The Philosophy of Sport

Everyone remembers the first team they fell in love with. I was a devoted fan of the 1998 Tennessee Volunteers the year they won the championship, and moved to Cleveland just in time to catch the powerhouse 1999 Cleveland Indians, but I didn't fall head-over-heels until I met the Indians of 2000. The glorious '99 summer that ended in bitter October had left me fascinated with the game of baseball, and for an entire winter I was a sponge for any rumor or scrap of news I could grasp. I was saturated with sports talk from local radio, stayed up deep into the dark night dissecting every potential trade or move, and my dreams were filled with longing for those magical nights at Jacobs Field. When the equipment trucks drove to Florida for Spring Training in February I rejoiced, and the phrase "pitchers and catchers report" gave me goosebumps. When April 3, 2000 finally arrived and Opening Day was upon us I thought Christmas had come 8 months early. After the Indians pummeled the Orioles 4-1 I thought nothing could keep us from the World Series. I was young, naive, and full of hope; little did I know that the fateful summer of 2000 would rip out my 12-year old soul and pummel it into pulp.

The Tribe was beset by a rash of injuries, especially to pitchers, and we quickly fell behind in the divisional race. We had won a stunning five straight division titles but this year the rival White Sox had leapt ahead from the start and showed no signs of slowing. Undaunted, I had full faith that we would catch them, if not during the regular season then in the playoffs. I fell asleep listening to Kevin Keane's "sportsline" on the radio and ate, drank, breathed baseball. I was uncommunicative at meals because I was reading the sports page or Sports Illustrated. By July my sports knowledge had far surpassed that of my friends; I knew not only the full Indians roster but those of all six of their farm systems, and had full scouting reports on all of our prospects committed to memory. My first thought waking up was how many games we trailed in the wild-card race. As the leaves began to fall and we came into October my anticipation had reached the boiling point; it was the last game of the season, we trailed by one game, and 11 months of studying, dreams, and prayers all led up to one moment.

After struggling for most of the season we had caught fire over the last two months, making up a massive deficit with a spirited late-season run. I have never seen a team come together and pick each other up with timely clutch plays like the Indians that season. Every night around 10 you could hear an ensemble of car horns on the streets when we clinched another victory. The Indians were the heartbeat of the city; everything else we did revolved around our Tribe. By the end of the year we were the team nobody wanted to play in the postseason, absolutely on fire. On Sunday, October 1st we had one final game to play; we were pitching our worst pitcher against a possible hall-of-famer, David Wells, at Jacobs Field in downtown Cleveland. If we lost this game, our season was over. If we won we could make the playoffs if Anaheim could beat the Athletics later that afternoon. My father had somehow finagled 8 tickets from his company and had brought me with six of my friends. One of the most overused terms to describe a sporting atmosphere is "electric," but as we walked into the stadium that perfect autumn day I felt chills and my hair was on end. From thirty minutes before gametime the park was literally shaking. Each strike we threw brought on an earthquake, and each long fly ball they hit nearly caused our collective cardiac arrest. Over 45,000 people in that stadium and millions around the region lived and died with every pitch. We could not be denied that day and clobbered the Jays 11-4. For hours downtown Cleveland was pandemonium. The streets were a parking lot of euphoric fans dancing on their car roofs, laughing and crying and celebrating what could have been one of the greatest memories, let alone sports moments, of their lives.

We were driving home through that same traffic when we heard the last inning of the Angels-A's game across the country. The Angels were losing 5-0 in the final inning. Mo Vaughn was at the plate for the final at-bat. He popped out. Our season ended. I was twelve. My sports cherry had been popped.

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More than six years later that day is just a footnote in a long history of triumphs and tragedies. But I can never forget the joy we felt that day, and the pain just hours later. I have no idea how a simple game played my selfish millionaires with no loyalty to the fans or to the city can cause such a spectrum of raw emotion in us. Sure its just a game, but its never really been about the game. There is something about sport that has made it such an institution in our society that we open our hearts and our very souls to our teams, that we viciously heckle opponents and deify our heroes, that a simple game with a ball that we all played when we were five years old can transcend sports and become larger than life. The study of that question is the philosophy of sport.