{"id":1974,"date":"2008-01-16T08:04:16","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T13:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1974"},"modified":"2009-05-30T09:53:31","modified_gmt":"2009-05-30T14:53:31","slug":"youll-find-me-where-the-sun-shines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1974","title":{"rendered":"You’ll Find Me Where The Sun Shines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chad the Elder is a hard-core Vikings fan<\/a> in the same way that the Pope is pretty Catholic:<\/p>\n

Cheering for a team is not about calculating the odds and going with the winners. It’s about loyalty and eternal hope in the face of constant disappointment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a nice sentiment, but…no.<\/p>\n

Family? Country? Faith? All ofthose things are about loyalty and perseverance. Sports? That’s entertainment.<\/p>\n

I covered this a few years ago<\/a>. I wrote:<\/p>\n

Except for the Bears and, most seasons, the Twins, I’m the king of the fair-weather fans. <\/em><\/p>\n

I’m a busy guy – work, kids, time-intensive hobbies, yadda yadda. I go through a particularly rigorous cost-benefit analysis for everything on which I might spend time; does the cost (in time) benefit me in enjoyment more than the other things I might do?<\/em><\/p>\n

That calculation leads me to toss things out pretty ruthlessly; among the detritus, losing teams (like the ’90 Twins) and even entire sports (Hockey). <\/em><\/p>\n

And let’s be honest; sports need fans like me. It’s only good capitalism.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a calculation I’d never make with, say, my kids (my son at age 14 is, let’s just say, a net loss in the “enjoyment” department for the next year or two), my faith, or my nation.<\/p>\n

But a sports team<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I mean, back in the days when players spent their entire careers in one city, and owners were part of life in a region?\u00a0 Maybe – and that’s a big maybe.
\nBut all those things – the actual reasons <\/em>to be “loyal” to a team – went the way of the Corvair, and at about the same time.<\/p>\n

In a normal free-market economy, sports teams need to deliver – good teams, good efforts, winning records – to provoke audiences to part with their hard-earned money. If the team is phoning it in, punching the clock, nobody but the absolute hard core will care – and the team will fold, and will deserve to. To draw people, they <\/em>have to appeal to the fickle tastes of…me!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And of course it’s more than just pure capitalism. Indeed, we owe it to our nation, our culture, and our way of life to see it this way:<\/p>\n

In the East-German-like sports economy of places like Wrigley Field, Fenway, and the vision the likes of Patrick Reusse, Joe Soucheray and the like have, everyone would troop dutifully, a horde of gray-faced sheep, to the Sports Allocation Centre, for their weekly ration of Sport. The team would slog through the motions, the herd<\/strike> audience would pay $5 for their hot dogs and dutifully clap at the appropriate times, and go home wearing their $399 sweatshirts. <\/em><\/p>\n

So you see – fair-weather fans like me are not only absolutely vital for the health and survival of sports; we are good for free enterprise, even democracy itself.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You owe it to this nation, and to those who’ve fallen to defend it, to eschew the Vikings until they turn things around.<\/p>\n

Thank you, and God Bless America.<\/p>\n

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Chad the Elder is a hard-core Vikings fan in the same way that the Pope is pretty Catholic: Cheering for a team is not about calculating the odds and going with the winners. It’s about loyalty and eternal hope in the face of constant disappointment. It’s a nice sentiment, but…no. Family? Country? Faith? All ofthose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}