Are teams that insist on singing 'Sweet Caroline' during games the worst thing in sports?
It's Wednesday, which means it's time to fire off whatever has been bugging us over the last week in another edition of The Gripe Report!
Y'know, this is OutKick, and what does OutKick do?
Creates must-read, watch and listen content across a variety of platforms?
Well, yeah, but what else?
Employs a very handsome and funny writer who is great at complaining and is also surprisingly good at sit-ups when he forces himself to do them out of shame and/or guilt?
I mean, that goes without saying, but I was thinking of something else.
Sports?
CAROLINA HURRICANES DROP THE NATION'S NEXT GREAT NOVELTY BEER CUP
Bingo.
So, this week, I wanted to run through a few sports gripes, so, without further ado, let's get this griping show on the road.
I’ve been watching a lot of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, as I do every year, but I’ve been noticing something that now drives me crazy.
It's teams that play the 1-Up sound effect from Super Mario Bros. when they kill a penalty and the player returns to the ice.
I’ve noticed that the Pittsburgh Penguins do this, and so do the Buffalo Sabres, but there could be others.
I get the joke. It’s a hacky joke, but I get it.
But it’s not the hackiness that bugs me; it’s the fact that they’re actually doing something that can hurt the team.
So, usually when a team’s power play winds down, their goalie will start banging his stick on the ice to let everyone on the ice know that a player is about to come out of the penalty box. When play is in the offensive zone, it means the player coming out of the box will be behind them.
They need to be aware of this so that the team that has just killed off a penalty can’t grab the puck and airmail the dude coming out of the sin bin a home run pass for an easy breakaway.
But what if the goalie forgets to do that or doesn’t keep an eye on the clock? That would mean that the power play unit might give up one of these easy breakaways.
Well, the 1-Up sound makes this impossible, because it takes the place of the goalie banging his stick and will always sound, no matter where the play is.
So, teams that play this are preventing themselves from sneaking a player out of the box.
They're sabotaging themselves.
I can’t believe any teams will take a very done-to-death joke, even if it means sort of hurting their team.
Don’t get me wrong, when my Flyers played the Penguins, and they were dumb enough to do this, I loved it.
SHOULD YOU WATERBOARD YOURSELF IF YOUR TEAM FALLS DOWN 3-1 IN THE PLAYOFFS?
But if they’re smart, they’ll throw that sound effect in the trash.
I’ve written about this before, but it was years ago, and obviously fell on deaf ears because I still hear it: stop playing "Sweet Caroline" and acting like it's some unique tradition.
There are so many teams at the college and pro level who are like, "It’s our thing to all sing ‘Sweet Caroline.’"
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Well, if everyone does it, it’s not much of a unique team tradition, is it?
I’ll answer that for you: it is not.
At the very least, pick a better song, because "Sweet Caroline" absolutely stinks.
Never has a mediocre song gotten so much mileage out of the fact that idiots like going, "Bah-bah-baaaaaaah!"
It's maybe an okay song if you hear it once or twice, but it's inescapable. You hear it at every game, regardless of whether it's professional, collegiate or even high school.
And that's why it bugs me when fanbases are like, "This is our tradition." It would be like someone saying that cheering when their team came out on the field was their tradition.
Everyone does it!
Pick a new song. Even another Neil Diamond song, if you have to, just give those of us with musical taste a break.
We recently had the NFL Draft, and one of my least favorite parts of the entire thing is when a team picks, and they herd a bunch of their fans right in front of the camera.
But what bugs me more is that a lot of these fans aren’t just fans, they’re trying to become some kind of character.
Usually one that ends in "Man."
"Bengals Man," "Colts Man," "Jets Man," etc.
Just kidding about Jets Man. No one wants that title.
It’s one thing to go all out, cheering for your team like David Puddy, throwing on some face paint and cheering on the Devils. I’m talking about people with elaborate costumes to try to become unofficial mascots for their team. They want people to stop them in the concourse to get photos with them. They’ve got Instagram accounts.
It’s just too much.
The only thing I like about this is imagining what family life is like for these people.
Like, imagine "Commanders Man" telling his kid he has to miss their starring role in their school musical because he has to go cheer on camera when the team makes their pick at the draft.
Scot is going to land the plane for us, with a gripe that is also kind of a history lesson and will send us in a strange philosophical direction:
I am expressing a gripe I've had for years. The wildly inaccurate use of the phrase "walkoff" among baseball media. This term was brilliantly coined by Dennis Eckersley to describe the act of throwing a pitch and walking off the mound as you realize the batter just swatted it to the moon to win the game. Now, it is used ubiquitously in baseball circles to describe any game-winning hit, sac fly, walk, error, hit by pitch, etc. -- even those that involve plays at the plate. Get it right, people!
…
I was unaware of this, and am probably guilty of it. Does it bug me, too? Not really, but it probably will now.
It does, however, go along with something I was thinking about recently: if enough people say or use something wrong, when does the wrong version become the right version?
*Twilight Zone music plays*
The best example I can give is this: I think most people know what a whammy bar is on a guitar. It’s that piece of metal attached to the bridge (where the end of the strings go) that you push down on, and the pitch lowers.
You’ll sometimes hear this referred to as a "tremolo." That’s because Leo Fender designed something called the "synchronized tremolo" for Stratocasters.
But here’s the rub: the effect a "tremolo" creates isn’t tremolo — a fast fluctuation in volume — it’s vibrato, a fluctuation in pitch.
Still, you’ll hear this part referred to as a tremolo.
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And while you still get some hardos who will correct you, it's still so commonly used that if you walk into your local Guitar Center and say, "I need a guitar with a tremolo," the guy who works there will not bat an eye.
In fact, he’ll probably be like, "Damn, this guy knows guitars."
So, my point is, if everyone is using the term walk-off incorrectly… at one point, is the incorrect version the correct version?
I think there is a point, and we may have hit it with walk-off, but you have to be careful because we’re starting to stray into Orweillian "2+2=5" territory.
Alright, now I need to go take some Advil and lie down after that one…
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That's it for this edition of The Gripe Report!
Be sure to send in your gripes for the next one!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com