Some days you just won’t feel like writing. Today is one of those days. I barely got any sleep last night, I had a few meetings and did tons of emails in between, and I had a double workout day, first at SoulCycle and then a mountain / canyon hike. And now All I wanna do is sleep. But I made a commitment to this writing thing. 1,000 words a day, every day. Writing For Rodney. Seemed like a good idea at the time. But now, honestly, Im not so sure. Im having doubts about whether or not Im gonna be able to make it through a full year.

Well, that’s not totally true. I definitely *can* make it. But should I? Sure, I can toss off 1,000 words every day, relatively easily. That’s sort of what Im doing here today. But who wants to read this bullshit. Should I be publishing every single day? That’s the real question. Because while I can easily write the 1,000 words every day, the challenge is really going to be, can I up come with 1,000 words that I think someone might find wroth reading. This first month, to be honest, I have just been writing fluff and filler. Four days about why I love the UFC? Who cares? A bunch of days about how I got into motorcyclying. Who cares. Ive just been wiring to knock em out. I should spend a day writing a really in depth story about that time when me and my buddy Jordan did a motorcycle trip around Nevada and Utah and Arizona and ended up getting back to Vegas just in time for a big July 4th weekend UFC card at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. And how we need up buying coke form a limo driver and then met Andrew Dice Clay at a Tiki Bar and then ended up whiling the night away with some floozies, but how I couldn’t come because of all the cocaine and booze.

But wiring stories like that, and doing them justice, take a lot more than 1,000 words, and a lot more time and effort than Ive been willing to put ion this far. Which is why I guess Im stuck in this position now. Wondering why the fuck Im doing this and who cares.  See, Ive been leaving the word count feature on as I type, and Ive been keeping my eye on writing and trying to just get to the 1,000 words, rather than wiring what needs to be said. And clearing out my head. And that has me torn. Because Im Half assing it, but if I don’t, there’s a danger I might write two or three or four or even five thousand words in one day. And I cannot stack the words up, I made a commitment to go 1,000 words a day. Every day.  And so now I’ve got to make those words count.

Join 2016 when I made a pact to run 3 miles every day, that was easy. Comparitively, anyways. I knew that every day, day in and day out, I only needed to commit a total of 30 minutes to this, ahem, exercise. Sure, maybe some more, when you add up the time it took to get dressed, and the. To stretch after the run, and shower, etc. But it was always pretty much a set time. And it didn’t require any mental energy, and in fact it actually led to increased mental energy, which is one of the great side effects of exercise.

What it also didn’t do, was require me to share every step of it along the way. I made videos. Highlights. Took all the best parts of most scenic parts of the runs, and posted them every couple of weeks. So why am I committed to posting this writing every day? That’s a very good question, and one Im only finally getting around to asking myself. And one I’m only asking myself because Ive been sort of dogging it this month. I guess it’s sort of like when I started the running. I had all I could do to push myself through the 3 miles every day, and didn’t always push myself hard. But before lon g, it became routine, so I started going on longer and longer runs, to keep myself interested, and then I started tackling triathlons. Which meant I had to train biking and swimming. And even had to learn how to swim.

That still brings me back to having to share this stuff every day. Maybe I should create a new and separate blog, so I don’t jam up the jakerocksoff.com feed with a post every single day. Maybe Ill just post the really good shit up there. Or maybe that’s just a cop out, which would make it OK to just write crap every day. Maybe I just need to man up and write amazing shit every day. Easier said than done. But I’ll give it my best shot, I guess.

Im gonna need to come up with a lot of ideas. Which reminds me. If you’re reading this, maybe there’s something you want to know about. A story you heard about me, or heard me tell, that you’d like the deep dive on…? If so, give me a shout and let me know. Comment here… or tweet at me. Or call me. Or text me. Or just fucking shout at me the next time you see me on the street.

Ideas. Shoot. I only need about 340 more of them and then the year will de done. How hard could it be? And what’s the worst that could happen?

People have asked me for a long time if I was ever gonna write a book. My stock response has always been… Im too busy LIVING to stop and write. But it looks like that’s what 2019 is gonna be for me. Gonna be a lot of nights in sat at the computer, channeling my best HST, except without all the booze and drugs, because I don’t do my best wiring that way.

It’s gonna be a long year. But hopefully a rewarding one. For both of us.

And so there we were. Bill Buckner let the 1986 World Series roll right between his legs. Poor guy. People forget that he was injured and shouldn’t have been playing. But they never let him forget it.  The most popular joke around Boston for months and years afterwards was “Did you hear Bill Buckner tried to kill himself? He jumped in front of a bus but it went between his legs.”  Except it wasn’t a laughing matter. Red Sox fans were heartbroken. How dare they bring us thiiiiiis close and then let it go, we all thought. But most people couldn’t let it go when it came to Bill Buckner. Game 6 of the `1986 World Series was the last game of baseball he ever played. And it was the last time he was seen in public for a long long time. He went into hiding. Because of a combination of the death threats, and presumedly, the shame of letting down and entire community with one unfortunate roll of a sportsball.

But in that. moment, I realized a lot about life. Number one was, don’t rest your hopes and dreams and self worth in somebody else’s basket. And also, don’t knowingly hitch your wagon to a known loser. What good does that do?  Some might say sports fandom is about loyalty. But that’s bullshit. Continuing to root for a losing team, when it comes to sports, is weakness. It’s a blind loyalty that you’re giving back to somebody who doesn’t care about you.

I get that someone wants to keep on hanging on to their city. But it’s n to the city you’re having on to. It’s some businessman. Who will fuck you over at any chance they get. Hence the rising prices of tickets d got dogs and parking and peanuts. And peanuts is exactly what they actually give back to you. Most team owners don’t care about the fan one bit. They care about their bottom line. I mean, REALLY care about winning. Winning is a lot harder than proftiing. Sure, they know that boasting winning records ups attendance. But they care more about signing long term lucrative TV rights deals. Or in the revenue sharing that participate in with the rest of league. They are about profits. Because sports is a business, and its built on the foundation of the guilt that fans have about having to root for their local  home team.

Which brings me back to why I still don’t get it. Most of us have enough losers in our lives that we can’t just drop by changing a channel. They are not distant tycoon crooks… they are friends and family. People we cannot escape form. Or at least cant escape from as easily. Why do we knowingly give ourselves more.

After that 1986 World Series, I decided I was done loving the Red Sox. I quickly likened Red Sox fans to someone in an abusive relationship. And the Red Sox were the abusers. Time and time again we were let down, and bettered. The team kept promising, year after year, that things would get better. And we kept on believing them. It’s like they kept giving us a black eye on Saturday night and then Sunday they showed up with flowers.

Well you know what they say. Shame me once, fool on you. Shame me twice, fool on me. What foo you do when somebody’s been fooling you since 1918? You say enough’s enough and you pack your bags and move out.  Which was hard, actually impossible, for me to do as a 13 year old. Physically.  But mentally, I checked myself out. I stopped caring about the Red Sox, and I stopped going to games. I decided I was going to move to New York City when I grew up. And that I was going to become a Yankee Fan. That last part of the decision was two pronged. One, I realized I couldn’t become a Mets fan, because they were the ones, ultimately, that denied my Red Sox their World Series title.  But secondly, and most importantly, the worst thing I could do to the rEd Sox would be to escape into the arms of their arch nemesis and century old division rivals, the New York Yankees.

And that’s exactly what I did. I fled the Boston area at the first chance I had, first to LA, as far away as I could literally get while remaining on the same continent. And then to New York City, ideologically the opposite of Boston. I was always taught as a child that Boston was so much better than NYC. That NYC was a den of sin and filth. And the home of the Rat Race. And that Boston was somehow cultured. I guess because it had a lot of Universities. Which, sure, I guess it did. But the best two weren’t even in Boston. Harvard and MIT were in Cambridge. But really, the dirty was a hotbed of institutionalized racism and homophobia, and still is to this day.  I call it “Kentucky on the Charles”  The only Freedom Trail Ever cared about was the Mass Pike. The one that got me the fuck out of there. Hell, even the signs to the On Ramp for the Mass Pike say “TO: NEW YORK” I always thought that was the greatest joke somebody could have played on the populace. ‘Yeah, let’s take their tax dollars and make a sign that reminds them all there’s a vastly superior city at the end of this great paved road.”

Not only did I moved to NYC and became a Yankee Fan,. It also coincided with them becoming one of the best teams in Baseball and winning an unpriced dented 5 World Series victories in 123years – 1996-2009. During that time I was a season ticket holder for 6 seasons. I went to a shit-ton of games. After the 2009 World Series victory I even got a Yankees tattoo. And then they lost Jeter. And Petite. And Posada. And Mariana. And before I knew it they were a team I didn’t recognize. So I cancelled my season ticket. And I stopped caring. They say you are the combination of your 5 closest friends. And I treat my friends much like I treat my sports fandom. I cut out the losers. Because even though they might get lucky sometimes, Im not gonna let it be at the expense of my happiness. So…. Fuck Em. 

PS. Rodney loved the Yankees. But now, I domino even care about baseball anymore.

The 1986 World Series. The Boston Red Sox vs the New York Mets. The red Sox had FINALLY made it back to the World Series. Since their last win in 1918, they had only made it to the series three other times, the last being in 1975, when I was two years old, and they lost that one to the Cincinnati Reds, who were led by Pete Rose. What a story that guy had. A few months ago I was in Las Vegas and walked past a memorabilia store and he was there signing autographs. The shop was completely empty, except for the people working there. It reminded me on the record store appearance fro Spinal Tap, except this was even more sad. When are they gonna let Pete back into Baseball? HE should be in the Hall of Fame already, dammit. Charlie Hustle!!!

So, 1986 World Series. All that believing was looking like it was finally going to pay off. The Red Sox took a commanding lead bye winning the first tow games, both in New York. The series then moved to Boston for a couple of games, where the Red Sox took both games at Shea Stadium.

Game 5 found the teams back in Boston for the oh-so-important rubber match. Boston took that one and with that, moved to within one game of the World Series.  They went back to Shea Stadium in Queens to try and close out the series, and close out the Curse of the Bambino. That’s the name sports fans gave to the Red Sox inability to win a World Series since their team owner had sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees back in 1919. Closing out the series in New York wasn’t going to be easy, but they had already beat the Mets twice on their home turf earlier in the series, so, well, we had to believe that they could do it again.

It was a see-saw game, and tense as all hell. Boston scored a run in the first inning and another in the second to jump out to an early 2-0 lead. They held the Mets scoreless until the 5th inning when they scored a couple to tie it up. That’s when the dread and tension really set in. THEY CAN’T MESS THIS UP!!!!!

I remember watching this game, clear as day. We were all gathered in our family room. Watching on our 19” RCA color TV set. I was sitting on the red shag carpet right in front of the TV. Hoping, Praying, Cajoling, BELIEVING. Hoping against hope.

Boston scored again in the 7th to take the lead 3-2 and my house, my block, me neighborhood, damn the entire city and STATE basically exploded. It felt like there had been an earthquake. No joke.

Then in. The bottom of the 8th The red Sox walked Keith Hernandez to load the bases and Gary Carter caste up to bat. Carter hit a deep fly to left field, that was caught, but it was deep enough to score Lee Mazilli. As much as we had all celebrated when the Red Sox took the lead, equal was the amount of despair that filled the entirety of New England when the Mets ties the game. In retrospect, I guess we should have known at that moment. That the Red Sox couldn’t keep a good thing going. That they would end up letting us down. But we kept believing.

We kept believing right up through the end of the regulation 9 innings, where the game was locked in a stalemate at 3 runs a piece. So now we were off to extra inning. And oh boy this was NOT a good feeling. Back in those days, we were told to believe, but nobody ever did. Everyone around me, especially the adults, who had lived trough this their entire lives, exuded not confidence, but panic, when things got tight. And this moment was boo different.

And then it happened. The top of the tenth. Dave Henderson knocked the second pitch of the inning out of the park to give the Red Sox a 3-2 lead. Then Wade Boggs doubled and was knocked in by second basemen Marty Barrett. ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE. The whole of New England was fired up again. TWO RUNS IN THE TENTH. SURELY, they couldn’t muck this one up, right?!?!?!

But these were the Boston Red Sox we were talking about.  And if there was a way to lose, these guys would find it, or die trying. What happened next though, was almost literally unbelievable.  The Red Sox retried the first two batters of the inning and were only ONE OUT AWAY from a World Series Championship. Another earthquake hit and we were all on the edge of our shag carpet perches waiting for the final out.  And then it started to unravel. Gary Carter lined a single into left field which was followed by a single by Kevin Mitchell. Ray Knight singled, scoring Gary Carter and bringing <Mitchell to third base. The tying run was on rd. HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN!?!?!

But it was OK, because awe had an ace in the hole. The Red Sox brought in their lights out reliever Bob Stanley, who hadn’t allowed an earned run in the entire series. Nothing could stop us now!!!!

Until Mookie Wilson stepped to the plate. The typically unflappable Stanley threw a ball in the dirt which allowed Mitchell to score and advanced Ray Knight to third. Not it was tied. In. Extra innings. The bottom on the 10th. How in the hell did we get here. The Red Sox had just been within a whisper of winning there. world series, and now they were about to give the game away.

To see what happened next, you’ve just got to watch… It defies words at this point…

Bill Bucker let the game roll right between his legs. A decorated veteran of the Major Leagues. A complete pro. Failed in the biggest moment of his career. And the Red Sox lost the game. And along with it, all of their Mojo. The Mets rolled to victory in game 7 and took the World Series. It was a foregone conclusion at that point. Sure, there was gonna be a game 7, but none of us believed, any longer, that the Red Sox had a chance.

Nothing was ever the same again for me. I lost all respect for the red Sox, and for the City of Boston, in that one moment. And that’s why Im a New Yorker now…

To Be Continued…

The Boston Red Sox. There’s almost no team in the history of pro sports that’s more divisive. Once upon a time they were my favorite team. Dad took me to games as a kid. Once a year.  One of my fondest memories of childhood was going into Boston with my dad for a “take your brat to work day” He took a half day off and we left his office around noon, and when I asked what the plan was he said “The Red Sox are playing an afternoon game. Let’s go to that!” I was blown away. I remember we were able to walk right up to the box office and buy two tickets not far behind home plate. Man, those were the days.

Every year Dad would take m e to at least one game. Maybe a few times we got to go to a 2nd game. On the rare occasion one of the rich people my family knew had a paid that they couldn’t use. Which back oil the 70s and 80s, was a real rarity. Even the people who we knew that were “rich” were only rich in comparison to us.

I can’t figure out what’s going on with the economy nowadays. I certainly never felt poor growing up. We didn’t have a ton of money, but we never missed meals. My dad was frugal, but I didn’t think he was cheap. We never ended up with the hot new things. We didn’t have fancy TVs or refrigerators, or redone kitchens. I remember being so jealous when I would go over to another friend’s house and see that they had a new fridge that was one of the brand new side by side models. Or when they had a fridge that dispensed water and ice from the door. THIS IS JUST LIKE A MOVIE I would think to myself. Years later, when I bought my first crib, I went out and bought a refrigerator that was BOTH side-by-side AND dispensed ice and water. Like a king in his castle I often thought to myself as I was filling up a glass of water. Didn’t even matter to me that it was just top water. The fact that it came OUT OF THE FRIDGE made me feel like a complete baller. Just makes me wonder how everybody seems to be rich nowadays. Everything is luxury. How the fuck is everyone affording all these luxury hotels, and condos, and never-ending airplane rides. A big part of the way I pay for my lifestyle is that I don’t have any kids, and don’t plan to. So Im not saving. For anyone’s college. Or buying diapers. Or wooing about private schools. And iPhones. And… Jesus man, why would anyone on earth choose to have children. Especially with the climate crises we are now facing.

Yeah sure, go drive a Prius. And take shorter showers, and carry around a re-useable water bottle.  That’s so cute that you think you’re saving the environment. When are people going to realize that we need to stop reproducing at such a rapid rate. Something’s got to happen to reverse the population explosion. If it doesn’t, then no amount of Priuses are going to help us. So, would everybody, PLEASE, for the sake of the planet, stop having more and more stupid kids. Mother Nature thanks you in advance.

Anyways, where was I? Oh right, the Boston Red Sox. Man, I was taught as a kid that the team was EVERYTHING. And about how we had to support them. Especially because they had a Polish guy on the team. Carl Yastrzemski. Who, oddly enough, goggle just told me is still alive. He felt old back when I was watching in the late 70s. He must look like Mr Burns now. The horror.

And we couldn’t stop hearing about Ted Williams, “the greatest ball player of all time!” Is what my entire extended family used to tell me. I guess they had all unilaterally decided to block out Babe Ruth after the owner of the red Sox sold him to the Yankees in what was the single dumbest move inn the history of pro sports, up until that time. This was way before the Dolans bought the Knicks and the Rangers, obviously.

Ted Williams was always held up as a super icon. As a guy who should have been the all time hits leader, but because he was drafted during WWII he ended up missing 5 seasons inn what would have ben his prime, and did it all to serve his country. That was all well and good, but to a 7 year old, that just sounded stupid. “Why would the Marines have taken such a good ball player?” I asked more than a few times. Nobody ever enjoyed that portion of my curiosity. 

But I still had this blind loyalty to the Red Sox. At that point in time, they hand’t won a world series since 1918. A fact that New Yorker’s at Yankee Stadium never let them forget. Every time the Red Sox would visit the entire stadium would break out into chants of “NINE-TEEN EIGHT-TEEN” But I was still taught that “You Gotta Believe!” Or some such crap, about how you couldn’t turn your back on the hometown team. None of this ever made any sense to me. I would continually ask “But why can’t we just root for a good team?!” Yet another aspect of my curiosity that was not at all popular.

But through it all, I blindly followed what my family taught me. After Bucky Dent hit that home run in 1978 to put the Red Sox world series dreams to sleep, I kept believing.  The following bunch of years were all huge disappointments, but I kept believing, of doing what I was told. Of blindly following orders, even if they were orders that were being set by example, I still didn’t feel right abut it. But I kept on cheering the losers.

It was 1979, after all, when Tom Petty released the classic “Even The Losers Get Lucky Sometime” I must have heard that and applied it to the Red Sox, trying to believe that If only I believed that it would finally come true. But before long, that whole fantasy came crashing down in spectacular fashion. The 1986 World Series.

To Be Continued…

The first pro football game I ever went to was the New England Patriots vs the New York Jets. Nowadays a classic rivalry, but back then they were just two tweets to me. The hometown team and the other guys.  The Patriots ended up beating the Jets 56-3, which, in any sport, would be a huge margin. On this day, it was a literal embarrassment for the Jets. But it was a complete thrill for a 6 year old kid at his first ever big time sporting event, and it kicked off a lifelong obsession with events for me.

Since then, Ive pretty much never passed up an offer to go to a major event, sporting or otherwise. But in those early years, there weren’t a lot of chances.  Not as many as there would come to be, anyways, and not as many as I would have liked in that time. But, more than most kids had, probably.

My dad was big into sports and would take me to one game a year, by each of our local Boston teams. The New England Patriots for football, the Boston Celtics for basketball and the Boston Red Sox for baseball. He never took me to a Boston Bruins game. My dad didn’t like hockey. He didn’t even care about it, really. Not sure why. He always just shrugged it off. So I never got the chance to go to a game. Or play, for that matter. But I remember sitting in our family room, watching the Bruins play on. WSBK – Channel 38. Back then Hockey was wi=ld. These crazy characters would crash into each other with violent hits, and fire a hard ribber disk at speeds over 100 MPH with long wooden sticks. Sometimes they would hit each other with those sticks. Or the puck. Or their huge bodies. But sometimes, when you were lucky, which was usually at least once a game, if n to more, they would hit each other with their fists. 

Watching a hockey fight break out was insane. The guys would just throw their gloves down on the ice and start a boxing match. On ice. With sharp as fuck knives attached to their feet. And the rest of the player, AS WELL AS THE REFEREES, would just stand around them in a. Circle and wait for one guy to knock the other one down to the ice. That would, usually, signal the end of the fight, and both guys would stop. Not always, but usually. Sometimes there would be so much animosity built up that these monster would keep on fighting. Those times were my favorite. Looking back now, it’s not hard to see why I loved hockey so much. Or why it’s gone on to become my favorite sport to go see live.

Just a few months after that Patriots vs Jets game, the Boston bruins travelled to Madison Square Garden to take on the New York Rangers, and the greatest fights of all time broke out. Taking things way beyond your average hockey fight, the Boston Bruins actually went up into the stands and beat the hell out of a bunch of Rangers fans at the Garden. Defenseman Mike Millbury even beat one fans with the poor guy’s OWN SHOE!

I’m dead serious. See for yourself!!

That’s the kind of things DREAMS are made of. Especially for impressionable 6 year old boys. Im not sure how may folks hid that one from me as a kid, butI didn’t find out about it until many many years later. I guess at 6pm I wasn’t staying up to watch the local news at 11pm, or reading the sports pages. Which is a bummer, because I wish I had been. I would have Demanded that my dad buy season tickets to the Bruins that very next day. Not that my demands as a kid held any weight. Hell, it wasn’t unity I was working  different jobs in high school that I finally had the money and wherewithal to buy myself Bruins trip kets and go to a game. With a sweet young thing who worked at the local burger king. Man, those were a memorable bunch of dates. But I digress…

Of the teams I did get to go see live in my youth. Only was a real winner. Sure, the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl in 1986, which was the end of the 1985 season. But they got thrashed 46-10 by the Chicago Bears, and it would be a whole until they got good again. And then there were the Red Sox, which we willet into tomorrow.

But the Celtics. Man the Boston Celtics. One fo the best all time teams in the NBA. Going back to the 1950’s where they had an incredible run of 8 straight NBA titles from 1959-1966. But that team they had in the 80s was an absolute pleasure to be able to watch on TV, and then in person once a year. The core of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish, Dennis Jonson and Danny Ainge, and later Bill Walton, was literally incedible. Larry Bird was easily the nest white guy to ever play in the NBA, and was knows as “the Hick From French Lick” He veritably wasn’t blessed with a lot of natural athletic ability. But he made up for it ion sheer grit, determination, and hard work. Watching him made you feel like anything was possible. And his teammates were a bunch of the same. Especially when compared to the glitzy and sinewy specimens that made up the Los Angeles Lakers of the 80s. The SHOWTIME team as they were known. They were everything the Celtics weren’t. Cool, good looking, prone to fast and flashy fats breaks. And physically and skillfully dominant. Their start was Earvin “MAGIC” johnson. With a million megawatt smile. It was like he was made to play in Hollywood. And he led his hard charging Lakers against the “Hick From French Lick” and his Celtics. It was like a real life version of the Harlem Globetrotters vs the Washington Generals, but int his version the Generals sometimes won.

Thought the 80s, both teams were dominant in their divisions. And they ended up in the finals three times. With the Lakers besting the Celtics twice.  Thought the Celtics still managed to win 3 NBA titles in the 80s. 

Going back now and watching those Larry Bird highlights, those plays seem even more amazing to me now than they did back then. Im so lucky to have got to witnessed them, and they have gone on to keep being a com petite team, even winning a title in 2008. Nowadays though, they do it with pretty much zero white fellers. But thats pretty much the way the entire NBA goes now.

The Patriots have of course, gone on to be one of the most impressive dynasties in the history of the NFL. And are the only Boston team I still identify with, because they kept putting out decent albums. The Red Sox, on the other hand. That’s a whole other ball of wax, which we will get into tomorrow….

Sports are so weird. People get so worked up about them. And I don’t fully understand it. Even though I participate. To a degree.

There were two huge games today for the NFL. Both had a lot of penalties. The officials seemingly stole the NFC championship game from New Orleans by filling to make a pass interference call. Pass interference is a tough call to make, because early in the game officials seem to not let any transgression go, whereas late in the game they tend to let more stuff go.  But this was just EGREGIOUS. The LA Rams player full on tackled the Saints player while the ball was in the air.And it wasn’t called. Im surprised DJ  didn’t come on screen and say “The NFL doesn’t care about New Orleans” like he did in 2003 during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Int he second game the New England Patriots bested the Kansas City Chiefs in an all time classic that went to overtime. So much has been made of the referees playing favorites with the Pats, but they had a bunch of calls go against them as well. In the end, In have to ask, who really cares… and why?  It’s a game, right? But it’s a game tied to your CITY, so all of a sudden people get so tribal. People who seem to have very little civic pride in much of anything tend to get all worked about about sports. When, in reality, you aren’t even rooting for a city. You just happen to be rooting for the same laundry that most of the rest of the people in your city root for. Really, you’re rooting for a rag tag bunch of mercenaries, who are only playing on the team that’s based in your city because your city’s billionaire is paying them more than any of the other city’s billionaires.

People don’t seem to get that. Sports was a business. You’re rooting for a god damned corporation, with a billionaire CEO. Long gone is the era of sports teams being staffed by people from that city. Sure, back then, I get it. The bears were amazing because Chicago was a rough guy city. You had to be tough to endure those long winters. And it felt great when the big grown beef fed midwestern came to town and beat the mamba pamby New England chowderheads. 

But now? Everyone on the Bears might be on the Patriots next year. Or might hav e already been on the patriots. Hell, even the tram owners don’t have any loyalty to their cities. Many teams aren’t owned by natives of that city, and so many owners threaten to move their teams if they don’t get some crazy new stadium which will be funded by taxpayer money. Which is almost never a good thing, as ALL the research shows.  Stadiums never throw off the tax money and jobs they claim to, and certainly never revitalize neighborhoods. Most everyone drives into the stadium on game day with the cars full of all the goods they need, and then disappear after the game, turning the area into a veritable ghost town on the 358 days a year that nobody is playing football there. The most economic benefit most people who live nearby can hope for is to charge people $10 to park on their lawn on game day.  Whooooooo!

Where else is this blind loyalty shown? Nowhere that I can think of. Especially in entertainment, which is what sorts really is. Think about it… People will continue to love a sports team FOREVER, regardless of if they win or lose. And actually, when a team is a perennial loser is when a lot of fans double down and love them even more. Look at teams like the Cleveland Browns, the NY Knicks, NY Jets, NY Mets, the Buffalo Bills etc… Teams who haven’t been competitive in eons, and have abysmal track records of getting things done in the big championship games. The fans of those teams wear it as a badge of honor. They profess their love for their teams specifically BECAUSE they never win. Like their suffering makes them martyrs of some sort. Imagine doing that with music. Sure I LOVED Bon Jovi for a long time. But then they started making crappy records, starting in the late 2000’s at which point I continued to love going to see them live. Even though they started putting on pretty much he same show year after year. Very little variation on the set-lists and even a lot of the same banter. It began to grow tired. And they they started introducing VIP meet and great packages for as much as $5,000. And it dawned on me that maybe by this point, they were only in it for the money. And then Jon fired Richie. And that was the start that broke this camel’s back.  I haven’t been to a Bon Jovi show since, and Im not sure I ever will. Unless maybe they hire Richie back, but even then, I’ll know Im not seeing the real Bon Jovi, I would equate that to going to see an Old Timer’s Game at Yankee stadium.

Thats a totally typical scenario in rock n roll. Band are. Putting out great records, and you love them and you go see them live. They stop with the great records and you still go see them. Until one day, you realize they are no longer relevant so you stop going to see them altogether. Or maybe you keep going to see them for nostalgia purposes. At least as long as there are some original members in there.

Winning games, and being competitive in a your league, is the sports equivalent to putting out good albums. Once a team hits a hard losing skid, why do people continue to support them? Nostalgia? I can get with that. But what about when there aren’t any players left from the good era. Then it’s really an entirely new team. Why get excited about that? You’re just rooting for laundry. And filling the pockets of a billionaire who doesn’t care about you.

Sort of reminds me of religion. Something you back because your parents told you to.

So weird.

Rodney didn’t like sports. Or religion. But he did support a lot of rock n roll bands long after they stopped having hits. So Im not sure this was a good example. But I loved him every day, no matter what. Like so many other people love their sports teams. I guess we are all a bunch of weridos.