We Bat for Team Data

     This appeared to be standard procedure. Across the stadium, fans were chopping the air with invisible tomahawks and bellowing war cries recycled from every bargain-bin Western. Apparently this was still considered team spirit and not racial caricature.
 

     I tried to imagine how it would look if our people did the same. Fans of the Atlanta Aspergers chanting, “Three, five, seven, eleven—it’s PRIME TIME!”
 

     Or offering polite, overly specific encouragement like, “Please maintain a 5.5 yards per play against zone coverage.”
 

     A sudden roar snapped me back to reality. Trey “Meatquake” Tuffington, once the heart and soul of the Chargers franchise, ran onto the field in enemy colors. The crowd erupted in boos at his monumental betrayal, even though today’s rosters churn so fast that most of them couldn’t name three players without Googling. But they remained infuriated at Tuffington, who was now rocking his victory dance for the Kansas City Chiefs and trumpeting his passion for their barbecue—occasionally consulting his jersey to confirm which city he loved this week.
 

     I watched the Chargers take the field. On their first play, they handed the ball to a guy who immediately got knocked backward into geological time and reintroduced to the turf. The stadium unleashed a synchronized, 131-decibel groan. Doug dropped to his knees as if the ball had just been declared terminal, shouting, “MY GOD, WHY?” with enough conviction to suggest this was not rhetorical.
 

     I wondered why a fully grown adult would stake his emotional well-being on whether a 22-year-old stranger in synthetic pants managed to move a ball across a painted field. And when that ball did not, in fact, move across said field, he grieved as though he had just lost a loved one or discovered that his DoorDash order arrived without the extra ranch. 
 

     Meanwhile, the actual players—millionaires endowed with sponsorship deals, dodgy diplomas, and the maturity level of frat-house goldfish—would be showered, refreshed, and negotiating sneaker contracts before he had finished processing Stage Two.
 

     Everything changed on the next play when the quarterback completed a long pass. Doug surged back to life as people high-fived, chest-bumped, and hurled nachos into the air. Perfect strangers hugged, jumped in unison, and apparently formed deep emotional connections based solely on a supposed adult catching a pointy oval.
 

     Rooting for a sports team, I realized, is mostly a socially sanctioned excuse for normlings to bond. It’s the same reason they have office holiday parties, group fitness classes, and weddings—they need a socially acceptable excuse to stand near each other and emit loud noises.
 

     Meanwhile, if one of us tries to bond by discussing the linguistic origins of the word “spatula” or the regional variations in manhole cover designs, we get weird looks and the conversation ends abruptly. Which is a perfectly satisfactory outcome, by the way. I’m just saying: if we’re all choosing random things to obsess over, ours at least omits body paint and screaming.
 

     As the cheerleaders joined in—offering glimpses of body parts best left to medical professionals and committed partners—it occurred to me that sports are still designed for a very specific audience.
 

     In gymnastics and figure skating, men wear full-length pants while women are one wrong move away from a viral upskirt video. Beach volleyball follows suit: men compete in baggy board shorts, while the women wear what can only be described as athletic dental floss. And you don’t see men celebrating a soccer goal by tearing off their shirts as if it were part of the broadcast package.
 

     Meanwhile, back on the field, the quarterback threw a perfect spiral 40 yards into the waiting hands of a wide receiver—who promptly declined the transaction. Perhaps it was the 260-pound linebacker in red and white body armor who crashed into him at highway speed. As the crowd moaned, Doug whined that even he could have caught that pass.
 

     It sounded ludicrous, but Doug had left the present to revisit a pre-marriage, pre-mortgage, pre-potbelly version of himself—a version that could still jump higher than his shoelaces and outrun his toddler. I was sitting next to a 47-year-old, pre-diabetic man with a body mass index of an outer planet who was watching genetic outliers perform superhuman feats. Yet he appeared to be thinking, There’s still time if I start training tomorrow.
 

     Mercifully, I was disqualified from that fantasy at a young age. I remember sports as an intensely disheartening social activity where I was picked last and assigned roles like scorekeeper, water bottle manager, backup referee’s assistant, or—on a really good day—statistician.
 

     Speaking of statistics, Mitch had opened his laptop and was furiously keying in the game situation. He explained that he liked to cross-reference historical trends, factor in the habits of coaches and players, watch the teams line up, and then predict the next play call.
 

     I swear the clouds parted, the sun shined, and the angels sang.
 

     “You mean you can turn this into…calculation?”
 

     “Yeah. And not just for football. In baseball, I try to call the next pitch. In basketball, I can predict, with astonishing accuracy, whether they’ll run to the other end of the court and try to throw the ball in the basket.”
 

     And so for the next three hours, Mitch and I huddled over his computer in mathematical bliss, completely oblivious to the aroma of stadium food, the seizure-inducing scoreboard visuals, and the fans loudly agonizing as the Chargers bit the dust, and then chewed and swallowed it for good measure.
 

     As we shuffled out with the defeated masses, Doug kept replaying the game in real time, narrating missed opportunities and deplorable penalty calls. By the time we reached the car, he had progressed to bargaining with the universe.
 

     Too depressed for conversation, he switched on the post-game show during the drive back. A rotating panel of former players, and men who had once shaken hands with former players, began dissecting the game in cheery over-confident voices. They spoke of “momentum,” “win mentality,” and even “eye of the tiger” as if they were physical laws.
 

     Mitch leaned forward between the seats and ventured a fact. “They ran cover-three on second down six times,” he said quietly.
 

     Doug didn’t respond. He turned up the volume as the station cut to the obligatory post-game interview with the winning quarterback.
 

     It was a reproduction of a copy of a rerun.
 

     The guy started by thanking God, as if the Almighty spent four quarters micromanaging his throwing arm instead of, I don’t know, tackling global famine. Then he pivoted to unabashed boasting: “I just wanna thank the team, my coaches, and, you know, my insane work ethic, superior genetics, and the fact that I’m simply better than everyone else.”
 

     Meanwhile, the reporter, tasked with extracting wisdom from a human vending machine full of canned responses, asked, “How did it feel to win today?”
 

     “Hey Mitch,” I said. “Maybe they should broadcast astrophysicists and philosophers playing football.” 
 

     I thought it was pithy. Maybe even astute.
 

     Doug turned up the radio, confident that someone paid to throw footballs was better qualified to provide insight. And he was immediately rewarded.
 

     “I’m just taking it one day at a time.”
 

     Mitch and I exchanged a look—the kind shared by the only two people who still read footnotes.

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     We didn’t need jerseys to be on Team Data.