HAAS PARTY #19: "Brutal."
The failing expectations of the sports fan.
Perfection, my therapist tells me, is unattainable. Expecting the best of yourself in every aspect of life, in every situation, is a recipe for self-loathing, contempt, anxiety, and general discontent. As most of us reach adulthood, we (hopefully) begin to accept that we are not perfect, that we make mistakes, that we (sometimes) learn from them, and do our best to grow and improve as we go. This is a path I’ve found myself on throughout my 30s, guided by therapists and self-help books towards a gradual realization that I do not have to be so hard on myself at every opportunity.
I often wonder which of the people in my life do battle with an internalized critic that can be as loud as mine. I wonder not only about my friends and family, but strangers I encounter randomly as I go about my days. Most? A lot? I’m never really sure. (Feel free to reply to me if you do.) Nowhere do I think about this more than when I’m sitting in the bleachers of the Rogers Centre SkyDome watching a Blue Jays baseball game.
“Brutal” is the word I’ve overheard the most at the Jays games I’ve been to during the last two seasons, and one I’ve likely heard many times over in the many more years that are fading out of reach to my nearly 40-year-old memory. Baseball is a pretty simple game. If you’re batting: try to get on base and score a run. If you’re pitching or playing defense, try to stop the batters from getting on base and scoring runs. Each team has 27 outs to make it happen. You don’t have to be a casual baseball fan (or general sports fan or human being) to know that runs are scored in nearly all games. You might even say it’s part of it. But if you went by the reactions of the average Jays fan, a non-perfect outcome of any given play is “absolutely fucken brutal.”
The Blue Jays have a good team in 2023. They had a pretty good team in 2022 that fell short of expectations, which, if you asked most fans, were to win the World Series. (My expectations for the Jays weren’t quite at that level, both because of their roster construction and because I apparently expect the best out of myself but not of a team with a $150 million pay roll.) As sports analysts love to point out, even the best baseball teams lose one third of their games. So when I go to a Jays game, I know there is at least a 33% chance they’re not going to win. As someone that watches many sports, I also know that the Jays might not be in the lead for an entire game—including one they end up winning. My expectations are in check.
So it’s always surprising to me to hear the mutters of “brutal” (or sometimes “trash” or “he’s a bum”) throughout the crowd as soon as a Jays batter strikes out, or merely swings and misses for a first strike. The impression I get of the average sports fan is that they can’t stomach anything less than the Jays playing perfectly, every game, despite their own knowledge and past experience telling them that a perfect game will almost never be the case—let alone a game filled my excellent performances by all players. They expect perfection anyway.
Is it because they paid (an increasingly large amount of) money for the tickets and want to see a win? Because they think professional athletes are paid millions to play a kids’ game so should be better at it? Or, this might get a little dark here, is it because their life hasn’t turned out perfectly? It makes me wonder: if something doesn’t go perfectly in their own life, is that “brutal” to them too? Can they not process their anger? Maybe the average sports fans’ expectations that their team is perfect at every moment is just a reflection that they haven’t accepted the reality of life. Or maybe they have, and so they go to a Jays game to expel their frustrations and disdain of unmet expectations versus trying to work through them.
Listen, I realize it’s possible I’m over-analyzing this. But I’ve never understood why the many people around me at Jays games seemingly have taken their seats with the expectation that if the team isn’t perfect that day, in that moment, they will fail. I’ve always gone to Jays games hoping to be entertained, whether that’s by seeing a perfect game, an imperfect win, or a flawed loss. There is a lot I can’t control in my own life, so I certainly can’t control how a sports team performs. I might agree it’s “brutal” if the Jays blow a lead in the 9th inning, but if they’re ahead by that point they have built expectations of a win. The moments in games when things aren’t going exactly as planned may be imperfect, but I’ve learned to take those as they come.
—Haas Stripling (That’s a baseball joke.)