Sunday, February 12, 2006
Cubs, Bears, Liberty: Which of these is not like the others?
So the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Superbowl. My residual affiliations with the ‘burgh (parents grew up there, grandparents lived there, I even lived and worked there for a few years) made me root moderately for the Steelers, although had the Seahawks won I wouldn’t have been heartbroken.
Because either way, a team with what I consider an appropriate name for a sports team would have won. By appropriate I mean the plural form of a common noun. When I was a boy we followed Lions, Tigers, Giants, Red Wings, Bears and so on. (We walked miles through 3 feet of snow to do so, I hasten to add.)
We could speak meaningfully of one Yankee or several. A Canadien or a group of Canadiens, though we probably didn’t pronounce it right. I guess we could have spoken of one White Sock, though I’m not sure anyone ever did.
What I’m having trouble dealing with is the practice of giving teams abstract and semi-abstract nouns, or the singular form of concrete collective nouns for names: Orlando Magic, New York Liberty, Colorado Avalanche, New England Revolution, or – a favorite of mine, the Fort Meyers Miracle, a Minnesota Twins farm team whose owners have included Bill Murray and Jimmy Buffet. (They did OK last year, with or without divine assistance: 11 games out of first in their division, but with a respectable 74-59 record.)
It gets sportswriters and others into all sorts of consistency problems: “The [Charlotte] Rage is another one of the League's long-standing teams and are celebrating their fifth season,” reads a press release from the defunct Arena Football team. Answer.com says that “The Colorado Avalanche are a National Hockey League team,” but “The New York Liberty is a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) team.”
Most of the social phenomena I notice augur the decline of Western civilization, and this trend is no different. It speaks to me either of an ersatz collective identity - "we're not just a hastily assembled group of overpaid egos who will be playing somewhere else next season, we're the Wyoming Anomie" - or an evasion of individual responsibility: the Magic may have blown the game, but you can’t pin it on any individual ... Magician, I guess. What is a member of the Magic anyway? a Trick? a Spell?
It also seems related to the growing practice of associating teams not with cities, but with states or regions, although that may simply be an additional piece of leverage for owners as they negotiate stadium deals with cities: “Hey, we don’t have to be in Denver. We could move anywhere in Colorado and not change the logo.”
Because either way, a team with what I consider an appropriate name for a sports team would have won. By appropriate I mean the plural form of a common noun. When I was a boy we followed Lions, Tigers, Giants, Red Wings, Bears and so on. (We walked miles through 3 feet of snow to do so, I hasten to add.)
We could speak meaningfully of one Yankee or several. A Canadien or a group of Canadiens, though we probably didn’t pronounce it right. I guess we could have spoken of one White Sock, though I’m not sure anyone ever did.
What I’m having trouble dealing with is the practice of giving teams abstract and semi-abstract nouns, or the singular form of concrete collective nouns for names: Orlando Magic, New York Liberty, Colorado Avalanche, New England Revolution, or – a favorite of mine, the Fort Meyers Miracle, a Minnesota Twins farm team whose owners have included Bill Murray and Jimmy Buffet. (They did OK last year, with or without divine assistance: 11 games out of first in their division, but with a respectable 74-59 record.)
It gets sportswriters and others into all sorts of consistency problems: “The [Charlotte] Rage is another one of the League's long-standing teams and are celebrating their fifth season,” reads a press release from the defunct Arena Football team. Answer.com says that “The Colorado Avalanche are a National Hockey League team,” but “The New York Liberty is a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) team.”
Most of the social phenomena I notice augur the decline of Western civilization, and this trend is no different. It speaks to me either of an ersatz collective identity - "we're not just a hastily assembled group of overpaid egos who will be playing somewhere else next season, we're the Wyoming Anomie" - or an evasion of individual responsibility: the Magic may have blown the game, but you can’t pin it on any individual ... Magician, I guess. What is a member of the Magic anyway? a Trick? a Spell?
It also seems related to the growing practice of associating teams not with cities, but with states or regions, although that may simply be an additional piece of leverage for owners as they negotiate stadium deals with cities: “Hey, we don’t have to be in Denver. We could move anywhere in Colorado and not change the logo.”
In any event, the Republic is in grave danger.
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Tom makes good points, but perhaps they can be taken a few steps further. The abstractions with which teams now identify themselves--Liberty, Avalanche, Magic, Revolution--are themselves an interesting collection. Some are, supposedly, what we are fighting for (hint: not "magic"). Some are political events we might fear, although that, too, depends on one's persuasion. Catastrophic "natural events" seem to be big: Avalanche, Hurricane(s) [especially this year]), Heat [ironically, a more temperate choice]. On the other hand, it is probably too soon for a team to declare itself a Tsunami, despite how popular "The Wave" had been.
And then there's the question of match-ups. What would happen if the Flames met the Heat? I guess not much.
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And then there's the question of match-ups. What would happen if the Flames met the Heat? I guess not much.
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