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The wonderful thing about talking sports is that the conversations are like verbal gateways to larger contexts. Sometimes they touch on social and economic concerns, sometimes they’re debates about historical milieu, and sometimes they’re probing questions about morality.
But many times, talking sports means talking about humanity: our emotions, our desires, our fears. All that psychobabble horse-hockey that keeps knuckleheads like Dr. Phil swimming in Hostess snack cakes.
My buddy Schultz at the newspaper put forth one such sports topic this week --
“Who would you rather be right now: A Notre Dame football fan or a New York Mets fan?”
As far as hypotheticals go, that one’s a doozy. Would you want to be a college football fanatic, cheering for arguably the most storied program in the history of the sport, who is now being subjected to an abortion of a season and a mess of a team on its way to potentially the worst losing streak in school history?
Or would you rather be a baseball fan who watched his high-priced collection of superstars become the first MLB team that failed to win its division after having a lead of seven games or more with 17 left in the season?
Let’s dispense with the obvious: In the grand scheme, it’s much easier to be a Notre Dame fan than a New York Mets fan.
(Full disclosure: I’m a lifelong Mets fan, but not an ND fan. I wouldn’t say I’m a hater: I believe Notre Dame’s success is a necessary evil for the betterment of college football as a whole, much like how it’s important that the New York Rangers or the Los Angeles Lakers have competitive teams. And besides, the team’s nickname is offensive to me as an Irish-American. I’m so tired of everyone thinking I’m some hair-trigger thug looking to put his dukes up. Suffering a slur from the name of a sports team…I guess now I know how Native Americans feel. Well, minus the genocide.)
Notre Dame has a legacy of mystique, while the Mets have a legacy of mistakes. Notre Dame has 11 consensus national titles, and the Mets have two world championships. Joe Montana is a bigger legend than Tom Seaver; same goes for Knute Rockne over Gil Hodges. Plus, Notre Dame is the only show in town, while Mets fans are in the constant shadow of the Bronx. Imagine if USC moved to North Bend, Indiana – it’s kind of like that.
And while the Mets’ most famous fans are Jerry Seinfeld and the fat guy from “The King of Queens,” Notre Dame’s most famous fan is…Jesus Christ.
But as far as this season goes, who has it worse?
I think the answer, clearly, is Mets fans. We watched this team look like a champion for roughly five months, chugging along to an inevitable playoff appearance in which pitching would decide its fate. What happened in September was like owning a tricked out luxury automobile that inexplicably started sputtering along and emitting fumes that resembled those found in the restroom of a Chevy’s. The mechanics can’t figure out the problem and don’t know how to fix it; it becomes a high-end junker before your very eyes.
There was frustration, there was pain and there was embarrassment, as we watched that annoying gnat of a franchise in Philadelphia overtake the Mets in the final week of the season. Tom Glavine’s end-of-the-season implosion against the Marlins will go down as one of the most singularly pathetic chokes in New York sports history. I always knew that guy was a double-agent; I could smell the Ted Turner on him from a mile away.
For Notre Dame fans, I’m sure embarrassment is prevalent, but pain? This season was such an immediate bullet to the brain that I can’t imagine there was much suffering involved this fall. That’s not to say Notre Dame fans aren’t suffering; as the Associated Press put it this week: “Close isn't good enough for Notre Dame fans 19 years removed from their last national championship, 14 years removed from their last bowl victory and 11 months removed from their last win.” Yikes…
So, going forward, who has it worse? The Irish have arguably the top recruiting class in the nation for 2008. CSTV recruiting expert Tom Lemming told the Chicago Sun-Times that, "You'll see steady improvement by the end of this year, next year will be better and by '09 they won't be looking back...they'll be competing for titles."
Sounds promising; this means that Coach Charlie Weis is doing something right, even if it’s not on the field this season.
The Mets, on the other hand, don’t have a recruiting class — like every other season, they’ll have transfer students, either via free agency or trade. There’s talk that Johan Santana may end up at Shea, and that’d be a nice way to help the long-suffering forget about that whole month-long-collapse nonsense. But as every coach in every sport has said at least once: Players play the game. And the Mets’ biggest problem is that most of theirs appear to believe they’re the 2006 World Series champions-in-exile.
As I said earlier, talking sports means talking about humanity: our emotions, our desires, our fears. If you believe that Notre Dame fans have it worse, it’s because you believe that prolonged suffering is direr than a month of shocking anguish.
It really cuts to the core of one of life’s greatest debates: How do you want to go?
The 2007 Notre Dame Fighting Irish are like a long illness that you battle through in the hopes that there’s a cure in the near future. The 2007 New York Mets? It’s like a doctor came to them in September and said, “You have 17 games to live, but hang in there because we may be able to save you,” and they responded by loading up on whores and booze for the next two weeks.
What a way to go…
Published on the web and www.SportsFanMagazine.com since 1997, "The Jester's Quart" is a weekly satirical look at sports, pop culture and why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a jackass. Columnist Greg Wyshynski is the Senior Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" can be ordered now. Email Wyshynski at jestersquart@hotmail.com.
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