Life in a pandemic: Why we miss sports so much
by Joan Ryan
by Joan Ryan
Young fans seek autographs during spring training in 2019; Photo: Elaine Thompson / Associated Press 2019
The shutdown of sports will hurt more than we think.
I wouldn’t have said this a few years ago, before I spent the better part of a decade researching a book about team chemistry. I now understand that the bond we feel with our sports teams can be as strong as the bond with family and friends.
Tribalism is the most deeply rooted human behavior. Our cave-dwelling ancestors needed each other to survive, and over the past 3 million years we evolved into the most social, interdependent species on earth. Tribes come in many forms — family, congregation, friends, even co-workers. But in today’s America, where many us live far from family and where 35.7 million of us live alone, sports teams can be our most meaningful, and perhaps only, tribe.
I first came across this notion while watching a 2014 documentary about E.O. Wilson, the famed biologist, evolutionist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who also happens to be a devoted fan of University of Alabama football. In the film, Wilson visits his alma mater’s campus on the day of the Iron Bowl, the traditional battle between Alabama and Auburn. He strolls happily through a sea of exuberant Crimson Tide fans decked out in Alabama paraphernalia and waving homemade “Roll Tide’’ signs. Five shirtless young men spell out “B-A-M-A-!’’ in white lettering on their red-painted chests.
In a conversation with the filmmaker, Wilson is clearly delighted not only by the spectacle but by what the spectacle tells us about the human species.
“Sports makes no sense other than we love being part of one group competing against another group,’’ he says.
We fans feel so much a part of our particular team that we drape ourselves in their colors, frame our license plates with their name and logo, decorate our living rooms with their paraphernalia. We wear the same jerseys as the players — complete with their names on the backs, not our own. Connectedness is fundamental to what makes us human. It’s why banishment was a punishment worse than death. It’s why we bought into Tom Hanks’ character in “Cast Away.” He survives for years on a deserted island in part by turning a volleyball into a companion named Wilson. The success of the film depended on us accepting Hanks’ emotional connection to the ball. We did, even if we didn’t know exactly why.
In my research I read about “sterile’’ orphanages in Europe in the early 1900s. To stop the spread of disease, caretakers were instructed not to touch the babies except to feed, change and bathe them. Soon the babies lost their appetites. They became lethargic. Many contracted the very diseases the sterile practices were meant to prevent. Death rates soared to 75 percent at some orphanages. The babies who did survive were almost always cognitively impaired.
Not until the 1940s, when an Austrian American physician named Rene Spitz began to study the deaths, did we discover babies need more than just food and cleanliness to survive. They need connection. They need touch and eye contact. They need to mimic faces and voices. They need another person’s body rhythms to regulate their own.
In isolation, we suffer. Research over the past 30 years has found that loneliness is a major health risk, as dangerous to our well-being as smoking or obesity. Sports teams have helped fill the void for many of us in profound ways. They stir our emotions and boost our energy. They give us a sense of belonging, even a sense of purpose. Our loyalty feels meaningful, as if by rooting hard for them day in and day out, we are partners in their quest.
Humans are open-loop creatures. We need other humans to make us whole. Our teams, our steadfast tribes, complete some part of us in ways that only they can. We await their return.
Joan Ryan is a Bay Area journalist whose forthcoming book is “Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry.”
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