Monday, December 19, 2005

An Open Letter To Every Man In My Office Who Won't Stop Talking About Fantasy Sports

Dear sirs,

Shut up.

I guess I should elaborate on that, or at least give you some insight into my reasoning. But while I do that, while you read this, you should take this opportunity to shut the hell up about your fantasy team. I don't care. Your wife doesn't care. If you have a girlfriend, she will leave you if you keep talking about this. If you don't have a girlfriend, rattling off stats for "your guys" won't help you get one any faster than if you were one of those guys who camped out for an Xbox 360.

And that's another thing: You say things like "my team," "I scored," "We did well over the weekend," etc. And you are in no way connected to any professional athlete. At all. At. All. You hear me? Not at all. It's one thing for parents to vicariously live through their children's successes, as in "My boy did well" or "My girl just made starter," and it's ultimately acceptable, though not encouraged, for them to use the plural possessive and say things like "Our team did great" or whatever. But you, gentlemen, don't do anything for the players you say are "yours." Their performance in any given game is not dependent on your watching the game, or having money riding on it, or getting sucked up in a fantasy draft. They do it without you every time. Every. Time. When you say things like "We need another win to clinch a playoff berth," you don't sound smart or informed or like you're an insider; you just sound like a tool.

Which brings me to another point: the name itself, "fantasy sports." Let that word roll around your Pabst-addled minds for a minute. Fantasy. Fantasy. Not real. In no way connected to reality. Fantasy. Say it as many times as you need to, but be sure you understand it. Sure, I realize it takes different strokes and all that, and I get how you feel excited when someone you "picked up" in a "draft" does well; I get how you like to feel involved with something bigger than yourself; I get how you like to feel somehow connected to high-performance athletics despite the inability of most fantasy sports nuts to do anything remotely close to the displays of physical prowess on the field we take for granted; well, I don't get all that exactly, but I kind of see where you're coming from. It's your passion, and that's fine. Numbers, games, stats, injury reports, bragging rights, inane legacies from father to son; it's all in your blood, and that's okay. I myself prefer a good story, well-told, something that will stick with me long after you've stopped breathlessly recapping the fourth game of the 1996 ALCS, for example. But hey, that's my hang-up, being able to emotionally connect to art and music and film. We've all got our crosses to bear. And I encourage you to enjoy yours.

But I don't want to hear about it all the time, okay? Seriously. Somewhere, deep down, you have to understand that I don't care, that most people don't; that you're only participating in the random collection of facts and performance charts, not the real game; that there are bigger, better things out there. I implore you to listen to that tiny voice that occasionally pipes up within you and tells you to take things down a notch when you're babbling to anyone within earshot about how "your boys" did over the weekend. It's a big world, fellas, and we've all got to get along.

Until then, though, shut up.

Sincerely,

Daniel Carlson

posted by Dan Carlson @ 3:23 PM   1 remarks

1 Comments:

Dear Mr. Carlson -

I must simply take umbrage with your characterization of fantasy sports. First, I understand your frustrations, and those of the many wives/girlfriends and office mates around the country who have to endure tales of fantasy woe. However, I don't think you understand what's at the heart of fantasy teams, which is perhaps one of the more homoerotic activities a man can engage in. You see, we men have difficulties relating to one another; we don't have the capacity to talk to one another about our feelings (nor the inclination). Most of us don't care about your girlfriend problems, how the stock market is doing, the nature of the real estate market, your new swimming pool, or the cool new place in town to get Chicken and Waffles. Movies and Television only get us so far in conversation, so we must resort to fantasy football in order to have any conversation at all. I understand this mostly proves your point; but unlike nearly any other topic of conversation, fantasy sports have no socio-economic barriers of entry. It is one of the few things a copy editor and a managing editor can talk about together, for instance. For those of us who lack athletic skills or have aged too much to participate, fantasy sports offers one of the remaining outlets to stoke our competitive fires.

For those who like to compile lists (Top Five movies or 10 movies you've never heard of, for instance), fantasy football works on the same principle, only on a much larger scale. It allows us to exercise largely unused portions of our brain, and then use that knowledge to say to an office mate: "Your teams sucks. You're an idiot," when, secretely, we mean, "You're an emotional cripple who lacks the basic social skills to engage with others on a very rudimentary level." Conversely, "Nice pick up on the waiver wire," or "excellent draft choice," really means: "Hey, you want to hang out tonight and watch Survivor and mock people we have absolutely no connection to?"

We understand that fantasy teams are random and have very little connection with reality, but for those of us strapped down to one woman, the same job, and the same goddamn five meals over and over again, fantasy sports provides some variety to the sameness of our drab lives, and offers us a topic of conversation besides the minutia of our banal, everyday existence. Sure, you hate it when someone talks about how well their QB did in last Sunday's game, but you should be thankful that he is not talking about his nasty hangnail, the flaring of his hemorrhoids, or Jim Carrey's ridiculous appearance on Letterman the night before.

So, I say: Be Glad, sir. There are worse ways to communicate in this world than through televised athletes we have absolutely no connection to. It is no different, really, than sharing one's favorite movies/books/or television shows with someone else as clues into the inner workings of our personality.

And now I feel slightly embarassed for defending an activity so ripe for mockery and so obviously a cry among overly heterosexual men for a connection - on any level - with another guy.

Still and all, hilarious diatribe and spot on. I don't disagree with your assessment, I only offer some small justification for the reasons your office mates engage in it.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:43 AM, December 20, 2005  

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