原文: Why We Watch Sports

This morning I listened to two fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders (Canadian Football League) talk about how they had supported their team for forty years despite the fact it had only won the Grey Cup twice in all that time. It reminded me of my experience as a young child going to football games with my father. He organized a bus that picked up about 30 fans from the area of Winnipeg in which we lived, drove us to the game and then back home again afterwards. I would often fall asleep on the bus on the way home, but I loved every moment of this experience, even though I wasn't much of a football fan. I knew all the players' names by heart, however. In the winter seasons I would watch all the Montreal Canadiens hockey games, in black and white on TV Saturday nights, since we had no local professional hockey team in Winnipeg. Because of the time difference we would never see the first period, since it would have interfered with the dinnertime CBC news, which was sacrosanct. My walls were covered with black-and-white photos of Les Habitants best players like Boom Boom Geoffrion and Rocket Richard, most of them signed by the stars themselves. My parents were forced to buy hundreds of boxes of teas and dessert mixes so I could get the treasured plastic Hockey Coins inside, each depicting one of the 120 active players in the NHL at that time. In my adult years I ceased to be a sports fan, preferring to play rather than watch, and while I still partake of hockey playoff pools, I rarely watch sports of any kind. I briefly cheered on the Toronto Blue Jays during their two back-to-back World Series championships, and got to know all the players then, but a year later they were all but forgotten. For all kinds of reasons I am boycotting the corrupt freakshow propaganda circus called the Olympics, this and every year. I've tried to figure out why I watched sports, and why so many still do, but it's hard to fathom. Although for many Americans (and Chinese) winning seems to be everything, fans in most of the rest of the world seem to enjoy the sport no matter who wins. The endless kitsch of propagandist Hollywood movies where American ("Yoo-Ess-Ay!") team X or individual athlete Y overcomes staggering odds to become the champion (at the last moment, when all seems lost), and in the process he/they find true love, just makes me nauseous. (When the underdog-turned-champ is a Canadian, or a furry animal, it's no better.) There is something at work here besides insecure nationalistic vicarious competitiveness. Why do we watch sports? I started paying attention to my own occasional spectator behaviour. I noticed that I was more attentive when "my" team was on offense than when they were on defense. After the game I felt the same no matter which team or individual won, unless there was some cruel injustice served up by cheaters or corrupt or inept officials, in either team's favour, in which case I was sullen. The Hollywood movies play on this relentlessly, of course, since it's a cheap way to stir up audiences. Hollywood does the same in the endless and banal "women as victim" movies, which are essentially identical to the sports propaganda movies except they involve women losers-turned-victors instead of men, and take place in homes and courtrooms instead of arenas. But when it was just a game, and I somehow got caught up in it, it was a wonderful feeling at the end of the event (barring having to face terrible traffic going home). The more I thought about it, the more I concluded that we love to watch sports for two reasons that have nothing to do with competition: Shared 'expertise': Real fans know who's playing, and everything about them, and what they're good and bad at. Armchair quarterbacks all, what they love, and love talking about, is what they know about the game, the expertise they share. We all love to be an expert, especially knowledgeable about something, and there is no easier way (with the possible exception of blogging?) to become known and respected as something of an expert than to study and follow a sports team. Affinity: We all love to belong, and sports teams are not called "clubs" for nothing. We are social animals, and we love to wear insignia that give us instant affinity with others, something to smile and talk about with strangers, and hence become friends. We actually spend more on sports affinity paraphernalia than we spend on tickets. Alas, in the context of 'professional' sports all of this comes at a major cost. Propagandists (from political thugs to opportunist corporatist advertisers) have exploited sports to the point of ruin, and disgust. Ticket prices for professional teams are obscene, relegating all but the elite who can tax-deduct them to the bleachers and TV screens. Most professional sports are replete with cheaters (drug users -- performance-enhancing and pain-numbing -- and judge bribers), bullies, and arrogant hacks both on the field and in the media. To come second is a disgrace, the media tell us -- heads should roll. And the health and fitness level of sports watchers who would never dream of actually playing a sport is abysmal. The solution, I think, is to find entertainments that provide us with the opportunity for affinity and to develop an impressive expertise, that are not competitive. That is, entertainments (like ballooning, hiking, and theatre-going -- other than to theatres that show the aforementioned Hollywood schlock) in which there are no winners and losers, only good, enjoyable performances and those that could be improved (and we're all armchair critics) and which, most importantly, are participative, both for our health and for our level of social and intellectual engagement. I keep saying we need to re-learn to entertain ourselves. We suffer from a dreadful imaginative poverty in our modern world. We are unfit, both physically and in our creative and critical thinking capacity. For all our information sources, we are appallingly ignorant about history, geography, the arts, science, and what is going on in the world. And we are fiercely, unnecessarily and destructively competitive. From now on, every time I am tempted to watch a "spectator sport", or a mass media information or entertainment production, I am going to stop myself and ask: What could I be doing instead that is more collaborative, and more participative, and take myself off the sidelines and out of the chair and into action, doing something, cooperatively, with others. I hope you will too. There is a difference between entertainment and fun, and we're buying far too much of the former and taking part far too little in the latter. Category: Our Culture

译文: 看体育比赛，我们图个啥？

今天早晨，我听到两个萨斯喀彻温¹骑士队（属加拿大橄榄球联赛）的两个球迷聊着彼此对他们的本土球队有多铁，哪怕在这40个年头里球队只赢得了两次格雷杯头衔。

这就不由得让我回忆起小时候跟着老爸去看球的事情。他会弄来一辆车，浩浩荡荡地把咱们温尼伯这块儿大约30号球迷载到球场，比赛完了再把一车人带回来。回家的路上，我常常已经累得睡着了，即使我算不上什么橄榄球迷，却依然享受每一分钟。更牛的是，我竟然还记得住每个球员的名字。

在温尼伯，那个时候我们还没有职业的本土球队，所以到了冬季赛季，每周六晚上，我总是守在黑白电视机前欣赏蒙特利尔加拿大人的比赛。当然咯，因为比赛当中必须得插播CBC电视台的新闻——绝对神圣不可侵犯的大事件——所以我们每次不得不错过第一节比赛。我的房间贴满了居住者²队各个最佳球员的黑白照片，像是“炸弹男”吉奥福利奥，还有“火箭男”理查德，而且大部分照片都是他们亲手签了名的呢。为了得到茶点搭档里赠送的珍藏版冰球明星钱币——其实都是塑料的——我就强烈要求老爸老妈买来几百盒这样的玩意儿，当时NHL联赛里120号比较牛的球员每人都有一款这样的钱币。

等我长大了以后，就不再热衷于当个体育迷了，因为比起看比赛，我更喜欢自己玩。除了冰球的季后赛，别的体育比赛我很少问津。只有多伦多蓝鸟队那两场背靠背³的世界职业棒球大赛锦标赛，让我暂时激动了一把，也趁机认识了当时的球员，不过一年之后他们就都被我抛在脑后了。再说到奥运会，天哪，对我来说这就像是个腐败的怪物秀、像个到处张扬的马戏团，所以不管是哪届奥运会、在哪儿举办，我都是抵制二字，理由是千千万。

我一直都想搞明白，过去看体育比赛，我到底图个啥？还有那么多依然看体育比赛的人，又图个啥？这问题是在很难参透。是为了输赢吗？看起来，只有大部分美国人（还有中国人）惟以成败论比赛，而其他的世界各族人民都是观赏第一，输赢无碍。那好吧，那些美国人是怎么样的呢？你大概可以从那些没完没了地想要说教的好莱坞大烂片里略知一二：梗概基本就是美国（哦天哪，美国！）哪个项目的国家队，或者是运动员克服了重重困难，可谓历经磨难，最后终于在让人已经万念俱灰的最后一刻，夺冠啦！当然咯，在这条通向胜利的道路上，这支队伍或者这个人必然要找到真爱，想想都让我恶心。就算这条翻身咸鱼是个加拿大人，或者什么毛茸茸的动物，也好不到哪里去。

有说看比赛是拿这种竞争来代替国家形式的竞争，我是看不到这之间有什么可靠的联系，但我觉得我们看比赛，肯定是有别的原因作祟。

于是我开始留意我不定期看比赛时候的行为。我注意到，如果是我顶的那支队伍在进攻，我就会更关注比赛；队伍处在防守状态，我就没那么在意了。比赛结束以后，谁胜谁负对我而言都没什么差别。只有黑哨或者什么无能裁判有不公正判罚的时候，我才会觉得不爽，不管他“照顾”的是哪一方。好莱坞电影就不屈不挠地利用这套情节，因为想要煽动观众，这个套路的成本是最低了。 之前提到的体育说教片，就像好莱坞一遍又一遍炮制的“受伤的永远是女人”类电影一样没新意，但区别是还有的：比如，这种电影里反败为胜的就变成女人了，取景地改为家里和法庭上了。

但如果说比赛只是一场游戏，那我又未免有点着了魔。很难形容终场哨音带来的感觉有多棒，只是得一路堵回去让人有点扫兴。于是乎，我似乎有了点眉目，也应该说越来越坚定这个结论：两个原因，我们爱看体育比赛就为两个原因（与什么国家形式的竞争毫无瓜葛）。

1. 偷“师”：什么是真球迷？真球迷知道拿球的是谁、他的各项情况、还有他的强项弱项。真球迷的装备绝对齐全，他们热爱的和他们热衷于谈论的无一不是他们对比赛的认识，无一不是他们乐意分享的独到见解。有人不喜欢当专家的么？恐怕没有吧，尤其是对某事物能达到谙熟于胸的境界，做个xx家。要是能撇掉写博客这件事儿不谈的话，那要成为xx家的一大捷径就是追随一支队伍，作他们的死忠。
2. 引力：“俱乐部”三个字可不是白加在队名后面的，它让人有归属感。人都是社会动物，这就决定了我们希望自己身上能有吸引别人的标志物，好让我们能和陌生人顿生好感，还能交上朋友。所以说实话，很多人求票子的时间远不止给自己配装备的时间。

哎，今日的体育是站在“职业化”的大背景之上，所以你说体育的成本不高么？政治流氓也好，投机倒把分子或者社团主义分子或者广告商也罢，总之这群拿宣传当饭吃的人始终在利用体育、压榨体育，甚至到了让人作呕的地步。看看职业队伍比赛的票价你就知道了，简直高得离谱！这种档次的球票市场恐怕也只有能把票价在所得税里扣掉的精英，才接受得了。那其他人呢，就被赶到最实惠的露天座位上去，要么在次一点——回家看电视得了。再看职业化体育本身，球场上比赛的还有球场外搞媒体的，骗子、流氓、自大的黑客到处都是。大家知道他们是怎么骗人的吧？对，要么就是靠服食药物，成绩突飞猛进还不知疼痛为何物，要么呢就是贿赂裁判。拿第二就是丢人，按媒体的说法：那就得滚蛋。其实那些看比赛的人又不曾想过自己也要涉足体育的人，说不定有很大的潜力。

我觉得呢，要除掉体育职业化带来的坏影响，我们得在娱乐中找到引力，在娱乐中成为XX家，而不是以竞争为目的。换句话说，我们得找像是热气球、远足、看电影这样的娱乐方式（嘿，可不是去看我之前提到的好莱坞大烂片啊），让人既能乐在其中、还能互相挑剔，以满足我们天生的批评欲，当然最重要的就是大家能共同参与。如此一来，摒弃了有输有赢的竞争，大家身体也好了，交集也多了。

我反复强调，我们大家得重新学着怎么找乐子。但现代世界扼杀了人们的想象力，以至于不管是身体上还是创作性、批判性思维能力上，我们都无法跟信息来源达到一个标准。所以对于历史、地理、艺术、科学还有实事，我们都一无所知到让人毛骨悚然的地步。既便如此，我们仍旧痴痴地互相竞争，徒劳而狼狈。

所以，我得改改规矩，从今往后但凡我意欲看热门体育赛事，大众传媒信息又或者娱乐作品，我都要停一停问问自己：我找愣是找不到能让我自己动弹动弹的是做了？这时候，我就会走出球场，要么从椅子上站起来，反正就是得实际地干点什么，我是说得和别人一起，通力合作地事儿。

希望你也能改改自己的规矩吧。娱乐和乐趣不仅仅是一字之差，显然我们都太买前一个的帐，忘了关心后一个。