Hello. My name is Chris Connolly and I'm a sports addict. I say I am a sports addict because, even though I recently succeeded in abstaining from all sports for several months, one never really stops being a sports addict. One is always just one drag bunt or foul shot away from sitting in the tub with sports radio blaring while re-reading analysis of games one watched the night before.
I did some things I'm not particularly proud of during my addiction phase. At my wedding, our photographer made a pocket-sized box score out of cardboard and held it up at the back of the room so I could track the progress of a baseball game. Three years later, while my wife was in labor with our first child, I had my brother sending me text messages with updates on Yankees/Red Sox. Talk about the "crack" of the bat . . .
I was pretty much a full-time sports fan. Which is to say, I consumed sports information all the time. I listened to sports radio during the day, watched sporting events at night, and had radios all over the house that I flipped on and off as I went from room to room. I would even go to sleep listening to games on a walkman. I doubt there was a major (or minor) occurrence in the American sports world over the last 10 years that I didn't know about within 15 minutes.
Did I know my sports fandom was over the top? Of course. But I never felt compelled to do anything about it until recently. After all, people devote time to things a lot more ridiculous than knowing who the Yankees' top third base prospect is (Eric Duncan). Until a few months ago, I was a highly functional, even exceedingly happy, sports addict. I was like a tranquil sea anemone, letting my tendrils drift in a rich current of sports data. Then, one day in November 2006, the New York Giants motored by and sheared off my tender little appendages.
If you don't recall, the 2006 New York Giants were a train wreck--or, to keep the metaphor going, a shipwreck. Actually, thinking about it now, if you took a train and shot it off into the sea, the resulting carnage would mimic last season's campaign quite nicely.
Every football team tries to create an identity. Even non-sports fans probably know that the Steelers cast themselves as a gritty, hard-nosed bunch and the Raiders as a gang of thugs. And the Giants? Well, the Giants are stupid. Stocked with as much talent as any team in the league, the 2006 New York Giants specialized in drama, bickering, and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With an unflagging commitment to knuckleheadedness, they engineered some of the most staggering come-from-ahead losses of all time.
And the G Men didn't leave their team identity on the field, either. Not by a long shot. It would have been impossible for them to be stupider off the field than on it, but they managed to battle to a tie. There was criticism of Coach Tom Coughlin via the media on more than one occasion. Michael Strahan, the team's defensive leader, who wasn't even playing due to injury, nearly assaulted a female journalist at a press conference. At midseason, the team's MVP candidate, Tiki Barber, announced his retirement for no reason. And while this freak show spiraled around him, Coach Coughlin stubbornly brayed his team watchword: "Discipline."
Have you ever heard those stories about surgery patients who wake up in the middle of operations unable to do anything but suffer horribly until the anesthesia wears off? That's what watching the Giants was like. Every Sunday I would wake up to find myself sitting in front of the television while this gang of millionaires plied their trade. When I wasn't kicking the ottoman through the living room wall, I was fielding calls from my father and brothers who, being similarly afflicted, would phone me to gnash their teeth and cry.
Since sports are all about numbers, let's look at it this way: Generally, I kick my ottoman through the living room wall once, maybe twice, per season. So let's say 1.5 for football, 1.5 for baseball, and 1.5 for a combination of basketball/soccer and other games. This puts my lifetime annual OKA at 4.5. During the 2006 football season alone, that number spiked to 4.0. Then on November 26 the Giants played the Tennessee Titans. Addicts can generally cite a moment when they hit rock bottom; this game was mine.
It started out well for the G Men. Dominating the game, they established a 21-0 lead by the end of the third quarter and showed no sign of slowing. My phone was silent, my heart was beating normally. Even the ottoman exuded a quiet confidence. Then the sleeping Giants woke up: "Twenty-one to zero?" they seemed to say. "This doesn't seem right."
Over the game's final 10 minutes they put on an incredible display of fumbling, holding, and interceptitude. When the smoke cleared, the bewildered Titans had won, 24-21, and my ottoman had been reduced to kindling. The phone rang, but I couldn't answer. I went into the kitchen and tried to prepare dinner, but my hands were numb. I thought about going for a drive, but decided it would probably end in my death. Instead, I took a shower.
Normally, as I've said, I listen to sports radio in the shower. But this day, the very thought left me queasy. I made the water as hot as possible and let it run over my shoulders. For the first time in probably a decade, there was no chatter to accompany the rushing water. And out of the silence, a realization came: I was wasting my time. I was investing hours of emotion and study into something that returned only pain. For me as well as my furniture.
I did the math: I'm 33 years old and started paying attention to sports at about age 10. I closely follow three teams: The Giants, the Knicks, and the Yankees. This means, over the last 23 years, I've followed 69 seasons of basketball, baseball, and football. The Knicks last won a championship the year I was born (1973) so I didn't share in that glory. The Giants won Super Bowls in 1987 and 1991; the Yankees, probably the most successful team in the history of sports, won the World Series in 1977 and 1978. But I don't remember those years. They also won in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Sadly, for all but one of those years, I lived in Europe and, in that pre-Internet era, could only follow the games by way of newspaper reports my grandmother mailed me.
So to sum up, out of 69 handwringing seasons, I have shared in the joy of three championships. Every other campaign has ended in failure. And compared with sports fans from other cities, I'm cleaning up!
Wasn't there a better way to spend my time, I wondered? What if I took all my sports hours and worked on my abs? What if I worked on reading the classics? Hell, what if I worked on work? I decided there and then to find out, declaring a three-month moratorium on sports fandom. I would not read, watch, listen to, or talk about sports. I called my brother to tell him about my experiment.
"Oh, you're experimenting with giving up sports," he said. "Are you conducting a corollary study about what it's like to be a homosexual raising a child?"
I was off to a good start.
As with most addiction battles, the first effects of withdrawal were physical. I'd get in the shower and reach for the radio, or I'd turn on the television and begin to tune in a sports channel. But once I got past the blunt-force desire to absorb sports, I discovered the true seed of my addiction: I missed the background noise. Accustomed to the calming drip of sports info in my ear, I had trouble sleeping. I lay restlessly tossing in bed while thoughts raced through my skull. Unchecked by updates on the misdeeds of erstwhile running backs, ideas and fears plagued me ceaselessly. I realized that, for the last decade or so, I'd been immersed in a constant and inoculating flow of sports information. I missed the drone.
My addiction, I swiftly realized, was twofold. Yes, I yearned to know what was happening to my teams, but I could deal with such cravings. What I really wanted was to get back into the Matrix of the sports community. Some people are always listening to music. Others flip on soap operas or the weather channel when alone. I listen to sports radio. It's a calming background buzz that keeps me from thinking full-time about work woes, money, or Iraq. It's also a place to debate like-minded people around the world.
Talk radio has been called America's Last Neighborhood, and during my experiment I realized that this could not be more accurate. Although we've never met, I know far more about Jerome in the Bronx and Mike in Manhattan (callers to my favorite station) than I do about my flesh-and-blood neighbors. There's a man named Frank who lives next door to me, and I know exactly two things about him: He watches truck racing day and night; and, for some reason, he carefully leaves a four-inch strip of grass unmowed where his lawn borders my driveway. Beyond that, we might as well live in different countries.
On the radio, it's a different story. I know my fellow listeners' hopes and dreams. There was a woman named Doris Bauer, or "Doris in Rego Park," who used to call New York's WFAN. She was a passionate Mets fan whose commentaries were frequently interrupted by bouts of wheezing and coughing. She championed the Mets, in good times and bad, and I always looked forward to her nightly appearances. A few years ago, at one in the morning, the hour when Doris usually called, her favorite host reported the news that she had died. Lying in bed listening, I wanted to cry; it felt as if I had lost a friend.
I learned a lot during my embargo. I rode my bike, tore through my library reserve list, and started to embrace those late-night thoughts rather than banishing them with an onslaught of white noise. But most important, I learned that sports fandom is about more than your team. Sports fans are a family. We share the same goals, contemplate the same issues, and rely on one another for support and discussion. A team is more than a collection of athletes; it's a geographically unbounded neighborhood. Fans root for uniforms first, athletes second: This is why we can hate the players and love our teams.
Why do wins and losses matter? Because they matter to the people in your neighborhood, they matter to your friends--even the ones in Rego Park you've never met. Yes, I'm a sports addict, but I know now that it's not such a bad thing. If I can restrict myself to the actual games and stay away from the pre-games, post-games, and game reports, I'll be okay.
That said, the other day I got an email from my brother that got my heart racing. The subject line: "NFL camps open in 100 days!"
I could quit anytime.
Chris Connolly writes from Madison, Wisconsin.