PHILADELPHIA — Maybe football fans are just smarter than everyone else.
Seriously: when was the last time you saw a football fan open up a little notebook and jot down a few stanzas of poetry? When was the last time you saw a lyrical football essay in The New Yorker? When was the last time you heard any self-respecting football fan describe the grass at the bottom of a football stadium as “emerald?”
More to the point:
When was the last time you ever saw a football fan wring their hands with moral outrage when one of their players was outed as a steroid cheat? When was the last time you heard football fans talk about how “betrayed” they were, or how these juicing players were mangling some sacred public trust between the sport and its fans? If you are a Jets fan, what was your first reaction when you heard Calvin Pace had been busted for violating the NFL’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs?
Was it:
1). “Oh, %#$%%! We lost Pace for four games! What are we going to do?”
Was it:
2) “Oh, %#$%%! We have to rely on Vernon Gholston for four games! What are we going to do?
Or was it:
3) “Oh, mother of mercy, what ever will we do now that Calvin Pace has violated all we hold dear in this magical, mystical game of ours? What will we tell our children? What will we tell our grandmothers? How can we go on? RELIEVE US OF THIS BURDEN, DEAR GOD . . .”
Something tells me it was either 1 or 2. Something tells me No. 3 never entered into the thought process at all,
never came within spitting range of any Jets fan’s brain.
So, yes, maybe football fans are just smarter. Maybe they are more realistic than anyone else. Maybe they are unburdened by the pressure of wanting a sport that lives up to all of its ethereal responsibilities, don’t have to sweat at night about the National Pastime being dragged through the mud, its reputation in tatters, its good name besmirched.
I talked to a football fan I know the other day, and in many ways he represents every modern football fan of 2009. He does in fact have a favorite team, the Giants, and while he never has owned season tickets, he has made it to an average of three or four games a year over the past 30 years.
But the Giants are only a segment of his football season. He is in a high-stakes fantasy league, with a winner’s payout that makes him blush enough that he ask his name be kept out of the paper. And he wagers on anywhere between three and five games a week, so even when he’s at Giants Stadium, “I’m not really at Giants Stadium,” if you know what he means.
I asked him how he felt about the Calvin Pace news.
“It means I may bet the over on Jets games early in the year,” he said.
Was he bothered at all by the news, even if Pace went with the Old Reliable defense, that he was done in by some devilish dietary supplements.
“You’re kidding, right?” he asked.
Now, in fairness to baseball fans, I sense many of them are growing similarly tough, leathery skin, that the assault of the Steroid Era, coming a decade and a half after what was nearly a suicidal strike, has conspired to strip whatever lingering innocence they may have attached to the game, has cracked into a million little pieces the rose-colored glasses through which they used to watch their game.
Alex Rodriguez does get booed in opposing ballparks, but it isn’t with anywhere near the fury you would have thought. You can expect Manny Ramirez to get similar treatment, though it will be surprising if he’s on the business end of any extra venom, either. But for the most part, any time you talk about, write about or discuss steroids in baseball, you are likely to receive an exhausted shrug as you are an outraged fist.
So maybe that is just baseball fans finally catching up to football fans and catching on to the reality that there’s simply no percentage in owning the higher moral authority. Baseball always has wanted to be known alongside motherhood, apple pie and Chevrolet on the list of all things Americana. It always has wanted to believe in its humble roots, even as it became as strong as U.S. Steel. So paying the piper for scandal is part of the deal.
Football? It never asked to be invited to the debutante ball,
never made any pretense that it was anything other than big guys brutalizing each other in the mud. And never much asked how those guys got quite so big. Never much seemed to care, either.
And still doesn’t.
Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com. For a daily dose of Vac’s Whacks, click on http://www.blogs.nypost.com/sports/Vaccaro.
VAC’S WHACKS
I love watching Roger Federer play tennis as much as I enjoy watching any athlete play any sport right now. But him getting his Grand Slam record today without having to beat Rafael Nadal to get there is almost as anti-climactic as the Lakers winning the NBA title without having to go through LeBron.
*
Not that anyone alive will be much interested in tennis much longer if NBC keeps mangling coverage of Wimbledon, of course. It was shameful the kinds of hoops tennis fans had to jump through to keep up with the tournament later in the week. Go live or don’t go at all. It is 2009, people!
*
One of the great overlooked treasures in our area is Historic Track, in upstate Goshen, where harness racing’s heart was truly born and which, at one time, was one of the summer’s great sporting destinations. Today, The Living Hall of Fame welcomes an honored guest to its halls: Tim Rooney, son of Art, and the man who has led Yonkers Raceway for 37 years. And it is about time.
*
The only thing better than seeing Dan Jenkins at a major — as we all did a few weeks ago at the Open, the 200th major Jenkins has covered — is reading “Jenkins at the Majors.” The anthology, released recently by Doubleday, shows what happens when you get the perfect marriage of craft and craftsman and subject.