“There are, as far as I can tell, just two types of people who can bear to watch baseball without talking: total non-baseball fans and hard-core players. The hard-core player can watch in silence because his immersion is so complete that he feels no need to speak, while the persona non baseball can do it because his ignorance is so vast that he sees nothing worthy of comment. For the rest of us, watching any sort of baseball-like proceeding without discussing what we’re seeing is about as much fun as drinking nonalcoholic beer while fishing without a hook.”
–The Brothers K, by David James Duncan
Dear Girl Sitting Right Behind Me At The Hockey Game:
If you have nothing more interesting to say than “GOOOO” or “SCOOOORE” or “UGH WHY HASN’T THERE BEEN A FIGHT YET? I’M SO BOOOORED,” then just do all of us a favor and shut up, please. Of course the Griffins didn’t score a second ago. The pass was imprecise, Sproul looked off-balance and startled to find the puck arriving—that was obviously a desperation shot. They’re behind and have been playing sloppily all night. Their non-scoring is not surprising. So hush.
It’s not only that I’m very tired of your volume. It’s also that I actually care about the game. No, I’m not a huge hockey fan (any sport where even the “real” fans seem to care more about the fights than anything else will perpetually baffle me), but I do love sports. All of them. I watch the SuperBowl annually for the actual game. I complete my bracket every March based on analysis, not favorite team colors. I am all sorts of sports happy right now—the usual sad and lonely gap between football and March Madness is filled by Olympics, and pitchers and catchers have reported for spring training: baseball season is near and life is good.
But I’m getting off topic, and you don’t seem to have a particularly lengthy attention span. So let me get to the real heart of the issue.
The real issue is that I love sports. But I’m a girl, so despite the fact that this is the twenty-first century and you’d really think we’d be past things like this now, I have to work to be taken seriously as a fan. I’ve had a lot of people look at me like I’ve sprouted a third head when I join in sports conversations and, as a result, they hardly hear what I have to say. I’ve gotten quite a few “Oh, you play fantasy football with your husband? That’s so cute!” comments. It is not cute. It’s competitive and occasionally slightly unhealthy for our marriage. I play fantasy football against my husband and some friends and win fairly regularly.
I tend to watch sports mostly in silence. I’m focused. I know a lot about a lot of sports. There’s usually not much to say unless my husband and I are commenting on the strategy we would take were we in some sort of decision-making position. Strategy more refined than “GO” or “SCORE.”
Even my husband is chattier than I am during games. But because I’m silent and a girl, 95 percent of observers would lump me in with people like you—those whose knowledge of the sport extends as far as that our team should score more than the other team. They might think—heaven forbid!—that I’m not-so-patiently listening to my husband instruct me in the ways of Men and Sports and Such Things That a Little Woman Like Me Couldn’t Possibly Understand.
It already takes effort to be taken seriously. I don’t need people like you not helping.
If you don’t care about sports, fine. That’s up to you. But please, please—for the sake of my ears and patience now, for the sake of sports-loving women in general—stop pretending to.
No love,
Laura
Laura (Bardolph) Hubers (’10) is wife to Matt, mother to Samuel, and copywriter at Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. She counts the day the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series as one of the happiest of her life.
Matt Hubers (’12) lives with his wife, Laura, and young son, Samuel. He likes to spend his time playing board games, coaching high school forensics, and frolicking with alpacas. His dream is to write picture books.
Preach. Watching games in sports bars is a trial because I know I’ll have to fight the urge to slap someone’s whiny girlfriend. Also, the same with watching soccer with Americans. “Kick it!” “That shot [straight to the keeper] was so close!” Nightmares.
Ugh. The WORST. Also, “Hit it!” at baseball games. What do you think he’s trying to do? I occasionally express my wish out loud that the opposing team members fall on their faces instead of catching a pop fly, but that’s about as unhelpfully vocal as I get.
There’s a girl who sits in the upper bowl in the northeast corner of Van Andel Arena who yells all night long. Always negative, commonly divorced from reality or any reasonable expectations. I’ve heard her at several games so I know she goes often. Just not often enough to realize that maybe, just maybe, this is what hockey normally looks like and that the Griffins are not, in fact, playing the worst game of hockey ever played by anyone in the history of the sport every time she happens to be in the building.
Drives me NUTS.
Her enormous patience for yelling the same stupid things constantly throughout the whole damn game was impressive.