In sports, or at least in sports fandom, there is typically a certain dichotomy that involves misery for the sake of entitlement.

The sports fan may find him or herself asked, “Why do you bother with sports when your sorry teams upset you so?” The answer is that we suffer because we feel that we cannot enjoy our victories—rare though they may be—unless we feel that we deserved them. Like John Elway finally winning his Super Bowl, we define our level of vindication by how long we have suffered in tortured agony before the moment of glory arrives. Don’t believe me? Compare the fan reactions of any recent New York Yankees World Series title—or heck, compare them all put together if you like—with the reaction that came with the Red Sox winning just one lone title… in nearly a century of trying.

Once might think that the oft-victorious Yankees might be more apt to claim superiority. After all, they have won and won often in that same 86 year period where the Sox went deeper and deeper into the pit of fan misery so you could reaosnably say the Yankees, overall, are better.

Sports fans don’t think like that. The Yankees win so much that being a Yankee fan is almost like cheating: Ask any baseball fan who doesn’t root for the Bronx Bombers what they think of the Yankees and Yankee fans. Just don’t ask the question around impresionable youngsters. At some point dominating teams are deemed unworthy of loyalty: Championships that come easily are championships unearned. In general we root for crummy teams in order to feel as though we have worked as hard to get the rare moments of glory as the actual players on the fields. Our support is not physical or tactical: It is strictly emotional. In such a case, smugness is tantamount to cheating.

Bay Area fans are masters of the emotional toil. We play home to the Warriors and the Giants. Our other baseball team is the perpetual underdog Athletics. Even when the A’s were good enough to win the ultimate title in baseball, the victory was bitter because they did it against the Giants, proving only that even when good things happen to Bay Area sports teams, they still make the fans suffer.

Since my time as a Bay Area resident and fan, we’ve had only one chance to truly feel like deserving victors: The glory days of the Joe Montana/Dwight Clark/Jerry Rice 49ers in the 80s. It is in fact the one highlight of my entire sports watching, emotionally exerting career and look what remains of those days now: Absolutely nothing. The Niners are the worst team in football and show no signs of improving. Oh, my work is so hard; give me water, I’m thirsty.

For the record, I don’t count the Raiders in any of this. The Raiders are not a Bay Area team. We don’t want them. Even Raiders “fans” don’t really want them. We can tell because they don’t bother to show up for their teams’ games, while the 49ers—who can be virtually counted on to lose all their games in spectacularly embarrassing fashion—outsell the Raiders no matter how bad they are. The Raiders are to Bay Area sports as Oakland is to the rest of the Bay Area: A redheaded stepchild we wish would just go away. When your team is mostly famous for being cheered on by thuggish baboons in comical rubber spikes and shoulder pads and your city is mostly famous for introducing the global punchline for ignorance sometimes referred to as “ebonics” (which surged ahead of the city’s previous claim to fame of being a breeding ground for gangsta rappers) you have capital-I Issues. When I heard the Raiders were coming back to the Bay from LA (which I think was a much better fit, coincedentally), I momentarily hoped they were literally going into the Bay; as in they would fire all the players and dump the Oakland Colisseum and all related Raiders merchandise into the ocean. It was a short lived but very happy moment.

Back from the digression, I watched the Sharks play against the reigning Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning last night and I realized for the first time that the Sharks are building toward what could very well be a contending championship team. I’m not making any predictions here, remember that smugness is cheating and I’m no cheater. No, all I’m saying is that the Sharks have the potential to at least make my misery sublime by losing in the Stanley Cup Finals. I mean, I could see it. When they play the way they did last night it seems hard to believe that they don’t have it in them to push through into the biggest opportunity to choke yet.

Did you see the second period? It looked (and the OLN commentators pointed this out) like the Sharks were on a Power Play. Only they weren’t: It was even strength and they just forechecked and cycled and hustled and peppered Burke with shots. When you see teams play that way you think: They have it clicking; they can score at any moment now. I’m used to seeing the upper eschelon of the league play like that: The Colorado Avalanche used to do that to the Sharks regularly; the Red Wings play like that—well, always. And so on.

I’m sure there will be a key injury down the stretch and someone (probably Cheechoo) will go ice cold after the Olympic break and they might limp into the playoffs and maybe even give a surprising underdog-like surge of hope only to fail at the prime moment to give Bay Area fans their dose of remorse just when they thought they might have to learn to live without, but every once it a while it’s nice to dream without the pipe; to think that maybe—just maybe—this could be the year.

My oh my, that’s the sound of the fans; working on the chain gang. Ooh. Ah.

Bits/Bytes

• On accident, Nik broke my iTrip while we were in the City this past weekend celebrating her stepdad’s 50th birthday. Since I drive the Honda which doesn’t have a better means of playing my iPod through the stereo, I went over to the Apple store on my lunch yesterday and picked up a replacement. The newer model uses a turning knob and a digital display to change the target frequency which is so much better than the old method of playing a small audio file (one for each freq.) and then going back to the playlist. In a weird way, she did me a favor.
• I hate the fact that I carry just about all the music I own around with me but I can’t listen to it while I’m at work. It just sits there, begging to be played. I suppose I could transfer a bunch of mp3/aacs to my work machine but that drives me nuts. Why duplicate effort? So anyway I’m looking for a better solution. Headphones are not an option since I need to be able to hear and talk to my co-workers (plus I’m going to be spending a lot of time on the phone starting next week). I’ve been looking at those docking station/speaker hybrids, but I don’t want something that costs more than a new iPod (my limit is probably around $100 maximum) and I may be saving up for a newer iPod here in the next few months as well (since mine is just about maxed in capacity) so it has to be forward-compatible from both the 5G iPods and my 4G Click Wheel 20GB. Thoughts or suggestions welcome.
• I’ve been doing some work with JavaScript for an eggsites client recently. Every single time I work with that language I end up thinking the same thing: JavaScript is ill-fitting pants and I would rather chew through my own wrist than develop with this sorry excuse for a poorly documented “language.” I wonder why I didn’t get that JavaScript development job a few months ago?