THE COACH IS NEW AND HAS AN IRRATIONAL HATRED OF YOU. New coaches are always eager to replace incumbent players with “their” players: players they personally brought in. If you were hired by your old coach and continue to play well after his departure, your new coach can’t take credit for finding you or making you good, and that won’t do. You also may be a victim of the dreaded Ex-Boyfriend / Dead Son Syndrome, in which your coach is constantly comparing you to an all-star player he once coached at your position. He’ll do everything in his power to make you similar to this favorite player of his. He’ll make you study tape of this player. He’ll make you change your mechanics to mimic this player. And he’ll make you wear Skin Bracer, just like ol’ Smitty used to. In the end, he’ll hate you all the more because, no matter how hard you try, you can never be this player. Unless you were to undergo some sort of facial reconstruction surgery. Would you at least consider it?
YOUR COACH IS PLAYING MIND GAMES. You can do everything right and your coach may still find fault with you. It’s his way of maintaining the upper hand in the relationship. In many ways, he’s just like my ex-girlfriend, who was a total cunt.
YOU ARE A TEAM CANCER. Team cancers, also known as malcontents, are players who disrupt the delicate intangible known as team chemistry. According to every sports column ever written, team chemistry occurs when a majority of players on a team like one another and share a common team-oriented goal. Never mind that any team can fit this description and still be terrible. And it’s not like everyone at Microsoft likes each other. That company is worth billions of dollars. Do you really think it has anything to do with whether or not the sales department goes bowling every Thursday? Fuck and no.
Regardless, your coach enjoys propagating the myth of team chemistry, because then, if your team has it (and it may, by sheer luck), then he will get credit for perfectly orchestrating the natural human relationship dynamics of your locker room. But he can’t do that if you’re the one asshole on the team trying to turn guys against each other. So cut it out. You’ll never be as ruthlessly effective as real cancer anyway.
YOU ARE GAY. See previous chapter.
Clippable Motivational Slogan!
A successful coach needs a patient wife, a loyal dog, and a great quarterback. But if you don’t have a wife, the dog can usually pull double duty.
— WEEB EWBANK
Chapter 5
“Don’t You People Have Homes?”
Fame and Fans
“I love you AND I hate you!”: a guide to the modern fan.
It has been said that Americans are obsessed with sports. I don’t know where it was said, or who said it. But, for the sake of my straw-man argument, let’s just say someone said it somewhere. I personally consider this obsession a healthy thing. You see, sports serve as a distraction from all the serious issues in our lives, like war, God, family, and proper nutrition. Sports let us forget about that stuff for a while and, in many cases, successfully phase it out completely. After all, if India and Pakistan decide to engage in all-out nuclear conflict, do we really want to know about it? Much better to freak out over shit like Nick Swisher’s batting average. It helps keep things in proper perspective. Sports are an escape, a chance for fans to get away from the stress of everyday life and enjoy an entirely different kind of stress.
As a pro athlete, you serve as a proxy for the unrealized athletic dreams of the people in the crowd. They are coming to cheer you. But the real truth is that they have come to watch you and imagine themselves as you. So when you play well, the fans like you because you are making their alternate universe selves look good and helping them get some hot alternate universe pussy after the game is over. If you fuck up, then you’re just ruining the dream. And that won’t do. So when you hear fans booing, remember: they’re not booing you, they’re booing themselves through you. It’s called displacement. Look it up.