Last week, a young American, LeBron James, had a one hour ESPN special to announce the results of his job search. When he announced that he was moving from Cleveland to Miami he was routinely denounced as selfish, and a traitor to Cleveland, by its residents and members of the sports punditocracy.
I'm writing this as if I was a visitor from Mars and had no understanding of the passions sports generate, the psychopathology of fandom (Nick Hornby, in Fever Pitch, his memoir about his obsession with Arsenal, the British soccer team, says devotion to one's team is like a marriage in a country with no divorce), and the opportunities mass media outlets have to inflate their audience share by fanning the flames generated by sports mania.
But I'm also a sports fan and since age 10 have died hard with the Yankees. I still haven't accepted their seventh and final game loss to Pirates in 1960 World Series after winning three games by scores of 10-0, 12-0 and 16-3 and been a slightly less devoted follower of the Boston Celtics ("separated" after 35 years in the '90s and re-united in 2008). So I feel the pain in Cleveland---up to a point, the point being that my teams haven't lost franchise players to free agency. I can't be sure how I'd feel if Mariano Rivera deserted to the Red Sox when he had come to the end of a contract, but I would never turn grief into anger.
So, a word about LeBron James and then an attempt to explain the misplaced rage. I think the worst that can be said about LeBron is that he allowed the announcement of taking his skills to another city to be made into a reality television show, especially since he was leaving his adoring hometown. But, in an age when many star athletes leave their original teams (which they were never truly free to choose given professional leagues' rules regarding drafting of amateurs from high school and college) simply to maximize their income, LeBron's decision was an anomaly and worthy of praise not condemnation.
LeBron did not stay with the Cleveland Cavaliers even though they offered him a deal which would have exceeded Miami's bid by 30 million dollars. He did not go to New York with all the attendant glamor and even greater marketing opportunities. He didn't even choose Chicago, with a hungry fan base trying to restore the glory of the Michael Jordan era. His decision seems to have been based on a motive that is normally heralded: a paramount desire to win championships, even if it cost him money and the sole spotlight---which will have to be shared with future teammate Dwayne Wade, who nearly single-handedly brought the Miami Heat its only NBA title, and,another star newcomer, Chris Bosh.
LeBron's individual scoring statistics, which were on a pace to eclipse anyone elses lifetime totals, might be sacrificed as well. In an era of selfishness, he stood out as someone who tried to make his team better by making his teammates better. He did this for seven years before finally realizing that his efforts would fall short because a team sport championship is almost impossible when the team has only one star with a mediocre supporting cast playing in a city which can't attract top free agents.
Even if LeBron was not what he was---the embodiment of what sports fans should cherish,a superstar focused on winning who was beloved by his teammates for playing with them and not just by himself (as Jordan and Kobe Bryant have done at times in their careers)--- why do we,and not just Americans,invest so much emotionally in our teams and heroes that we can't even see them as human? After all, how would any of us feel if we were expected to make our career decisions based solely on the preferences of millions of people whose standing is based solely on their living in a city which hosts our employer? Or that we should be expected to work for our initial employer as long as they wanted us to even if we had no choice regarding who that employer was?
So, ultimately, the spectacle we've witnessed has to be understood as testimony to the role that sports play in the lives of perhaps billions of people world-wide. That role encompasses both sociological and psychological elements.
On the sociological level it fortifies a sense of community, a living symbol of one's city, country, or ethnic/racial identity during an era when other forms of collective physical competition such as warfare have largely been de-legitimized. For males, typically the most passionate fans, in urban industrial societies, where competitive capital and labor markets have weakened the cooperative bonds that existed in hunting and gathering and agricultural societies, allegiance to a team provides a means of expressing comaraderie, establishing and deepening friendships, and sharing free time.
The psychological rewards of professional sports for fans are legion, but two stand out. First, identifying with powerful and skilled athletes is a way of boosting one's one self-worth. For young males particularly, the triumphs of their favorite players and teams, compensates for their own struggles to succeed in becoming physically adept as their bodies mature and are tested in recreational sports. The frustrations of adulthood can also be alleviated by the success of one's team and even rooting with millions of others for losing teams offer distractions from the daily grind and supports the view that "misery loves company." Second, many team sports provide an opportunity for fans to act in a managerial capacity, if only in their minds and in conversations with peers. At work, one frequently must take orders, but an armchair team owner, general manager or coach can make strategic and tactical decisions and second guess those actually in charge of the team's fate. Being able to perform this pseudo-role can be extremely gratifying, as exemplified by the recent film, Big Fan, in which a parking lot attendant, hectored by his family as an under-achieving loser, is empowered by regularly calling a sports talk show to make pronouncements about the best way his beloved New York Giants football team should be run.
To someone not emotionally involved as a fan the LeBron James saga seems like a form of collective insanity, But there is a rational underpinning to the madness that can't be ignored and it's hard to imagine more benign ways of satisfying so many human needs. On the other hand, like Marx's view of religion as the opiate of the masses, finding joy in sports can make us more willing to put up with miseries in our daily lives that possibly could be be better addressed through collective social and cultural change.
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