Why We Support Losing Teams—Sports Loyalty

When I was nine I lay in my parent’s bed for days struggling with red measles. Through fever and pain, I vaguely remember mom’s cool hand and wet clothes and clutching a rosary Above all I recall the Kansas City Athletics lose 12 games in a row while listening to my parent’s red bakelite radio. Predictable as humidity in high Missouri summer, the cast offs and mishaps who made up the Athletics plodded to the plate, struck out and erred their way to defeat, again and again and again. They were simply the worst team of their era. I grew up a fan.

The Athletics  built several Yankee championship teams by giving away Art Ditmar, Bobbyy Schantz, Clete Boyer, Roger Maris and others. This team drafted Reggie Jackson, Blue Moon Odum, Dave Duncan, Catfish Hunter and then stole away to Oakland to win championships. This team anchored my identity—my children trace my putative nutsiness to this.

Growing older I met Red Sox and Cubs fans who proudly wore losing. They bragged on their losing. Puffed up with a Nietzschean resentment again the rest of the world, these fans embraced the romance of rooting for the lost cause. Their pain grounded a hopeless chivalry and proudly handed on this legacy to their children. These fans formed a community in adversity and pride born of resentment against the unfairness and inequality of the world. The Athletics, refugees from Philadelphia, offered no glamor and no mystic. They were flat out the worst team of their era with NO REDEEMING FEATURES.

 These memories sadly meld with my support of the hapless Mariners, the second worst team in baseball for the last 4 years lead me to wonder: why do we support losing teams?

I can understand the resentment theory of community by resentment. This resentment flips into a populist hatred for the successful endless winners who are usually unjustly rich or cheaters to boot. It carries some weight and can drive revolutions.

I believe other wider and deeper reasons exist to support losing teams. These reasons answer a common attack on sports fans whom are accused of seeking psychological compensation by participating vicariously with winners. This identification supposedly compensates for brittle male egos and feeds a sense of superiority and domination that encourages arrogance and glorification of dominating the weak. This may apply to Yankee fans. However we who support teams that win and lose or just simply lose demonstrate integrity and loyalty in our loserhood.

Good fans support losing teams from loyalty and identity. Sport loyalty can help anchor or refine a personal self-narrative. Many, like myself, stay connected to their hometown roots or youth through following teams. College teams epitomize how mobile Americans thread links to hometowns or awakening to adulthood. These memories of home or college burn bright by following a team that reignites affiliation through winning and losing, although, honestly, winning feels better.

American immigrants traditionally adopt teams as signal of identifying with their new country. Similarly we can adapt to a new city or location by attending to the local teams. I still consider Kansas City my home teams, but after 25 years root for the Mariners and Seahawks. My children are northwest born and raised and identify with their Seattle teams.

Identity, community, and affiliation augment simple joy for a sport. I like many others will watch a sports game where I have not favorites but watch to enjoy the game.

Rooting for a team, especially a losing team proves to myself I am capable of enduring loyalty and unrequited love. It teaches and models loyalty to our family and friends. I am not referring to the bandwagon and good-times followers, but real fans staying  true through good and bad times.

Staying loyal to a losing team proves our capacity for integrity to ourselves. If not driven by resentment, this commitment to the team reminds us and teaches friends and children that loyalty is not a calculation. Loyalty and community do not grow from cost benefit analyses of value and pain. Loyalty to a team tests and grows our capacity for loyalty (and perhaps masochism). It imparts how love endures though good and bad. This matters even more when it turns out that rooting for a losing team can impact health, I mean really and do I care?!!! 

This type of loyalty and commitment endures through ups and downs of winning and losing of joy and sorrow of exasperation and elation. It proves our capacity for integrity even when we may find it under assault in so many areas of modern life.

Honest fans know that in the end their loyalty resides to a dream of community and its ideals. Every sports team exists as an institutional shell with rotating members who embody a vision of place and sport. The reality of a sport team encompasses flawed humanity and becomes erratic, messier and uglier than the aspiration. Every institution whether country, church, corporation or family exists as this dialogue between reality and possibility.

In the end team loyalty has a spiritual dimension as much tied to the dream of who we are and can be as well as the dream of our connection to our home. Often those hopes get crushed or deferred, but every now and then a glorious moment occurs when it comes so close to the dream’s ideal as to renew faith and commitment when verging on losing its heart.

Like friendship or marriage loyalty to a team obligates a person to stay through good and bad. We reserve the right to criticize and quit and leave but return. I can turn off games in disgust and vow never to care again, but I know, even if the team does not that I will eventually cave and return. Team loyalty is not a one-season stand. Team loyalty elicits loyalty and commitment for good and bad.

Supporting a losing team reminds me of Pascal’s secret, “the heart has reasons the mind does not understand.”

"Shutting Down" Stephen Strasburg is Ethically Right

Why are sports commentators and players so upset over Stephen Strasburg? The Washington Nationals long ago decided to limit the total innings of their prized pitcher Steven Strasburg. Strasburg, who is one year out from a Tommy John surgery, will end his first year of pitching after180 pitches. Now he has ended it even earlier after a three inning stint where the psychological costs of being the center of a firestorm finally got to his concentration.

Even locked in a pennant race, the Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo decided to protect Strasbug’s healing and avoid arm fatigue that has derailed the career of many fine pitchers. The decision has unleashed a firestorm of criticism for “shutting down” Strasburg. The criticisms come from an old school mythical view of sports and ignores the science and economics of what the Nationals are doing. We should be proud of a team that is putting a player’s welfare before winning at all costs. In a world where coaches risk the health of players to eek out a win, we should celebrate the courage of this action, it is the right thing to do.

Baseball pitching is one of the most notoriously inhuman actions performed in sports. 50 percent of major league starters will end up on the long term disabled list in the normal course of their career. We have ample empirical evidence of the costs of over pitching. We know managers like Billy Martin who road pitchers to championships only to have them ruined for the rest of their careers.  Jason Stark who has been the most reasonable commentator on Strasburg from the beginning has it pretty much right on the pros and cons of the decision to limit pitches one year out from surgery.

The Nationals consulted with a large number of medical personnel and have gotten almost universal respect from the medical and training community for their brave decision. The medical community has been trying to introduce a much stronger emphasis upon pitch count and sophisticated accounting for years, and the Nationals’ decision represents the high water mark of this attempt. This becomes increasingly important given the unique inhuman nature of pitching and the size and strength of modern pitchers who easily average 94-98 miles per hour.

The decision resonates with me because managers, coaches and general managers have traditionally been willing to risk careers of individuals to win championships. Too many incidents exist of players pushed by peer pressure, coaches or collaborating trainers and doctors to play when they should not. I’ve talked to doctors who ultimately left professional service because of the pressures they felt upon their medical judgment. Yet Rizzo very flatly stated, “We want to do what’s best for Stephen in the long run.”

In a world where athletes are treated as disposable commodities deployed to win at all costs, we should celebrate this decision, not vilify it.

I want to emphasize the players want to take this risk too. Most of the pressure to play through pain and risk comes from the internal drive of players to compete as well as the powerful almost ecstatic feeling of dominating performance when you are on. Players also feel strong obligations not to let fellow teammates down. When Manteo Mitchell finished running the first leg of the Olympic 800 meter hurdles on a broken leg, he knew the leg broke but kept running. As he put it, “You don’t want to let anyone down.”

The senior leadership of the Nationals is trying to set aside this type of pressure and romanticizing of pain. They have two strong justifications:

1.     1)          The team wants to protect the pitcher’s health. They already know that he can be injured and oversaw a model rehab. The decision flows from the desire to protect his long-term ability and lower the risk of career ending injury. The team has no certainty but has done its best to think about the dangers and stresses to a young strong power pitcher in his first year of recovery from ulnar collateral damage.


2.    2)             Economically the Nationals have made one of the major investments in the history of pitching in signing Strasburg (Thank you Scott Boros). The team has built carefully for the long run as witnessed by how they carefully husbanded another injured star pitcher Jordan Zimmerman as well as picking up veteran catcher Kurt Suzuki to work with them. The Nationals have every reason to want their economic investment to pay long-term dividends.

Strasburg is not 37 like Chris Carpenter for St. Louis last year. Carpenter went on a roll and and gladly risked what remained of his career to win a World Series. Nor is he Orel Hershiser in 1988 having one of the great seasons of modern baseball who showed no signs of stress or strain on the way to a World Series win and in the middle of 5 250 inning years. At 32 he blew out his arm and never had the same career. Strasberg is 23 and already severely injured. The Nationals do not have certainty but they know the heightened risk and have examples like the almost great career of Kerry Wood.

Ethics has a principle called the precautionary principle where individuals and institutions should prefer the outcome that generally avoids the maximum amount of damage. As the probabilities of the damage rises, the imperative of the principle rises. Yes the  Nationals are acting on probabilities. The have amassed and studied good information supported by an emerging science among doctors about how to protect and nurture the arms of modern power pitchers. They might be overly cautious but they are not wrong; they are much more humane, thoughtful and statistically sensitive. They are acting on the precautionary principle.  This is how teams should think of athletes, not as interchangeable parts.

Left to his own Strasberg would make the Achilles Choice I often write about. He is upset and angry about this decision. He would risk his long-term success to win all the glory of the World Series. We do not know he would win, but he would risk it. The Nationals will be competing for years, but this year looks special and he would do it. So would the Greek Chorus of fans and commentators and self styled old school players attacking the Nationals.

The attacks on Mike  Rizzo and the Nationals are many and varied but they all reduce to one narrative—athletes play to win. Athletes risk physical injury and that is their job. So let him take the risk and gain the glory.

Behind the critique lies the facile and wrong claim by the smaller, weaker, and slower ex-veterans that somehow this “shut down” (versus pitch control) indicts the coddled and pampered modern athletes compared to the tough guys of old. You see the same resentful logic among football veterans who attack efforts to minimize head trauma in football. To them, this decision defiles virtues of courage and overcoming adversity that gives sports narratives so much appeal in the USA.

These images evoke a bloodied Rams’ linebacker Jack Youngblood playing the Super Bowl on a broken leg. It conjures Kerri Strug with a torn ankle vaulting the US to Olympic gold in 1996. Strasburg’s “shut down” shatters this tale of courage and triumph.

I mean Strasburg is not even injured yet!!! They are taking him out before he is injured, and that makes no sense to the narrative of sport, to fans desperate for a victory or to players invested in their own self-image of warriors and gladiators.

The reality is different. Those unique heroic moments can occur because physiologically and psychologically athletes and humans can muster immense physical resources and surmount pain for short periods. High stakes, huge stress and strong loyalty amplify this power. We see acts of superhuman bravery and physicality during accidents, disasters and exceptional moments.

Most athletes and humans, however, do not achieve through pain. Their performance degrades, and the longer they stay in the worse they become and their teammates suffer for it. Injury and hurt degrades performance, and serious injuries can destroy careers in a nanosecond. Unless masked by painkillers or adrenaline, pain undermines performance quickly and radically. The realities in the broken lives and foreshortened careers-pitchers who lose their speed and delivery and end as journeyman because they were mismanaged and overused during their early careers.

The Nationals know the reality; they see through the myths we collectively embrace which are confirmed just often enough to reinforce its influence.

The average fan gets the moral and practical side of the decision to shut down Strasburg. They approved the decision by a 4-1 majority. They understand the fairness and risk with far more clarity about the issue than the commentators and ex-jocks. They know how teams usually exploit and toss off players to win.

The Nationals are right; this is ethical progress, not failure.

Sports Ethics: Play Through Pain

“Pain is your friend.”  “Pain lets you know you are still alive.” “Pain is good.” So Master Chief yells at the beleaguered SEAL recruits in a great movie G.I. Jane.

This lesson, so central to military life, pervades the moral culture of athletic competition. Every athlete trying to be a warrior, and here athletics draws heavily from millennial old origins as preparation for life combat, must learn to fight through pain and to seek goals despite  hurt and obstacles. Playing through pain is a central moral tenet of sports. It exemplifies three virtues critical to athletic success: self-mastery; courage; sacrifice.

It does not matter the moment we tune into sports, but pain splays through the games and the wounded fall before us with startling regularity. If we were not so inured to the carnage, we would be appalled by our callousness. This last month twenty five and counting baseball starters are out for at least three months. Seven Boston Red Sox outfielders alone are on the disabilities list. The first week of NFL pro to-practice saw at least three players end their seasons before even doning pads.  Derek Rose writhed on the floor with an ACL and the Chicago Bulls saw their playoff hopes collapse. The great Junior Seau committed suicide, too much pain. The NFL continues to try to bring to justice the players who deliberately attempted to end the effective careers of other league players through injuring them, not just pain. And this is only one month! 

All this endless pain in sports and life means we should not forget master chief’s lessons.. Pain is our friend, because pain signals to the athlete that his or her body has stressed beyond the point where it can continue to function at full efficiency and still be healthy. Pain signals deeper injury, inflammation, nerve overload, neurotransmitters warning and adrenalin flooded emergencies. The body floods itself with chemicals to deal with pain; some seek to quiet the pain, others to kick up the level  of awareness or body performance for a short time to get through the pain. Sometimes the body narrows the focus of the mind and eyes to prepare for and overcome the danger that body announces.

The ability of an athlete to be aware of and monitor their pain is important. In every sport every athlete lives with attrition of physical skill and strength over a season. They realize there are times when as an athlete they need to play with the pain because it is bearable and will not detract form their performance level. There are moments when they need to demonstrate courage to their teammates and encourage them to also play with a reasonable level of pain out of loyalty to each other; the contagion of a leader, if he or she can do it, so can I.

Last year Washington State University started a redshirt freshman quarterback Connor Halliday against Utah. It was his first start after a stunningly successful first game the week before. He played on cloud nine full of energy and adrenal protection. During the game he took some hard hits and suffered contusions and injuries, nothing that seemed out of the ordinary for the normal pain and injury that football inflicts upon its players. Yet later that day he ended up int he emergency room with a lacerated liver. The WSU doctors had run all the regular and protocol based tests when he was injured and nothing came up. This type of injury remains internal and not immediately evident; its pain should have alerted the quarterback of the severity. But like so many young athletes in the thrall of competition and loyalty and cortisol induced protection from pain, Halliday did not recognize the signals or refused the listen to them; he was going to play come hell or hi water.  To understand the culture of sport and athletes, it is important to listen to what his coach said after complimenting him for  "unbelievably courageous outing." "He hung in there and took hits and threw the ball under duress and pain. I'm very proud of his toughness and grit."

Yet even bearable pain may be a reason to leave the field. First, as in the case of the young quarterback, it may be the tip of an extensive set of damages not yet fully unfolded. It may be the warning signal that the body is pushing limits and catastrophic failure is shortly to occur. Playing on may intensify injuries or magnify the range of the loss. Secondly, even a bearable injury can detract from performance. It may be that a player hurts her or his team by staying on the field as an act of courage or self-mastery. Yet this important point is often missed and when Jay Cutler left the field of play for this reason the NFL's professional football semi-finals, he was vilified.

Pain serves a survival function and as an early warning system to people about the need to protect and attend to their body. It alerts athletes that worse is on the way if they keep pressing against the signals of the body. The young quarterback could have destroyed his life.

Pain manifests as a real physiological phenomena exhibited by neural and chemical responses. But pain is also experienced subjectively, and many persons have different responses to the same physical impact; they read their body differently. Individuals can be trained to deal with higher levels of pain, physical or mental, over time. Dealing with high levels of pain can be learned, and levels of pain that would paralyze a person at the beginning of training can be tolerated and functioned through later.

People experience pain subjectively, and the classic medical scales ask patients to rate pain 1-10. In real life, people might talk of mild or unbearable. It might be stabbing or throbbing or intermittent. It might explode or linger and thrum. The scaling and different manifestations make diagnosing and living with pain an art, not a science.

Sometimes the pain recedes because the pain initially signaled a level of muscle, vascular or pulmonary performance that the sport required pushing past. Pushing past meant experiencing the braying complaints of lungs, muscles and mind as the athlete learns to develop higher levels of endurance, strength or odd skills that require unique vascular and muscle specializations. The capacity of the body to function without hurting itself grows with practice and strength.

At other times the pain simply reflects bodily disorder and breakdown. The picture of Curt Schilling with blood flowing from a bone sticking through his foot as he pitches the Red Sox to a World Series win exemplifies the play through pain mystique and myth and imperative of sports. Jack Youngblood finishing a football game with a broken leg also ranks in the pantheon.

The key to remember is that  playing through pain has serious short and long term costs. First, pain distracts the athlete. It takes indirect concentration and focus to keep the pain at bay, and this distracts from utter complete presence to the task at hand. Second, the pain diminishes actual physical performance and limits physical actions. When a player is injured, they can often keep playing with adrenalin and team loyalty and support holding them together. But once on the sideline the adrenaline falls, the contagious strength of a huddle falters and the full measure of pain explodes and debilitates the player. The next time they go out, the deterioration of performance becomes obvious.

Finally, pain’s early warning nature signals later cost. Players who keep playing through the pain like a torn meniscus just tear the meniscus apart until they play bone on bone. Players with a ripped muscle continue to fray the muscle or micro-fracture grows into a greater break in the bone. Players compensate on the field and in compensating put excessive stress on other unprepared bones and muscle and end up multiplying injuries. The longer the player plays through the pain, the longer the healing and the greater the possibility of more injury and hence even longer healing. In my world of college athletes, the most common medical reason for waivers after major immediate injuries like ACL or broken bones involves players coming back too early, not giving their injury or body time to fully heal.

It makes perfect sense to play through certain types of pain. The accumulated aches, pains, strains, twists and bruises of a season nag at performance and harass a player’s focus. Good athletes know their own bodies well. They usually know when their body has reached its limits. Good athletes, like good professionals, learn to master these physical pains. They also learn to master and play through the mental pains that arise from daily life that ensnare daily suffering or worries about family or child or finances or breakups or friends. Playing through these pains mirrors a primary moral requirement of life.

The legendary status of playing through pain deserves its moral status. To do this humans manifest honor, strength of will, loyalty to goal and team. These are admirable traits and deserve praise. So modern athletes will “power through.”

But we have learned that more often than not playing through the pain of major injuries or threatening injuries makes no sense for athlete or team either in short run or long run. This is especially true for younger athletes who do not have the fine grained sense of their bodies or a well developed sense of self-preservation. This is why college and high school athletics must have independent and empowered doctors on the field to stop the athletes and stop the coaches when they prefer to risk the Achilles Choice that I have often discussed  to seek glory and victory.

The sacrifice of playing through pain makes little moral sense for young or college athletes. Players and doctors know this, even if coaches regularly forget it.