Fans Without Longing: A Requiem for Red Sox Fandom [Jarrett Conner]
There was a time when all respectable tortured artists dreamed of being Red Sox fans. Some, born in New York, for instance, were too authentic in other ways to adopt a red sox fan-ian pose just for the implications, but I'm sure they longed to do so. That is, they longed to do so before the Red Sox won the World Series.
Poets and philosophers and their fellow travelers, aware of certain tragic aspects of seeking the highest and best things in the world--like goodness, truth, beauty, and Red Sox World Series victories--were lured by the perpetual tragedy of the Red Sox. The ancient Greeks were aware of the centrality of longing in the human soul. They knew there was something important about wanting something that at times outstripped the importance of having it.
The centrality of longing in the human experience and the possibility of the attainment of the higher things is only now beginning to sink in for "Red Sox nation". While enthusiasm and ticket sales run high, there is something strangely hollow about the experience.
It is not that we are less fans or uncommitted to the team. As a Red Sox fan, I still anticipate daily scores and check the standings, but I know that it's different. The quest to win a world series, stripped of its connection to 1918, is now more like any other team's quest for the world series. The owners attempt to maximize value and keep fans in the seats (which they have done). The players hope to win this year and win a big contract next year. Parents and grandparents ask each other about the scores, and it is all now profoundly different, profoundly smaller, profoundly ordinary--and (perhaps most troubling) profoundly more like being a Yankees fan.
As Red Sox fans, we are now fans without longing, fans without aspirations to distinguish us from the ordinary sports fan, fans without a link to historical mystery and unattainable glory. We may not all be aware of it, but we lack the very emptiness that made being a Red Sox fan better than being any other kind of fan. Being a Red Sox fan meant fidelity to the impossible; it meant staring into the abyss of certain failure and saying, I'm still here. Now, with a championship an unremarkable two years ago, Red Sox fans must now adjust to life as regular fans of a regular team, watching a business model play itself out as we drift, aimless, through another baseball season.
Of course, philosophical mumbo jumbo aside, it is still important for the Yankees to lose.
Poets and philosophers and their fellow travelers, aware of certain tragic aspects of seeking the highest and best things in the world--like goodness, truth, beauty, and Red Sox World Series victories--were lured by the perpetual tragedy of the Red Sox. The ancient Greeks were aware of the centrality of longing in the human soul. They knew there was something important about wanting something that at times outstripped the importance of having it.
The centrality of longing in the human experience and the possibility of the attainment of the higher things is only now beginning to sink in for "Red Sox nation". While enthusiasm and ticket sales run high, there is something strangely hollow about the experience.
It is not that we are less fans or uncommitted to the team. As a Red Sox fan, I still anticipate daily scores and check the standings, but I know that it's different. The quest to win a world series, stripped of its connection to 1918, is now more like any other team's quest for the world series. The owners attempt to maximize value and keep fans in the seats (which they have done). The players hope to win this year and win a big contract next year. Parents and grandparents ask each other about the scores, and it is all now profoundly different, profoundly smaller, profoundly ordinary--and (perhaps most troubling) profoundly more like being a Yankees fan.
As Red Sox fans, we are now fans without longing, fans without aspirations to distinguish us from the ordinary sports fan, fans without a link to historical mystery and unattainable glory. We may not all be aware of it, but we lack the very emptiness that made being a Red Sox fan better than being any other kind of fan. Being a Red Sox fan meant fidelity to the impossible; it meant staring into the abyss of certain failure and saying, I'm still here. Now, with a championship an unremarkable two years ago, Red Sox fans must now adjust to life as regular fans of a regular team, watching a business model play itself out as we drift, aimless, through another baseball season.
Of course, philosophical mumbo jumbo aside, it is still important for the Yankees to lose.
posted by Jarrett conner at 5:05 PM
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