| In today’s FOX Sports Insider: A plethora of modern broadcasts of classic sporting events has given rise to an important wave of nostalgia in these trying times … it’s starting to feel like Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield have something in mind … and as plans to start the MLB season heat up, we take a look at the World Series favorites. In a weird kind of way — for what is a weird concept in general — old games are the pandemic’s version of old sports trading cards. Nostalgia has been forced upon us during this present journey of emptiness, amid a time when everyone is faced with the mind-bending thought that we are living through a unique period, one in which history is effectively standing still. Yet the minds of sports fans have had a progression of their own, and in many cases it went something like this: We heard about the virus, that it was coming and that it might affect sports, but figured it probably wouldn’t go so far as cancellations. After all, sports events have survived pretty much everything life has thrown at America. The Masters had gone ahead every year except for from 1943-45, pausing only for the ravages of World War II. The Men’s NCAA Tournament had taken place for 81 years, without interruption. Next, we heard that sports, some of them, would be staged without fans — then, rapidly, that they would not take place at all. Suddenly, all those years of relentless precedent didn’t matter, not in the face of this opponent. We were left wondering when sports would even come back at all. Once the initial shock of lockdowns and restrictions and stay-at-home challenges set in, we finally started trying to figure out what we were going to do to pass all this newfound spare time. Simultaneously, broadcasters were scratching their heads figuring out how to fill their hours of programming. The response was both obvious and glorious: We were going to get the old stuff. And we fell in love with it — some of us for the first time, some of us all over again. With live action shuttered, more and more people are filling up their mental checklist by ticking off the classics, collecting new memories of days past as if they were binders of old memorabilia. Those broadcasts are like trading cards because they take us back. They make us feel good, and they have a value in that they soothe our soul, which is a feeling worth its weight in gold right now. There has been everything from old Wrestlemanias, like the iconic third edition that was shown on FS1 Tuesday night, to feasts of boxing featuring greats like Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Mike Tyson. “The Last Dance” series highlighting the end of Michael Jordan’s career with the Bulls has definitely played into an appetite for reminiscing over glory days of yesteryear, while soccer specials like the United States’ Women’s World Cup triumph from last summer showed us that nostalgia doesn’t have to be from the deep past, just from a time that feels different to now. “If you consider yourself a devoted fan of a sport, there is something satisfying about being able to say you have ‘completed the set’ of watching the most significant events or moments in its history,” Los Angeles-based businessman and sports nut Jason Hartley told me. “Until recently it wasn’t really feasible. First of all, a lot of the stuff has become more easily available during the pandemic, because broadcasters have nothing else to show. Also, in normal times, you are too busy watching the live events.” Hartley is a huge mixed martial arts fan, and each day has dove into the UFC’s library of old pay-per-view cards on its Fight Pass portal, starting with the original UFC 1 from 1993 with its bloodthirsty advertising approach and only three rules – no biting, eye gouging or whacks to the groin. He’s currently up to UFC 97. Major League Baseball opened up its MLB.tv archives from 2018 and 2019, allowing fans to play catch-up. Kristen Santos, a freelance designer from Riverside, Calif., finds the audio for past games to be a pleasing backdrop while working from home. “It feels like something normal,” she said. “That’s what I love about it.” In England, repeats of iconic cricket matches from last summer brought about a remarkable response across multiple platforms. When the country’s 2019 Cricket World Cup triumph was broadcast on Sky Sports, simultaneous radio coverage was available online, while the rival BBC did play-by-play updates as if the thing was playing out live, and popular website Cricinfo gave “up to date” analysis. Players who had been involved Tweeted – and admitted feeling nervousness, in the same way Tom Brady did when he recently rewatched his Patriots’ comeback against the Falcons in the Super Bowl – while the eventual triumph over New Zealand led to a reliving of the sense of national euphoria. It is strange, in a way, to watch the old games, just because it is already jarring to us to see so many people in such close proximity, fans shoulder to shoulder, hugging, high-fiving, breathing each other’s air. Meanwhile, it is hard to figure out what of the changes we’ve made to our lives will linger and which will quickly be dispensed with. Such pleasure has been derived from seeing the games of old that there is a likelihood that there will be some persistence. But who knows to what extent? Over here, a return to sports is on the way; at least, it seems so. A firm MLB plan is on the table, while reports suggest the NBA has growing optimism its campaign can be completed. The National Football League schedule has been released in full, and was greeted with great anticipation. When we have live sports with regularity again, what will become of our newfound salvation? Will mass viewing of the classics go away, no longer needed? Or have we discovered something within us that gives us a greater appreciation for our sports history, even as the strangest of new histories is being written? Here’s what others have said … Jason Hehir, director of “The Last Dance”: “I definitely think that this project will always be viewed through the lens of a pandemic when we talk about when this aired, when we had to get it done, and the process to get it done. It’s always going to be talked about through the lens of COVID. But we took a great amount of pride, my team and I, in fast-tracking this and getting it up as soon as we could. It’s uncanny the way that the timing happened because I think it lends itself to something that is comforting for people to watch right now. If this was heavier subject matter, stuff that was difficult to watch, I don’t think it would be as embraced as it has been. I think this is steeped in nostalgia and it reminds people of a fun, warm time they had watching these games themselves or with friends or family. So people that watched it back then can go back to that safe place and re-experience it themselves, or they can share it with kids they may have now that didn’t experience this the way they did when they were kids. It’s a safe storyline.” Will Leitch, New York Magazine: “There is an old rule that every fan’s emotional maturity freezes at the age they first fell in love with sports — that they think sports will never improve from what they saw when they were 10 years old. It’s why people are always claiming baseball has Lost Its Soul, and that football players aren’t as ‘tough’ as they used to be. But while I’ll always have a soft spot for the speedy Ozzie Smith–Whitey Herzog Cardinals teams of the ’80s, the skinny dudes on those teams would get the bat knocked out of their hands today. Watching old games for five minutes now makes that abundantly clear. Sports is like technology: It can’t help but improve, because if it didn’t, it would cease to exist entirely.” Connell Vaughan, RTE Ireland: “For the sports fan, the current pain is not an inability to relive famous events, but a desire to return to a time with new sport to follow. As such, the new broadcasting trend is better seen as a development of the already present nostalgia operations of sports media. Unlike other audiences, the relationship between the sports fan and broadcaster consistently and routinely trades on nostalgia. To be a sports fan is to be surrounded in media content laced with nostalgia. It is invoked in the promotion of events, implied in the constant referencing of statistics and personified in the use of former players for analysis and commentary.” |
