We Are the Champions: Sports Teams in Our Culture

The Boston Red Sox are one of the most recognized sports teams in the world, perhaps even more so now considering their recent championship win. Across the world we are enraptured by teams in all types of sports and levels of popularity. There is a draw to the competition and community of the sports team that is more than mere entertainment. Indeed, we often deify our favorite professional athletes; like celebrities, they are gods because we set them apart from ourselves. A team is a pantheon of divinities for their achievements on the field, rink, or court, for their seemingly superhuman athletic actions. Yet, are we not like gods ourselves? We watch the Red Sox from elevated seats—which are luxuriated more and more, treating ourselves as gods—much as the Olympians watched the Achaeans and Trojans waging war beneath them, taking a side and rooting against the opposite. In our eyes, teams are paradoxically both mere mortals and mighty gods of athleticism.

But like gods of vanity, a team such as the Red Sox prides itself on its image. Who are they? They are blue-collar, a scruffy and unkempt bunch of athletes who play for the love of the game and get dirty in the process. In past years they have been “cowboys” and “idiots,” and their cavalier attitude toward image (cavalier on the surface and yet constructed nonetheless) has fostered tremendous love from their fans. This image is engineered to contrast their rivals, the New York Yankees; indeed, this image is the very binary opposite of that of the Yankees. It is unnecessary to describe the image of the rivals; the polarized attributes of the Red Sox imply equally polarized attributes of the Yankees. Who are they? They are white-collar, a neat and clean ensemble of athletes who play for the money and only get dirty if they have to—these last two points are, of course, the conceptions of Red Sox fans. We merely need to know who our team is, and we know everything worth knowing about its rival.

Interestingly, the players often do not share the same sense of rivalry, or at least not in the same degree. When asked, most athletes on both clubs respect one another; Red Sox players do not generally make claims that Yankees players are ‘all about the money.’ It is enough for the fans, however, that they believe this is a fundamental difference. The players do not have to explicitly or even implicitly support these beliefs—as long as they do not explicitly deny them. Red Sox players, in this rivalry, are more like actors in an ancient Greek drama: they wear masks, happy or sad, one or its opposite, and whichever mask they do not take up is assumed by their loyal fans to be worn by the opposing players.

After all, let us not forget that all of these players can be considered rich. The minimum wage for Major League Baseball is roughly 300,000 per season. The fact that the Red Sox have the second-highest payroll in baseball only solidifies the realization: none of these players is blue-collar. We as fans have a complete misconception of who our beloved players are; indeed, a simple observation of the rivalry with the Yankees is enough proof to say that this is a deeply rooted mythology to which fans have completely committed themselves. The idea that there are blue-collar (and by relation, white-collar) professional athletes is a complete fabrication—we know this—and yet the opposition still appeals to us. Why is this so?

Quite simply, the teams are a projection of social and economic struggles, a transportation of class wars from the street riots of early-nineteenth century Paris to the hallowed battleground of Fenway Park. For fans, the rivalry is most certainly not about the Red Sox versus the Yankees; no, it could be stated more accurately as blue-collar versus white-collar, laborers versus the executives, poor versus rich. From this it can then be said that fans may choose their teams partially for this socio-economic representation (though geography tends to be the dominant factor; however, is that not also a dominant factor of class?), and the rivalries result from these choices. It can also be speculated that the Red Sox players do not create their image, the fans do. Indeed, the Red Sox (or whichever team to which we claim allegiance) are ourselves. How often has a fan spoken of his or her favorite team using ‘we’? “We almost won but just couldn’t pull through—we’ll do better next season—we beat them badly.” We do not delude ourselves into thinking we are actual members of the team; each individual is the team. Because of government, laws, and other boundaries, we must relieve our own social and economic frustrations by manifesting our own characteristics as well as longings in our sports teams, one of the few options we have left open to us. The teams manifest our longings, our desires, as they strive for that ultimate goal, the championship: it means total dominance over all the others, one class triumphs over all. For the economically-challenged, it represents a chance for advancement and a mobile class structure; for the economically-elite, it represents a solidification of power and status.

And yet, do not be so quick as to call this system beneficial for its symbolism. Although the Red Sox team allows its fans to achieve class success over the hated white-collar Yankees team, it denies any actual progress whatsoever. Instead, these manifestations promote stagnancy among the classes: do not strive for actual progress, but rather seek solidarity in your status with others and merely play it out on a field, rink, or court! This mythology surrounding the Red Sox and other teams creates the illusion of change, which is then reset at the start of the next season (because remember, on opening day, every team is in first place!). The class struggles have been relegated to entertainment—or perhaps a better term—to diversion. The Red Sox are little more than automated playthings to us, like the Achaeans were to the Olympians. The same gods and mortals of our desires and ourselves have waged bloody war for millennia and will continue to do so as long as there teams upon which we might project our struggles.