As a young child, I hated baseball.  It signaled the abrupt end of the Saturday morning cartoons.  Hanna-Barbera’s Laff-A-Lympics, assorted superhero cartoons, and, of course, Schoolhouse Rock filled my Saturday mornings.  Once the clock turned to afternoon, the networks turned to the boys of summer, and afternoon games aired.  I remembered the impossibly green fields and the bright sun.

In 1982, I started watching a baseball team that finished next to last in 1981, but that year, they started it with 13 wins.  The Atlanta Braves set a record that still stands today.  I followed them through that tumultuous season until the very last game, when they barely won their division after the San Francisco Giants defeated the Dodgers.

My loyalty to the Atlanta Braves dates back to 1982; it has been a 44-year relationship with this team.  As happenstance, I’m wearing an Atlanta Braves shirt today.  As devoted to this team as I am, I navigate my language around my team loyalty crisply.  For instance:

• I do not consider myself a ‘fan’.  Fan is short for fanatic, and thus my devotion to them would be fanatical.  My enthusiasm for the Atlanta Braves is not fanatical.  I’ll readily use the term ‘enthusiast’ or use ‘root’, ‘cheer’, or ‘follow’ the team.
• I will not refer to them as ‘we’ nor as ‘my team’.  I won’t debate that they’re my favorite team, but I don’t own the Atlanta Braves.

Aren’t we getting a bit pedantic?

Some of you will think this is too much thought towards something as trivial as loyalties to a sports team.  I’ll answer that with a decades-old story from my shopping at a local Barnes and Noble in the Seattle area.  In 2001, I shopped for a baseball book and stood in line to check out.  While the Seattle Mariners were having an exceptional season, the Atlanta Braves were in the unfamiliar position of second place in their division.  If the season ended on that day, they would be eliminated.

The man behind me in line noticed I was holding a baseball book.  This stranger spoke to me and asked, “Isn’t this season great?!”  Why would he assume that, based on nothing but geography and an interest in the sport, that I would implicitly cheer for the Seattle Mariners?  I nearly screamed at him, but opted for terse, though polite, conversation instead.  I paid for my book and left.

Still, many believe that sport fandom is mostly harmless.  Identifying with a team solely because of geography doesn’t harm anyone.  There’s nothing wrong with phrases like “we scored a touchdown” or “who is up in our half of the inning?”  These subtle linguistic nudges that your loyalties should fall along certain lines are completely harmless, right?  You are wrong.

How far does it go?

A friend enthusiastically rooted for the Seattle Sonics.  In 2008, the franchise moved to Oklahoma City; this shattered my friend.  He complained about this incessantly; for months, he talked about little else.  It’s a free country; if he chooses to align his identity inextricably with a professional sports team, that’s entirely his choice.  Personally, I don’t think identifying with a sports team to the point where you grumble for months is healthy, but hey, you do you.

He threatened to burn all his Seattle Sonics gear, capture it on video, and post it online; keep in mind, this was 2008.  He considered the Seattle Sonics’ departure such a colossal betrayal that he threatened to burn hundreds of dollars of his personal possessions in protest.  Now, let’s revisit the term ‘fan’, again derived from ‘fanatical’.  In any other context, if your friend suggested they would burn their personal possessions in protest…  Does this not sound irrational, or dare I say fanatical?  That said, this leads to you burning your possessions.  Again, you do you.

Let’s dissect the reason why the Seattle Sonics left Seattle.  The team wanted $220 million in public funding from Washington state to update KeyArena.  The Seattle Sonics played chicken and lost.  The team packed up and left.  Naturally, my friend supported passing a luxury tax to fund that $220 million.

This nugget of information does not surprise me.  What does surprise me is that this particular friend is a small-government conservative.  In fact, he’s a hard small-government conservative.

Why do we make exceptions for sports teams?

I have talked to small-government people along the entire spectrum.  I have talked to people in the ‘universal healthcare’ end of the spectrum, and I have talked to the ‘why do we even need to be taxed for services like police, firefighters, and road maintenance’ end of the spectrum.  My friend is about 80% along that spectrum.

Rationally, it’s simply a cost/benefit analysis.  No one opposes universal healthcare in principle; people oppose its cost.  I doubt that anyone would oppose granting every resident universal healthcare if it cost $1 in taxes each year.  Small-government supporters look at how much they pay in taxes each year, and they reason that, “I’m not getting the value for what I’m paying for“.  Though I doubt that many have actually evaluated how much it costs to run a police department.

Ironically, here’s a great example.  I pay an accountant several hundred dollars to prepare my taxes.  On one hand, that figure sounds inflated; I can think of many more fun ways to spend that money.  On the other hand, the average taxpayer spends 12-13 hours preparing their own taxes; mine would take considerably longer, but let’s use the 13 hours.  I take the sum from my accountant and divide it by 13.  I’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s far less than I currently make an hour.  Paying for an accountant may not literally save me money, but it saves me time and aggravation.

Independent of fiscal leaning, sports enthusiasts are willing to spend seemingly infinite tax dollars to nurture their teams.  Why?  When you assert, “no new taxes”, did you mentally include an exception for the local professional sports team?

Is it worth it?

Each voter needs to evaluate this when they cast their vote on the ballot initiative.  Again, it’s a free country.  First, you have the prerogative to cast your vote on each initiative as you’d like.  Second, you don’t need to tell me how you voted.  Third, you certainly don’t need to listen to me about how you cast your vote.  However, the fact that you’re still reading indicates that you’re at least curious.  Let’s ponder the cost/benefit analysis of a handful of projects:

• The Seattle police department is short-staffed.  They boosted recruiting by giving $50k hiring bonuses.  Well, that well has run dry, and they’re still short-staffed.
• They planned to shut down up to 21 schools in the Seattle area due to a $100 million budget shortfall.
• The Mariners and Seahawks each have their own stadium; they’re less than a mile apart.  The former’s stadium cost the taxpayers $390 million.  The latter’s stadium cost the taxpayers $300 million.  I’ll let you in on a little secret: football and baseball teams can play in one stadium; they both played in the Kingdome for decades.  The final insult?  Taxpayers paid for the Kingdome for fifteen years after it was demolished.

Cast your vote as you wish; you have that right.  However, the evidence suggests that we collectively value professional sports team geography over education or public safety.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I find more disgusting.  Is it the vanity of having your city attached to a professional sports team?  Or is it the hypocrisy of valuing that vanity over education or public safety?

Incidentally, nothing prevented my friend (or anyone) from continuing to follow the Seattle Sonics as they became the Oklahoma City Thunder; they just didn’t.