New Rule

Last night my team, the Detroit Red Wings, finally bested the upstart Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 6 to win the Stanley Cup and their fourth championship in eleven seasons. I have been an ardent Detroit fan since I lived there as a child and witnessed their back-to-back sweep of the championship in ‘97 and ‘98, but I fell out of touch over the years after I moved away from Michigan and could no longer see their games televised. This year I got back into it, though, when I learned they had made the playoffs as top seed. I’ve been following the action ever since with great, often fanatical, enthusiasm.

The Wings should have won in Game 5, but lost in triple overtime to an unlucky penalty. I was despondent and furious, cursing and railing and storming out of the room. My companions chastised me for being so childish, and this led to a curious realization. Games in general and sporting events in particular evoke an uncharacterstic level of emotional attachment among their participants and supporters, but more importantly: games and sports are culturally accepted as venues in which emotion of this level and this irrationality can be displayed.

Consider: our culture is generally fairly reticent and courteous. We disapprove of loud or ostentatious displays of personality except under certain circumstances or in specific venues. We have laws against public nuisances and disturbances, or for noise violations. We scold people for being boisterous in theaters, libraries, offices, and courts. But we revel in the roar and intensity of a crowd attending a sporting event. What is it about game and sports that they deserve this distinction?

Games and sports are one of the few places in which people feel they can get attached to an irrational degree. We go wild for our teams when they win, and feel heartbroken when they lose. We can curse and rail, get into fights with total strangers, paint our bodies and wear ridiculous outfits, and do all manner of things we’d never get away with in any other situation. Sports (merely physical games) provide an outlet, a venue for release of emotion that exists nowhere else in the modern world, and it is another of the many strengths and essential gifts of games. This kind of opportunity is essential, I feel, to keeping most of us on an even keel. We need this release, we need this surrender. I needed to be irate when the Wings lost in Game 5, and ecstatic when they won in Game 6. My friends, instead of chastising me, probably would have benefited from joining in the furor

Tags: Game Criticism, General //