Sean Taylor, 1983-2007

People who aren’t sports fans don’t get it about what sports can do to enhance community.  They scoff at us for watching games, make cynical comments about athletes and team management, oppose any public financial support for arenas and stadiums.  They aren’t always wrong in their criticisms, but there is a lot that they are missing.

Me, I had season tickets for a decade to our city’s pro football team, the Washington Redskins (no, I don’t like the name, either, but let’s save that for another day).  I gave them up this year, in part because of the major hassle getting to and from their suburban stadium.  And I have season tickets to Georgetown Hoyas basketball, where the home games are just a short walk from my office.  There’s actually quite a smart growth story in the difference between the two locations; the downtown arena has been wonderful for DC’s revitalization, and draws 80% of its fans from mass transit.

One of my cycling friends, Diane, was once startled to learn all this about me:  “But you’re not the type!”  Oh? 

Being a fan gives me something in common with people I’d otherwise never know.  Go to a football game sometime and you won’t find yourself surrounded by public interest lawyers.  It’s a working class fan base for the most part, a mix of urban African-Americans and whites whose roots are in nearby rural Virginia and Maryland.  And a smattering of people like me, of course.  It’s a similar crowd in some ways to what I see when I show up for jury duty, or have one of those hellish days at the DMV when I need to bring some sort of paperwork up to date.  Only at the game, we’re having fun together.  This is called community, folks.

We’re not having fun today.

Arguably the Redskins’ best player, 24-year-old Sean Taylor was gunned down in his home night before last.  The doctors and nurses kept him alive as long as they could, but they lost him early this morning.  So did we.  Our community of sports fans is unified again, but this time in mourning.

It’s not like losing someone you know and love personally, at least not for those of us who didn’t know him.  (He leaves behind, among others, an 18-month-old daughter.)  But it is still unsettling, and it hurts.  Taylor was a controversial figure when he first arrived in DC, exhibiting careless, over-aggressive play on the field and getting into petty trouble off of it.  But by all accounts he was maturing.  It certainly showed on the field, where he was having an all-pro season before an injury a couple of weeks ago.  People who knew him well described him as unfailingly polite and respectful around his teammates and coaches.

Horrible.