There are losses, though. I don't get to see The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. I didn't expect to find that such a loss, mind you. To me, Fallon was the guy who kept cracking up during Saturday Night Live sketches, and one of the perpetrators of one of the worst semi-baseball-ish movies of my lifetime, Fever Pitch. (I would go so far to say that that particular movie was the one that convinced me not to be such a completist about baseball movies -- it's o.k. to miss some of them.)
Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I'm starting to think I might be missing something. Having Idina Menzel sing "Let It Go" accompanied by The Roots playing children's classroom instruments was inspired and will be hard to top. Another of his stunts, though, while funny in so many ways, makes me think a bit about how we treat our sports heroes.
Robinson Cano, longtime second baseman for the New York Yankees, made his first appearance in New York recently with his new team, the Seattle Mariners. Fallon convinced Cano, who signed a crazy megabucks contract to make the move, to go out into NYC and get booed before he even took the field. Watch the video here. Go on, I'll wait.
You've seen it? No cheating, now.
Now you've seen it? Good.
You see what happens. Fallon's lackey persuades each jaded cynical New Yorker to boo at the big glossy photo of Cano, which some do with more vehemence than others.
Booooooooooooo!
When they turn to boo again, all of a sudden Cano's there.
Boooo -- oh, hey, Robinson Cano!
In not one case does the fan continue to boo. Some react with a bit of shock, one with something that looked like fear -- "oh, crud, he's gonna kill me" -- and some manage to slip seamlessly from booing into glad-handing and merriment, which would seem a little psychotic to me if the whole situation weren't so lighthearted from the outset.
None of the fans really hated Robinson Cano, when facing him in the flesh, no matter how angry their sentiments might have been when Cano signed that contract. About the meanest thing any of them managed to say to him in person was to hope he played well, but didn't win, which is about as fair a wish as can be made for a player whose team is playing against yours.
Interesting how suddenly being face-to-face with Cano made such a difference.
Of course, Fallon's little experiment isn't exactly scientific. The passerby involved were specifically being encouraged to "boo" the Cano picture, which is not at all like being in a stadium in the heat of the moment. Still, the difference between anonymity and presence does show up rather strikingly.
Of course, I'm not entirely sure that booing in the stadium is the best example of how anonymity liberates the lesser impulses within. While you can still get some serious demonstrations at the ballpark or arena, it usually takes something more than leaving for a fat contract to get them to happen for more than a few at-bats. The Internet, on the other hand...
Of course, that doesn't apply just to sports. Perhaps it reaches its worst depths on the subjects of politics or religion. Maybe this is a case where fan behavior at games should have been a warning to us all, rather than being the end-all of human depravity.
The fat contract itself, of course, would be a worthy topic of discussion. But as always here, I'm a bit more fascinated with the ethical choices fans make, and what degree the Christian faith tradition (I'm certainly not qualified to speak from any other perspective) can or should inform that choice.
That said, I'm not going to be as down on one good boo as you might expect. Note that: one good boo. You've expressed your disappointment with, in this case, Cano's choice to leave with one good lusty boo; fine. Now move on. Get back to cheering for the players who are actually still on your team.
Which to me makes it interesting that none of the fans in the Fallon clip, given the opportunity to ask Cano directly why he could leave the Yankees, did so. Most turned basically into fumbling starstruck fans when confronted with Cano's presence. Either (1) these are raging hypocrites, or (2, the more charitable option and the one I'm taking for now) they really don't hate Cano, even for leaving their team; the boo is more of a societal expectation than a genuine measure of hurt or anger. Then again, the in-stadium experience is likely to be rather different.
It's as if they know it's really not right or ethically justifiable to disparage a player (who is, after all, a human being) that way. Being in a crowd in the bleachers provides a nice little mask of anonymity and distance from the offending player, so that moral twinge is harder to feel.
Still, based on totally unscientific observation (i.e. watching sports for many years), I can't help but feel that in-crowd behavior is not nearly as awful as it used to be. (Outside the stadium, on the other hand, it can still be horrific, as Bryan Stow can tell you, or maybe his family can on his behalf.) I suppose that may be tested this coming NFL season if Michael Sam makes the St. Louis Rams roster. I'd also notice that this characterization probably does not apply to European soccer.
Still, there's something there that should have been a warning, a source for concern rather than an occasion for jokes about Philadelphia fans booing Santa Claus. It's not always about the game. Sometimes it's about what the game shows us about ourselves.
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