Fans In The Stands

I tried to care about the World Cup but suddenly nothing happened. Like Trump at Madison Square Garden during Knicks basketball playoff game, I nodded off. Yet every time I woke up, I had missed something; a penalty shot, a free kick, maybe even a goal. Perhaps if I took the time to learn what an off-side or an infraction is, it might help. But I'm too ossified to enthuse about men, once again, throwing, kicking or clubbing balls into holes. Yes, it is better than throwing each other into pits, but still.

Go ahead, call me an Ugly American. 3.5 to 5 billion soccer fans can't be wrong. On the other hand, McDonalds sells 76 burgers every second, world-wide. They go for up to $25 at a World Cup match. When they sold 300 hundred billion they stopped counting. At my age big numbers no longer impress.

I'm not one to sneer over sports events. We get to chose our alternative universe. Baseball is in my bloodstream. I can watch a game and write a blog at the same time. I don't scoff at slow. Runs are hard to come by; the average game has about 6-7. 

Basketball has become a too high-scoring game with each team averaging over 100 hundred points. I can handle the last 2 minutes. Football keeps my attention with 30-50 points scored between the 2 teams.  

Fandom makes no sense. I know, I'm one of them. It is an exercise in the irrational which taps into the reptilian brain. It strikes me that the phenomenology of being an avid fan is more pronounced today than ever before. Passions have been sublimated into identification with a particular jersey. Stadiums are bursting with cheers and jeers. The throng is living or dying vicariously with the fate of their team. And yet, nothing in real life changes.

Of course, the fan knows this. We will go home (or get up from the couch) and register the elation or dejection for an hour or two. For those who bet, it's different story. An estimated 50 billion dollars has been wagered on this World Cup. Go figure!

On some level, fans are players in this theater of the absurd. It is a meta world enacting grievances as if the outcome will redress those complaints.

I am taken in by the crowd screaming, praying, rising en masse with each turn, projecting their imagined selves onto the field. The image of 60,000 ardent souls wearing the colors of their team's uniforms, coiled in expectation, is an arresting sight. From a distance it is a Pointillist painting or a Pollock action drip, a splattering of red or smear of green on the canvas. The painter might discover an abstract splash from his palette to capture the vortex of shoe and ball headed for the open net. Or possibly the head of a leaping player altering the trajectory of the soccer ball. 

Half the fans will get drunk in revelry. The other half may also drown their sorrows in drink, cursing missed calls, the refs and their fallen idols who let them down, just like life itself.