The Bobby Rock Newsletter #115 (10-30-24) - Understanding Our Collective Sports Obsession
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Hey Gang -
Checking in from New Zealand for this edition. My girl has a "con" (pop culture convention) appearance here in Auckland this week, and I'm on a short break from the road with Lita Ford, so I had a chance to tag along. It's actually my first time here and I've been diggin' the vibe, for sure.
As usual, I've been working on this edition over the course of several-plus days, which... in this case, enabled me to drop in a couple "obsessive" World Series updates as they went down, which... proved to be pretty ironic, given the subject of our feature piece this week. Additionally, it's "obsessively" lengthy... one of the longest pieces I've written here in 115 editions, which is also ironic. (I almost edited out the updates, but then figured their obsessive nature added a certain "credibility" to piece's main thesis.)
Just the same... enjoy!
In This Issue:
Lita Ford Dates Ahead: Catch a show if you can...
New Zealand Impressions—A 10 Pic Preview: We have arrived, and departed, and it was grand. Here is a small taste of my experience.... in 10 pics or less.
Understanding Our Collective Sports Obsession: After much contemplation, especially these past few weeks, here's my take on our culture's hopeless obsession with sports, the deeper meanings at hand, and the timeless beauty of it all.
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Lita Ford Shows
These are the next stops for the Lita Ford freight train... hope some of you can make it out:
Pic by Teddy Allison
Friday 11-1-24
Golden Nugget Las Vegas Hotel & Casino
Las Vegas, NV
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Saturday 11-2-24
Whisky a Go Go
Hollywood, CA
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Friday 11-8-24
Planet Hollywood Cancun
Costa Mujeres, Q.R.
(with Bret Michaels)
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Friday 11-15-24
MGM Northfield
Northfield, OH
(with Warrant)
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Saturday 11-16-24
Hard Rock Casino Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH
(with Warrant)
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Saturday 11-23-24
Renfro Valley Entertainment Center
Mt Vernon, KY
(with Warrant)
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New Zealand Impressions—A 10-Pic Preview
As impossible as it would be to try and capture the magic of my New Zealand experience in 10 pics or less, here's my best shot. Hoping to get to a full blog about it at some point. For now... dig:
The lush, rolling hills outside of Auckland were breathtaking... and endless.
A random shot of a cool building during one of my late-night runs.
Ran across this beautiful couple along the way...
Although Kari and I made time to see a few places and catch some great restaurants, this was a work trip for her: Armageddon Expo. She signed her ass off all weekend!
Lots of great vegan food on this trip!
The glow worm caves were a trip highlight! This shot was taken just outside the cave, after we rolled through it via boat.
Interesting to get a behind-the-scenes take on what they do at the famous special effects studio WETA, in Auckland. Here's an entire model scene, meticulously crafted to replicate an enchanting castle world.
Our surprise visit to the Zealong tea company bore one of the stand-out meals of the trip. All vegan, gourmet-style.
Had to grab this shot of the Auckland skyline (or at least a small part of it) from a park near the hotel during an afternoon run.
On the flight home. We left Auckland on a Tuesday afternoon, and hit LA some 12+ hours later... on a Tuesday morning. One long day!
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Understanding Our Collective Sports Obsession
It is a hell of a time of year to be a sports fan. We are in the pivotal month of October, where we are experiencing the conclusion of baseball season, the middle of football season, and the beginning of basketball (and hockey) season... all at once.
Most noteworthy for me? The 2024 World Series is well underway and I couldn't be more thrilled with this year's match-up. After the Dodgers knocked out the Mets in the National League Championship, setting the stage for a showdown with the NY Yankees, I posted the following on social:
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Prophecy fulfilled! Dodgers vs Yankees in the 2024 World Series. My friends, I’ve waited a long time for this match-up and have not been shy about saying so. IMO, Dodgers vs Yankees is one of the sports world’s most dynamic rivalries, on scale with Lakers vs Celtics, or Ali vs Frazier. And this year, in particular, to include Judge and Ohtani—as both MVPs and home run leaders—not to mention how stacked each of these lineups are… it stands to be one of the most watched World Series in a long, long time.
Will be watching from New Zealand this week!
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My bigger point here? Why do we care so much? And I ask that mainly in a recurring fit of self-reflection. I've been a major sports fan my entire life. And virtually every year, I wind up in front a screen somewhere, during some key game, stressing over the Dodgers, or the Lakers, or the Texans, with the Texans, by the way, being the only sports team hold-out I've had from growing up in Houston (probably since football was away from LA for so many years).
After much contemplation and reflection, and in an effort to understand our "affliction" and attempt to glean anything of value from it, I figure there are three noteworthy aspects of our obsession, with one or more driving the madness at any given time:
1) The tribal nature of sports fandom;
2) The "roots and rituals" impact of sports in our past and present;
3) The pure Hero's Journey story aspect of sports that touches our humanity and inspires our own such journey.
Granted, this is not the typical kind of rabbit hole we explore around here in BR Newsletter land. But again, I believe if we can look beneath the surface of anything that entrances, enrages, or excites us, there is something deeper there to learn about ourselves. And that is what we are mining for today.
Repping the Tribe
I find it fascinating that so many millions of us have "our teams," and we invest so many hours, and so much energy and mental bandwidth, into following outcomes that we cannot remotely control and that, incredibly, will fade away into the past... fast. And these allegiances are often random as hell, such as: where we happened to grow up, or where we went to college.
Furthermore, it is expected that we keep these allegiances no matter how many times the teams shift rosters, or coaches, or "culture"... unless the team is relocated to another city. Then we can abandon them (presumably because they abandoned us?) and adopt whatever new franchise may turn up in our fair city. It's pretty whacked when you think about it. (FYI, I left Houston in the mid-80s and gradually began to transition to LA sports teams through the years. Hey, it's my life!)
So it would appear, on one level, that sports fandom is a primal compulsion that ties into some kind of group identity thing—a pride-in-our-tribe mentality—where we can all experience a sort of ceremonial bonding as these games play out. The universal experience of being fans of the same team truly does transcend any other aspect of being that might illuminate our differences. And this "oneness factor," this birds of feather thing, is something humans generally gravitate towards. In other words, when we align with a particular team, we gain immediate entry into a particular club, and suddenly... "we belong." Fair enough.
Speaking of tribes, there are those we are a part of and, of course, those we loathe: rival tribes, you might say. Look no further than sports to experience the agony and ecstasy of these rival tribes. For many, the biggest dramas in competition play out when our tribe squares off with a rival. Some of these rivalries are well established, laboring on for decades. Others might be more personal to the individual. Either way, there can be real emotion when your team beats, or gets beaten by, a team you can't stand. This emotion can go a long way in hooking us into the yearly cycle of competition for a chosen sport.
Roots and Rituals
For many families, sports is a consistent and beloved backdrop to the seasons of our lives. We relate football to the fall and winter holidays and happenings, basketball to the spring changes, and baseball to the long summers and early fall. Whatever we have going on in our lives, there is a game... a storyline... a highlight... that is linking a life event to a sporting event, on some level. And if, as youngsters, we are involved in playing sports, then those activities form memorable roots to our childhood.
For me, I know a lot of it is deeply rooted in my upbringing, especially where baseball is concerned. My dad and I watched countless games together through the years, both live at the Houston Astrodome and on TV. Additionally, my Grandpa Louie was a standout catcher, both as a kid and a young adult, and went on to have a lifelong affection for the game. This coincided with my early love of baseball, as he would have active involvement in my development as a player through all my years of Little League. My Grandpa and I would spend hours together in the hot Texas sun practicing: with me catching his grounders and flies, him catching my pitches, and me hitting his fastballs and curves all over a scorched-earth ball field that we usually had to ourselves through the heat of the day.
Here's a roughly-cropped pic of a photo of my grandpa in his earlier years that my sister Pam recently sent me. The original photo must be nearly 100 years old.
And, as I believe I mentioned in an earlier issue of this Newsletter, I still have his catcher's mitt, circa the 1920s. It resides in my kid's nursery, right next to my dad's glove (from the 50s), and my glove (from the 70s).
So yeah... I guess a lot of this stuff is deeply rooted for me! And it has certainly been "ritualized" in so many activities throughout my upbringing.
The Hero's Journey
My Grandpa once got to see Babe Ruth and the Yankees play an exhibition game near his hometown in upstate New York. He used to tell me the story of how, if a player in their semi-pro league ever hit a ball over the fence and all the way to the base of a row of these towering oaks, it was a celebrated rarity. But when the Yanks played their exhibition there, he said the Babe rocketed a ball so far into the sky, that it went well beyond the fence, over those big, tall oaks, and into a vacant field some distance behind them. Even the gunshot crack of the bat hitting that ball, he said, was unlike anything he had ever heard before or since. And mind you, he was telling me this story nearly fifty years after he saw it go down! I'm sure no one else in the overflow crowd that day ever forgot that moment, either.
Babe Ruth: The original American sports icon?
Maybe this is the deepest point of our sports obsession. We all marvel at greatness, especially when it's expressed in the midst of high-stakes obstacles, and in the greater context of story—which is what the biggest moments in sports are always steeped in. And here, precisely, is where Joseph Campbell's renowned Hero's Journey philosophy comes fully into view: It's his famous archetype theory of the hero, who follows a call to action, endures all of the obstacles, slays a few dragons and, in the end, against all odds, emerges victoriously.
Campbell made it clear in his work that this Hero's Journey storyline plays out, to varying degrees, in most every compelling story, from every generation of every culture before us. But the thing so riveting about sports is that the story unfolds in real life, in real time, in unknown and unexpected ways, with the conclusion not fully known until it happens, and with the "dragons" often winning!
So when our hero wins large, it creates a big moment for us. And we are inspired by these big moments, I believe, because they remind us of the big moments we are capable of producing in our own arena—of the proverbial dragons we are capable of slaying in our own story—and, subconsciously or otherwise, perhaps, we get to "test-drive" the experience vicariously through the hero's toil and suffering (and all from the comfort of our own home, with chips and soda aplenty!). Therefore, in the impossibly competitive world of high-level sports, we spectators put up with an awful lot of agony for the rare but blissful payoff of such moments.
And so it shall remain for me in these days of the great unknown that lie ahead in the 2024 World Series.
Update 1:
Just caught game one.
Oh man... we simply could not have asked for a better first game! So many storylines are in motion here. And the electricity coming off the screen, from the crowd, from the players... is palpable, even from here in Auckland on the other side of the globe.
I know on one level, it's just a sporting event. But for the millions of us who watched game one, we will never forget it, especially Freeman's crushing grand slam to end it in the bottom of the 10th! Good God. Even a Disney movie screenwriter wouldn't have dared such an audacious ending. Crazy shit!
And here's something I posted on social after Game Two, with the Dodgers up 2-0 in the series:
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I've caught the majority of the first two World Series games from a hotel gym in New Zealand, where the games have started early afternoon... the next day! (We are 20 hours ahead of LA time.) That first game was something none of us who watched will ever forget—especially the once-in-a-generation ending! And both games have been very competitive.
But listen: While I'm obviously hoping LA will pull it out in the end, I want the Yanks to have a great showing... especially Judge. I know this might sound strange, but I've been cringing watching this poor bastard struggle, just like I cringed watching Mookie struggle these past couple post-seasons. I'm hoping Judge will find his swing again, just like Mookie did. (Better hurry, though!) And, needless to say, I'm hoping this shoulder thing Ohtani's dealing with is nothing too serious. It would be a travesty if Ohtani can't play, and Judge continues to slump. But then again, this IS baseball... and, as always... nothing is guaranteed to us helpless spectators!
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Update 2:
So now I am on the flight back home out of New Zealand. Just before boarding, game three was underway and I was following along on my ESPN app. By the time we boarded and the plane started its ascension, Freeman had smacked another HR and we were at the top of the fourth with a 3-0 lead. And then... my connection went south and it was radio silence from the app... with no wi-fi on this flight... and no live channel feed on TV. And so it would be for the next 12+ hours. Waiting. Wondering. A life on hold.
And then, around 6:00 AM, as we were descending into LA for our landing—boom! Life resumed. The ESPN app lit up, and I saw "my" Dodgers had taken a commanding 3-game series lead with a 4-2 victory. Kari and I were able to scoot into the lounge for some breakfast and some ESPN highlights and commentary on live TV... and all was right in the world.
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Update 3:
Caught game four last night from home (Yankees came through on a must-win)... and now it looks like we have a series. So no—all is no longer right in the world! Sure, I wanted the Yankees to have a "good showing"... but not necessarily win a game in the process! Seriously, should be interesting to see how things play out for Judge and Ohtani, the chief ringers of each team who have been relatively quiet throughout this WS. Will their bats finally wake up, or will some of the other players, marquee or not, continue to step up?
And even more importantly, will (Dodger coach) Dave Robert's decision to go with his "B-team" pitchers in game four (in an effort to save his best guys for game five and, potentially, the remainder of the series) backfire, as the NY win has clearly invigorated a Yankee team on the verge of elimination?
Lights! Camera! Action! Popcorn! Game Five tonight...
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Thanks again, everybody. Connect soon!
Until then,
BR
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