Hi gang! It's baseball season and I stayed up way too late last night watching the Dodgers/Yankees game. Sadly, my team lost - quite unbelievably to some but to those who follow the Dodgers the sight of Jonathan Broxton walking a tightrope is not entirely unusual. Sorry, JonBoy, I bought your tee-shirt at the Top of the Park store and you're friggin' doomed. But it looks good on me.
So....which way to go? Another blog entry about my self-image? Hmm. A polemic about Life and It's Many and Varied Wonders? Meh. Free advice? Not today.
Today it's the SHPORTSH Page. I'm creatively checking out and replacing anything interesting (and that is - admittedly - a stretch. When is any of my crap interesting???) with A DAMNED LIST!!!
Are you like me? Do you hate lists? The Top 100 celebrity bowel movements!!! The Top 10 Funniest Things My Wife can do with her Rump! My Personal Top 10 greatest Farts........
No, I guess you're not like me. Well......THE EASIEST TEAMS TO ROOT FOR!
Interested? No? Bollocks to ya, go watch soccer.
First, a preamble. I'm not shooting for "where we've been lately." So, kids, the Indy Colts are off this list. Yeah, they're good now, but they haven't always been (see, e.g., 1983). Ditto for my New England Patriots - when I was a kid they were a joke. New Orleans? Nope. Tampa Rays? Puuuhhh-leeze. I'm talking about consistent "greatness" and popularity
In no order at all:
LA Lakers/Boston Celtics: I'm lumping them together. The Lakers just won another title two weeks ago, and deservedly so. Lots of titles, combined. The Celtics have more, but the Lakers have more flash, more "star power". The Yin and Yang of basketball - all offense or all defense. I'll give Honorable Mention to the Chicago Bulls when Jordan was there.
Montreal Canadiens: ugh. The Yankees of hockey. I'm not even bothering to look up how many Cups they've won, but it's twice what any other team has won. Blanc, bleu, and cheesy. I'd thrown in the Detroit Red Wings, but that's a fairly recent development. Honorable mention goes to the NY Islanders (yes, they were outstanding once), and Edmonton Oilers.
Oakland/LA Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers: Yeah, a joke lately. But from the mid-70's to early '90's they were consistently good and perennial contenders, and had a good run there earlier in this decade. The silver and black are everywhere, from Northern Cal to South Florida. Coined the whole "commitment to excellence" thing. Of course, the Steelers are much-beloved by many across the country, winning 6 Super Bowls does that for a team. The NFL has many honorable mention teams, like the recent Colt and Pats teams, or the old Dolphin, 49-er and Packer teams.
Boston Red Sox: in terms of titles this is Jonny-come-lately. But the Sox are over 100 years old and part of the fun of pulling for the Sox is the futility. Nowadays that's less of a negative. I think alot of fans gravitated towards the Sawx when the Yankees had that great run in the late-90's. Yankee-haters united under the Sawx banner. Just my opinion, I was baptized during the infamous Sox/Mets 1986 Series. Why lose Bruce Hurst??? Why? I'll toss in a few teams here, like the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Braves - all really good teams but without the "ease of rooting for" that I'm referring to. It aint tough to be a Red Sox fan right now.
NOTE: I can't include the Cubs. I WON'T include the Cubs.
Dallas Cowboys: the second-worst type of fan is the Alaskan Cowboys fan. "America's Team." Yeah, in this life ya really do go out on a limb when you declare your allegiance to this f-ing dungheap of a football team. Why are there so many Cowboy fans? I'm a little clueless and - as a Skins fan - biased as all get-out. The Star? eh, ok. The history? OK, if history was the barometer there'd still be lots of Cleveland Browns fans out there. I know that just about every NFL team has it's own passionate following, but Dallas seems to be a universal....some sort of unknown universal nexus. They've had some great teams in every decade and have lately come up far short of the expectations of their rabid fans, but their popularity is as undeniable as it is inexplicable.
I recall some DJ on a sports station opining that in the 1970's alot of dads raised their sons as Cowboy fans so as to enhance the child's self-esteem, to make them feel like a winner. The hypothesis lacks for any kind of scientific method, so I'm not convinced. More likely, in my estimation, is that the kids knew the Cowboys were winners and wanted - of their own accord- to root for a winner.
Which leads me to the Absolute Worst, the Final Circle of Hell, the New York Yankees. An undeniable team full of f-sticks who consistently buy titles. Yes, that is bitter, go eat one. Politicians, celebrities, soldiers, muppets, and Emperors doff the Yankee cap. It's almost more American than the stars and stripes. In its' excess, it represents us at our worst. 27 titles, the most in professional sports - AND YET LAST NIGHT ESPN CUT TO A G-DAMNED SHOT OF A LITTLE KID PRAYING FOR ANOTHER YANKEE COMEBACK!!!!
Shit, junior, if God isn't a Yankee fan, He doesn't exist. OK? Ok.
In my imagination, I see a kid in Kentucky and in Alaska wondering which baseball team he wants to pull for - and the KY kid knows he just can't wait for Johnny Bench and Pete Rose to come 'round again for the Reds, so - independently of the other they each pick THE BESTEST TEAM EVAH! It's fun to pull for winners, right?! Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Goliath to crush David....the odds are just stacked in Goliath's favor.
Tick off some great Yankee players...Jeter, A-Rod, Jackson, Winfield, Tartabull (oops!), O'Neill, Gherig, Ruth, Mantle, Berra........I'm willing to bet that the Yanks have their own wing in Cooperstown (I haven't been yet). Almost seems unfair.
Well, that's my lame little list. It's not ironclad. Every team I picked has had High Times (see, e.g., South America's Team) and Low Times (see "Red Sox, Boston; 1919-2004), even those damned Yankees (the late '80's to mid '90's). I guess that's part of the fun. If I was going for FUTILITY I'd mention "any Washington baseball team" and the Lions and Bengals. In fact, what's with the State of Ohio and championships? What did you people do to deserve such lousy luck, especially you folks in and around Cleveland? Must be the water, the bad teeth, or Drew Carey.
Well, there's always that OSU marching band channel, where ya can watch highlights of the Buckeye Band's greatest, um, marches. Yup.
I should have tossed in Green Bay, too.
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