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MITCH ALBOM: Got another new word for 'fan'?

December 18, 2005

FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
I held my father's hand as we walked into the stadium. I wore a cap. I carried a glove. I ate a hot dog. I clapped constantly. When one of our players struck out, I said, "That's OK," mimicking my father, who added, "We'll get 'em next time."

I remember every vivid detail of my first sporting event, from the seat colors to the greasy food. What I don't remember is if our team won.

I guess it didn't matter.

I was a fan back then. I am not one anymore. I surrendered that option when I took this job. A fan, as defined by the dictionary, is "an ardent admirer." To be honest, under that definition, I'm not sure how many fans are left in this country.

Sure, people call themselves "fans." And today, many of them are expected to brave the winter weather for the Lions-Bengals game at Ford Field. But they are not coming to cheer the home team. They are coming to boo it, to march around the stadium in protest, to howl endlessly for the firing of the team's president.

I'm not sure what I call that.

It doesn't sound like fandom.

Preening for attention

It's hard to imagine a "fan" of a movie star such as Julia Roberts screaming at her because she took a bad part, or a "fan" of writer Stephen King calling a radio show demanding his publisher fire him. If you don't care for their work anymore, you move on.

But in sports, somehow, we don't move on, we move in. We throw things on the court. We unfurl nasty banners. We scream threats and curses.

We start obscene chants. We sing a player's name and add the word "sucks!" We throw beverages at preening athletes (Pistons-Pacers last year). We throw beer bottles at the visiting team's buses (the LSU-Tennessee football game this fall). We jeer draft picks. We scream for trades.

Decades ago, if our team lost, we might commiserate at the coffee shop. Today, we spew venom across the Internet, we speed dial a sports talk radio station, we scream into a TV camera. We give ourselves names ("SuperFanFreak"). We get famous for selling our loyalty on eBay. We imagine ourselves as equals. Every fan a coach. Every fan a general manger.

We demand our "rights." We say we are "sick" of losing. The whole relationship is like a tired husband and his tired wife, quick to anger, quick to battle, quick to see love turned to resentment. I don't know what you call that.

It doesn't sound like fandom.

It's so easy to criticize

Of course, the teams themselves are hardly blameless. Coaches and general managers take the money and run. High-priced players refuse to sign autographs or demand to be traded. Owners raise ticket prices so high a fan feels entitled to excellence -- or else.

Meanwhile, in the media, it is in vogue to be cynical and acid-tongued. I've done it myself. You show too much "admiration" (see the definition of fan), they call you a "homer."

So today, in Detroit, "fans" will gather en masse to express not support, but anger. And they will protest a team making money from failure while buying angry T-shirts and boosting ratings of entities making money from, well, failure. And the very media that often have egged them on -- including this newspaper -- will race down and cover them.

And perhaps this grants them their truest wish: to be watched and written about on Sunday afternoon, instead of the players.

The whole thing has gotten so loud, so profane and so drunken, I'm not sure what it is anymore. But I know what it isn't.

It isn't a little boy and his father, holding hands and watching sports heroes. They called that fandom. But those days are gone.

Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or malbom@freepress.com. Catch "The Mitch Albom Show" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760). Also catch "Monday Sports Albom" 7-8 p.m. Mondays on WJR. To read his recent columns, go to www.freep.com, click on Sports and then Mitch Albom.

Anthropomorphic rock formation, Sedona, AZ

 
 

A "Cowboy Killer" in Sedona, AZ

 
 

H&P 2005

 
 

"Lay down your Law books, now they're no d*** good"

Scott Turow's newest book, Ordinary Heroes, is not a book about lawyers in the sense his previous novels were. The protagonist is a JAG lawyer during WWII, but that is completely secondary. He gets drawn into combat including the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. I thought the story was very good, Turow always writes well, and this novel seems Hemingwayesque to me, a "Man at War" kind of atmosphere.

Annals of in -state Rivalries

Leave it to City Hall ...

 
 

Beachy sidewalk

 
When we were at the beach, we saw some herringbone sidewalk and decided that was what we wanted in front of our house. Still a bit rough. 

Trick or Treat

 
 

Good game

Annals of Books: Catching up on the reading list

Each time I try to post this my computer crashes.
Best book lately is Tyrannosaur Canyon by Preston.
The Traveler by Hawks was ok, as I finished it thinking it needed a sequel, I read the back jacket that it is part one of three.
The March by Doctorow was ok, about Sherman's March (the activity not the month) through the South, with a stop in Columbia to watch the Gamecocks play.
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of Warfare is a nonfiction that I enjoyed.
I have been meaning to read Freakonomics and The World is Flat, but they are packed in a box somewhere due to the renovation of our book room.
I have a promising new (to me) author named Steve Alten, he writes technothrillers like Preston and Childs.

New Seagrove living room 

The British are coming 

Sunset from Cape Cod, taken by Morgan. Actually saw the Green Flash a few seconds later. 

A rainbow dot, over Brewster, Cape Cod 

wink 

Pop Pop, Granny and grandkids at Cape Cod 

Annals of Law: Stupid Things the IRS does

In the wake of all of the corporate scandals lately, the Government has instituted new rules, regulations, and no doubt a bunch of committees. Something that boggles my mind is known as Circular 230.

In practical part (the only part I understand) this requires some lawyers to put a footer on every single dad blamed email they send out, in substantially this form:

"IRS CIRCULAR 230 Disclosure: Under U.S. Treasury regulations, we are required to inform you that any tax advice contained in this e-mail or any attachment hereto is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, to avoid penalties imposed under the Internal Revenue Code."

Note that this is on every email, including lunch invitations and Final Four Office Pools, etc. What good does this do for society?

Do you mean to tell me that if a lawyer advises me how to set up an offshore corporation, or if I am the CEO of Enron and I want to post dummy losses and get tax advice about it, putting a footer on the email makes it all better? That's completely insane. That's as silly as "expert driver on closed course, do not try this at home."

The only good email footer I have seen is from a lawyer I know, his has an unintended grammatical error. Reading it, the footer plainly directs any reader to delete and destroy the email without reading it. Like looking into a hall of mirrors? Whoa man!

I saw the movie

With the kids Friday night (Mrs was late getting back from out of town). It was pretty good, a bit intense for MEB (MHB spent part of the time watching her to make sure she was not "sad.") Pretty good Star Wars movie.

Although George Lucas is a genius about many things, I am skeptical about his storytelling. How hard is it to foreshadow when you start at the end? I also do not believe he had it all planned out, I think he made things up as he went along. Especially after the first movie. Therefore some of the later movies boxed him in.

Examples: Why did Obi-wan say "you must learn from Yoda, the jedi master who trained me." How did Darth Vader ever figure out Luke was his son? If it is just feeling the Force as MHB guesses (probably correctly) then why when he was faced with Leia in the interrogation scene, did he not note the force was strong with her, etc? Also, Vader and Leia appeared to be acquainted in Episode IV. Why hide Luke on Tatooine, Vader's home planet, with people he knows? Why, when flying over Tatooine in IV, did Vader not note in some way that this was his home planet? And why wipe C3POs memory and not R2D2s?

Still, I liked the movie. Lots of action, and the bad dialogue scenes were mercifully short and to the point.

A very cool website

Is the Baby Name Voyager. You enter a name, and you see how popular, or not, it has been over the years. Try it. http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html