First a few items in sporting news to mention. Both the baseball teams in the Washington-Baltimore metro area were eliminated from the playoffs last night. The big-picture story isn't that they were both eliminated, it's that they both made the playoffs in the first place -- the probability at the beginning of the season of this occurring was right around 1%*. I was kinda pulling for Baltimore because my boss is a huge Orioles fans, and he's a good guy, so he would've been happy, but they lost to those damn Yankees. I was kinda pulling against the Nationals (despite adopting them as my NL team earlier this season) because they shutdown their best pitcher Stephen Strasburg before the playoffs -- a bizarrely overcautious move that I wanted to backfire, which it did, sort of. Who knows what happens if Strasburg pitches? You enter a Back to the Future II alternate-1985 (in this case 2012) reality, and it's moot to speculate on what it would have looked like. What you can say, however, is that the Nats made a move that clearly diminished their odds to win the NLDS, and then they didn't win. What makes it even more heartbreaking for Nats fans is that they were winning the decider 6-0 early in the game and twice had the Cardinals down to their final strike, but couldn't seal the deal.
And while I'm on the topic of Nats fans, let me say this, in my view there are no real Nats fans between the ages of 21 and 50 (family and friends of the players, people with a financial stake in team, and the players themselves excepted). The Washington Nationals began play in 2005, 7 years ago, and age 14 is roughly the cutoff for when you can really be a fan of a team. After 14 you can follow a team, you can root for them, but you can't develop the ingrained, emotional attachment of a real fan -- it's simply not possible. A team's performance just doesn't effect your being and mood the way it does for fans who established a connection pre-14.
It's like learning a language. You can take ESL classes as an adult, but you'll always have an accent, even if you've been in the US for 30 years. On the other hand, a 10-year old can come to this country and speak like a native by the time he or she is 11. It's the same way in fan-dom. Sports fans who find a team after the age of 14 always have a "fan accent", they can never be a native speaker. And by the way, this isn't a bad thing or a knock on accent fans. I wish I cared less about Seattle sports teams. Trust me, I know how pathetic it is to have my mood effected by the performance of a bunch of 20-something millionaires (many of whom aren't the greatest guys in the world) to whom I have no direct connection. But I got it in me when I was little and it's tough to get rid of it, just like it's tough to unlearn your native language. It can be done, but it's probably not worth the effort.
[On the right, Oriole legend and Jules Winnfield lookalike, Eddie Murray.]
You'll notice I also allow for people over 50 to be Nats fans. This is because it's possible they were fans of the old Washington Senators who moved to Arlington after the 1971 season and became the Texas Rangers.** Someone who is 50 now would have been 9 or 10 in 1971 which is just about the right age for when a sports team can initially become ingrained in your psyche. It's perfectly reasonable to replace a now non-existence team of which you were once a real fan with a new team in the same city. It happened to Cleveland fans with the Browns and hopefully will someday happen to Seattle fans with the Sonics.
So that's it for Nats fans -- kids and seniors. For everybody else in this city, we can go to the games and cheer and cop a "Nattitude" (this is an actual, terrible marketing term), but let's not pretend like the game effects us that much one way of the other.
In other sporting news, my old B'ham friend Barb "Little Warrior" Honchak won another fight. Here's the link. The announcers kept talking about the other fighter's defense, and I was just thinking to myself, "Defense? She's getting whupped. What about Barb's offense?"
Anyway, in non-sporting news, S and I get our first night out tonight since Lil' S came along. Both her parents are in town, and we're going to take advantage of the babysitting by going out to eat with some friends. Dinner starts at 6:30, and I'm setting the even-money over/under for when we will be home at 9:15. I'm sure we will get antsy about being away for too long, and S will probably be dead tired by then anyway. She usually goes to bed around 9:30. I'm always up on night shift. I haven't gone to sleep before 1:15 since Lil' S has been born. I don't get much sleep, but I figured out an easy way to deal with it. It's called being tired. You just be tired all the time -- there's nothing to it.
It'll be nice to get out, if only briefly. Lately a "date" for S and me is an episode of Homeland while she pumps breast milk. We just started Homeland, and it's looking like a solid choice. It's got Mandy Patinkin in it, which is a great choice. Claire Danes is really good so far, too. One thing that bothers me about a typical TV drama is that they always have a foxy woman playing a role that a foxy woman just wouldn't be in in real life (like crime scene investigator), but with Claire Danes's character they made her borderline psychotic which makes it more believable to me. The only gripe I have with the show is the following. The premise is that a POW US Marine has been rescued and returned home, but he was actually flipped and is now an al-Qaeda agent. Danes, a CIA analyst knows it and is trying to prove it (this isn't a spoiler, BTW, it's all explained in the pilot). The show is set in the DC-area where Danes lives and works (since she's with the CIA), but it also is where the POW Marine comes home to. His family lives here also. Here's my big question: why does his family live in this area? He's a Marine, couldn't they live anywhere in the country? Is it just a complete coincidence that his family lives in the DC area? This seems way too lucky. They need to explain this, it bothers me.
Anyway, gotta get ready for a big night out. Until next time...
*Technically the probability was around .01, as a probability, using a strict mathematical definition, is a number between 0 and 1, not a percentage, but you get my point.
**These Washington Senators, who began play as an expansion team in 1961, aren't to be confused with the original Washington Senators, who were an inaugural member in the AL in 1901 before moving to Minnesota and becoming the Twins after the 1960 season.
No comments:
Post a Comment