As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I am well familiar with both the downside and upside of fandom.
Up until 2004, when The Olde Towne Team finally won a World Series for the first time in 86 years, I actually lost some occasional sleep rooting for these boys of summer. Over the years, I certainly shed plenty of tears. In especially tense circumstances, I would refuse to watch a game, choosing to get my updates second-hand while I sheltered in place in my bed with the covers over my head. This worked as long as my husband was here to provide those updates and let me know when and if it was safe to come out. Since Jim’s death, I have managed to force myself to look at the scary bits.
Since 2004, however, I’ve had less of a fear factor. Once the Red Sox won it all, and we had our “Ode to Joy” moment, the stakes were no longer as high. I enjoyed the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2007. I enjoyed the win in 2013. And I didn’t mind all those intervening loser-ama years all that much. This year, the Sox are on a tear that has lasted through mid-season. We’ll see how it all ends up. I hope they win. I hope the Yankees lose. Either way, I’ll live.
But I do know, up close and personal, the derivative thrill of victory and agony of defeat that come when you’re a sports fan. Mostly I’ve enjoyed my fandom over these many years – prime for the Red Sox, second order for the Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins.
Turns out that, on balance, “sports make the world a sadder place.”
Armed with 3 million responses to a happiness monitoring app, plus the locations and times of several years worth of British soccer matches, University of Sussex economists Peter Dolton and George MacKerron calculated that the happiness that fans feel when their team wins is outweighed – by a factor of two – by the sadness that strikes when their team loses.
…In the hour immediately after their team wins, researchers found a typical fan might feel about 3.9 points happier than usual – about the same boost as from listening to music. That’s more than offset by the 7.8 points of extra sadness that fans will feel in the hour after their team loses, an event that makes respondents feel about twice as sad as they would be after working, studying or waiting in line. (Source: Washington Post)
The economists were, of course, looking at soccer, a sport that on my personal happy-sad continuum doesn’t really factor in. If I’m watching a game, I’ll pick a side and root. And I’m sure that if the U.S. or Ireland made it to the World Cup, my rooting interest would be revved up. But, as Melania Trump’s jacket once asked, “I really don’t care, do u?”
Anyway, I’m sure that most sports fans aren’t going to look at the equation and decide to stop being fans based on the net negative it brings.
Sports fans focus on the upside. Even when our teams are terrible, we look for whatever little points of happiness that do exist, however infinitesimally small those little points of happiness may be. As a kid, rooting for some colossally dreadful Red Sox teams, I could still enjoy Ted Williams (or anyone else) hitting a home run. I liked it when the Sox had really good relief pitchers – Mike Fornieles, then Dick Radatz – at a time when having really good relief pitchers were as much a sign that you needed relief pitchers because you had god-awful starting pitchers as it was anything else. And over the years, whether at Fenway or plunked in front of the television, I enjoy watching baseball. I even enjoy listening to it on the radio.
But as I said, I don’t get as emotionally caught up in the sporting life as I used to, even when it comes to the Red Sox.The thrills and agonies dissipate with age, I guess, especially once your team has WON IT ALL.
Still and all, it’s a pretty interesting finding that the unhappiness outweighs the happiness that sports brings, at least statistically. Who knew?
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