By Kyle Jorrey
Sports Editor
The Los Angeles Clippers know a lot about it. So do the Boston Red Sox, the Confederacy and the Jamaican bobsled team. Barry Goldwater and Walter Mondale knew it, Mike Tyson is starting to figure it out and gubernatorial candidate Schwarzenegger is worrying about it.
What is “it” you ask?
Losing, of course.
Yes, the nature of competition as a primal human urge is founded on the idea that, for there to be a winner, regrettably, there must be a loser. Regardless of each party’s particular level of ability or talent, a contest is only really settled when one emerges a victor and another must settle for defeat.
This certainty is apparent in modern day sports. For every Dallas Cowboys or Los Angeles Lakers dynasty, I’ll show you an Arizona Cardinals (team .403 winning percentage, 1 playoff appearance since 1990) or Minnesota Timberwolves (7 playoff appearances, 0 wins) dynasty of losing. Though losing comes in all types of shapes and sizes, it all amounts to the same thing — frustration, for the athletes and the fans.
As a lifelong fan of the Chicago Bears, I’ve become well acquainted with this grim reality of sports fandom. My first memories of watching the Bears on television is when I was 7 years old – bursting into tears after a late-game missed field goal. Yes, as long as I can remember the Bears have been a losing ball club.
Thanks to my untimely parents, I was suckin’ on a bottle and playing with G.I. Joes during the glory days of the mid-1980s and guys like Walter Payton, Jim McMahon and “Refrigerator” Perry.
Instead, I was blessed with the shadowy days of the 1990s, and names like Alonzo Spellman, Rashaan Salaam and my new personal favorite, Jim “my game is blander than my name” Miller.
The point being, outside of a couple shocking bouts of success, I’ve been accustomed with watching the team I love, lose again and again. And while I hope and pray against it, I expect it, and can deal with it.
That was until this past weekend, when I was blessed to attend my very first Chicago Bears game, in person, at 3Com Stadium in San Francisco. Ironically, their opponent, the 49ers, are one of the winningest franchises in NFL history.
In the weeks leading up to this historic day, all I thought of was victory; of what it would feel like to taste the sweet honey of success, if only for one game.
It all seemed simple enough – I had supported them through years of bad times and now I was to be rewarded by getting to see them win in person.
Just based on mathematics alone, I figured I was certainly due. For all the games I had seen them lose over the television airways, the chances for them to win this one must be higher. So against a slew of negative pre-game predictions by my roommates, ESPN analysts, sports talk radio show hosts, the Los Angeles Times and my brash-talking mail man (“You goin’ see”) I took my seat at 3Com nearly convinced I would witness the start of a new Bears dynasty.
But that’s just not how sports work.
Instead, I was greeted to a 49-7 annihilation that would have made General Custer proud. For much of the second half, I sat helplessly, watching the game through my fingers, stirred up only when an overzealous Niners supporter would spill beer on me as he stood and cheered in his best English – “How you like that one, Bears fan?”
After the game I was crushed. I thought to myself, I had waited all these years only to come see the team’s worst loss in 26 seasons. I was angered, hurt and felt as though I wanted to rip my freshly washed Bears T-shirt to shreds.
But that’s when it hit me … the reason I was a fan all of these years wasn’t because of wins or losses, but about something else all together. Like so many other fans, I had supported them simply because they were “my” team, and that kind of bond cannot be severed, even by the most humiliating of losses.
On that Sunday the Bears had done only what I had been seeing them do for my entire life — lose. How could I have the nerve to be so surprised?
Sure, I wish they had done better, who wouldn’t, but the simple fact that I had completed a lifelong dream to see them in person started to overshadow the stats, which will wash away with time (hopefully) leaving only the unforgettable memory that I will most certainly share with my children.
So here’s to the Cleveland Cavalier fans of the world, to those who shed blood and tears with teams who just can’t seem to get it together. To those who never lose sight of the dream and who never let negative energy deter their commitment to the team of which they feel a part.
For as sports dictates, we will always have the one thing that keeps bringing us back — “next week.”
September 11, 2003