Why I Quit Watching Sports

Are you excited about the big game on Sunday? Without meaning to yuck your collective yum, here’s several hundred words on why I don’t give a shit. To start, let me get a little Sophia Petrillo on your asses for a minute…

Picture it. Suburban Boston. The mid 1980s. A gloriously droopy mustached man named Larry Bird led the Celtics to their third championship of the decade. Young, thick-thighed Roger Clemens struck out twenty Seattle Mariners on a chilly April night in Fenway. Hell, even the usually shitty Patriots made an improbable run to the Super Bowl. I was in elementary school. I was also in heaven. 

Growing up in Boston, sports permeated the air we breathed. With a nod of respect to Dana Hersey at ‘The Movie Loft,’ sports were by far the most monolithic, unavoidable part of Boston culture. Everyone talked about the Red Sox or the Celtics or the Patriots and sometimes even the Bruins all. the. fucking. time.

More specifically, they talked about losing. 

For the uninitiated, there are two kinds of losing in sports. There’s the “be terrible every year” type of losing. As a fan, this of course sucks. It is a miserable existence if your team is bad, always has been bad, and has no future chance of being anything but bad. No one enjoys that.

But there is a much more painful variety of losing: the ‘almost winning’ type of losing. The type of losing where the second you let a little bit of hope into your brain, it slips between a hobbled first baseman’s legs. With the exception of the Celtics, Boston sports teams carried the baggage of a long tradition of the ‘almost winning’ type of losing. The 1985 Patriots? Yeah, they improbably got all the way to the Super Bowl… and got absolutely creamed by the Walter Payton-led Bears that year. The Bears were so dominant that they put out a rap song! And they were so good at football, no one really laughed at them! We all thought it was kind of cool! How was poor Tony Eason and the gang supposed to compete with that kind of intimidation?

But when it came to inflicting hope-spiked pain on their fan base, no one compared to the Red Sox. Every generation had a Red Sox heartbreak story. Babe Ruth. Bucky Dent. Bill Buckner. Aaron Boone. There was an entire cottage industry built around the team being ‘cursed.’ It was, of course, wildly stupid. But - as we know - if you repeat even the stupidest thing enough times, it becomes reality. Whether it was perception or reality, the Red Sox genuinely seemed cursed to heartbreaking last minute failure. It was uncanny.

To me - the message was clear: no matter how much you care about something, you will ultimately fail in the end. In life, anything you truly care about will end in heartbreak. This narrative resonated loud and clear with a pre-adolescent Brendan, just flirting with a lifelong intimate relationship with depression. I was just starting to fall in love with my misery and my Boston sports fandom was along for the ride. For decades.

Then, something kind of crazy happened: the 2000s. A scrappy backup quarterback named Tom Brady led an improbable run through the playoffs and even pulled out a last minute upset to win the Super Bowl. The Patriots. Won the Super Bowl. Today, the Patriot organization is synonymous with success, but if you grew up in the 80s? That would be like me telling you - “Hey, you know who just won an Oscar? Scott Baio. For Best Director.” For a New England fan, it was absurd to the point of almost disbelief.

And it didn’t end there. Even the Red Sox were starting to be good. The fucking Red Sox. Two magnetic forces of pure joy named Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz ignited the city with energy and (gasp) hope. By this time, I was in my twenties with the requisite free time, so I spent every night on the couch watching the Red Sox. Every night. And I didn’t just watch. I was one of those tense, yelling, anger-fueled sports fans. I cursed, I screamed, I punched walls. I was a real pleasure to be around. But I was committed. I wanted to be able to say I watched every game of the year they finally won it all.   And in 2004… they did it. They won the goddamn World Series.      

Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with myself. This was an affront to everything I believed about life. Sometimes, you… win? That couldn’t be right. In the hours following the Red Sox World Series win, I spent most of my time on an online message board for fans of the losing team, the St. Louis Cardinals. I was much more comfortable consoling losers than actually enjoying a win. What was this feeling?

After joining a million or so fellow drunken Massholes watching our conquering heroes roll down Commonwealth Ave in duck boats, it finally hit me: sometimes in life… things work out? I guess? It was a weird reality to step into, but one thing was sure - I liked it. It felt freeing.

Almost immediately, I started cutting energy-draining things out of my life and pursuing activities that I loved. I jumped full bore into playing with my band (shoutout to all our leftover Scamper fans). I started writing movies again, an activity that had been dormant for a few “why bother this movie is never going to get made anyway!” years. I drank, I laughed, I kissed girls. I did therapy and started antidepressants. I did something I hadn’t been able to do for my whole life: I allowed myself to be happy.

Then, the 2005 Red Sox season started. My fellow fans jumped right back on the anxiety train again. Would they be able to repeat? Can you believe that traitor Johnny Damon signed with the Yankees? Is Curt Schilling really as much of a choad as he seems? (He is.) And - most importantly - YANKEES SUCK!

What were we doing? We were ready to leap headlong into this misery again so soon? I couldn’t do it. I needed to step away. For all the euphoria with which the Red Sox World Series win injected me, I wasn’t ready to buy another ticket for the local rage roller coaster. And that’s when I realized - my connection with Boston sports wasn’t a love affair. It was an abusive relationship. It was time to take some space. 

I didn’t ‘quit’ sports cold turkey. Actually, I had no intention of stopping watching baseball. I just didn’t have to watch every game. I could spend that time doing things in my actual life. Slowly, I started watching less and less baseball. And the funniest thing happened - nothing. As it turns out, the outcome of a baseball game has no inherent meaning. It only has the meaning we assign to it. So it can just… stop mattering. Poof.

This was weird for me. But a good weird. It was like another level of freedom. I wasn’t beholden to the nightly allure of NESN. But there was a second test on the way: over the next decade, the Patriots just kept winning. And unlike baseball, the NFL only played once a week. Much more doable for an adult life. And yes - the Patriots run was very enjoyable for a fan. Really, there was only one other barrier to my enjoyment: other Patriots fans.

A joke I used to like to tell: “I look at my fellow Patriot fans like I look at my fellow liberals. Yes, we want the same thing but Christ I can’t stand being around you people.” During the Brady/Belichick era, Patriots fans were the whiniest, most out-of-touch-with-reality groupthinkers you could find outside of a CPAC convention. Listen to five minutes of sports radio in Boston. You needed to scrub yourself from the ooze bath of misdirected anger, conspiracy theories, and false victimhood. Too many people I would interact with on a daily basis had clearly substituted “Patriots fan” with “having a personality.” 

But I think the thing that bothered me most was the tribalism. There was a pronounced ‘with us or against us’ vibe about the whole “Patriots nation” mentality. Of course Brady didn’t deflate footballs! (He did.) The facts don’t matter! JETS SUCK! (They do.) Tribalism is a natural human phenomenon and sports are ultimately a pretty harmless arena for it to play out. But with the way our national politics devolved in recent years, participating in tribalism became less and less fun for me. Even though I still enjoyed watching the actual game, the toxicity of fanhood was starting to test my resolve. 

Plus, when you take a step back, a clearer sense of what professional sports really are emerges. Honestly, it’s pretty ugly. Rich white billionaires raking in profits while mostly non-white young men destroy their bodies for our entertainment. Yes, I understand that the players are well compensated and they are entering the sport with informed consent, but still - the whole system leaves a gross taste in my mouth. When affable former Patriot Junior Seau unloaded a shotgun into his chest because he wanted scientists to study his broken brain, it made it hard to cheer for more CTEs on Sunday afternoons. When the NFL took the wrong side on protesting racial injustice, I was done. This time, I actually did quit cold turkey - another “Brendan takes a moral stand that no one notices or cares about” moment. Classic Brendan!

So here I have emerged - a recovering sports fan. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t think I’m ‘anti-sports.’ I totally get the appeal. I also don’t think interest in sports is some sort of lesser pursuit than anything else. What’s the difference between getting excited about the Patriots or the Guardians of the Galaxy or the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the Real Housewives of Greater Lowell or whatever? I still appreciate the excellence of a sport played at the highest level. I will get into a baseball game if it’s on TV at a restaurant. I’ll occasionally be curious about the NFL standings and check out the Pats score. If the Celtics are on, I’ll watch the last two minutes. I have never and will never watch hockey (that is another essay I will write another day). But I have the monkey of sports fandom off my back. I can say from experience - no championship is as good as not giving a shit feels.

But hey - this is just my journey. I don’t want my gleeful nihilism to impinge on your enjoyment of Sunday’s festivities. Have a blast, eat a wing, buy a square. Popping a proverbial squat on other people’s fun time is something that - like caring about sports - I have left in the past.

Unless you’re one of those “I just watch for the commercials” people. Really? You’re into what the amazing creative minds at Budweiser and Doritos are up to these days? That’s just weird. I’m sorry. You’re weird.

Boogie Writes is a completely independent endeavor by one hard-working funnyman trying to make his way in the world today (which takes everything you’ve got.) If you like what you read, please subscribe, support, and tell a friend! Also - do you need advice? Of course you do! Send your queries to brendan@brendanboogie.com with “Dear Boogie” in the subject and get some solid or at least passable advice!