Why
I Care
Perspective
of a Fan
The other day my roommate asked a sports related question
that I was honestly stumped by. This for
me is not something that happens often especially when the person asking is not
much of a sports fan. This is not to say
I know everything about sports but for the most part I usually have at very
least an educated guess to send someone’s way.
He asked me the following question, during game four of the 2016 NBA
Finals. Why do you care so much about
this? Now this doesn’t seem like a hard
question to answer but put your mind in a position where you are watching your
lifelong favorite team losing en route to a 3-1 series deficit. I was sad, disappointed and slightly angry
with the fun he was poking at my ill feelings towards the game, again he is no
fan of either team and he just wanted to see me get a little roused. So here I am a sports fan for 25 years, a man
who prides himself on being an above average knowledgeable fan, and I had
absolutely no response to this question.
I looked at him with hurt in my heart and sadness in my voice and simply
said “I do not know”.
The answer to my above question is not easy to explain
and it took me three days and a win in game five of the NBA Finals to find an
answer. I love sports, there is no other
way to say it other than I have an unadulterated and unwavering love to the
sports teams in northeastern Ohio. I
grew up being taught our both poor and rich history among the Cavaliers, the
Indians and the Browns. I knew of all of
the success in the 1960’s for the Browns behind none other than one of the
greatest running backs of all time Jim Brown.
There is also the heartache that has been (choose any of the 30 for 30
Believeland clips) the looming shadow over the city of Cleveland since
1964. I personally watched the Indians
World Series losses in both 1995 and 1997 to Atlanta and Florida
respectively. These were some of my
earliest sports memories as a child, I was four years old during the ’95
season, so why would I subject myself to that kind of torture for the next 21
years? Does it make me crazy to continue
to watch every single year, let down after let down? There is one answer to both questions,
HOPE. Hope that next year will be the
year that it ends, next year will be the greatest joy a sports fan can find. As I currently write this, it has been 52
years since the city of Cleveland has won a professional championship. As a loyal Cleveland sports fan we all sit
and wait for the day that the drought ends.
I hope that this NBA Finals will be the one that it all finally
happens. If it does not happen now,
maybe the first place Indians will end it in October, or dare I say the Browns
may pull off a miracle and complete the job in February of 2017. So maybe this will be it or maybe it will
not, but what is for sure is that this man will continue to watch until that
day finally comes.
Hope may be the driving force behind why I watch, but it
does not explain why I care. Why do I
care so much about a team of grown men, some younger than I, play a sport that
I loved growing up as a child? I was
never good enough to play at that kind of level, but I found no greater level
of enjoyment in my life than playing game of pickup basketball or being a part
of a High School baseball game. Sports
bring people together who otherwise have no common ground and forge a bond
toward one common goal, to win. I may be
crazy for caring so much, but that does not dissuade me from hanging on every
moment as if it were the last. Finding
something in life to love is one of the best things one can find, and as I said
before I love sports. So with that being
said, why would I not find so much joy in watching a game that I love so very
much? I may end up disappointed at the
end of each season but if I do not care then what would be the point of
watching? I may spend more of my time
watching these games than I should, but I do not care, I will watch and love
these teams as if they were my own. So I
suppose the answer to my question, why do I care, is because I have found
something so much bigger than just me to love so very much. I will watch until the end of my life whether
you give me what I want or not, I will continue to love you and I will always
care.
-Kyle
Jones
