you won't about your most passionate team, which does seem to be the hawks. even at your most "indifferent", you'll still find a way to follow them. i know this feeling all too well. you'll grow up in how you handle the emotional stuff but i think it'll always be a part of you in the way that you'll be emotionally connected to them. and usually it's that first team that got you.

I loved the Ben Gordon rookie year

Ya pick your spots to go all in


I imagine every Cub fan would get pretty invested if they made the series

Shit, I'd get invested if they were .500 on May 1st (CSFMB War Day).

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You know me like that.

I told myself I'll never let them suck me in like they did in 03 04

I was able to keep that going thro 07, 08 but I don't think I could make it if they actually won a playoff series or going to the World Series

I'd be going crazy

me too. i mean you just gotta get kinda...protective. i hated '04.

I was even starting to slip in 08, they win game one and I'd probably have been back to full crazy

Thankfully it never came up

I've lost it for the Bears, I think. Don't know if hockey or the Blackhawks will stick.

right? fuckin...i mean the LA dodgers???

I'm invested in every Cub season until I'm not. Like Doc said, if it lasts till May, it's a bonus.

I was a big Hawk fan from the mid 70s until the mid 90s. Left for over a decade until the old man assumed room temp. I never thought the last few seasons w

Always been a bear fan. Basketball was always fourth. Like many have said, I just don't have the time anymore to keep up with the rest of the teams in the leagues. It's hard enough for me to watch my teams.

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

It was nice to see Manny and Torre finally win though

Three, sir.




Sorry about the stroke.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

I got a phone call mid post and came back, hit submit without finishing. Just dementia, no stroke.

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

wheatgrass.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

I do not believe you.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

Are you taking up for BRick or what?

I have almost nothing invested anymore. I miss at least a quarter of the games. I think they will lose and if they do I don't care. If they win I don't care.

No one can take up for Brick.

This makes no sense to me. You bitched and moaned the last few years about getting rid of Lovie. They get rid of Lovie and you stop caring.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

There's that formula again. I am loving this.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

I stopped caring the last 2-3 years of Lovie. Maybe that's why I hate him so much. The apathy began during the Giants game in 2010 and by the time they played NE later that year I was done.

This sounds right. Thanks.

I have seen the F&P grow in some older folks, but that seems rare. I had to tone down my "passion" for MY team back when the kids played Little League. Winning wasn't everything, and that had to start with me. That was tough, and even more so when they hit high school and played the same rivals I had. It never did really transfer over to the pro sports for me- I like baseball just for baseball, could be Cubs, Sox or Tigers, or even another game. I would not even own a team-logoed item had I not received them as gifts recently.

My goofy work schedule doesn't help- I miss about 50% of televised NFL games. But I really wonder what role the whole Free Agency (Ajent?) plays. With guys moving betwixt teams so often, I just don't develop that "know the roster top-to-bottom" feeling. Maybe I just ain't payin' no detention...

It's a great question and one that I think about often. As a kid, it was easy to buy in and just enjoy being a fan. The players were older and were easy to root for.

As an adult, I often catch myself wondering why I care so much. I wonder why I care about a group of adults who are employed by an organization with which I have no real affiliation. It got even worse when I moved away from Illinois. I had no constant sports talk radio or just conversation at the bar about my favorite teams. I suppose part of my interest now is mainly nostalgia and holding onto that childhood allegiance that was never questioned. I hate the idea of rationalizing my love for a team, but it is an inescapable thought.

I once heard that musicians are taught to never become self-aware. They must never think about what they are doing and instead just do it. I feel the same way about being a fan. I try not to think about why I'm a fan and instead just try to be a fan. It gets harder as I get older.

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I think the second sentence is true, but I'm not sure the first one is possible. I don't know if that's something that can be taught. All the best musicians I ever played with were blissfully unaware. Unlike myself.

I think the same is true of athletes. I always think of the part in Moneyball where Beane and Dykstra are sitting on the bench in their first big league spring training and Steve Carlton is on the mound. Dykstra was cracking jokes making fun of the old goof on the mound and Beane was shocked that Dykstra didn't know that was a 300 game winner widely considered to have the best slider in history. He told Dykstra that and Dykstra was quiet for a minute and then turned to Beane and said, "I'm gonna light him up anyway." Beane said that was the moment he knew Dykstra was going to make it and he wasn't.

I've gone through phases where my passion for sports was greater at certain times. When I was playing in bands, I barely followed sports at all, just glancing at the White Sox with one eye every once in awhile. I just felt like those two worlds didn't really mix. Sports bring fathers and sons together. Music drives them apart. (Unless you're a dopey Baby Boomer trying to impose your own passion for Levon Helm on your poor son.)

I don't think I could be more passionate about any team than I was about DePaul basketball from about 1977-1981.

But I was trained to be a Sox fan at an early age.



I'll always be passionate about them to some degree. I can remember standing on 35th after the last game in Houston and thinking, "It's okay if I die now."

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I remember sitting in a Roman library reading the Daily Herald and being pissed about the Bears drafting Stan Thomas. I have requested Bear Down, Chicago Bears be played by the band at friend's weddings. I was pissed on Monday about the loss to the Packers.

I distinctly remember sitting alone in my basement trying as a young child to tune in Channel 44 to watch the Sox play some nondescript game against the Royals and crying as they got destroyed. I remember in the last few weeks of my first real professional job looking out of the window in my office to see The Cell, remembering there was a day game, saying "fuck it" and running over at lunch to buy a ticket to watch the game by myself.

The only game I have really lost passion for is college basketball. I used to be an NCAA freak. I knew all the players. I watched every De Paul game on Ch. 9. I asked for tickets to Loyola v. DePaul for Christmas. I was pissed that the Chaminade upset of Virginia was not available on TV. I knew the past, present and future of the game. Now, I'm lucky if I know the top players. The turnover is simply too great from year to year with hype rarely matching the production. The entire system has become kind of grotesque to me, like a giant child beauty pageant. The pros were always a distant second to me as the place where my heroes continued their existence. That has definitely switched.

I put all of these things into proper perspective but I still have a passion for them.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Outside of your Bears passion, our sports fan experience is similar. I like to call myself a "closet Bears fan". They're my team, but I don't cry when they lose. I'm really only a fan when they're good. I don't care about pro football very much.

I think for me, the changing of the college rules to make it more like the pro game caused me to lose interest. And the "one and done" guys haven't helped. I can remember obsessively calling Sportsphone waiting for updates on ACC games. One game I'll never forget Duke had a 7-0 lead over North Carolina at halftime.
Pat Benkowski said something like, "No, that's not a mistake." Being able to pull the ball out like that may have been boring for the average guy, but it allowed weird stuff to happen and let Ivy League teams that could pass effectively take a crack at the big guys.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I wonder what the age line is where a basketball fan doesn't know what the four corners offense is.

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You know me like that.

Or the 3-man weave.

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