Games don’t need all that artificial noise
music. No videos. No T-shirt guns or hot-dog rifles or giant computer-generated hands imploring mindless patrons to “CLAP!” or “MAKE NOISE!” No former players accosting the team owner. Nothing.
The team made a pregame announcement saying the experiment was to let fans “experience the game in its purest form” and “enjoy the sounds of the game.”
Yes, like sneakers squeaking and the ball bouncing and coaches yelling. You know, a basketball game. Call me a hopeless romantic — or maybe an old man yelling at iCloud — but I couldn’t get enough of it on TV.
The players and coaches hated it, at least partially because they found out at the last minute.
Warriors star Steph Curry said it felt like a middle-school game. Coach Steve Kerr called it “strange.” Draymond Green called it “pathetic.”
“You advance things in the world to make it better,” Green said. “You don’t go back to what’s bad. Computers can do anything for us. It’s like going back to paper. Why would you do that?”
Wait, there’s no more paper? New York’s Lance Thomas said: “They didn’t dim the lights. We didn’t have music. You really had to create your own energy out there.”
God forbid we have to create our own energy, right? Something do it for me! OK, now I really am an old man yelling at iCloud. But I swear we’ve become brainwashed. My sports brain sometimes becomes so lazy it doesn’t think it has to watch live action intently because it can rely on replay.
So I find myself at, say, a high school basketball game wondering where the replay is after I only half-watch a spectacular shot. It’s like the study I saw on London cab drivers who literally lost gray matter — part of their hippocampus — by relying on GPS instead of, well, their brains, to navigate the streets.
Our sports cathedrals have become the epicenters of our (artificial) noise culture. I’m all for organic noise, like you hear from Winnipeg Jets fans. It’s the fake noise, noise for noise’s sake, that is unbearable. “EVERY-BODY CLAP YOUR HANDS!”
Something incredibly loud and extremely close has to be happening in every moment outside of actual game action. In the NBA, they pipe in music during game action! It’s insane. And I realize it’s only going to get worse. Or better, depending on your perspective.
But could we at least get a reprieve now and again? A hockey game with just organ music? A baseball game with nothing at all?
Interestingly enough, I saw where fans responded positively to the Knicks’ experiment. I also remembered the Pirates’ “Turn Back the Clock” game against the Red Sox in 2003 and the positive reviews. I like pierogi races as much as the next person — my 8year-old daughter loves them to the point where she chases down the winner for selfies — but what would be so wrong about one night of sweet, peaceful baseball per season, on the commissioner’s order?
I posted the following Twitter poll question Wednesday: “Would you like to see a ‘silent’ game here, any sport, where fans generate their own noise?”
Possible answers were yes, no, or “only in baseball.” I’m happy to report that only 29 percent said no. 49 percent said yes and 22 percent said “only in baseball.”
Several respondents remembered that Pirates’ game from 2003, one saying, “The crowd was really into it,” another opining, “It was actually quite enjoyable” and another saying, “It sucked.”
Pirates manager Lloyd McClendon loved it.
“How about our fans?” McClendon said after the 5-4 win. “They had me tingling in the dugout. No frills, no productions, no organ, nothing on the scoreboard, just good old-fashioned baseball and good old-fashioned Pittsburgh fans.”
I wonder if Mac uses iCloud.