Hometown Bias Is a Beautiful Thing

People enjoy sports in different ways, but for me it occurs in 3 ways:

1. Appreciation of impressive athletic feats
2. Stats and fantasy sports
3. Taking part in the "us vs. them" battle for supremacy, i.e. competition

Number 3 manifests itself in a variety of ways. Obviously there's the win-loss component of the games themselves (or even within the games themselves), but fans also have their own battlefield: the war of fandom. This encompasses having the most badass rituals, the coolest paraphernalia, and, perhaps above all, talking the most incisive and cerebral smack. The following post takes a look at this most noble of traditions.

Smack talk has evolved to an art form, and I would argue that teams have increasingly embraced this aspect of fan culture and tried to leverage it. Yahoo blogger Greg Wyshynski brought to my attention a hilarious example of this with the Boston Bruins's playoff billboard campaign.

Indeed, no caption needed. And yet, sports fans react in wildly different ways in the war of words. Some, like lame Lightning fans, can't take a clever ribbing and complain until the bad words go away. 

Others are too dumb to realize that a line does in fact exist between the trivial world of sports and the real world and go way overboard. On opening day, two Dodgers fans savagely beat a Giants fan. The fan, Bryan Stow, is described as a jokester, but unfortunately not everyone appreciates the arena for humorous banter that sports provides.

Like the one kid in elementary school who wouldn't shut up so you could go out and have recess, these bad apples should not be allowed to alter the sports fan landscape one way or the other for the rest of us. If the Bruins are forced to make vanilla advertising, what's next? Do they have to force NESN to get rid of ultra-homer play-by-play man Jack Edwards?

At the other end of the spectrum, the Dodgers have dropped their half price beer promotion, ensuring that reasonable Dodger fans will be price gouged throughout the year.

The last thing we should do as sports fans is succumb to any pressure to stifle passion for the game. That last word is the reason why: sports are games. And when something is taken seriously that needn't be, you know it's a prime area for comedy.

Let us be free to slam our rivals and make insinuations about their body-mass index, suspect breeding, or insufficient mental capacity to operate simple machinery.

And in that spirit, Yankees fans: your players are careening toward AARP status. Their talent will soon be outweighed not only by their colostomy bags, but the financial burden they put on your management and their Veruca Salt spending mentality. I don't know what's creepier, A-Rod's obsession with Derek Jeter, or the fact he willingly banged Madonna. 100 lbs and 3 years of mediocre middle relief pitching later, it's hard to believe that Varys look-alike Joba Chamberlain was once considered a top prospect. Then again, never underestimate the pomp of a Big Apple blowhard. Find me a honey badger that's not badass and I'll find you a Yankee fan that's not a loud-mouth. May your hopes for 2011 decay like your aging roster's bone density.


Add your own smash talk in the comments, and you bet my teams are fair game!