still wondering: thoughtful insights & insightful thoughts

There a number of things I don’t understand about (most) organized sports. Not the sports themselves, but moreso the mob-like mentality of sports fans and all of the curiosities that go along with fandom. What perplexes me, mainly, is how people get so so riled up about their “home team,” as if that word encompasses even the tiniest shred of home pride in the traditional sense of the word (according to my traditions, of course, with which I will assume everyone is well-versed and commonly subscribes to.)

Sexy Plumber / Sexy Yankee?

But seriously, most players on the teams aren’t from the city that they play for (rather, get paid to play for.) How does that make any sense? I would rather see actual, fat plumbers from the Bronx on the Yankees go against a Boston-based team of questionably-sober, incomprehensible Red Sox. Just me?

Left to right: Obama & Ludacris (singer/songwriter)

In fact, even more ludicrous is how season to season the decks are reshuffled. And by decks I mean rosters. Switcharoo’s and the like, therein looming a large chance that the favorites from one season could potentially go to a different, or even rival team.

Also, athletes by and large are not playing for the hometown fans (this is unsubstantiated but just go with it.) They are playing for the paychecks signed by rich, old men who own the “teams.” They own the teams but refer to them as “franchises,” which boils my blood for a whole different set of reasons. Its mostly a verbiage thing. When I hear about sport franchises I cant help but immediately think of sports teams as some abstraction of a fast food restaurant. Franchise, when you hear the word, evokes thoughts of things like business models, profitability, Big Macs and other (less delicious) business-y type concepts proposed by mustachioed corporate big-wigs and fat-cats.

I’m just sayin’, white folks is crazy. And, so is my perspective on sports fandom.