Please indulge me a sports moment…
When does a streak stop being about the dedication and start becoming just about the streak? How does one manage to balance the desire to help your team win with being a slave to the numbers. When should a streak end? How should a streak end? Well Bret Favre is showing us the down side of starting consecutive games, when a streak takes on a life of its own and ends up starting to effect his legacy.
This is not about Favre retiring and un-retiring so many times that we lose count. This is not about the controversy related to cell phone pictures or getting back at the Packers or using the NY Jets or any such folly. This isn’t about him or his career jumping the shark. This is about when a player needs to see that he is no longer helping the team he plays for and moves on with the rest of his life.
Unfortunately we are a sports fan nation that is over indulgent of streaks. A baseball player hits in 10 or 15 straight games and DiMaggio’s 56 game streak is brought up. A player hits 10 home runs in the first month of the season and we are inundated with “on a pace to break Maris/Bonds” claims for weeks on end. We honor streaks that can “never” be broken like Gehrig’s until Ripken comes along and does break it. Then his becomes a “never be broken” too.
I can’t help but think that SOME of Ripken’s legacy was affected by being enslaved by the streak. Yes, it is honorable to want to be in their every single game but what to do when your performance is no longer up to the accepted standards and yet you are enslaved to the streak. This is what the Yankees and Derek Jeter are going to go through this winter as he looks at a new contract. Although there is not a “streak” per se to be enslaved to, the fact that he has been with one club for so many years, going against the grain of free agency and the norm in baseball now a days and that this contract is said to represent not only expected performance but a reward for what he has done for the team, bring about the same sort of feelings.
Bret Favre is on the down side of his career and has been for a while. Because his week to week appearance is so tied to the streak, it has lost the meaning of what he can mean to the team’s chance of winning. We just spent the past week wondering if Bret was going to be able to keep his streak alive. If you are a Viking fan, you are probable more interested in can the team win this week, not can the streak win this week.
I guess the real question will be “when will this stop being about Bret, or the streak, and start being about the team again?”
Thanks for the indulgence…
3 comments:
agreed---bret has transcended the ultimate team sport and it's all about him now. too bad---just like the dallas cowboys losing their chance to be the first to host a super bowl on their own turf because jerry jones's personality usurps the work the team needs to do. as for jeter, i hope he opts for free agency, takes his record of most hits by a yankee, and goes to fenway........ :-)
I think perhaps there is more chance of 12" of snow in Las Cruces on July 4th then DJ appearing in a Red Sox uniform any time in our immediate future...
It stopped being about the team, two years ago with the Jets, when he didn't tell the trainers he was hurt and lost most of the last few games of the season, expressly by playing badly when he should have been out, but stayed in for the streak.
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