Month: October 2025

Though I am a sports fanatic, I rarely write about my fandom obsessions. There is so much blather surrounding every nuance of coaching maneuvers, player fails, nonsensical trades, tearful retirements, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, that the last thing anyone needs is another pretend pundit. I have no intention of adding to the avalanche of inanity.

I cannot, however, resist revisiting the worst sports weekend of my life. It started Thursday night when my beloved Phillies once again bowed out early in the baseball playoffs, this time in horrendously bizarre fashion. I have to face that their window of opportunity to win it all with these players has probably closed.

While that debacle was unfolding, the Eagles were cooking up their own catastrophe, getting blown out by a hated Divisional rival. Not only was this embarrassing, it was incomprehensible for a team that seemed destined to make a strong bid to repeat last year’s triumphs. The Super Bowl hangover is in full bloom. 

I was mercifully given a day of rest on Friday, only to face an apocalyptic Saturday of college football. The day started with the team I have rooted for the longest, Penn State, going down to its third straight ignominious defeat to a second rate Big 10 opponent, one it was picked to beat by more than 20 points. Happy Valley it is not.

The evening ended with watching my alma mater, South Carolina, throw away its once promising season and devolve into mediocrity once again. Not only was the loss to LSU dispiriting, but it highlighted how deluded we all were in thinking that the Gamecocks could compete in the SEC. It’s just another year where the possibility of beating Clemson is all we have to look forward to.

On lesser notes, the Flyers started their NHL season with two losses. The Sixers got blown out in a pre-season game, prefiguring the many blowouts to come. And to top it all off, I lost my fantasy football matchup when my players accumulated 50 points less than the week before. Frankly, it felt like piling on.

As I sat in stunned silence Monday morning, looking back at the devastation, the true nature of sports fandom dawned on me. Sports apologists tell us that sport can provide life lessons in teamwork, discipline, resilience and leadership. But the truth of the matter is that what it provides more than anything else is harsh instruction in the art of losing.

Let’s discard the notion that losing is somehow ennobling or loveable. It’s not. It is just depressing. It hangs on you like a shroud, blotting out all goodness in the world. (OK, that’s hyperbolic, but it’s been a tough week).

Sports fans are like the pledges in Omega Theta Pi in “Animal House”. We bend over, get whacked in the butt and then scream at the top of our lungs, “Thank you sir. May I have another?” And the sports world is never reticent in providing that whack with all the glee that a Douglas Niedermeyer could muster. 

Let’s do the math. Over my 43 years in Philadelphia I have endured 166 professional seasons. Overall, these teams have won 3 championships; the Phillies in 2008, the Eagles in 2018 and 2025. Ten other Philadelphia teams have at least competed in the finals during that same time period. Penn State and South Carolina combined have played 86 seasons since 1983, with 2 PSU championships and another year where they were robbed. South Carolina has never been close. That means that my teams got a whiff of glory in only .063% of those seasons, and won it .016% of the time. Bleak indeed.

You could say that the continuing dedication to my teams despite this abysmal record is a sign of the resiliency that sport is supposed to engender. Then again, ramming your head into a brick wall again, and again, and again, and again could also be a sign of resilience. Let’s face it, there is a thin line between resiliency and stupidity. 

For all of that, hope is eternal. The NFL season is still young. The Eagles could rebound and find the magic once again. Maybe the young Flyers will mature quickly and shock the hockey world. If Embiid’s knees can regrow cartilage and allow him to play at least ⅔ of the regular season games and be healthy for the playoffs, who knows. In other words, it’s time to assume the position. “Thank you Sir. May I have another?” 

I confess that up until his assassination Charlie Kirk had barely penetrated my consciousness. There are enough elected officials with, to my mind, extremist right-wing views to keep me up at night without focusing on a campus agitator. I was not aware that he was a darling of Republican establishment figures and Christian evangelicals.

Perhaps that was a gap in my understanding of modern trends that should not have been there. The way he has been feted since his death I get the sense that many saw him as the future of the MAGA movement. Whether that’s true, or not, I cannot say.

What I do know is that the response to his assassination is problematic, to say the least. His supporters have used his death to urge repression of unidentified left-wing groups, even though there is no inkling that any prompted his shooting, and, in fact, the evidence says otherwise. In doing so they act as if all political violence comes from the left.  

For example, JD Vance stated “[W]e have to make sure that the killer is brought to justice… And importantly, we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years and, I believe, is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”

Stephen Miller said that the administration is going to “channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these [left-wing] terrorist networks… It is a vast domestic terror movement, and with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.” 

The President’s recent speech to the military top brass stating that they will have a role to defend the United States from the “enemy within”, citing several cities with Democratic led governments, confirms that this is not just idle rhetoric. Exactly how the military would discern between the left-leaning “terrorist networks” and those who peacefully oppose administration policies was left unsaid. I doubt if that was accidental.

Contrast these comments with the right-wing silence that followed the political assassination of Minnesota Democratic Representative Melssia Hortman and her husband. I could not find any remarks by either Vance or Miller in reaction to those murders. Vance may have sent out “thoughts and prayers”, but if so, they were not worthy of note. More importantly, there was no outpouring of outrage or a pledge to take action to stop such killings in the future. Had there been, we might have averted the Kirk tragedy.

Looking at the Kirk response, the Hortman silence appears to be because the killer was of the right, and the victims of the left. There was no recognition that the hyperbole coming from that side of the aisle helped inflame the atmosphere which led to those murders, let alone a commitment to tone down that rhetoric, or root our right-wing violence. Instead, on September 11, the Department of Justice removed from its website a report concluding that right-wing domestic terrorism was much more prevalent than left-wing or Muslim inspired terrorism, as if the Hortman killing was not a concern.  

If you do not condemn all assassinations, you are in favor of assassination as a political tool, so long as those being killed don’t share your political views. If you pledge to wipe out only one perceived violent faction while leaving another in place, you are condoning violent attacks against any who may share some of that faction’s views. It’s that simple.

Yet, it’s not simple at all. Violence breeds violence. It cannot be contained. It cannot be pointed in only one direction. It cannot be employed to pick and choose its victims. Once violence is unleashed it grows exponentially. Aunty thought she could contain aggression within the Thunderdome, but that was unwarranted hubris.

Political violence, whether sanctioned or not, is unlikely to target those preaching or practicing violence. When no line is drawn between those who legally oppose administration policies and those who use force to overturn those policies, it is more likely the former that will be in the line of fire. There was nothing radical about Melissa Hortman. Yet, it is the Hortman’s of the world that will be killed.

I do not believe that Miller and Vance care, let alone the President. They know that some of the violence will be directed to their allies, such as with the recent ICE shooting in Texas. To some extent they even welcome it. In their cynicism, such violence will only give them more of a reason to broadly target their “enemies”.

If we as a country opt to ignore the truism that violence breeds violence, we will have its truth shoved down our throats. No one can say how this will play out, who will suffer or what the collateral damage will be. However, it will not be pretty. Violence never is. The ballet of John Wick is an entertaining fantasy that defies reality.

Those who condone violence think that it will enhance their power. They are wrong. As Hannah Arndt recognized, power arises when people act in concert. It is grounded in consent. Violence becomes a tool only when real power has broken down. It is a sign of weakness, not strength. 

Either we take steps to reduce partisan violence across the board, or we will wallow in it. If we see violence as an acceptable political weapon, it will consume us. If anyone thinks that the violence can be surgical, they are living in Lala Land.

I wish I could see a way out. I don’t. The train is hurtling down the tracks, and no one is even considering application of the brakes. Those who think they are driving that train are fooling themselves. It will leave the rails, and no one can control the devastation it will leave in its wake. I know that’s grim, but it’s how I see it. I hope that I’m wrong.