Crazy about the Jets? Nuts about the Bombers? You bet you are!

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/10/2017 (2910 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Influential Washington Post political columnist Charles Krauthammer took a break from politics earlier this year to write a column in which he postulated athletes and their fans are basically crazy — and not just in the fanatic way that the word “fan” is derived from.

As Krauthammer sees it, the pain of losing is always greater than the joy of winning, and anyone who took the time to do the math would never attach themselves to a team, much less actually join one.

“By any Benthamite pleasure/pain calculation,” Krauthammer wrote, referring to the work of 17th- and 18-century ethical hedonist Jeremy Bentham, “the sum is less than zero. A net negative of suffering.”

Krauthammer wrote that column in June, but I tucked it away intending to revisit the subject at some point, reckoning Krauthammer’s proposition — sports is an enterprise that takes from us infinitely more than it gives up — would have a particular resonance here in Winnipeg, a city that was founded on the idea of a net negative of suffering. (“Come for the spectacular three-month-long summers! Stay for the horrifying six-month-long winters!”)

If you had an uncle who constantly yelled at Mike Holmes while watching HGTV, you’d probably start keeping a closer eye on him.

The idea of suffering will be familiar ground for any fan of the Winnipeg Jets and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

The last time the Jets hoisted a trophy at Portage and Main, Joe Clark (who?) was prime minister. The Bombers are the owners of the longest Grey Cup drought in the CFL, a streak that will hit 27 years next month unless they can finally figure out a way to beat the Calgary Stampeders.

Now, there is nothing new in the idea fans of sports teams will be disappointed far more often than they are satisfied. The goal of every sports team is singular — a championship, however that is defined.

And since only one team can win a championship every season, even the fans of sports’ winningest teams — the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Montreal Canadiens, the New York Yankees — have cried in their beers far more often than they have doused themselves with champagne.

But what’s interesting about Krauthammer’s proposition is the idea that even on the rare occasions when you do win, the pleasure you get doesn’t make up for the pain you felt in losing.

You can see this less-than-zero-sum game at play in one of sport’s most famous moments: Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” that won the New York Giants the National League pennant in 1951.

While the homer made Thomson famous — “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It may have been the best thing that ever happened to anybody,” Thomson once told a reporter — his elation was nothing compared to the anguish that forever followed the man who gave it up, Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca.

Despite a brilliant pitching career that included three consecutive all-star appearances, that one pitch overshadowed everything else Branca accomplished and it followed him to his grave. Literally — the New York Times headline on Branca’s obituary last year read: “Ralph Branca, who gave up ‘Shot Heard Round the World,’ dies at 90.”

“A guy commits murder and he gets pardoned after 20 years,” Branca once said. “I didn’t get pardoned.”

For a parallel closer to home, ask yourself this: Which feeling was more profound — the joy you felt when the Jets were admitted to the NHL in 1979 or the anguish you felt when they moved to Phoenix in 1996? It’s not even close — and it’s not good, I’d argue.

But we keep coming back for more, don’t we? That broken heart many in this city felt when the Jets left was precisely why there was such unmitigated elation in 2011 when another team moved here and was named the Jets. And so it goes, around and around.

You can even see it in what’s gone on with the team over the past two weeks. While their early season record is 3-3 and Connor Hellebuyck is showing signs that the goalie the Jets have been waiting for might have been here all along, it’s all doom and gloom in town after  a 5-2 spanking Tuesday night courtesy of the Columbus Blue Jackets provided more evidence that the Jets other goalie, Steve Mason, might have been a very expensive free agent mistake.

Ask yourself this: Did you feel more joy when the Jets manhandled Connor McDavid and the supposedly mighty Edmonton Oilers earlier this month or more misery when the Jets got destroyed by Auston Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs on opening night?

Again, it’s not close and it’s not good.

Now take the Bombers, who have put together a very impressive regular season for the second straight year and yet are the source of nothing but consternation at the moment, as season-ending injuries to key players mount as a date with their kryptonite, the Stampeders, looms on the horizon.

Again ask yourself: what do you remember most from last season — a thrilling 11-7 regular season that included a seven-game winning streak and secured the club’s first playoff spot in five years; or a debacle of a West semifinal that saw the Bombers seize defeat from the jaws of victory?

Me too.

The only thing more irrational than continually returning to an activity that, more often than not, drives us crazy is the crazy stuff sports uniquely inspires in otherwise rational people.

Consider: a new Washington Post-UMass Lowell poll released this week found 19 per cent of sports fans confessed they “always” yell at the television while they are watching sports, 16 per cent said they yell “most of the time” and 25 per cent said they do it “sometimes.” 

And it’s not just men, if that’s what you’re thinking. While 56 per cent of male fans report they occasionally yell at the inanimate object in their living rooms, that number jumps to 62 per cent for female fans.

That’s both crazy and crazy-making and yet we treat an activity — that might otherwise get you locked up for your own safety — like it’s the normal course of events when it comes to watching sports.

If you had an uncle who constantly yelled at Mike Holmes while watching HGTV, you’d probably start keeping a closer eye on him. But yelling at the Jets penalty kill? Hey, there’s only so much one man can take.

Now, some of this, to be sure, is not without its therapeutic value. In a world in which people are now paying companies to give them a baseball bat and a room full of glassware to smash, there is surely good value in spending an evening in front of the TV channelling your frustrations about things in your life that really matter into something that doesn’t.

Which is essentially what a garlic fries vendor told New York Times reporter Sarah Lyall this week when she surveyed the crowd at Yankee Stadium to try and understand why fans had so mercilessly booed longtime — and previously beloved — Yankees manager Joe Girardi a week earlier over his failure to ask for a video review in Game 2 of New York’s division series against Cleveland.

“How else are the fans going to express their displeasure?” said the vendor. “This is why you pay $100, $150 a ticket — for catharsis.”

Sports drive us crazy, but we keep coming back for more, which is quite literally the definition of crazy.

Imagine how crazy we’d be without it.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek