I am far more depressed than I have any right to be, but perspective never works well for sports fans. It should, but it doesn’t.
I have, at times, tried to make a practice of not caring about sports. I’ve stopped following them; that helps, but something always reels me back in whether it’s success or the prospect of success. I have long assumed my love of sports started with the Sacramento Kings and their brief brush with greatness at the turn of the century. What a time. I was graduating from high school, blossoming into the world, and my team was finally winning. It felt like anything was possible. I felt the rush of an entire city rallied behind a cause. I felt hope. This could be our year.
And then our hearts were broken, and I’ll never quite get over that so I won’t rehash it here, but needless to say, I will never, ever, not ever, cheer for the Lakers.
I thought that was when my investment in sports began, but it wasn’t quite. It goes back a few years earlier.
I never understood football until I was twenty-five years old (schooled in the game, ironically, by my extended family of Chiefs fans, but I digress). I just didn’t get the rules, couldn’t follow the game play, didn’t understand the appeal. Nonetheless, I have a memory. A joyful memory. I was ten years old, and the Super Bowl was playing on TV. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that “our team” was playing, and they were winning. The 49ers were in the Super Bowl. I remember Jerry Rice dancing on the field, getting the crowd riled up, and I wasn’t in the stadium that day, but I was there, in a way. I was moved.
For any love of sports that I’ve ever had, whether it be for the Kings or the Giants or the Red Sox, I think I can draw a line from my investment back to that moment. That pride of home. Success and celebration. The thrill of the win.
That was the last time the 49ers won the Super Bowl. After a twenty-eight-year ensuing drought, I really thought—I allowed myself to believe—that our time had returned.
But why am I saying all of this? I don’t need to rehash the heartbreak of this week’s game; I’ve shed enough tears. I’m thinking it through because I’m wondering if my joy was misguided. I’m wondering why we care about our teams winning at all? I’m wondering if it is a product of our better angels or our demons? I think the answer to that depends on how we deal with this moment of loss, so I’m going to think it through.
I’m just so flummoxed by the pain. It’s baffling. I haven’t personally lost anything, my life is abundant, nothing about my day-to-day experience has changed in any way. And yet I’ve been wearing black for two days and listening to the Smiths’ most depressing songs on repeat. I am so, so, sad. It is not wise to attach oneself to an outcome that is completely out of one’s control, and yet that is the essence of sports fandom. Why the hell do I do it?
I don’t know. Except that maybe it is the lack of control that we are drawn to. Maybe we are programmed to have faith in something we can’t influence. Maybe this is how we transcend ourselves, move beyond our own little solipsistic view of the universe. Nine times out of ten (or in this case, twenty-eight times out of twenty-nine) we end up with broken hearts. It feels impossible to keep believing. I know many a Niners fan this week who is having a hard time imagining enduring another season, setting themselves up for another heartbreak. I know I am. I’m considering taking next year off. Completely silencing all football-related chatter. Opting out.
But that feels wrong, too. Because it’s not the points and the trophies that I got myself attached to. Not at all. It’s the players. If you haven’t been moved by the Brock Purdy story these past two years, check your pulse.
If I was writing this book, the one where Mr. Irrelevant rises to lead his team to the Super Bowl in a matter of two seasons, I think I would have ended it differently. Or at least, I would have been tempted to. But if I dig deeper (and writers must always dig deeper), I uncover something else. My heart was captured not only by the moniker given to him, but by the way he responded to it. He could have risen up with a chip on his shoulder, but Brock Purdy is more emotionally intelligent at twenty-four years old than I am trying to be at nearly forty. He says, time and again, that life isn’t about him, it’s about something bigger than him. He’s not overly attached to being a star quarterback because he knows he’s many other things. He knows that his purpose is not tied to the outcome of a football game, but to something far greater, something inviolate.
Oh. I see.
I thought the moral of the story was to watch Mr. Irrelevant prove himself a champion to the world like some sort of messiah for the undervalued, the underestimated. The prove-everyone-wrong narrative. But I would have been wrong. Because what captured my heart so deeply in Brock Purdy’s words would not have been as substantiated by a championship win, but it can be exemplified by a loss.
Ah shit.
You know, there’s a reason I love the end of Rocky so much.
In storytelling, the thing your main character thinks that he wants at the beginning is almost always the opposite of the thing he actually needs, and gets, by the end. The thing about fandom is: this hurts because Brock Purdy isn’t the main character of this story. I am. And I wanted him to win. I wanted everyone to look at him and think, “I guess we were wrong! You’re not irrelevant! You are the best, Becky!”
I mean Brock.
I was captured by the story of a young man transcending irrelevance and rising to greatness. I was heartbroken that he didn’t get it done. I’m sure he’s heartbroken, too. But I must believe that he believes his own words. That his faith is strong. That he is so much more than a quarterback, more than a champion. That he is at peace with the fact that he really is just mister irrelevant.
Because we’re all mister irrelevant.
We are all so incredibly insignificant, and that’s what opens us up to the beauty of the whole. It’s what makes us so precious to the chosen few who truly love us on this brief journey. I’m not here to prove to the entire world that I’m special, that I matter, that I’m good at anything. I’m here to love and be loved. I’m here to be of service. As we all are. As we all must be. Life is about so much more than me.
Whether or not Brock Purdy ever wins a Super Bowl, he has given me, personally, so much more than a picture of him holding a ring or a trophy ever could. He has given me faith.
“I feel a strong desire to tell you – and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me – which of two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs – pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies upon your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors.”
- C.S. Lewis
Many people apply this quote from Lewis to two-party politics, which is apt, but I believe it’s applicable to anywhere we see polarity, sports being no exception. I really want to hate the Chiefs right now, which stinks because half of my family is in Kansas City, and I know they are so happy. The last thing I’d ever want to do is resent my loved ones’ happiness. It’s poison. But I am so entrenched in the 49ers pain, it’s hard not to see the joy on the other side as anything but salt on a wound. I even want to hate Taylor Swift.
I know this is a trap. I know rivalries are only acceptable when healthy. I know that hate has no place in sports, not for me. This goes back to my first point: do sports appeal to our better angels or our demons? I think it can do either. When we hate an opponent because they have beat us, the devil wins. If we can do the opposite, if we can dig deeper and find some common joy in our fellow human’s successes, if we can look inward for our next move, those are angels in the stands.
And so, though it physically pains me to say so, I will hold my nose, swallow, choke back my pride and … oh God, this is hard.
Eyes squinting,
breath holding,
I will
somehow, quickly, eke out . . .
congratulations to the Chiefs.
God, that hurt. I’m a bad angel.
In the meantime, pitchers and catchers report this week. Let’s go get our hearts broken. No matter how many times we do it, I think it’s worth it for the love of the game, which is really just a love of each other. A love for something over which we have no control. That’s life.
That’s what it is to be forever faithful.
