As I've thought about this, I've decided Gannis response is silly, fundamentally misunderstands sports and is a massive backwards hustle.
The central appeal of sports is the stakes are irrationally inflated. When you watch or participate in a sport you are tacitly agreeing to massively inflate the stakes of every outcome.
it's an essential part of the social contract of any sport.
And pople who violate that social contract are shunned because to do so is to puncture the very essence of sports competition.
If you are playing any serious sport and a dude on your team kept harping on the fact that "none of this matters" "we are all winners in life" you would have nothing but contempt for him.
Sports are a way to vicariously experience life or death outcomes. Basically all social animals with a fear response engage in this kind of play. It's a way of testing the body and the mind,.
Human beings are social animals so there is such a thing as social death. So our forms of play almost always involve a social component.
Legacy; how will victory or defeat echo across time? What will it mean to you, the players that came before, the players that will come after?
Gannis gets paid win or lose, every player is a millionaire and has no relationship to the city other than tenouis geographic designations.
Sports are human drama, If you can't call out success or failure you might as well watch NBA 2K simulations.
Obviously In the context of life Gannis is not a failure. But what does that even mean?,
In modern society unless you murdered or raped someone or are a hardened criminal we don't really call anyone's life a "failure".
Competitive sports operates by different rules, and we all understand this. It's part of the social contract.
If you lose in 5 games to an 8 seed it is obviously a massive failure.
Describing it as anything less in the context of sports is absurd.
If Gannis doesn't like that he should probably just not play competitive sports. Victory / defeat, success / failure is kind of the whole point.
B Sox do you feel the Cs are ****ed?
