The Starbucks closest to my apartment is about 70 feet from the world headquarters of Whole Foods, an upscale supermarket that doubles as a bat signal for soccer moms with bleached hair, a gym membership, no job, and their husband’s American Express platinum. These women always manage to attach themselves to one or two of their carbon copies and gaggle over to this Starbucks where, as fate would have it, they end up in line directly in front of me. Getting stuck behind these women is the equivalent of having 94 normal people in front of you because their coffee orders tend to contain somewhere around 473 syllables. God forbid you just order a medium coffee. Besides having to watch the poor soul making $7.95 an hour sprinkle nutmeg on their chai lattes while they heckle him, the most excruciating part of standing so close to these women is being forced to listen to the astounding crap that comes out of their mouths. Apparently when everything someone would ever need is handed to them and they are completely void of all stress and responsibility, they are forced to manufacture problems to tell their equally privileged friends about.
Whole Foods Mom 1: “I was watching Dateline and they were saying that these flat screen TVs are getting so big and so light that kids have died from pulling the TV down onto themselves. I told (Enter husband’s name here) he needs to either anchor ours to the wall, or go down to a 55” screen. I had to put my foot down.”
Whole Foods Mom 2: “My pilates instructor moved to Indonesia and the new guy just isn’t the same. It’s only been two weeks and I swear I can feel my love handles coming back.”
These are problems construction workers in line at Dunkin’ Donuts don’t have. They have real problems. (Cue the Springstein music, preferably something from Darkness on the Edge of Town) They have mortgage payments and daycare bills. They have five kids attending public schools trying to learn from under qualified teachers in overcrowded classrooms. They have a herniated disc but can’t go to the doctor because their co-pay is too high. They build things with their hands. They make highways and buildings and bridges. They think pilates is an Italian dessert and have no idea where Indonesia is.
As a person, I like to think I identify with these guys. I’m more comfortable at sports bars than cocktail lounges. I was raised to understand the workingman’s plight and have more in common with them than the real housewives of Austin. Then yesterday I was sitting at the kitchen table bitching to my girlfriend (100% not listening) that I didn’t like the Red Sox being picked by everyone and their mother as pre-season champs and how their bullpen wasn’t going to hold up and how their lack of depth in right field was going to catch up to them when I had a come-to-Jesus moment. I suddenly realized I was bitching about a team, my team, which is probably going to win 94 games this year. Oh no. As a sports fan, I not only identify with the Whole Foods moms . . . I am one.
It wasn’t always this way. Sure the Celtics had a remarkable run in the ‘80s but by the time they won their last championship in ’86, I wasn’t even five years old. My sports life didn’t really begin until 1990 so until the moment Vinatieri’s kick split the uprights, all I knew was losing. Then a strange thing happened when I went to college. My teams started winning championships. It started with the aforementioned Rams Super Bowl, continued through the Sox breaking the curse in ’04, the Pats winning another two, Sox again in ’07 followed shortly thereafter by the Celtics trading for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett and winning the NBA title the very same year. I should have had two more, too. If not for the helmet catch and Kendrick Perkins blowing out his ACL in game 6, I could have easily seen my teams win eight championships since 2001. Eight!
Yet here I am, belly-aching about the Perkins trade and how much I can’t stand to watch JD Drew bat against lefties. As it stands now, my baseball team is favored to win the World Series, the Celtics are vying to make a deep run at another championship, the Pats are getting better with a young defense coming off of an impressive 14-2 season, and even the Bruins are looking tough after making a couple great trade-deadline deals and riding a hot goalie to another playoff berth. Life is pretty good, right? Not for me. I’m a Whole Foods mom sports fan now. I dig for things to complain about.
The thing is that I do realize there is a sports fan from Seattle out there with a mediocre football team in a terrible division, one of the worst teams in baseball, and a beloved basketball team that was taken away from him by a greedy owner. I complain about JD Drew. JD Drew would be the second best player on his team. I bitch and moan about the recent play of a second-place basketball team. He hasn’t had basketball in his city for three years. My team signs Carl Crawford and I shrug my shoulders. He feigns excitement for the Pete Carroll era. (I’ve seen how that movie ends) He is the guy in line at Dunkin’ Donuts. I’m the Whole Foods mom at Starbucks, swiping someone else’s credit card and complaining that my flat screen TV is too big.
With that being said, please do not mistake my self-awareness for compassion. The only thing that makes me angrier than the realization that I have turned into a Whole-Foods-mom sports fan is when someone calls me on it and tries to throw a pity party. When I am whining about the Sox bullpen, don’t stop me mid-sentence and point out that we have three set-up men that would all be the closer on your team. And especially don’t start telling me that I don’t understand how hard it is to be a sports fan from whatever part of the country you are from. No one cares. No one wants to hear about it. This is fandom stripped down to its most basic elements. There are lean times and there are fat times. During the fat times, you rub it in the faces of all the lean timers. During the lean times, you keep your head down and hope. Remember, you’re never the only one in line at Dunkin’ Donuts.
In the world of sports, times like these are rare and fleeting. I learned this as a young Celtics fan when Reggie Lewis unexpectedly passed away. The Celtics were actually in a pretty good place at the time. Even after the Len Bias tragedy and Larry calling it quits, we still had this homegrown guy that would be the face of our franchise for the next decade. But when Reggie hit the floor that day the Celtics were sent into a tailspin that all of the ping pong balls in the world couldn’t pull us out of. We went from a franchise on the rise to the laughing stock of the NBA overnight.
The sports world, like real life, is populated with haves and have-nots. What makes sports such a great escape is that unlike real life the two classes can switch positions much more fluidly and without meaningful life-altering consequences. There is nothing like seeing one of your friends, formerly a Whole-Foods-mom like myself, swinging a hammer on a construction site with a thermos full of Dunkin’ Donuts dark roast. The best part is, you don’t even have to be a Whole Foods mom to enjoy watching the downfall. You can already be on the construction site and just cheer like crazy when one of the Whole Foods moms shows up hanging her head, lunch pail in hand, reporting for work. If you don’t believe this happens and would like to experience the phenomenon for yourself, book a flight to Cleveland during the NBA playoffs, head to the nearest sports bar and watch everyone cheer for the Celtics when they play the Heat in the second round. You’ll think you’re in Charlestown.
What I can try to do, and this is something the real Whole Foods moms will never understand, is remember what it was like to be the guy in line at Dunkin’ Donuts and appreciate my good fortune for as long as it sticks around. I’m still going to make fun of you Cleveland sports fans but deep down I realize I’m just a greedy owner and a terrible trade or two away from being back there again. My hammer and lunch pale have about an inch of dust on them . . . but I’m not throwing them away.
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