For a small town we have a splendid team, the Falcons. I myself am not much of a sports fan but my wife understands the game and has been known to assure players that “they can do it” from her couch.
But that is alright. We are solid fans, nevertheless. The Falcons are “our” team. When our team is playing we are tuned in. When the team is doing well we are exstatic, especially when Crawfit does his his famous two three pointers in a row. Pendergrast and Voykovitch on the attack, handing the ball to each other in such quick succession that just watching makes you dizzy. And then the groan when the ball hits the rim and the other team gets the rebound. Ah, the joys and the agonies of living with your team. Right or wrong, it is your team. Not just Crawfit and Pendergrast and Voykovitch but Jared Browne as well, and Ishmael N’Bakuba, this other great talent the commentators talk about a lot. Those men, and a few others not named here are our team, “a number of persons associated in some joint action”, as the dictionary defines the term. Those men as a group were the ones we rooted for.
But the season ended and Browne retired. He was the oldest. Crawfit was traded. Voykovitch went to Miami. Pendergrast ended up in Oklahoma. They were obviously no longer “associated in some joint action .” I forgot what happened to N’Bakuba. Does not matter, though. One man can hardly be called a team. In other words, our team had ceased to exist.
We had never considered that “our team” and “Falcons” were not identical, not one and the same thing. But actually the Falcons are a separate, a different “team,” an abstract corporate entity, a club called Falcons. The Club is a business entity, a corporation. It never shoots anything, let alone baskets. It may shoot itself in the foot by trading the wrong player. I cannot get myself to root for an abstraction. Some will now accuse me of lacking this imponderable thing, the team spirit. But then I never rooted for the abstract entity called Falcons. I rooted for the team of players I admired. And that team is gone, dissolved. And with it goes my team spirit.
It seems, though, that I was taking trivial things too seriously. Because the Falcons club is still alive. Like a damaged lizard that grows a new tail the Club is growing a new team. They are working on it. To give up on them now would be untimely. And I was just unteamely uprooted.