While I grew up playing sports - soccer, street hockey, a season of baseball, tennis, ping-pong, and a season of high school football - I was never a huge sports fan. I was never the kind of guy who could name players' stats, and I never had a poster of an athlete on my wall. I enjoy watching sports, but I don't know enough about any particular team, player or coach to support any other team but my "home" teams of New England. So even though I now live on the opposite coast, I still root for the Sox, Pats, Bruins and Celtics.
I care almost nothing for college- or high school-level sports and didn't while I was attending school, with the one exception being the ice hockey team of Boston College. It all started when a friend invited me to a hockey game while in my junior year. Up to that point I had been to several football games but had never attended a single other sports match. That year (1989-90) the BC Eagles were playing extremely well, and we were there amongst a sell-out crowd of boisterous (and probably drunk) co-eds all cheering on their team to victory. It was a great game, and it opened my eyes to how much fun I'd been missing by not attending those games. I don't think I made it to many more games that season, but I was there at every home game - and quite a few away games - during my senior year.
I was usually in attendance with my younger cousin Ray and his friend Jay. Jay was actually a year older than me and was originally friends with my older cousin, but Ray "inherited" him through their mutual love for sports. And, as it turned out, their mutual love for yelling highly-emotional and - at times - highly-inappropriate things at the games. I admit that my blood gets pumping when I watch sports, but the most I recall yelling was an extremely loud, "You got nothin!" at the opposing team. Ray, but Jay in particular, would yell things that embarrassed and sometimes even shocked me. The one example I can think of is when a player got hurt and was lying on the ice, Jay would yell, "Drag the body off the ice!" It was as if Jay had no sense of decorum, and nothing mattered but cheering the team on to a win...at any cost. In fact, if we called him on it, he would act as if we were at fault for being pussies. The other team was the ENEMY, and it was okay to wish - loudly - that they get hurt or worse. It was only a game? Not in Jay's book: it was life or death, and you were either with him or against him.
I bring this up, not because Jay was the exception, but because Jay's behavior foreshadowed what now seems to be the norm for life in America. We live in a country with two sides - the Republicans and the Democrats - and life is just one big sporting event. You are either on our side, or you're the ENEMY.
What if we have a problem that affects everyone like the environment or health care? Doesn't matter. If you're on the other side, I don't care what you have to say. In fact, I don't want you to even have the right to say it; I just want you to shut up. Anything you have to say will simply be wrong and probably hurtful to my side. "The Republicans suck! The Republicans suck!"
Politics has become sport, with the only losers being us, the public.
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