First Word

It was completely unexpected. With 17 games left in the season, they were seven back. Team #14 playing in City #1 had dominated the National East since the very first game of the season. For the last month, we were hoping to catch up with and hold the wild-card spot. There was no hope of taking the division. Nevertheless, when the last game was played, the group commonly known as the “Phillies” were on top, one game ahead of the group commonly known as the “Mets.”

As I pointed out last year, the players and coaches involved in professional baseball have become commodity items. There is little loyalty or continuity. The final step to completely dispel the illusion of the “home team” would be to auction off each collection of players known as a “team” to that city willing to outbid the competitor cities that year. In anticipation of that logical eventuality, I call the Phils “team #9 playing in city #5.”

Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard are back from last year. There might be a half-dozen others as well, if you count bench-warmers. Maybe. I’ll have to check.

It is not just city-swapping going on. It is also nation-swapping. There are more and more Latin Americans in the MLB rosters. I have nothing against Latin Americans per se. That is not the point. But push the logic: suppose the entire team were made up of imported Latin Americans. Would we still feel like they were the “home team”? Or would the absurdity of commodity sports finally be evident to everyone in a palpable way?

It is partly a national question, but it is also partly racial. Few will admit it openly, but it is there nonetheless. For example, the 2002 NBA Western Conference playoff featured LA versus Sacramento. The starting lineup for Sacramento was — mirabile dictu — mostly White. At the company I was working for in SE Pennsylvania, where there was no geographical stake for either contender, my informal poll revealed, without exception, that the Negroes were all rooting for LA, and the Whites all for Sacramento. There is a principle of tribal solidarity in fanship that is primal, and one does not have to scratch very deep to find it, even after twenty years of political correctness.

The fakiness is more than the national and racial confusion. Even tradition is becoming something manufactured by the PR firm. For example, management has been handing out “rally towels” to the Philadelphia fans the last few games, so they can swing them around, creating a shimmering effect that the announcers can claim is “rooting for a rally.”

But isn’t there something sick about that? Suppose there was a real tradition in Philly: suppose people rounded up old tee-shirts, handkerchiefs, napkins, or whatever else was at hand to wave and rally their team. That would be authentic. Management passing out towels smacks more of romper room. “Okay children, when I raise my hand, everyone wave and say ‘yippee’. Isn’t this fun?”

It’s a love-hate relationship. I have been a faithful fan the whole year, enduring the jeers of the cynics in the lab, and I’ll be cheering the Phils on in the upcoming playoffs (at the bar, not the stadium, however). But I also recognize that the whole fan-of-the-home-team is more pretend than real. It is a metaphor for a big aspect of what is wrong with the wider society.

Nevertheless, life is good. It kinda reminds me of the gag Woody Allen tells in Annie Hall. A guy goes to the headshrinker and says, “doc, I have a problem; my brother thinks he’s a chicken.” The shrink asks, “then why don’t you turn him in?” The man without guile answers: “I would… but I need the eggs.”

Go Phillies!