The Train is Getting Way Too Loud

Part XXVI (My Response)

Before I attempt to answer your question on the typical temperament for a sports fan, I'd like to follow up on your observation regarding Daryl Morey. I'm not nearly as interested in the NBA as you are, but due to the fact that I'm (largely) a Bill Simmons sycophant, and Simmons and Morey are buddies, I've come to appreciate Morey's work. I'm really writing all of this in hopes that he'll invite me over to dinner since we do live in the same city, but I'm not holding my breath on that invitation. Anyway, what I mean to say is that the identity, background, and yes, temperament of those who hold front office jobs for sports franchises is going to continue to change. We're going to see more people like Morey (MIT, computer science background) and Andrew Friedman (Tampa Bay Rays' Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations with a financial background, albeit at Bear Stearns) instead of seeing the usual mill of former players through the front office.

You were dead on when you said that sports fans are people of all personality types and characteristics, but sports fans strike me as people who both need and thrive in community. (Hmmm, I think we've discussed that term before. I'm sensing some threads coming together in this conversation.) The act of playing sports, even individual sports, is largely a communal experience, and one of the joys of following a particular team or club or franchise is sharing in the highs and lows of that franchise with others who feel the same way you do about your chosen team. I don't think you're going to find many extreme introverts among the mass of sports fans.

Since you've been asking the questions lately, I'll ask you a question: Working off of our earlier discussion about whether people care more about sports than they did in the the past, do we, as a society, care too much about sports today?

I Know I Look Tired but Everything's Fried Here in Memphis

Part XXII (My Response)

I'm not saying that the "bulbous, hairy, occassionally inebriated dudes" always intend to follow their chosen team because they know that doing so will allow them to express and experience all of those emotions. I'm saying that sometimes we do things because we know how they make us feel, even if we don't understand exactly why.

It's funny that you labeled yourself a "sports heretic" a couple of emails ago, because I've heard Bill Simmons refer to Chuck Klosterman as a "sports atheist." The difference in the labels is that Klosterman has no team to which he attaches himself, and we all know Simmons' rooting loyalties rather well now, but you do have teams that you follow. As you've said, though, this following does not include getting pulled into some sort of funk when the Blue Devils, Evil Empire, or Lakers lose. It also probably means that you don't get too excited when they win either. You appreciate the act of following the team and enjoying the games, but you don't allow it to affect your emotional state. That's undoubtedly the healthier route as a sports fan.

On the other hand, though, you have people that you have already mentioned who go into a self-destructive tailspin whenever their team loses and go out and overturn cop cars and assault police horses when their team wins a title. I think the reason for the self-destructive tendencies is explained very well in Nick Hornby's book "Fever Pitch", which is Hornby's memoir on his life as a supporter of Arsenal FC in the English Premier League.

Let's leave aside for a moment any Red Sox-related associations you may have with the words "Fever" and "Pitch" and reflect on Hornby's work. He explained that at times when Arsenal would climb to the top of the standings in England only to come up with ever more creative ways of losing games and squandering their season, he was also going through a really rough patch in his own life. The struggles of Arsenal on the pitch came to mirror his own struggles, whether those be romantic, financial, or emotional. Once his life turned around, he still cared about Arsenal, but the times when they would horribly collapse, it didn't affect him as much. I guess the moral of his story is that people use sports as an escape from some of the drudgery of everyday life, and when sports leads to disappointment as well, people allow those feelings to take root.

We're Tiny White Specks on a Bright Blue Planet

Congratulations to Mr. John Middleton for correctly naming "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin as the Monday Song of the Day.

I'm back in Space City after a quick weekend trip to visit the lady friend in Nashville. We thoroughly enjoyed our time on Saturday night at a soggy Neyland Stadium along with 96,000 of our orange-clad friends.

My favorite part of the entire visit to Knoxville happened during the "Vol Walk."

What's the "Vol Walk" you might ask?

Head Coach Johnny Majors came up with the idea for the Vol Walk after a 1988 game at Auburn when he saw the historic Tiger Walk take place. Prior to each home game, the Vols will file out of Stokely Athletic Center, down past the Tennessee Volunteers Wall of Fame, and make their way down Peyton Manning Pass and onto Phillip Fulmer Way. Thousands of fans line the street to shake the players' hands as they walk into Neyland Stadium. Through rain, snow, sleet, or shine, the Vol faithful are always out in full force to root on the Vols as they prepare for battle. The fans are pumped up with Rocky Top played by The Pride of the Southland Band.

Thanks, Wikipedia!

Back to our story...as the Vol Walk was beginning, and the players and coaches were approaching the entrance to Neyland Stadium where our group was standing, the excitement grew as we clapped in time to "Rocky Top." Suddenly, I had the sense that a very large person was standing just behind me. For those of you who are thinking ahead, no, it was not Manute Bol. Instead, it was a very large man wearing bib overalls and a Tennessee orange jacket. As Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin walked by us, the aforementioned mountain of a man proceeded to yell "The LANE TRAIN" over and over again for a solid 2 minutes.

Was this guy the first person to recognize the rhyming properties of the words "Lane" and "train"? Almost certainly not.

Was this guy the only one who was fired up at the sight of his favorite team entering their coliseum to do battle against the foe from South Carolina? No again.

Did this guy contribute to my enjoyment of the "Vol Walk" and thus my enjoyment of the trip as a whole? UNDOUTEDLY.

Thanks, Overall-clad, Name-Rhyming Guy. You made our trip to Knoxville/Neyland Stadium a very memorable one.

Current Reading

The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy by Bill Simmons

His Answer Came in Actions, He Never Spoke a Word

After a spirited discussion in the comments section of yesterday's post regarding Tim's suggestion that I switch my baseball allegiances from the Rangers to the 'Stros, I'm going to link to the end-all, be-all source for the topic to allow everyone to know where I stand on the topic.

Islam has the Koran, Judaism has the Tanakh and the Talmud, and in the world of sports fandom, the disciples of Bill Simmons have "The Twenty Rules for Being a True Fan". This column may have been written over 7 years (Editor's Note: After noticing that at the top of the page, I now feel older than James Earl Jones in The Sandlot), but it still rings true for all who believe.

This column has been brewing for about six weeks, ever since a startling phone conversation with one of my Page 2 bosses (KJ, a Seattle native and die-hard Seahawks fan). We were chatting about the Patriots and Steelers potentially colliding in the playoffs, when KJ suddenly said, "At least if my Steelers lose, I'll be happy for you, because the Pats made it." Huh? My Steelers???

And this was how I found out that KJ -- my esteemed editor and friend, a good man, a father and a husband, the man who makes Page 2 run so smoothly -- was a Sports Bigamist. As it turns out, the Steelers are KJ's Second-Favorite Team, whatever that means. Apparently, as long as Pittsburgh isn't playing Seattle, he roots for the Steelers, but he doesn't root for the Steelers quite as hard as he roots for the Seahawks, and if both teams are doing well, he chooses the Seahawks, but that doesn't mean he doesn't care about the Steelers, and I think I just lost control of my bowels.

Please read the column, take time to think about it, and then you will understand why I (must) support the only American League franchise to have never reached the ALCS.

Current Reading

Tree of Smoke: A Novel by Denis Johnson

The Autumn Bells are Ringing, but They'll Just Have to Wait

Two things before I head off to the exotic locale of Nashville, Tennessee for that thing the kids like to call Spring Break (look for me in the Nashville-edition of Girls With Low Self Esteem):

1. Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, provides a great take on the societal menace that is the Facebook Status Update:

Other than that, the comedy of status updates can be off the charts. Like my college classmate who sends out status updates so overwhelmingly mundane and weird that my buddies and I forward them to each other, then add fake responses like, "(Guy's name) … snapped and killed a drifter tonight" and "(Guy's name) … would hang myself if the ceilings in my apartment weren't too short."

It kills us. We can't get enough of it. We have been doing it for four solid months. And really, that's what Facebook is all about -- looking at photos of your friend's kids or any reunion or party, making fun of people you never liked and searching for old hook-ups and deciding whether you regret the hook-up or not. That's really it. All in all, I like Facebook.

2. Some blessed soul has been putting all of the old GSP Sing Song acts on YouTube. We're talking all the way back to the halcyon days of 1993. In the spirit of excess, here they are in all their glory.

1993-Referees

1995-Golfers

1996-Sheriffs

1999-Matadors

2000-Umpires

2001-Barbershop Quartet

2002-Huck Finn (bonus points to the first person who finds baby-faced Dan Carlson)

2003-The Beatles show is M.I.A. for some reason. I blame Demetrius Collins for this.

2004-Top Gun

2005-Travolta (I have no idea how this show won)

2006-Frogs (The show I enjoyed the most, and, in my opinion, is the best one on this list)

2007-Firemen

2008-Magicians (I'm just going to act as though I never saw this show)

2009-Peter Pan

Before They Turn the Summer Into Dust

For those of you who know me well, you probably know that I have a moderate to severe man crush on Bill Simmons, but today the Sports Guy really outdid himself.

In his annual "NBA Trade Value" column, Simmons presented to the world the following video featuring the immortal (due to the fact that he's an alien) John Tesh performing "Roundball Rock", a.k.a. the NBA on NBC theme from the 1990's.

Just watching the video took me back to the days of Bulls-Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, Marv Albert's toupee in its middle years, and countless showings of "Entertainment Tonight".

There's one thing that I think the Sports Guy got wrong with his video analysis, though. At the 1:17-1:25 stretch of the video where Simmons thought that Tesh was playing "air piano", I think that Yanni, Jr. is actually doing something closer to "air dribbling" of a basketball. I'm not Marcel Marceau here, but I think that's pretty close to how a mime would dribble a basketball, also assuming that the mime has an assist-to-turnover ratio comparable to that of a drunk Gheorghe Muresan.

I apologize to Billy Crystal and Big Gheorge for that last comment.

Current Reading
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I Can't Help the Feeling, I Could Blow Through the Ceiling

Congratulations to Mr. Joseph R. Halbert for correctly naming "Cochise" by Audioslave as the Tuesday Song of the Day.

Joey's mention of Chris Cornell as a nominee for the Best Rock Vocalist of All-Time sparked another firestorm in this Houston-addled brain of mine.

If you had to choose one song as personal entrance music and/or a personal soundtrack what would it be?

For me, in the realm of entrance music, I'm going with the song named earlier, "Cochise" by Audioslave. It really has it all, my friends: A thundering drum intro, an absolutely filthy guitar riff, and wailing lead vocals.

In the category of personal soundtrack music, I'm stealing the choice of a Bill Simmons-mailbag contributor who noted that each and every Explosions in the Sky has the ability to make even the most mundane tasks seem like epic adventures that take on a mythical quality.

In the personal soundtrack clip, I'll be depicted eating a bowl of fruit loops while an 8-9 minute musical adventure takes place in the background.

Oh, also, pyrotechnics will be present.

Yes, many, many pyrotechnics.

Power and the Money, Money and the Power

There was an episode of "The Office" last year where Michael informed Jan that no one at the Scranton office was disgruntled, but to the contrary, everyone was extremely "gruntled".

Well, as has been written about here and here, it seems that William "LaBill" Simmons, a.ka. The Sports Guy, is less than, shall we say, "gruntled", with the World-Wide Leader in sports at the current moment.

As improbable as it seems, he is apparently writing for the moment at...wait for it, wait for it, wait....this site. Yes, that's correct. The most famous blogger/internet-centric sportswriter this side of Grantland Rice is using a Blogger-platform to, in the words of Whitman,"Sound his barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world."

This, my friends, is why I am fascinated by the internet. The playing field has completely been leveled. I have the same method of communicating with the masses as one of the most well-compensated/promoted/connected sportswriters of the current era. Someone could stumble from the Sports Guy Unplugged to Osler's Razor to No Genuine Issue of Material Fact to the Jig and Twig without even knowing which was written by the law professor, which was written by the student, and which was written by a de facto internet mogul.

True Colors Fly in Blue and Black

Congratulations to Mr. Jeremy Masten for correctly naming "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty as the Sunday Song of the Day.

Rest easy, everyone. We now have proof that the Sports Guy did not mix himself a Drano smoothie after last night's devastating loss by the Great Satan.

Now it all makes sense.

You bleed for your team, you follow them through thick and thin, you monitor every free-agent signing, you immerse yourself in draft day, you purchase the jerseys and caps, you plan your Sundays around the games ... and there's a little rainbow waiting at the end. You can't see it, but you know it's there. It's there. It has to be there. So you believe.

Of course, there's one catch: You might never get there. Every fan's worst fear. All that energy over the years just getting displaced, no release, no satisfaction, nothing. Season after season, no championship ... and then you die. I mean, isn't that what this is all about? Isn't that the nagging fear? That those little moral victories over the years won't make up for that big payoff at the end -- that one moment when everything comes together, when your team keeps winning, when you keep getting the breaks and you just can't lose.

And if none of this makes sense, well ... it does to me. I just watched somebody else's team win the Super Bowl. Giants 17, Patriots 14.

"Free Fallin' Out Into Nothing" by Bill Simmons.

I must confess that a small part of me hurts for the Patriots, Simmons, and the entire fanbase of the Great Satan. Set aside their former smug satisfaction, thoughts of Spygate, and Bill Belichick leaving the field last night with :01 remaning on the clock. Instead, think if you had been working towards anything monumental for months and months, only to see it taken away at the last moment by the black sheep brother of your greatest rival.

After weeks and weeks of pressure, constant questions about perfection, and tons of potshots, the Pats fell a few minutes short of immortality, and as Eli Manning knelt to the turf in Glendale, Arizona, I was reminded once again how the pursuit of perfection is an unforgiving journey.
History will not view the Pats' season as a success despite the second-ever undefeated regular season. Instead, they will be viewed as a tragic collection of figures that, by all accounts, should have finally ushered the '72 Dolphins out of the spotlight, and entered into a rareified status that only comes along every so often in this era of parity and mediocrity.

Now, everyone is undefeated once again. When the next season begins in September, we will have these inevitable discussions around the final team remaining undefeated, constantly wondering if they can make it all the way. Those conversations will be full of possibility and conjecture, but they will always contain the phrase,"Yeah, they're undefeated, but what about Super Bowl XLII...?"

Such is the Promise, Such is the Curse

On Friday, I mentioned the enshrinement of NY Times columnist David Brooks in the Running Down a Dream author/writer/columnist Hall-of-Fame. At the point when I made that famous declaration, said Hall-of-Fame was an entirely contrived entity, and I guess it still is, but I wanted to run with the idea and commit it to the firmament of the internet. That last clause is probably an oxymoron, but I'm moving ahead regardless.

If I had to construct my version of Canton, Grauman's Chinese Theater, or Cooperstown, it would look something like this:

First-Ballot Members (since Cooperstown had 5 initial members [Mathewson, Ruth, Wagner, Johnson, and Cobb] I'm going with 5 of my own) in no particular order:

David Halberstam

As if it were not enough to have written the definitive book on the Vietnam War (1972's The Best and the Brightest), the Pulitzer Prize-winner also authored one of the best sports books in the last half-century with 1980's The Breaks of the Game.

Over the years, he developed a pattern of alternating a book with a weighty theme with one that might seem of slighter import but to which he nonetheless applied his considerable reportorial muscles. “He was a man who didn’t have a lazy bone in his body,” said the writer Gay Talese, a close family friend. Obituary in the April 24, 2007 edition of the NY Times.

David Brooks

I was introduced to the writing of Brooks through the Op-Ed page of the NY Times, but his best work, at least in my opinion, is found in his two books, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. When viewed as two parts of a larger whole, they represent one of the most accurate pictures of modern America that I have read.

Bill Simmons

Even though his rampant homerism for the Great Satan this year has been a bit too much to handle, the Sports Guy still holds down a spot in the Pantheon (I know, I'm mixing my metaphors), due to the fact that he has introduced me to The Ewing Theory, the Manning Face, the Levels of Losing, the Tyson Zone, and "Yup, these are my readers." His first book, Now I Can Die in Peace, chronicling the 2004 World Series run by the Red Sawx, may just be required bedtime reading for my (non-existent) children or grandchildren when the Rangers, Cowboys, and Liverpool still have not won a title.

Malcolm Gladwell

Out of the Top-5, Gladwell is easily the figure that I have read the least, but his ability to present technical, jargon-laden information in an engrossing and engaging manner is a skill that I greatly admire. Whether it was 2000's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, 2005's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, his pieces for the New Yorker, or his blog, almost all of Gladwell's writing makes me view the world in a new way that I had never before considered.

Jon Krakauer

Krakauer rose to prominence based on his first hand-account of the 1996 Everest Disaster in Into Thin Air, but 1990's Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains, 1996's Into the Wild, and 2003's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith are just as good, if not better than Into Thin Air. Krakauer's writing is reminiscent of the settings he describes: stark and often unforgiving. If the sign of a great writer is the ability to remove himself from the story and place the characters on center stage, Krakauer is surely near the pinnacle of the modern non-fiction genre.

Honorable Mention (Maybe next time, fellas)

• Ernest Hemingway
• John Grisham
• Stephen Ambrose
• John Steinbeck
• Bob Woodward
• Chuck Klosterman
• William Manchester
• Edmund Morris
• David McCullough
  
  
  
  

It's Been Raining for Hours, There's Water Everywhere

2007: Part Deux

July:

• 14: The kids from Memorial C of C in Houston compare me to the evil German camp counselor Lars in Heavyweights. I'm strangely honored.
• 20: Honestly, eating spam is not that bad for a few weeks each summer.
• 26: Lightning and I are almost tragically united.

August:

• 15: I call out Bear Grylles and somehow still survive to this very day.
• 16: Michael Vick: Federal inmate and covert operative for Al Qaeda.
• 22: Anchorwoman begins its rather brief run on Fox. The residents of Tyler exhale as one in response.

September:

• 4: "Battery Hut, Battery Hut, Battery Hut!!!"
• 7: Matt Phillips, we salute you.
• 24: Mike Gundy and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Just a Couple of Guys Keeping Things Crazy.
• 27: If you are a Texas Rangers fan, hope must spring eternal.

October:

• 1: If you don't think this is yet another opportunity to bring up the GSP Sing Song win streak, well, you just don't know me that well.
• 7: I manage to send the Baylor Bear football program to even greater depths of despair.
• 19: College football fan arrogance at its finest.
• 25: The 3rd Anniversary Post.

November:

• 8: The Trinitarian Opposition to the Evil Empire.
• 13: Ruminations on the phenomenon that is Soulja Boy.
• 15: Take it from me on this one: Always try to remember who's alive and who's dead.
• 28: The Sports Guy's date with destiny.

December:

• 5: Take this quiz and help determine the fate of the free world.
• 10: The best piece I've read so far on the 2008 Presidential election.
• 13: Happy Mitchell Report Day!
• 17: Gus Johnson's status as a liar is still up for debate.
• 19: Anton Chigurh v. Jason Bourne for all the marbles.

If You Find Yourself in That Nostalgic Rage

Jonathan referred to it in a comment on the post from earlier today, but I would be doing myself and the rest of this band a disservice if I didn't promote the heck out of The Sports Guy's record-breaking 7 hour, 4 minute chat today on ESPN.com.

For those of you who are loyal and ardent Sports Guy followers, you've probably already read the chat transcript, but for those of you who have not delved into the madness, I'm warning you.

This is like picking up War and Peace and thinking that Leo penned a tome that could be vanquished in less time than it took Howard Dean's presidential campaign to fall apart after the "Yeahhhhhh" speech in 2004.


Reading the entire transcript is going to require whatever fortitude, gumption, moxie, and mojo that you possess, but know this: You will be a better person at the end of the madness.

Just as my father constantly reminds me of the musical supremacy of the 10-year stretch from 1965-1975, my children will one day grow tired of my stories chronicling the moment when The Sports Guy vanquished the record of Rob Neyer.