a.k.a. V.J.

A week or so ago, I was following a baseball game that my favorite team, the Baltimore Orioles, were playing in and a thought struck me: This year’s Orioles squad is simply a lot of fun. They are a young team, loaded with talent, and they have a knack for come-from-behind victories. This team, I told myself, was enjoyable to watch, even when they lose.

That observation immediately led me to recall a water-cooler* conversation I had with some football-loving coworkers about the Bills’ up and down season in the NFL. I said something to the effect of, “The Bills are excruciating to watch, even when they win.”

The juxtaposition of those two thoughts created a momentary identity crisis and some soul searching. There are a number of teams in various sports that I consider myself a fan of, but for the past 35 years or so the Bills have been, by far, the team I cared the most about. Had that changed? The short answer is, “It’s complicated.” The long answer is hashed out in the following paragraphs.

My life as a sports fan started with baseball. In my childhood, no other sport really even registered with me. Until I reached junior high school, I only rarely watched NFL games. I was aware of the big boxers of the era, especially Ali, and watched fights, but I wasn’t a boxing fan per se. Basketball and hockey weren’t on my radar, nor were college sports of any variety. I followed Major League Baseball. Why? Because my father did. He grew up in Maryland and Virginia, so the Orioles were his team. That meant they became my team. (Life was simpler back then.)

The 1979 World Series was the first sporting event I remember being really emotionally invested in and when the Orioles lost to the Pirates, it was my first sports heartbreak (of many more to come). The Orioles also gave me my first taste of I team I really cared about winning a championship, when they won the World Series in 1983. I’ve only gotten to experience that one other time since, when the 2003 Syracuse Orange basketball team won the National Championship. Beyond those two bright spots, my life as a sports fan has been bleak. And that brings me to the Bills….

As a child, I always vaguely identified as a Bills fan, simply because Buffalo was the nearest city to me with an NFL team, but it was a pretty shallow allegiance. I didn’t really start paying attention to the NFL until I was in junior high school, and I didn’t follow it regularly until I was in college. My college years corresponded with the period when Jim Kelly arrived in Buffalo and the team started to get good after a long fallow period.

The Bills started appearing in — and losing — Super Bowls right at the point when I graduated from college and was trying to figure out adulthood. I was in a job I hated, I lacked direction, and the country was in a recession. The Bills of that era were my desperately needed escapist entertainment. Sure, it always ended tragically, but the regular seasons and playoff runs were fun. That was the point when I started to see my sports fandom as primarily centered on the Bills and the NFL generally. Any other sports allegiances were secondary and casual. That has remained the status quo for over three decades.

The past two years, the Orioles’ ascendency has given me reason to reassess that status quo. I’ve been watching MLB with regularity for the first time in decades and, my specific rooting interests aside, I think I simply enjoy baseball as a game more than I enjoy what the NFL has morphed into in recent years. So, it’s really less a question of my affinity for the Orioles vs. my affinity for the Bills, but more fundamentally about baseball vs. football. At this stage in my life, baseball is a fun diversion, while a Sunday spent watching the 2020s version of pro football often leaves me feeling a little empty and depressed, regardless of the teams involved. (I have some thoughts on why the latter is the case, but that’s a whole other post.)

All that said, if I had to choose between the Orioles winning the World Series this year and the Bills winning the Super Bowl, I would of course want the Super Bowl win. The former would make me smile; the latter would allow me to die in peace.

*We weren’t actually standing at a water cooler, but the exchange had the vibe of a proverbial water-cooler conversation.