Team spirit

You might have gathered that I’m not much of a sports fan. I’m vaguely aware that there are events that purport to be athletic endeavors around town, but in my opinion, once “sportsmanship” left the field, they should be called what they are. Which is a bunch of over-hyped egotists pumped-up on performance-enhancing substances engaging in activities that fleece the public, first in the granting of ridiculous tax favors and building of free facilities and then in the wildly over-priced ticket charges.

And that’s before the traffic jams.

Basically, whether it’s baseball, football, basketball or hockey, we’re just talking about another incarnation of corporate welfare.

Given that premise, I might be forgiven for getting confused by logos I encountered when I arrived at the District They Call Columbia earlier this year.

What happened was that I went into a Harris Teeter, saw this logo, and wondered, “Do they have a Walgreen’s [pharmacy] in this store?”

Because, look—grocery stores have over-priced and over-hyped coffee-like-substance chains, and banks and whatnot, so there might be a Walgreen’s…

Only it turned out that logo represented the local baseball team, the Washington Nationals.

But before you slap me upside the head, here’s the actual Walgreen’s logo:

So—an easy mistake.

Back in the very early years of this century in London, my bus route home from a Saturday morning wandering around the Portobello Road market or being a culture vulture at one of the museums took me past Chelsea Football Club. I was watching fans converging on the stadium one day, wearing shirts proclaiming their team support. Viz.:

(Apparently these are now collector’s items, ergo the eBay-worthy pix. Sorry.)

Here’s what I thought: “Man, that Autoglass team really has a lot of fans here.”

Well, look—when the corporate sponsor has bigger lettering than the team logo, what am I supposed to think?

I twigged to the situation at some point before I got home, and then mentioned it to a couple of colleagues on the Monday. They told me I was pitiful.

Well, fair enough. But in this regard, I’m with Sherlock Holmes: my brain does not need to be cluttered up with identifying specific athletic (ish) teams. What I care about is knowing when there’s a game on so I can take alternate routes to where I want to go.