Dear NFL: The cruel epiphany of a once baseball fan
Dear NFL,
I write you as a friend to express some concerns. I may be writing only from my own pure — and perhaps misguided — nostalgia, but I worry about the future of my great game. (I apologize in advance for moments of incoherence and inconsistency, but like many long-standing passions, the one I have for you defies articulation — and reason.)
You would not be wrong to downplay my concerns. After all, people love their big-time sports nowadays. The ESPN juggernaut, with hours of jocks-in-ties, is testament to that. I love sports, but I don’t watch those shows. I feel uninterested in most of it. But then there is the NFL, which I love. Why? Maybe it’s fantasy football. Maybe it’s the gladiatorial-chess match hybridity of the game. Maybe it’s the shiny helmets. Maybe it’s…
I could speculate forever, but there is no real reason. It’s sweet, illogical fandom, tracing back to a feeling developed in childhood, when I fell for the game. I had record books. I had a Fran Tarkenton jersey. My friends and I played the game whenever we could. A neighborhood tackle “league.” Touch in the street. One vs. two in my side yard: A running back hopelessly barreling toward two defenders.
I had electric football, that big metal, buzzing field on which I played my Electric Football League (EFL). Observers thought me crazy to watch little plastic players slide around the metal gridiron, but I saw order and beauty to it. It was football.
As a child, I found a stability and sweet mystery to the game. I never had to think much about that.
I know, NFL, that now all our games have changed. The money and excess of big-time sports has made everything too important. Instead of watching the games, we watch refs re-watch games to make sure they get the call right, a sytem that misunderstands why we watch in the first place. During last year’s Saints-Vikings NFC Championship game, I suffered through video replay after replay, and started to think, “Wow, I’m not enjoying this any more.”
I worry that others are having a similar feeling, but I worry more that while the adults were watching the replays, the kids were playing in another room. So many things compete for kids’ attention, that’s for certain, with so little permanence. Take my EFL obsession. I still have the teams in their little boxes, and I can still name, in a kind of bizarre parlor trick, at least ten members of the 1977 line-ups of a dozen NFL teams. Now, we have Madden video games, in which every year you get new digital players, a revolving door of hyped, but ultimately forgettable, names.
I worry because I look in the stands, and I see so few kids. Is the air slowly leaking out of the NFL fan base because a new generation of fans, whose love of the game will be forged in childhood, can’t afford to experience it?
Of course, my worries now center around next football season, because there might not be one. The owners may lock out the players and there will be no games.
And so we come to baseball. There is a story about a Phillies game I attended when I was a little boy. It rained, yet I sat in the middle of a cleared-out section of seats keeping score, tracking every pitch. Now, I can’t even watch baseball.
What happened to that boy who sat in the rain and kept score? Baseball went on strike in 1994-5, and I’ve never watched it seriously again. We make our compromises (I’ve forgiven you, NFL, for such things), but for some reason after the baseball strike, I started thinking about baseball. The moment I did, I couldn’t live with it any more. Baseball was simple. The teams with the most money win. I had this cruel epiphany, and I was ashamed to realize the games weren’t decided on the field or even in practice. They were decided in an office by people with checkbooks who bought things. I went to a baseball game or two, but instead of hearing cheers, I heard something else, a thrumming chant: “Money, money, money.”
I worry, NFL, that if you go on lockout or strike, that I will be unable this time to ignore your own money mantra. Unlike other fans, who eventually filled baseball stadiums and bought their $7 beers and paid their $20 for parking again, I may not come back. If the games end next year, I’ll be forced finally to think about it all, to stop overlooking jurisprudence articles and in-your-face celebrations and greed.
This is ultimately a self-indulgent letter. I’m just sad for me, because as I get older, as we do with many things, I feel a stronger childhood connection to the game. I still have my EFL teams. I never finished my third EFL season. The Broncos, in those old orange soda-colored uniforms, have lived for 30 years in the specially padded box reserved for my Super Bowl champion. The games are over, so they will never be dethroned.
And so my worries about you are probably baseless. NFL players and owners know fans will stick around. Most kids will still want an autograph, never thinking about who is signing it. To this lonely observer, it seems that sealed world of fandom is so fragile, and any kid who really thinks about it won’t enjoy the games, and it will all disappear. I guess what I’m hoping for is a little more prolonging of that magical world of faith, where we don’t think things out too much. Once you do, the games are over, and real life sets in.
Your long-admiring friend,
Scott
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And so the struggle continues! Scott, I love this one for another – and also selfish – reason. This article reminds me of the joy given to me by my now 12 year old son. Four or five years ago, Al was an amazing quick-change artist. He loved to dress for the occasion and often the occasion changed mid-day, heck, mid-hour!
Quite often we’d get a phone call. “Hey its your neighbor. I just wanted to tell you we’re enjoying the heck out of your son. He’s in the yard (fill in the blank – hitting, running, tossing) dressed like (fill in the appropriate corresponding blank).”
Most often, I’d notice it myself. For a fleeting moment he’s next to me marveling at an amazing play as I watched my Philadelphia Eagles. When I turned to comment later, he would be gone. He had gotten all he needed out of that one play, changed into his Donovan McNabb jersey and plastic helmet, and was in the yard throwing imaginary passes to himself.
Sometimes I’d just watch and laugh and smile a whole lot. Other times I’d join him and enjoy the simple joy a good catch. Less often I’d ruin his imaginary game by asking him to run precise patterns.
No matter the end result, they’re all OUTSTANDING memories. Thanks for getting them back for me.
Joe
PS – Mine was a Paul Krause jersey!
Being someone who relished all those touch football games, hours spent watching football as a kid, and even (ashamedly) once videotaped a friends electric football game…I couldn’t agree more. The monster that is professional sports always seems one step from growing too large for its own good. One step from taking itself so seriously that it defies enjoyment. However, I think there is hope. And like many things it comes as time served. I am passing along my love of football to by boys as we watch the games, cheer and groan together.
They seem less interested in all the extra crap that we as adults tend to get caught up fretting over. Maybe it’s that the things we see as new intrusions have always been part of their game. Not sure. But it gives me hope that they can start to love a game with those irritants, even as it rankles me. Lets me hope that I can let go of some of my tight-fistedness and just relax and enjoy the game like I did when I was twelve.
By the way….still waiting to see who gets crowned in that third season.
I still have a kid who loves to watch the entire games, and does the replays himself! Ah, the joys of digital TV … Did you see that last-second almost-goal by the Flyers a week ago? We watched that at least 10 times. He still loves it all.
Kids see the game. Grown-ups see the world around the game. Grown-ups are dumb.
Rule#62 Dont take yourself so damm seriously.
Being someone who relished all those touch football games, hours spent watching football as a kid, and even (ashamedly) once videotaped a friends electric football game…I couldn’t agree more. The monster that is professional sports always seems one step from growing too large for its own good. One step from taking itself so seriously that it defies enjoyment. However, I think there is hope. And like many things it comes as time served. I am passing along my love of football to by boys as we watch the games, cheer and groan together. They seem less interested in all the extra crap that we as adults tend to get caught up fretting over. Maybe it’s that the things we see as new intrusions have always been part of their game. Not sure. But it gives me hope that they can start to love a game with those irritants, even as it rankles me. Lets me hope that I can let go of some of my tight-fistedness and just relax and enjoy the game like I did when I was twelve. By the way….still waiting to see who gets crowned in that third season.