One of the biggest complaints I hear from fans is that they “can’t relate to their favorite team” like they used to. The reason most give is their favorite team doesn’t have the same players from year to year. Longtime favorite players leave for other teams, and newcomers are players their favorite team fans hated when they were on other teams. It appears the emotional bond between fans, players and a team is now broken and will never again be as it once was.

For sports fans the reasons are foreign and unacceptable. For a pragmatist and unbiased sports observer like myself, it’s understandable, and while sad, the breaking of that emotional bond was inevitable. The difference between the fan and myself is emotion—in other words, perception versus reality. This is not to say the fan is wrong, but only that the fan holds on to their memories of what sports once were, believing that change is only something you do once a week with your underwear.

Sports are unlike anything else we get emotionally attached to. It’s a remembrance of a better and simpler time. A time when we played games, pretending to be Mickey Mantle, Jim Brown, Bill Russell or Gordie Howell. When we didn’t know what players made and were sure next season they’d still be wearing our favorite team’s uniform. We read and heard about their “on field” playing performances, not their off-field shenanigans. Their stats were on bubble gum cards, not arrest sheets. We only knew of the points they scored, the home runs they hit and the numbers they put up, not how many illegitimate children they had. Yes, they were pros, but their salaries were second to their sport. A favorite player left your team when he was either traded (curse you management), retired, or they had a day to remember him when he died. A player, like our heroes, is what we all hoped someday we’d have a chance to be. That was the perception.

The reality today is different. Sports are no longer just a game. Actually it never was. It is big business, and to the fan, big business and sports are as compatible as Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley-- or anyone else he may have been married to. For fans, business takes the fun out of sports and robs them of their wonderful, comfortable memories of the games they played and the images of their heroes who played them. To them, they were just players. Today, they’re pro athletes. The battle between yesterday’s perception and today’s reality is painful and at times unacceptable to fans. It hurts to care and then have that caring for a team or player shattered by an athlete gone bad, or just plain gone to another team.

Here’s where I become the pragmatist and put on my sports journalist hat. First, times change, and so must all other things, including our attitude and understanding of sports. In the 21st century, sports have taken on their true identity of being “big business”, and with any “big business” there’s success, failure, cheating, pain and anger. All of this may be foreign to sports fans still anchored in their “old days” remembrances of sports and players. The adjustment fans must make is to love the game, no matter who’s playing it in which uniform. Support players who are wearing the uniform with the name you like on the front of the uniform, not the name on the back. Baseball is still baseball; football is football, etc. The ability of the players and beauty of their performances are the same as they’ve ever been. Don’t let reality ruin your perception. To fight that reality will only make you angry and you’ll miss the joy sports can bring to your life.

Today’s sports reality is that players are now pro athletes. They’re paid for their services and they can seek their pay from the highest bidder. Despite having a special skill, they should be viewed like you and I. And, like you and I, we can sell our services to the highest bidder and work anywhere we want to. Don’t begrudge the pro athlete for taking all they can. They can only do so for a short period of time. They are at the mercy of management as much as management is at the mercy of the athlete’s agent. And, remember, unlike you and I, we don’t read or hear about our failures in the media, and the next time we come to work, I doubt we hear boos. Like all jobs, there’s a bad side that goes along with the good. And finally, the pro athlete pays a high price physically for bringing the fan lasting memories and happiness. Athletes come and go, but a fan’s memory is forever.

Change is never easy. And, changing one’s emotional feelings when it comes to sports can at times be impossible. But, fans should remember, watching a game and sharing those moments with a son, daughter, or family is more important than who’s playing it. The athlete’s performance should be celebrated and appreciated. They work hard for what they make, and an athlete’s life is not all glory. Effort, sacrifice and pain come with the paycheck. It’s okay for a fan to be disappointed. It’s not okay to let that disappointment make them angry, cynical and out of control to the point that the beauty of the game, the value of competition and the memories of the happiness sports has brought them is lost. If so, the real game, the game of enjoying one’s life, is lost. And, that loss is not what sports is about.

I feel better now.

I'm Ron Barr.

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