Some kids grew up wanting to be Michael Jordan. Some wanted to be Wayne Gretzky.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be Frank Costanza.
As I got older, my fascination with cynical television characters — Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm is my favourite — grew even deeper.
Which takes us back to the important holiday of Festivus. In case you didn’t watch Seinfeld — the greatest sitcom of all time — you might be a little confused by the concept, so here’s the scoop.
Costanza, the character on the show played by Jerry Stiller, created his own fictional holiday called Festivus because he couldn’t stand the commercial and religious aspects of Christmas.
“Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son,” Costanza said. “I reached for the last one they had — but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way!”
Instead of a tree, he decided to put up a pole in his house because it required no decoration and tinsel was too distracting. And thus, a new holiday was born.
“A Festivus for the rest of us!”
The tradition begins — celebrated on a yearly basis on Dec. 23 — with the airing of grievances.
“At Festivus dinner, you gather your family around, and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year!”
Costanza was onto something. I wouldn’t mind doing this once a week.
In last year’s edition, we took issue with the wave (it’s still terrible), mid-game interviews with coaches, and Justin Bieber. So I polled a group of trusted colleagues to come up with our list for 2015.
Here is the third annual edition of the Sportsnet airing of grievances:
Complaining about celebrations: There are too many people — whether it’s players, fans or media members — who get on their high horses and start rambling on about the integrity of the game any time a player has some sort of controversial celebration. It’s amazing that any celebration would be considered controversial at all. Blue Jays fans saw it up close this year when Jose Bautista flipped his bat after a huge home run to essentially win the ALDS and some of the post-game reaction was absolutely absurd. Professional sports are supposed to be entertaining. These games are emotional. It’s completely normal to get worked up for a big moment and let out some fire or trash talk as a result. Stop complaining about celebrations. Stop writing letters about Cam Newton. Pro athletes should be allowed to have some fun and talk some trash. There are much more important things to get worked up about.
Hockey player interviews: Is there some sort of robot training course that prevents hockey players from ever saying anything of substance other than “pucks in deep” or “give it 100 per cent”? It’s difficult to listen to. The NHL could use some personality. I’ve grown to respect players such as P.K. Subban because they don’t just spit out clichés that offer nothing. Maybe hockey culture is the problem, but this has to go. If all players are going to give you this, you might as well stop interviewing them between periods.
The random jersey-wearers: Everyone has seen this — either on TV or live at a stadium or an arena. I’ll give you an example. You’re watching a Blue Jays-Red Sox game and some nitwit shows up wearing a Yankees jersey or a Dallas Cowboys jersey. OK, we get it. You like sports. But what the heck are you doing? It’s not funny or clever; it just comes off as strange. In my books, it’s one of the ultimate sports party fouls — along with wearing a jersey with your own name on the back. What is the deal with that? You’re not on the team.
Post-trade videos with crying children: My colleague Derek Wright suggested this grievance and it was an excellent choice. Nowadays we have become such a “look-at-me society” that parents are willing to profit off their own kids’ sadness. You’ve seen the videos. A player gets traded from their kids’ favourite team, the parents break the news to their kids, and they start crying uncontrollably (see below for an example). And somehow it’s all perfectly caught on video. This is supposed to be cute? Really? Exploiting your own children just for a couple of retweets? Parents, be better than this.
The NFL’s catch rule: Only in the NFL, where the rulebook is so convoluted that the refs hardly understand the depths of it, could something as a basic as a catch become so complicated. Well, it has definitely come to this point and as a result the players, the refs, and the people watching on TV can’t seem to figure out what constitutes a catch anymore. Hell, the Dallas Cowboys lost a playoff game as a result of this. And it’s not like I enjoy defending the Cowboys but this has come too far. NFL, figure this out. Simplify your rulebook. Clarify what a catch is and stick to it. It shouldn’t be this complex.
People who only read the headline: Here’s a little secret: Most of the time, writers don’t come up with their own headlines. That’s typically the job of someone else. So when you’re about to send that angry tweet or crazed email, remember that. We see this way too often with our online commenters or our mentions on Twitter. Sometimes there’s a miscommunication somewhere but it shouldn’t be such a novel concept to actually read an article or watch a video before sounding off about a potentially-misleading headline. It’s not so difficult.
Mid-game selfies: I mentioned the look-at-me society, right? My goodness. Do people go to sporting events to actually watch or to just tell your friends or Instagram followers that you went? At least someone agrees with me…
People, they’re the worst.
The “no-hitter jinx” crowd: I know sports fans can be paranoid and neurotic, but the people who get worked up about “jinxing a no-hitter” need to chill out. We work in sports media. The people who run our social media accounts or their own personal accounts or work on television/radio would be shortchanging their audience if they don’t inform readers/viewers when a no-hitter is going on. If we had as much power as you insist when we’re “jinxing” a no-hitter, we would probably put it to much better use. Or at least I think we would. Enough of this nonsense.
Other suggestions:
- The term “compete level”: Aren’t all athletes supposed to provide effort? Who dictates this so-called level anyway?
- Blaming coaches/managers for everything: Too easy and often misguided. Most of the time, we don’t even know what the players are coached to do in certain situations and yet we always tend to blame the coaches for bad losses or poor seasons. It shouldn’t always be the answer.
- Fans complaining about conspiracies: I mentioned neurotic tendencies above. Sports fans can sound like crazy people sometimes. Remember all the Toronto fans who thought MLB was out to get them — with the start times, umpiring, closing the roof — to prevent a Canadian team from making the World Series. See how silly that sounds in hindsight?
- Mike Carey: What’s the point of having a replay/officiating expert in the broadcast booth if he gets every call wrong?
However, I was most amused by a suggestion from an unnamed colleague, who was upset the MLB non-tender deadline got moved from 5 p.m. to midnight. I’m sure this applies to very few people reading this article but it was too funny not to mention.
Well, that’s all for this year. If this wasn’t a sports website, I would grumble about Facebook etiquette but I’ll keep it clean this year.
If you have any sports grievances of your own, send me a note on Twitter at @realjeffsimmons or send a tweet to the @Sportsnet account with the hashtag #SNFestivus. I’d love to hear them.
