The Meaning of Loyalty (or, Why My Dad Became a Braves Fan)

by Ian McLoud

I grew up in Saginaw, Texas, a town whose only claim to something better than obscurity is its massive grain elevators - some of the biggest ever built, because this is Texas after all, and even small towns here need the biggest something to prove the Texas bravado. Anyway. I grew up in Texas.

Two sports existed in our household: football and baseball.  Nothing else counted.  Basketball is played by a bunch of “wannabe-gangster-thug-rappers,” or so my dad said. Hockey is just plain boring, unless Coach Bombay is there telling us all about the triple-deke, the flying V and quacking.

My dad, a man I admire more and more as I get older, was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers. We never went to Cowboys games, but I remember the Ballpark at Arlington, in all its beautiful, green, majestic glory. I, however, wasn’t a Cowboys fan, or a Rangers fan. 

I was a Green Bay Packers fan and an Atlanta Braves fan. The Braves make sense; I spent summers in Georgia with my grandparents and when Grandpa went to bed, Grandma and I would stay up late and watch the Braves. Grandma would scream and scream at Chipper, Glavine, Maddux and Smoltz. Mostly Chipper, and often so loud I was afraid Grandpa would wake up and tell us to go to bed. I liked Green Bay because I was weird and also, one time they won a Super Bowl while I happened to be watching.

But my dad was a die-hard fan of Texas teams. Sundays in the fall meant the Cowboys were on. Summers meant talking about Rangers baseball.

So it struck me as really odd when, after a move to Georgia, my dad began rooting for the Falcons and the Braves. I understood the Braves because they’re awesome, but at the time, the Falcons were even worse than the Cowboys. I asked dad what was up with this sudden change of heart; he said something along the lines of, “We live in Georgia now,” and I probably made some crack about him needing to learn the meaning of loyalty.

As I get older though, I view that response differently. My dad, a former minister, was doing something that I now realize had an importance all its own: he was trying to relate to his new neighbors, new friends and a new church community. He was, to quote Paul, “becoming all things to all people.”  That may sound weird; all he did was change his allegiance to sports teams.

Big deal, who cares? But looking back, I can see how the people he met cared. He could converse with them about a subject that they both knew something about. No one in Georgia cared about the Rangers, or the Packers, or the majestic grain elevators of Saginaw, Texas. But they did care about the Falcons and most definitely the Braves.

My dad had this whole idea of understanding a new culture and building relationships that bridged the gap. He could relate to people in this new environment on a level that I simply couldn’t because I was stubbornly sticking to my Brett Favre (pre-Jets) loving ways. He could connect and build relationships whereas I was still an outsider. And from him, I learned the importance of culture and relationship building before it became the trend du jour. (Hey! My dad’s a Christian Hipster!)

He was acting out the all things to all people that Paul was talking about. And while I don’t think Paul was envisioning sports fandom exactly, still, it works. Especially in a society where our sports affiliation is seen as a key to our identity.

So yeah, my dad wasn’t loyal to the Cowboys or the Rangers. He’s not even really loyal to the Falcons or the Braves. But he’s loyal to God and to people. And sometimes, that means giving up things we desire in the pursuit of connecting with others. 

Ian is the Youth and Family Minister at the Lakehoma Church of Christ in Mustang, Oklahoma. You can follow him on Twitter @KindaScottish.

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Yes, I Am Rooting For Laundry

by Ben Howard

Every sports fan knows that no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you will inevitably run into that one person who is absolutely incredulous that you follow sports. One day, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, you'll be at a party and you'll ask someone for the score to some random game that has little to no existential significance and they will look at you, roll their eyes and smugly state that, “You're just rooting for laundry.”

When that time comes you will stare back at this incomprehensible fool, this titan of arrogance and dismissive snark and...you will say nothing, because they are pretty much right when you think about it.

For instance, I grew up as Cowboys fan and have fantastic memories of rooting for Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith (true story, I once wanted to go as Emmitt Smith for Halloween, but was highly unaware of the racial undertones of an 8 year old in black-face). I knew all the players. I knew what it meant to root for the Cowboys. I knew about the pride and the tradition. This is America's Team.

Fast forward two decades later. None of those players are still on the team. None of those players have been on the team in ten years. The only connection between then and now are the fans and the owner and I'm pretty sure the fans didn't choose to root for Jerry Jones.

But it's the same laundry. And that laundry carries a tradition. For the Cowboys it's a tradition of outsized personalities and being the best of the best. It's about being bigger than the game. For a team like the Pittsburgh Steelers it's being tough and rugged and consistently great. On the flip side for a team like the Cincinnati Bengals or Arizona Cardinals it means being a perennial underachiever.

It's true for all sports and at all levels. Technically, you're rooting for laundry and the names and the players change all the time. Sometimes even the game evolves and it looks different than it did in your youth, but the tradition of what it means to be a fan of your team still shapes the way you watch the game.

I grew up watching Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Darren Woodson and Deion Sanders, so when I watch football I don't just want to see a win, I want to see that special mixture of efficiency and artistic brilliance. In baseball, I grew up watching Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux pitch for the Braves and so artistry defines my way of understanding the sport. I'm shaped by the tradition I grew up in and I'm shaped by what it means to be a fan of my team and by what my team means.

This happens in churches all the time. We are defined by the legacy of those who came before us even though they are no longer apart of our present community. For some that tradition is rich and vibrant like the Pittsburgh Steelers, for others it can only be seen as a series of disappointments and failures.

So what to do with this tradition? What should we do with this inherited meaning of who we are?

Our natural instinct I think is to jettison it in favor of our own hand-crafted identity, but this is a dangerous response. Former Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez broke many Michigan traditions when he arrived in Ann Arbor to try and restore the once powerhouse program. In breaking these traditions, he made many enemies and eventually was unable to find the sort of success that he envisioned for his program. We run the same risk if we break away from tradition too harshly. It is entirely likely that the backlash of breaking tradition will define us instead of our new hoped for identity.

I have seen this especially in non-denominational and evangelical churches who have become so enamored with breaking the chains of tradition that they become defined by what they are not instead of by what they are. They do not use the liturgy, the do not have priests, they do not practice the Eucharist, but in this cacophony of do nots they are no longer able to communicate what they do.

The other extreme is to hold too tightly to tradition in the hopes that you can recreate the past. I'll title this John Elway disease, but there could be many names. John Elway was the Hall of Fame quarterback for the Denver Broncos from 1983 until 1998. In his time with the Broncos he established them as a perennial contender and brought them back to back Super Bowl championships during his final two seasons. John Elway was irreplaceable, but that hasn't stopped the Broncos from trying. First they tried Brian Griese, who was good, but he wasn't John Elway. Then the same thing happened with Jake Plummer, and once again with Jay Cutler, and finally with the magical woodland fairy creature known as Tim Tebow.

For Denver, John Elway became a ghost instead of an honored part of the tradition. He has haunted the franchise instead of enriching it with his legacy. I feel like this especially is true in mainline protestant churches who are haunted by a time of prominence and power that they no longer experience. Instead of transitioning to something different when the time has come, they continue to fight in an effort to recover a ghost.

I think the proper way to deal with tradition is to respect it and let it guide you even while you transition into something new. It is still your past and you deal with it, good or bad, accordingly. However, while the church is shaped by its past and needs to understand where it has come from, it is not shackled to its past. Maybe this is the Aaron Rodgers ideal of the church. Brett Favre was great and he did great things and Aaron was taught under Favre's tutelage, but it's his turn now and that might not look like the exact same thing. That's okay, it's healthy and it's growth.

So yes, I root for laundry. I root for what it means, what it has meant, and what it might mean in the future. I root for the story it tells and how that story shapes me and how I view the world. I root for the way that laundry might be redeemed and renewed and how it might look like something entirely different to a future generation.

Thanks for making me think Incredulous-Fellow-At-Party!

Peace,

Ben

When he isn't taking passing insults way too literally, Ben likes to imagine what sports would be like if they were all played on the moon. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email him at benjamin.howard [at] gmail.com.

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