Is winning everything? (for an athlete)
I’m not much of a basketball fan – correction, I’m not a basketball fan at all – but the heavily-reported saga of Lebron James’ free agency has struck a bit of a chord with me. James is set to announce tomorrow whether he will stay with his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers – the only team he’s ever played for – or sign with another team in another city. As a non-fan, I don’t know all of the considerations. Cleveland was a playoff contender last season, so it’s difficult to simplify this as a choice between the losing home team and a winning team elsewhere. My understanding based on a conversation with a friend who does follow the sport is that, in part, James wants to play with certain other players but also that he would have greater playoff chances with another team. The fact that the particulars of the story are not a perfect fit doesn’t change the broad strokes: Do athletes owe their fans anything beyond their best effort while they play for their team?
I might know next to nothing about basketball, but I am a baseball fan. More specifically, I am a lifelong Orioles fan. I apologize up-front for the Orioles-centric take on this entire subject. Any fan of any perennially losing team in any sport will undoubtedly be able to relate even as they will have an entirely different set of stories. Since winning the 1983 World Series (I was 3), my team has had 7 winning seasons… and we are, in dramatic fashion, well on our way to our 19th losing season in that same time period – 13th straight. For me, the starkest reminder that winning teams attract winners came the off-season before last when the Yankees signed free-agent All-Star first-baseman, Mark Teixeira. Teixeira, a Maryland native who grew up following the Orioles, was reportedly offered a competitive contract by his hometown team, and turned it down to sign with a hated divisional rival all because he wanted to play for a winner – a less likely scenario in Baltimore to say the least.
To some extent, the considerations involved can be broadened to any professional field. Certainly, sports are not the only realm in which there is often a complex relationship between loyalty and ambition; staying local and re-locating for a new opportunity. But this becomes even more complicated in the field of athletics. For one thing, there are fans involved; fans that become invested, fans that (for the most part) will keep their allegiance with the team they support rather than having their team allegiance follow the player they have supported. They should at least be included in the equation.
For another, more than in most fields, athletes are absolute competitors. They are accustomed only to quantifiable definitions of success: contracts, stats, wins and losses. Sometimes it all falls into place, and a player (Derek Jeter, for instance) can play for one team and still have the money, the fame, and the rings to show for it. More often, a future superstar is drafted by a Kansas City, a Pittsburgh… a Baltimore, and their choice is either to wait it out until free agency allows them to move on, or content themselves with being an over-performing local fan favorite rarely mentioned on ESPN. Sure, there are good players who choose to re-sign with bad teams. But even then, the stated reason is usually “I believe the team is committed to winning,” and never “win or lose, this is my team. I’ll do my best to help us win, but whatever happens, I’m proud to play for this team in this city and in front of these fans.”
It’s easy to blame free agency for the exodus of good players from bad teams (and I do), but that blame rightly and somewhat disturbingly acknowledges that few players – given a choice – would under any circumstance opt to play for a losing team with few prospects of becoming a winning team. Also, there is a pretty strong (but not absolute) correlation between winning teams and money in the bank for contracts, so it’s often hard to distinguish between a player leaving a losing team based on desire to win versus a player leaving a losing team for a bigger contract.
So, while I’m no fan of free agency and while I would support some kind of baseball revenue sharing and/or salary cap (sorry Mark, I guess I’m something of a sports socialist), I’m not focused on either of those at the moment. Right now, I’m just interested in whether the average athlete would consider winning merely important, or whether they would consider it a necessary outcome for career satisfaction.
It’s not a crazy notion that athletes would hold other, less tangible, measurements for career success: just look at the 2007 Hall of Fame inductees – Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. Each played 20 or more years with their respective teams and between the two of them they had three World Series appearances and one World Series ring. Out of 41 combined seasons. What’s more, between the two of them, they enjoyed only 17 winning seasons out of those 41. Or, consider this description from The Baltimore Sun of B.J. Surhoff’s emotional state after being traded from a plummeting Baltimore team to the first-place Atlanta Braves in 2000:
He was an emotional wreck before he sat down for the news conference, in tears long before anyone even asked a question. In tears even though he was going from a losing team heading nowhere to a likely division winner possibly headed for the World Series. In tears even though he was escaping a franchise in turmoil for the game’s reigning model of stability and success. In tears because, as hard as it might be for anyone outside the game’s ropes to believe, sometimes there are more important things to a player.
That press conference did as much to cement Surhoff’s place as a Baltimore fan-favorite as had his play on the field. Of course, there’s a counter-argument to be made. Plenty of people enjoy sports precisely because it is one place where records speak for themselves. Sentimentality about loyal play for a losing team is something akin to the oft-maligned “let’s give a trophy to all the kids who played!” phenomenon. Sports, unlike every other part of life in which abstractions cloud the objective, should be clear-cut, made up of winners and losers – and there is no dignity in losing. So goes the argument. I don’t want to get too far out on a sports-as-a-metaphor-for-political-economy argument – there’s been enough of that going around with the World Cup – but for some fans of the game, the mere suggestion that winning really isn’t everything is one short-stop from declaring oneself a Commie and setting out to ruin the entire intent of a given sport.
I don’t know. For me it’s a no-brainer. Players who stick it out and play with either their home team or the team that drafted them regardless of the record are more worthy of respect than players who bolt for greener pastures, no matter how stellar their careers, or even how much character they display off-the-field. I’m always stunned by the level of understanding and rationality fans apply to players. Sure, Teixeira is loudly booed when the Yankees come to Camden Yards, but it’s also common for fans and especially sportswriters to defend his decision: “Can you blame him? Who wouldn’t want to sign a huge contract and play in the World Series almost annually?” This kind of objectivity has no place in my view of team sports; I have no difficulty blaming him, just as I would fully consider it legitimate for Royals fans to hold a special contempt for Johnny Damon, or old Expos fans to feel that way about… well, too many to list. Maybe that’s just easier for me – a non-athlete, and not a particularly competitive person – to believe without complication.
I don’t have even a passing personal interest in where Lebron James plays next season. I’ve never seen him play the game of basketball and regardless of his announcement tomorrow, I feel safe in assuming I never will. Still, I’m really rooting for the fans of Cleveland in James’ decision, hoping that together, they will chalk up a victory for advocates of professional athletes discarding objectivity and putting either their hometown team or their original team (and in this case both) first.
I can’t find the story right now, but what I have read is that Lebron is not just looking for money or a winning team, but also an owner(ship group) with whom to be in business. It’s linking the Lebron brand with a competent business man who will help him get the most out of his brand.
Not sure how true it is, but it does put an interesting spin on things. If it shows a trend, then perhaps losing teams can turn things around by having strong ownership (as a lifelong Seattle Seahawks fan, I can see some merit in this).
*I should note, I don’t know that this Lebron hypothesis is true, but it seemed plausible and interesting.Report
@Jonathan, Interesting, if true. Still… expansion of the Lebron brand is just sort of a roundabout way to the “more money” argument. I doubt it will comfort the fans in Cleveland if he leaves in order to expand his brand. And, best of luck with the Seahawks.Report
I don’t think “objectivity” is the right word here. Objectivity will take in all the pertinent facts making such a decision. He could subjectively make the decision because he loves the feeling of the potential riches elsewhere, or the lust at the possibility of New York groupies.Report
@Mike Farmer, Maybe it’s just a matter of semantics. I suppose “quantifiable” works as well as “objective.” I just meant that, generally speaking, more money is objectively better than less, and wins are objectively better than losses. But the appreciation of a fan base that is starved for love is not objectively – or quantifiably – superior to playing for another team.Report
@Lisa Kramer,
More money is not necessarily objectively better — it depends on his value system and what he objectively establishes as priorities. If he goes by emotion, it’s a crap shoot regarding making the best decision. I’m sure he has many emotions tugging at him, but in order to make the best decision he needs to use reason to objectively weigh all the options against what’s most important to him. Money is a small part when you’re talking about tens of milions, and hundreds over a career, but he can establish this best through looking at it objectively and reasonably.Report
@Mike Farmer, I would love to know, Mike, if New York groupies are objectively or subjectively better than Cleveland groupies.
If such a study were to exist, who would do the peer review? Gene Simmons? Magic Johnson?Report
@Jonathan,
I’ve applied as a field agent to perform the testing procedure.Report
I enjoyed this, Lisa. Hopefully I’ll have time tonight for a complete response, but for now I’ll just say that I fully agree, although I think that the actions of the fans themselves play a significant and often parallel role in all of this.Report
@Mark Thompson, Thanks Mark. Look forward to reading the complete response.Report
@Lisa Kramer, One other thing. Since I was inaccessible when you joined and only sporadically accessible since then, let me be the very last to say “Welcome! Excited to have you on board!”
Seriously, though – you’ve got a touch and a style that we’ve desperately needed around here.Report
I would agree that is nice to see great players show some loyalty to their hometown or, not it lebron’s situation, a team that gave them a chance when others didn’t. On the other hand i think it is great that great players can escape terrible teams and/or poorly run franchises instead of being stuck there. It does feel good to see players emotionally invested in their teams given how much ( to much) regular citizens invest in their teams.Report
@gregiank, I guess this makes me a bad person, but I think I’m a little bit happy when a player who bolts a losing team for a winning team never finds success with the new team. It’s especially satisfying when the abandoned team improves without them. Sweet justice.Report
@Lisa Kramer, On the other hand, there’s a countervailing responsibility on the part of ownership too–as a fan of the Redskins under Dan Schneider, bad ownership deserves condemnation just as much as any player.Report
I can see both sides to this.
I give a lot of respect to players like John Stockton, who stayed with the Jazz in spite of the fact that he probably could have made twice as much as he was in Utah if he had gone to another team. As a Laker fan, I abhorred having Karl Malone on my team.
On the other hand, there are contemptible owners/managers/coaches in all sports, and you could not pay me enough (or show me enough fan appreciation) to work for some organizations and/or play for some managers/coaches. Clippers fans are some of the most dedicated fans in the basketball world, but their organization is terrible.
I would never blame anyone for leaving a bad org. Or even an arguably decent organization if they didn’t fit in; if you’re asked to play a style of game that you’re not comfortable with because the star player likes it, or the coach prefers it, you’re well within your druthers to pack up your bags and go elsewhere.
I do agree that people probably don’t consider the fans enough, but the fans aren’t everything.Report
Enjoyed the post. I would add one other factor that makes a difference for me. A great player in baseball can be great even if he is on a team full of losers. You may suffer on RBI’s if you’re a hitter or wins/saves if you’re a pitcher, but you will still have numbers that speak for themselves: strike outs, ERA, home runs, batting average, etc.
So I am more sympathetic to football and basketball players that want to play for better teams. Football players in particular. It not only allows them to Get The Ring, but it also allows them to play up to their potential. A good offensive line gives you time to pass, for instance. Good defensive tackles spreads the offensive line out so that you can’t be double-teamed. And so on. The same applies to basketball where if you’re the only threat you can be neutralized.
You can neutralize a baseball hitter through intentional walking, but that’s about it and that’s limited in application.Report
@Trumwill,
Not to mention the fact that if you’re a quarterback, a good offensive line can guarantee that you can enjoy your retirement 10 years down the line instead of sitting in a wheelchair drooling from brain damage.Report