How far is too far?

by ravenfly on Sep 17, 2010 6:06 PM EDT

Where do you draw the line when you're cheering for your team -- or perhaps more importantly, against another team? Does a gutsy play by the other guys draw a respectful acknowledgment of a a worthy adversary? Do you applaud a bad call that goes against your rivals?

Do you hope the other team's players get hurt?

I can't stop thinking about this ever since (foolishly) venturing over to the poisonous SSS gamethread for the final game of our recent sweep at the Cell. Now, I don't want to misrepresent my own motives here. I went there not to troll or to discuss, but because White Sox fan schadenfreude is the most delicious of all schadenfreuden. Also, because I was bored at work. But I digress.

Personally, I cannot cheer for players getting injured. Not Favre, when he was kicking the Vikes' asses up and down the field for a decade in Green Bay. Not Buehrle, when he insults the entire Twins organization on a weekly basis. Not even Bertuzzi when he deliberately tried to injure Gaborik, Bouchard, and whomever else. I just don't have it in me.

Injuries are the saddest things in sports to me. I still cry a little inside when I think of what Junior could've done with a dozen healthy seasons, or what Bo Jackson could have accomplished in two sports. What kind of absurd numbers Pedro or Koufax could have put up with the longevity of a Randy Johnson.

This isn't to say that I don't revel in the visceral thrill I get when the White Sox lose. I love it. I love watching Ozzie make that slow, defeated walk to the mound after the Twins knock around yet another member of the vaunted White Sox rotation. My skin tingles every time Konerko whiffs on a snappy Liriano slider and sits his ass back down on the bench where it belongs. But injuries...I cringe when Beckham takes a fastball off his hand, though he's been one of the Sox' better players.

I wince when Paul Konerko gets pegged in the face.

And that's why the truly nasty things in that SSS thread stick with me. I can't understand fans who cheer for opposing players to get injured. Baseball, football, hockey, whatever -- it's the most bush league, unconscionable fan act I can imagine (short of rioting, I suppose, but I don't expect anyone to defend that).

Anyone out there feel differently? I'm not trying to demonize here (well, maybe a little), but I honestly don't understand it.

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I usually assume that people who go to extremes with sports fandom

are displacing rage that would otherwise be directed towards real-life people. Not sure that’s psychologically sound logic, but it’s what I like to tell myself.

by Luke in MN on Sep 17, 2010 6:53 PM EDT reply actions

It's generally because

Chicago sports fans epitomize arrogance, and find it absolutely, positively impossible to believe that a team from little, itty, bitty Minnesota can possibly be better than a team from Chicago. Like it’s their birthright or something.

You see it with Bears fans directed towards the Vikings. . .but not nearly to the extent that you see it from White Sox fans towards the Twins.

Oh, well. . .they can sit at home and play with their Joe Mauer or Delmon Young voodoo dolls all they want now. Their team has been on life support for weeks. . .the Twins just had the nerve to walk into their house and pull the plug.

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by Christopher Gates on Sep 17, 2010 7:11 PM EDT reply actions

They seem to have that in common with East coast teams. (Yanks and RedSux)

That kind of self righteousness and balking at the thought that they are not the best.

I always loved that one.

by FoulJack on Sep 17, 2010 8:32 PM EDT up reply actions

If you don't like it there, don't go there.

Problem solved. It’s their blog for their fans.

"Don't take life for granted, because tomorrow isn't promised to any one of us." -Kirby Puckett
"Dear AJ, That facial hair is not making you less douchey. Love, Batgirl" -TwinsBatgirl

by less cowbell, more 'neau on Sep 17, 2010 9:20 PM EDT reply actions

Let's not take things too seriously. Of course they're pissed; their season more or less ended.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-will-suffer-humiliation-when-the-sports-team-f,10804/

by bl4ckduck on Sep 18, 2010 9:29 AM EDT reply actions

Only when the sporting world would be better off without them.

I would have preferred that Bertuzzi had been permanently banned from organized hockey after assaulting Steve Moore. That would have been both nonviolent and appropriate. But given that he wasn’t, yeah, I hope somebody hits him so hard that he spends the rest of his life trying to remember how to use a spoon.

I also hope Derek Jeter gets antibiotic-resistant syphilis and Tim Tebow drinks himself to death, but I suppose those aren’t “injuries” per se.

by timprov on Sep 18, 2010 10:48 AM EDT reply actions

I don't know what vile stuff sss "fans" were saying

But if it was anything like what I heard on the broadcast, I have to agree with you Ravstache.

After Konerko got beaned, one White Sox fan screamed “Go after Mauer. Take his head off!”

I consider it good sportsmanship that Buehrle hit the first guy up after the Konerko beaning, rather than wait eight hitters to plunk Mauer. And when he did hit Cuddyer, he didn’t go for the head. Fans who scream for their team to injure the opposing players definitely cross the line.

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on Sep 18, 2010 11:50 AM EDT reply actions

Ill play the semi scapegoat

I am probably to big a baseball fan I follow it closer than any other sport so when following a team so closely and being invested in every win every loss and every game piece by piece sometimes I have more visceral reactions that aren’t really logical. I cant say I really want to see someone I loathe in the sense of sport injured but sometimes when in the moment of a teams battle I will admit to wishing a particularly threatening or annoying player, mainly of white sox or yankees persuasion, beaned or otherwise left incapable of play for awhile. Obviously not in a serious sense like Konkero taking the ball to the face, that pleases no one, but when I watch a Quentin or Jenks or A rod or Texiera go on the Dl for a bit it gives me pleasure. SSS takes a lot of things to the extreme including this kind of thing but I don’t blame them for that I enjoy the rivalry and the mutual hate. Maybe im in the minority being a displaced California twins fan and enjoying the visceral aspect of the rivalry.

by holymackerel on Sep 19, 2010 4:04 AM EDT reply actions

Who cares what they do at SSS?

Its an anonymous open vein game thread. Of course its going to be over the top.
Go back and read the TT game threads from the Yankee series earlier this year. That was full of visceral reactions. – And do you remember Phil Cuzzi? I wouldn’t have mind if he tripped down the stairs…

i’m kind of sick of how some fans react so sanctimoniously toward SSS.

by clutterheart on Sep 19, 2010 12:58 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs

Seriously.

We’re irrational sports fans on an internet forum. Who really cares about “being classy” 100% of the time? It’s perfectly fine if someone says something like that. I have no problem with SSS being what it is, and can we at least stop getting worked up about it?

by Hillstop on Sep 19, 2010 5:25 PM EDT up reply actions

one exception

I really hate all intentional injuries, including all HBP’s. And I really hate to see hustle injuries, like collisions at the wall, and at home plate. I don’t like any game related or fluke injuries on either team. Joel Zumaya hurting his shoulder trying to save his dad’s house from a fire still bums me out.

The one exception that actually makes me smile is predictable injuries that come back to haunt the team that overspent, like when people who I suspect of taking steroids start to break down in predictable, steroid-related ways, or when the Yankees overpay for some aging superstar and he gets age-related injuries right when they should have expected him too.

For instance, if the Twins were to face the Rays in the playoffs and David Price were injured, that would take some of the satisfaction away from beating them. I’d actually be disappointed, not relieved. But if they faced the Yankees, and A-Rod was hurt, and Pettitte and Posada weren’t at full strength, and Jeter wasn’t getting to balls in the hole, I would say great, all’s fair, that’s the team they built, and that’s the team they deserve to have on the field that day. That’s how they chose to spend their money, and the Twins will have beaten the true Yankees if they win. Whereas, if Phil Hughes broke his leg, that would be a bummer for me and would diminish the victory. But I really enjoy it when old, expensive Yankees break down.

by by jiminy on Sep 21, 2010 6:12 AM EDT reply actions