Go On, Wear the Jersey

Whether you're dressing for the job you want, or just to start a conversation.

One of my favorite chapters in BIG FAN is the one where Mike and I went to the World Darts Championship in London because that thing is just bananas. I mean that both literally and figuratively; it was bananas as in “crazy, deranged, wildly enthusiastic,” and it was also bananas because I’d say 15% of the crowd dressed up as actual bananas.

The other 85% were dressed up as minions, Dumbledores, Marios, Warios, the Jamaican bobsled team, some other bobsled team, tomatoes, traffic cones, Harry Potters, barristers, cowboys, jedis, Star Wars stormtroopers, Lord of the Rings characters, Toy Story characters, on and on and on and on.

At least five percent of the people were dressed up as what I can only classify as “uncategorized.”

It was so funny and so weird and so … baffling? We kept asking people why they dress up in costumes for a darts competition, and nobody seemed to know, and also nobody seemed to care, and also they thought it was kind of a downer question to ask in the first place, especially coming from more or less the only two people there NOT dressed up in costume.

Their answers could be translated as so: “Shut up and enjoy the ride, man.”

I think about this again today because I’m sitting in my office and I’m wearing my Carolina Hurricanes jersey. It’s a very silly thing to wear. For one thing, it’s going to be 95 degrees today. For another, this is a Monday, and this is an office where people do actual work — I mean, these are adults here, and they’re dressed like adults. For a third, it’s impossible to wear a hockey jersey and not feel like Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

But I’m wearing the jersey anyway because the Canes won the Stanley Cup on Sunday, and I really got into it — more than any Stanley Cup since the years I covered it — and I got this Petr Mrazek jersey seven or eight years ago, when we took the girls to their first (and still only) hockey game in Raleigh. I don’t believe I’ve worn it out in public even once over those years.

I mean, if I don’t wear it today, then what even is the point, right?

But that’s the right question, isn’t it: What even is the point?

In my memory, nobody wore jerseys to sporting events when I was a kid. I’m old but not quite old enough to remember when people dressed up to go to games — when they wore suits and hats and shouted “Hip hip hooray!” — but I do remember people just wearing, you know, regular clothes to games. Oh, sure, you’d see Cleveland Indians caps at baseball games, and you’d see some people wearing Cleveland Browns jackets and sweatshirts at football games.

But for the most part, adults wore what they wore to work that day, and kids wore what they wore to school that day. Part of it, I suspect, was that merch just wasn’t as readily available then; I wouldn’t even have known where to get an actual Cleveland Browns jersey. You might see a faux Browns jersey at K-Mart — ones where the colors were just a little bit off, and the numbers were a touch crooked, and the material was some heinous polyester blend — but an actual jersey just like the players wore? Seriously? Maybe if you knew the equipment manager.

I’m not sure when this began to change, but I distinctly remember going to my first Masters golf tournament in 1992 and being stunned that everybody in the crowd dressed just like the players, all the way down to their golf cleats. It struck me then as so funny, so absurd, like they were hoping an official in a green jacket would tap them on the shoulder and go, “Hey, listen, I don’t know you, but David Toms had to pull out because of an injury at the last minute, and you look like you’re probably pretty good, what do you say, you up for joining the Ian Baker-Finch group at No. 1?”

As the years went along, though, EVERYBODY started dressing like the players. In every sport. My friend Dan McGinn, author of the wonderful The Future We Already Know newsletter, wrote a fun piece a little while ago about what a dinner with Abraham Lincoln might sound like. And he has been after me to collab with him on a similar piece about taking Lou Gehrig to a baseball game. I’m sure we’ll get around to it when I can get free from the book loop (putting the finishing touches on FIFTY SEASONS — cover reveal coming soon!), but I’ll say now that one of the things that I’m sure would utterly baffle Gehrig is why all the people in the crowd are wearing the Yankees pinstripes.*

*I mean that might not baffle him quite as much as seeing Jacob Misiorowski’s 105 mph fastball, but it would still baffle him.

I do feel a little bit silly wearing this Canes jersey* … I mean, my hockey experience is limited to one humiliating afternoon where I played goalie during a Cincinnati Cyclones practice. This was during my George Plimpton participatory journalism phase — during this time, I faced Greg Rusedski’s serve, I practiced with an indoor soccer team, I tried to score on a penalty kick against American goalkeeping legend Tony Meola*, and a whole bunch of other things like that.

*This was a classic; Meola prepared for the kick by standing on one leg and covering his right eye. “You want me to cover both eyes?” he asked. Meola is a Jersey guy, and he thought he was psyching me out, but listen, I don’t rattle. OK, maybe I do rattle. I promptly kicked the ball right at him.

But the craziest thing I did was play goalie in a Cyclones practice, crazy because I cannot, at least technically speaking, “skate.” (I also write about this in BIG FAN, where I asked Olympic superstars Alex and Maia Shibutani to teach me how). But I somehow slid out to the goal, and I stood there, and I actually made a couple of saves when the players purposely hit my pads with the puck. What I remember most, though, is that this photo ran in the Cincinnati Post the next day.

(David Kohl/Cincinnati Post)

Yeah, that’s the puck over there on the right side. Yeah, I don’t see it at all. Yeah, my glove is by my side.

I have no business wearing a hockey jersey. I’m sure somewhere out there in the world, Petr Mrazek is feeling a little bit nauseous and he doesn’t know why.

But here’s what I will say about wearing this jersey: It’s an open invitation for anybody to come up to me and talk about the Finals. It was such a fantastic series. I’m not sure how many of you will remember this — or if I dreamed it — but Vegas won Game 1 in Raleigh and then was up 2-0 going into the third period of Game 2, and I would swear that right then ESPN’s Steve Levy, Mark Messier, and PK Subban were talking about a Vegas sweep. My connection to the Canes is pretty casual — I’m still working on my hockey fandom, and I like the Canes simply because it’s a fairly short drive away — but I was outraged. A sweep? They’re talking about a sweep before the end of Game 2? How dare they!

The Canes scored three goals in the third period and won it when Seth Jarvis scored in overtime, and I remember thinking — in the most distressing fan way — “Suck it, Steve Levy!”

And they came all the way back, scoring three goals in 39 seconds, blowing a 3-1 lead* and then winning anyway, riding their backup goalie, Brandon Bussi, who repeatedly stood on his head, which is one of the greatest expressions in sports.

When I went to Montreal with my great pal Ryan George and his family for a game, the Canadiens took a 3-1 lead, and the guy next to me told me, “3-1 is the worst $#^#& lead in hockey.”

And here I am in a Canes jersey, and I’m no different than those folks wearing banana suits at the World Darts championship, and that’s a pretty great thing.