Sport!

Joey is right. Today is not a good day to be a sports fan. Letdowns abound as the Tigers and Lions both lose games. It’s not all that surprising; they’re ongoing, disturbing trends: The Tigers have backed into the playoffs after being swept at home by one of the worst professional sports franchises in recent history, and the Lions are, well, the Lions.

The Lions and Tigers are two of the three teams to which my allegiance as a fan is tirelessly devoted. The third is Michigan State, and this was not a good weekend for them either as they were beaten in homecoming by Illinois, who has not won a conference game since 2004.

It all compounds: I have this hopeless belief in sports karma, or balance, or equilibrium, some sense that says all of my teams can’t possibly lose on the same day. It’s against the rules or something. There’s no way a loving God would subject me to such a fate, right?

Well, the Tigers are in the playoffs. That’s good, right? And besides, we should be happy and surprised. Everyone forgot there was baseball in Michigan for a long time. The bandwagoners can’t give you the names of anyone who was on the roster when they lost 119 games. Well, maybe they can… a lot of people tuned in to lust after that loss record. But, playoffs or not, we can by no means be happy with the last few months of D-town baseball. Especially when today’s loss yields a wildcard birth after holding onto first place for more than four months…and it had to be the Royals! I can understand getting swept by a team like Minnesota, or Oakland, or Chicago. Or maybe a team that didn’t have 100 losses, or one that didn’t need to call up AA ballplayers to finish the season. Is that so much to ask?

But the point is, we are none too thrilled going into the postseason. The season is not a loss. I love that the Tigers are tasting playoff baseball. I love it. But in the last few months, they’ve strung together enough disappointments to taint an otherwise great season. We’re not confident in the product on the field.

Speaking of not being confident in the product on the field, how do we let our hopes get up for the Lions anymore? Are we nuts? It’s some consolation to see the offense pick up against the Rams, but this is just one week. I’m ready to tune in each week to, like Tigers fans a few years back, lust after a mark of futility in a winless season. Then, the Fords can ruin the career of another high draft pick. I apologize in advance to Brady Quinn.

I’m not going to go into MSU football. It’s just that every year around this time, we all begin to look forward to basketball season a little more. Maybe the Spartan diehards will start looking into tickets to the Motor City bowl or the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. I can think of no better way to cap a 6-5 season than to spend a December evening in beautiful downtown Detroit.

Once in a while, all the losses coincide and I get a weekend like this one. When you’re a fan of those three organizations, it actually happens a lot. Today, when I heard the end of the Tigers game, I turned off the radio in my car and pouted. (This is how you reduce the manliest of men (not that I’m talking about myself here) to the most immature, silly state imaginable: You have his sports teams lose.) But as I sat and muttered and sulked, aloof in my Escort, I began to realize just how petty my mood was.

And I wondered why we allow our emotions to be so affected by a group of millionaires on a playing field trying to get a ball across a line. I’m sure there’s some Freudian-psychology-ego-study-thing to account for this, but I haven’t looked into it yet. We invest so much hope into our teams, and we stand by them in their wins and losses. We identify with them – their joys are our joys and their disappointments are ours as well. Unfortunately, our hope can become so misappropriated to distract us from real life. And the blessed escape for three hours of football can be soiled by an evening of depression if our team doesn’t pull of a win. To go to 1-3. There is so much more to take joy in, and so much more to get justly enraged about. None of which should revolve around guys vying for Nike endorsements.

One Love.