There are occasions when you're just not sure whether to laugh or cry. Sometimes, drinking is a good way to split the difference. The aftermath of Toronto FC's loss on Saturday night was one of those times.
Anyone who's spent any time following Toronto sports teams -- specifically TFC -- knew exactly how it was going to end, even if they momentarily (foolishly) allowed themselves to dream otherwise. Doneil Henry's goal was always just going to be a cruel trick, inflating our sense of hope just long enough to have it all catastrophically ripped away in the game's final moments.
Believers in karma would tell you that the dwindling group of masochists who voluntarily call themselves Toronto FC fans clearly must have all done something very, very bad in their previous lives.
And the calls are getting louder and louder from the armchair economists: Vote with your dollars. Show the team, show the coach, show MLSE that this record-tying run of futility is unacceptable. Stay home from the games. Don't watch on TV. Give up on the team. Do what good consumers do.
So why -- why? -- do I find myself more desperate, more eager and more enthusiastic about seeing the team get a win than ever before?
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
I've followed the team since its inception, but never counted myself among the ranks of any supporters group. The season-ending 5-0 loss to New York a few years back was one of the most devastating results of my life as a sports fan. When the team plays, I always want them to win, which is how I imagine all sports fans feel about the teams they follow.
But winning is never guaranteed. I don't support the teams I support because I believe that my financial or emotional investment will always have a return. I don't support the teams because I believe that winning a game, or a tournament, or a trophy, will have a discernible long-term impact on the quality of my life (in fact, following Toronto sports teams has almost certainly had a deleterious effect overall).
I follow the teams because -- for some inexplicable and utterly illogical reason -- I'm the sort of person who cannot help but be psychologically enthralled by the fortunes of whatever collection of mostly-foreign athletes happens to be earning their paycheques playing in the same city where I randomly happened to have been born.
It's irrational, unreasonable and will probably take years off my life. But I can't help it. And that ridiculous addiction doesn't end when the team goes on a losing streak.
Some people take a different (and probably much more mentally healthy) approach. Some people treat sports teams like other products and services, which carry a reasonable guarantee of return on investment. If you buy a microwave and it doesn't heat your food, you'll return it to the store. Maybe you'll never buy that brand again. Consumer goods are defective if they don't do what they're supposed to do 100% of the time.
Sports teams aren't microwaves. They're all going to be somewhat defective. (Or, if you're from Toronto, highly defective.) And if you think of sports teams like you think of microwaves, then you might be among the growing chorus of people looking to abandon ship (permanently or otherwise) when it comes to Toronto FC.
It's your time and money. Do with it what you want. Maybe you've got kids and a mortgage, and continuing to invest in a defective microwave of a team simply isn't feasible anymore. Maybe in a few years' time, I'll be in the same boat and look back on my current mind set as ridiculously naive and destructive.
And y'know what, perhaps I'm a sucker. Perhaps I'm part of the problem. Perhaps it's because of people like me that teams owned by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment can keep stinking up the joint while continuing to draw crowds.
But the thing is, when I watch one of my teams play, I don't think, "the money I'm spending is a vote of confidence in the board of directors of whatever corporate conglomerate owns this franchise." What I'm thinking is, "I want my team to win. If they do, I'll be happy. If they don't, I'll be pissed off."
It's childishly simplistic, of course, but that's inherent in sports fandom, whether we choose to readily admit it or not.
An 0-7 start might be enough to turn some people off of Toronto FC for the season, or forever. But for me, paradoxically, it only strengthens a stubborn, resolute desire to see things through, in the feeble, likely-delusional hope that all of my increasingly-pitiable emotional investment will, some day, in some way, be rewarded.
I know full well that it might never be. But in the end, that's what makes the whole preposterous ride so exhilarating.
.