hit to him is only slightly better than being the smelly guy. That's right, the smelly guy. (this is where you nod your head and chuckle in agreement)

Bottom line? If it were just about fun we wouldn't keep score or standings. I'm not saying you have to be an A+ athlete to be on the field, because honestly if any of us were all that good we wouldn't be playing in a simple rec league. What I am saying is to know your limitations - I played intramural basketball in college and my only real value to the team was giving breathers to the guys who were actually good. So when it was a tight situation late in a game, I took myself out. If we lost, at least it wasn't going to be because I traveled. So if you are admittedly not that great a player (and being able to admit it is 90% of the battle), don't trot yourself out to left field in a tie game in the 7th inning, because the ball is going to find you, and odds are, you are not going to catch it.