When Are You Too Much of a Fan?

I hate it in a way, but a secret part of me loves it, when the Cubs are on the West Coast. I hate the part about being tired at work and grouchy at home the next day, or for that matter, sometimes three or four days in a row. It's not fair to anyone. I know that.

The part that I love? That's easy. Everyone else is in bed. The phone doesn't ring. I have no one to answer to. I can rejoice, or grieve (usually the latter) all alone in the wee hours of the Midwestern night.

Sacrificing the quality of my work and family time, just to see the game, just to get that high.

For fully six months of the year, I am an addict. Every day. Work, time spent with my family, when I mow the lawn, even vacations revolve around when and where my team will be playing. This summer, I planned a family trip to the Civil War sites in Gettysburg around the time when the Cubs were going to be in Pittsburgh to play the Pirates. Tickets are easy to get in Pittsburgh. Sick stuff, huh?

But that's nothing really. There's a lot that I'm not proud of. I've cancelled dinners and nights at the movies because a big game was on. My temper has snapped like a dry twig more than a few times and I've yelled at everyone in the car when the radio described a blown a play or game, or when one of the kids had the temerity to talk during a crucial moment.

Of course if we won, it's ice cream for everybody...

Even when the baseball season mercifully ends, there is football. I know I'm a better husband and father then. It's not as bad, because they play once a week. But if you follow a pro team, a college team and a high school team, like I do; well, it's at least three days a week. And, of course, you've got to check out a few other big games. And of course, there's Sunday and Monday Night football...

I have a wonderful wife and family. I've had a successful career (I owe the fact that I was able to get two college degrees to the Cubs rapacious futility over those years, by the way. If they had ever been in a pennant race, I would have dropped all my classes). The addiction I have, and have had all these years, has somehow not affected any happiness or overall outcomes in my life. But it is an addiction, so I can't be sure.

Dan Wann, a professor of psychology at Murray State University, says that only a small number of sports fans out there become so obsessive that it disrupts the relationships (if they have any) in their lives. I'm sure that's true, but how many of us out there have, truthfully, had their relationships change because of our obsession?

Unless gambling is involved, obsessions like mine are more generally smiled upon than anything else. A harmless hobby. "Better sports than drugs!" Sometimes, I'm not sure. Sometimes I wonder if I, and perhaps a lot of others out there across America, have wasted a significant part of our lives getting our sports fix, too involved to too many games that we have absolutely no control over.

If so, what can be, or should be done about it? We all know of the Betty Ford clinic, and the many types of rehab places that have sprung up all over the country in the last generation, but you don't hear about an Ernie Banks Baseball Addiction Rehabilitation Center. There'd be no satellite TV or radio there, I'll betcha.

Dr. Wann essentially says that the two things we sports nuts are looking for are (1) to belong to a larger group with a common purpose, and (2) the chance to get away from our real lives, and succeed at something vicariously. He says sports is a nice way to hide feelings that we don't want to confront.

Maybe that's true for many, but for the average, well functioning guy out there who happens to be planning his whole Saturday around a game?

I know that there are tens of thousands of guys (and I'm sure gals too) that are like me, at least to some extent. Many of you will read this confession, and will identify with it. When and if you do, ask yourselves the following questions: When are you too much of a sports fan? If it affects the lives of others, if it takes time away from your family and friends, which it inevitably does, isn't that bad? And if so, what do we do about it? Or is this much ado about nothing?

Your thoughts please.

Don't recommend total withdrawal, by the way. That would be impossible. We play the Giants tonight.