Mike
Ball
Read Mike's bio and previous columns here
June 2, 2008
Please, Red Wings, Make
Me (I Mean You) A Champion
As
I am writing this, the Detroit Red Wings have just won their third
Stanley Cup Finals game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and are one
victory away from winning the 2008 Stanley Cup. If they win, we here in
Michigan intend to annex South Dakota so we can put Pavel Datsuk, Henrik
Zetterberg, Tomas Holmstrom and coach Mike Babcock (a Russian, two
Swedes and a Canadian) on Mount Rushmore.
At
the same time, the Detroit Pistons players are all dusting off their
golf clubs after losing the Eastern Conference Finals to the Boston
Celtics. A lot of Detroit fans are calling sports talk shows to debate
whether Pistons coach Flip Saunders should be fired, shot, poisoned,
burned at the stake, fed to hungry alligators or given a public
relations job in the Bush Administration.
And the Detroit Tigers are . . . well, they’re the Tigers.
As
you’re reading this, you probably know quite a bit more than I do about
how all that stuff is working out. But I can’t help wondering why we
sports fans even care. After all, whether Darren McCarty gets to float
around in a swimming pool sipping Crown Royal and Red Pop out of the
Stanley Cup or not, my life will be pretty much the same.
And boy, do we fans ever care! We drive around with team flags flapping
themselves into colorful shreds by our car windows. We sit for hours in
front of the television set, screaming helpful coaching tips at the
screen. We paint our cars, our boats, even our homes in team colors. We
name our pet hamsters after the team’s equipment manager.
Well, some of us do.
In
return for all this unbridled adulation, we expect championships. If our
team doesn’t happen to win it all, we pull for them to come close enough
that we can accuse all the other teams of shameless cheating and assure
each other that we’ll get ’em next year.
Just what is it that gives us the right to demand so much of our teams?
On the surface, I think it’s all about wanting some return for our
commitment. After all, if I’m going to spend eight bucks on an
adjustable billed cap with a team’s logo on it, I have a right to expect
every member of that team’s organization to lay down his or her life to
live up to my idea of success.
But it may be a lot more than that. I think that at some level we each
imagine ourselves to be the one on the ice firing a slap shot at the
net, or driving the lane for a lay-up or getting hit in the butt with a
knuckle ball.
That being the case, it seems like people who have participated in one
sport or another, especially those of us who have been fortunate enough
to have been involved with winning any sort of championship, would have
a more realistic attitude when we toss our athletic supporters in the
laundry and sit down to become fans. We all know from experience that no
matter who you are or how good you are, for every time you hoist a
trophy, there had to be a lot more times when you shake the winner’s
hand and hoist a conciliatory beer.
As
I write this I don’t know for sure how the Stanley Cup Finals will turn
out. At the moment the Red Wings’ odds look pretty good, and within the
next few days there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll get to see my boys
skating around with the Cup held over their heads. At the same time, I
try to remember that in every contest there is one team that gets called
“champion,” and all the other teams have to wait until next year.
But you know what? This year, it really better be my Red Wings. After
all, I did buy a cap . . .
Copyright © 2008,
Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Click here to talk to our writers and
editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.
To e-mail feedback
about this column,
click here. If you enjoy this writer's
work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry
it.
This is Column # MB080.
Request
permission to publish here.
|