Sometimes the cheaters win. Let that sink in for a moment. Most of us over age 5 already know this. In fact, we know that in some areas of life the cheaters nearly always win. Look around you. Forget the big stuff, like stolen elections and corporate scandals. Look at your life and the people you know. Look at the winners, the ones who always seem to get what they want. Do they play entirely fair? No, of course they don't. But it's still not much fun to get reminders thrown at us from the sports world that, yup, all too often, the cheaters win.
This past Sunday, within the game, the Seattle Seahawks lost the Super Bowl to the New England Patriots (who are unholy and disgusting and do not deserve any of the love my fellow Red Sox fans give them) because of the single dumbest play call in the history of the NFL. That the Patriots were there at all, though, may, just might, be due to massive, ridiculous cheating in the playoff game that got them there. They certainly have a documented history of massive, ridiculous cheating. As an Eagles fan, I just try not to think too hard about the implications (What if they cheated in our Super Bowl? What if? What it? What if?), because this isn't the Olympics, which will straight up take away and re-assign medals ten years down the line if someone is found to have cheated (Please, NFL, think about it? Signed, St. Louis Rams, Carolina Panthers, Philadelphia Eagles, Seattle Seahawks, and Their Fans).
Elementary school teachers in (at minimum) Indianapolis and Seattle, you have an example that will be viscerally effective for years to come of why cheating is bad and wrong and hurtful and should be punished. Elementary school teachers in New England, well, good luck.
Now, I know (much though I might like to believe otherwise) that the Patriots are not some sort of anomaly on the football landscape. I've been watching sports for the better part of 35 years, the last 20 or so of those in the more or less certain knowledge that in every game I watch, at least someone on each side is cheating, somehow. That's just the reality of any endeavor involving human beings. But. But. Maybe I'm wrong to view it this way, but to me it just feels different when you have individuals here and there getting tempted and breaking the rules versus an organization deliberately, systematically setting out and planning to break or at least subvert the rules.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given what I teach, my worldview is pretty medieval. I believe wholeheartedly in The Wheel of Fortune--you're up sometimes, but inevitably you'll go down again, and then inevitably you'll be up again, and then inevitably you will yet again be down, and round and round it goes. No one gets to stop The Wheel. No one. Teams like the Yankees and Patriots and Soviet pairs skaters find ways--very often not above-board--to stop The Wheel, and that's why a lot of people don't like them--it's nothing so modern and petty as "jealousy" but something much older and more primal.
One of the (maybe stupid) things that's comforting to me about sports is how, often in very strange ways and at long distances of time, if you pay close enough attention, Fortune's Wheel completes a turn and you get to see scales balance (another ancient and very useful metaphor). In 1977 and 1978, the Phillies lost back-to-back National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 2008 and 2009, the Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in back-to-back National League Championship Series. In 1984, Canada's Brian Orser won the Olympic silver medal behind the USA's Scott Hamilton. In 1988, Orser very narrowly lost the men's Olympic figure skating gold medal to the USA's Brian Boitano--silver again. Of course as an American skating fan I'm still delighted about both of these outcomes, but Orser has always seemed like a good guy, so I was just as delighted for his sake in 2010 when his student Kim Yuna won the ladies' Olympic gold medal and again in 2014 when his student Yuzuru Hanyu won the men's title. Kim should have had another gold in 2014 as well, but I'll rant further about official cheating in figure skating in Part III.
And sometimes it doesn't even take decades. In 2003, the Red Sox lost a soul-crushing American League Championship Series to the Damn Yankees on a walk-off homerun in Game 7. The next week, the Yankees lost the resulting World Series. Balance. The next year, the Red Sox came back from an 0-3 ALCS deficit to crush the Yankees' souls (presuming they have any) in a Game 7. Balance. In that same beautiful, magical 2004, the St. Louis Cardinals, who had won I think 104 games in the regular season, basically failed to show up for the World Series, which the Sox swept for their first Commissioner's Trophy in 86 years. Two years later, the Cardinals got a World Series of their own. Balance. There is of course a multi-decade thing happening here with the Red Sox and Cardinals, because that is how sports travels around and around on Fortune's Wheel. During those 86 years in the wilderness, the Red Sox lost two World Series to the Cardinals, 1946 and 1967. They've now won two against the Cardinals, 2004 and 2013. Balance.
I like it when the sports scales balance. The Yankees' title drought of nine whole years (i.e. an eyeblink to every normal fan base that understands The Wheel) in the 2000s was balm to my soul. The Phillies' 2008 World Series victory closed a hole in me that I didn't realize until that moment had been open and bleeding since their World Series loss in 1993. If you figure, as I do that, in addition to 2008 balancing 1993, 1980 balances 1950, then you'll agree with me that some day in this universe, three more Phils' World Series victories are coming to balance 1915, 1983, and (oh, my heart) 2009. Just last month, the Dallas Cowboys (motto: the Yankees of the NFL) were eliminated from the playoffs on a controversial call precisely one week after they'd eliminated the Detroit Lions on a controversial call. The scales, they balance, and it is oh so sweet when they balance in favor of the good guys.
The Scales of Sports also, sometimes, seem to have a moral element. The White Sox didn't win a World Series for forever and a day, and that was a just punishment for the Black Sox Scandal (coming in Part II). I always took the whole "Giants can't quite get there to win a World Series" situation as the baseball gods' punishment for letting the whole Barry Bonds situation happen. But then the last five years happened, and I wonder. Over the last few years in football, I took comfort in the knowledge that the Patriots hadn't won a Super Bowl since they got caught cheating with the cameras, but then Sunday happened (possibly as a reward for . . . more cheating?), and I really wonder. So I am moved to reflect on my watershed "The scales don't always balance, dammit. The cheaters often win, and nobody does anything about it, and oh, why do I care?" moments with all the sports I love that, every now and again, love me back.
Part II will discuss how the Black Sox are not quite as anomalous as we make them out to be.
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