Fairweather Fan

You've got a lot of nerve

to say you've got a helping hand to lend

you just want to be on the side that's winning.

I know the reason

that you talk behind my back

I used to be among the crowd you're in with.

                                      Bob Dylan 1965

When a professional sports team far exceeds expectations, invariably more people start to root for them.  At that point, the long-time fans will often mockingly describe the new fans as fairweather fans.  The implication is that they don't really deserve to root for the team; they don't really care about sports and are only pretending to like the new team because everyone else is doing it.

The truth is, however, that logically it really only makes sense to be a fairweather fan.  First, a little background.  Growing up in a mid-sized town, Louisville, I did not have any local NBA, NFL, or MLB teams.  The only game in town was University of Louisville basketball and an occasional minor league baseball game.  Like a lot of kids growing up in that situation, I started rooting for the first team I saw on TV that won a lot and was exciting.  For me that was Magic’s Lakers and Staubach’s Cowboys.  In baseball I liked the Cincinnati Reds, because they were the closest team to Louisville, and the local media adopted them as the hometown team.

As a close to obsessive sports fan, I followed these teams as closely and passionately as anyone would in a big city with their local team.  Over time however, something changed.  My love of sports did not.  But as I grew up I began to find it harder and harder to root for teams or players that I didn’t like or couldn't play.  I don't expect athletes to be role models.  It's not that I think their character is worse than the average population; I think their character is the exact same as everyone else, and people put in their unique situation of too much money and too many beautiful young girls would act in the same way.  It's just that when you can't stand someone it's hard to root for them.

So the first casualty was the Reds. This happened during the infamous Marge Schott era. Hopefully you don't remember her.  I do.  She owned the team in the 80’s and 90’s, and will most be remembered for her derogatory comments towards African-Americans and Jews, as well as her ownership of Nazi memorabilia. That ended my love of the Reds, and it never came back.  As for the Cowboys? Look, I tried to keep rooting for them.  I really did.  But you just can't.  The owner, Jerry Jones, is an egomaniac who ran the best coach in the NFL, Jimmy Johnson, out of town.  This was because Johnson wouldn’t give Jones enough credit for the titles the Cowboys won.  Their quarterback, Tony Romo, chokes in pressure situations at a more consistent rate than any player I've seen in my lifetime.  The team has consistently brought in criminals and underachievers.  They’re not good.  Seriously, what's there to like?

The second reason that it makes no sense to blindly root for the same team year after year, is what if they suck?  Sports is the only entertainment I know in which people feel obligated to spend their time and money on a product that is weak.  If Tom Cruise is in five movies in a row that everyone tells me are great, and I like Tom Cruise, I'll go see his movies.  But if all of a sudden every movie he's in is horrible, and he's in a new movie that a good friend of mine and RottenTomatoes.com tell me is more of the same garbage, why would I go see it?  No one will ever criticize me for not supporting Tom Cruise.  Why spend time and money on something that you know will be lame?  

R.E.M. just announced that they're breaking up.  In my mind they're one of the 10 best bands in rock history, maybe top five.  I have every one of their albums from 1983 to 1992. It's been all downhill since, to the point where they haven't put out a good song in about a decade.  I obviously don't spend any more time or money listening to their music.  Yet I've never had anyone come up to me and say, “You know, I can't believe that you no longer support R.E.M.  What kind of fan are you?  What? You’ve been listening to Brandi Carlile?  You’re just a fairweather Brandi Carlile fan.  I was listening to her when she was in diapers.  Before it was cool to like Brandi Carlile.  You don't deserve to listen to her.  You’re pathetic”.

Look, life's too short to waste time on anything, especially bad entertainment.  Now I understand why someone who grows up in a city with a pro sports team would always root for them, and have a hard time cutting the cord.  That team brings up happy memories and it's a bridge to your childhood.  We're naturally loyal, and after spending so much time following a team you almost feel guilty letting go.  Also, after a while it almost gets to be a habit.  But you can't rationally argue it makes a ton of sense. 

So at least for now, in football I've watched more Patriots games in the last few years than any other team.  The reasons are simple.  I think Tom Brady is the best football player I've seen in my lifetime, and I’ve spent way too much time watching football.  They’re exciting.  I like their coach, Bill Belichick, because I love how he handles the media and his offense is the most complex and brilliant system I've seen.   In baseball I like the Red Sox, because I grew up reading about Bill James and sabermetrics, and I find the use of statistics and mathematical analysis to create a winning team really cool.  When the Red Sox hired James I predicted that they would immediately start winning big, which they did.

As for basketball, my favorite sport, I'm still a Lakers fan, but that's probably just luck.  My two favorite basketball players of all time are Magic and Kobe, and for the last decade or so they have run a difficult, beautiful offense, the triangle. (As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that two of the three teams are in Boston, which is kind of strange. I've been there only once in my life, and it was freezing.  I couldn't wait to leave).

What do all these teams have in common? They are fun to watch and they play at an exceptionally high level.  I enjoy the characteristics, if not the character, of the people.  It's what I want in whatever entertainment I'm taking in, whether movies, music, theater, etc.

Lastly, people need to understand that you don't owe a pro sports team anything.  If anything, they owe you since you have given them your money and helped make both the owners and players fabulously wealthy.  They don't know you.  You don't know them.  The players will go from team to team in search of the most money, which is exactly what we would do if we were in their situation.  The owners are running a for-profit business; your well-being is only relevant to them as a means to that end.

Have a good night everyone.

JR

Drug War

Late last night about a quarter past four
Ladanyi come knockin' down my hotel room door
Where's the cocaine
It's runnin' all 'round my brain
I was talking to my doctor down at the hospital
He said, "Son, it says here you're twenty-seven,
But that's impossible
Cocaine... you look like you could be forty-five"

                             Jackson Browne 1977

         

Last night, when Amy in the kids were safely in bed, I decided to try cocaine.  I had heard about it for a long time, and I wanted to see what all the hype was about.  I called a friend of a friend, and in a few hours I was set.  I figured that if I was going to do it I wanted to get the most out of it, so I decided to go old-style Richard Pryor and freebase.  To be honest, I don't remember much after that.  My neighbor told me that I knocked on his door at 3:00 A.M., took a swing at him and tried to dropkick his puppy.  I woke up in a jail cell, and my first court date is at the end of the month.

So obviously none of that is true.  But what if it was? (Not the part about the dog, the drugs).  Would you care if I had done illegal drugs last night?  Before you answer, know that if the situation were reversed, I wouldn’t care if you had.  That doesn’t mean that I don't care about you.  As discussed here, if you are reading this you're probably family, a friend, or at least not my mortal enemy.   If you ask my opinion on whether I think you should take drugs, I would tell you that it is one of the two or three dumbest things you could possibly do in your life.  Besides the obvious health affects, you will never meet a truly successful person who takes street drugs.  Never.

But I would not care in the sense of making it a crime.  The main reason is so important that I'm going to be rude and go all-caps on you:

TRUE FREEDOM MEANS THE FREEDOM TO DO STUPID THINGS.

 As a libertarian (not liberal, libertarian), I want both you and I to have freedom against government intrusion into our lives, even if we use that freedom to make bad decisions.  An obvious exception is when our bad decisions cause others harm, such as drunk driving or murder.   But for victimless acts, freedom is the most important goal.  I know an argument can be made that virtually all bad acts affect others in some negative way, but I think as a society we are smart enough to figure out where to draw the line.  It is seriously harmful to you to eat Haagen-Dazs all day, smoke cigarettes, or watch any show that has the word “Kardashian” in it.  But we don't outlaw these, nor should we.

The second most important reason to legalize drugs is to reduce crime.  Approximately 18% of people in jail committed their crime to get money to buy drugs.  In federal prison, about 50% are locked up for drug offenses.  50%!  In state prison the number is about 20%.  More than half a million people are in prison for drug offenses today, compared to 40,000 in 1981.  If drugs were legalized the price would immediately plummet, and being assaulted so that an addict could get money for his habit would be a thing of the past.  Also, on a fairness level, why should we have to pay for other people’s stupid decisions?  I could go into the absurd amount of money we’re wasting on the War on Drugs, but it’s getting late.

Whenever I talk to people about this, their main concern about legalizing drugs is the children.  A lot of people also have no interest in paying to keep drug abusers behind bars, but they're worried that this would lead to more drug use among children and adolescents.  Look, I have four young children.  I would be happy if when the teacher asks them what they want to be when they grow up, they give the usual response of firemen, policemen, doctor, or whatever mommy/daddy does.  I would not exactly be thrilled if their answer was “you know, what I really want to do is bounce around from job to job, be a horrendous parent and spouse, and find myself in the dead of winter in the middle of the night at my dealer's house because I need a fix”.   I have slightly higher hopes for my children.

So how do we keep that from happening?  There are many ways that would work.  First, unlike cigarettes, drugs would not be allowed to be sold in grocery stores or places like Walmart.  They would stay illegal until a certain age.  We could set it up so that anyone seeking to use drugs would have to do it in a controlled environment; a room run by a private company or government in which they would have to stay in for a few hours or for the whole night.  Who would put up with this?  The addicts, obviously.  They're desperate.  They would jump at the chance to get free or subsidized drugs without having to commit a violent crime that could land them in jail for decades. 

The real winners of course would be us.  We’d be freer.  We’d be richer.  We’d be safer. 

Have a good night everyone.

                             JR

The End of Books

You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known.

                             Bob Dylan 1965

About six months ago, I bought an e-reader, the Kindle.  After about 5 minutes of using it, I went upstairs to my wife and told her that paper books would soon completely disappear.  After having read a few more books on it, I still feel that way.

The advantages that an e-reader has are immediately obvious, mainly storage of a massive amount of books on a device that weighs less than a pound.  I thought it was a cool and elegant way to read.  Whenever I've made this prediction of books disappearing to friends who are serious readers, the response is always the same.  They love the feel of the book.  Some like the smell.  All seem confident that while e-readers might be an alternative for some people, paper books aren’t going anywhere, and they will never give up the real thing.

They are and they will.  It’s going to be brutally fast.  I would say most books will be gone within five years, and all of them within 10.  I think that my first grade son will not read one paper book in high school or college, and not because he prefers sports.  I think the e-readers will do to books what CDs did to albums and what digital downloads are doing to CDs.  When a better technology comes along the old one dies pretty quickly.  Don’t believe it?  Come over this weekend and we’ll hang out and talk about it.  We’ll go to Tower Records and head out afterwards to the Verizon Wireless store.  I hear they’ve got some hot new pagers.

Borders is bankrupt.  Barnes & Noble is in financial trouble.  But I think the more interesting concern is not the future of the private companies but the public entities, like the libraries.  I think they’ll be gone soon, but they will be the last to go.  It will make absolutely no sense for the local governments to continue to pay for a massive library, with the huge expense of books, staff, and storage space.  I envision a time when a person walks in a little room that is now the library, with their e-reader, and has any book they want downloaded in a few minutes.  After a certain amount of time, the book will automatically delete.  Actually, now that I think about it, this process will probably be done from home.

My other burning question is what’s going to happen to those people that have walls and walls of books in their house?   I always thought that there was a 50/50 split between those people; half were the really intelligent type and had read everything in the house, and half were just showing off.  I think eventually a roomful of books will look as dated as those grand pianos in the middle of people’s living rooms in the 1970s.  Anyone who was wealthy and cultured was required by federal law to have one.

Have a good night everyone.

                                                                   JR