A lot of my social media memories recently have been from 2021, when I seemed to have lost my mind on an hourly basis as the Red Sox trashed the Yankees to face the Houston Astros for the American League pennant. Shouty caps permeated my brain, with the likes of Kike Hernandez and Chris Sale and Rafael Devers and JD Martinez filling my Instagram and Facebook posts at night, and complaints of exhaustion saturating my mornings.
The Red Sox, of course, closed shop before playoff season started this year, and a small part of my Fenway-loving heart was relieved, knowing that I wouldn’t need to function in both my family and my workplace each day on little sleep and much fan-related anxiety.
It’s no accident that the word comes from fanatic, please remember.
But the sports noise in my head remains loud right now, utterly chock full of things to watch and cheer as fall sports are in postseason mania and the Rangers, those harbingers of winter, have taken to the ice. At work, my Manhattanville Valiants are back at it, ensuring that when I leave the office at the end of the day I am just as likely to wind up on the sidelines of a soccer or field hockey game, in the bleachers cheering our indefatigable women’s volleyball team, or courtside watching tennis as I am to get in my car and head home.
Football, which is never my priority, is must-see-TV when Taylor Swift decides to make an appearance at Arrowhead Stadium, as she did recently. Within a stone’s throw of my house, the Mets and Yankees are doing their best to make the World Series a Subway Series, and while I lose no sleep at such a prospect, my New England roots staying strong, I’m surrounded by colleagues, students, and friends who, well, let’s just say they care. A lot. Even I, who sat in Fenway with my mom for Game 3 in 1986, can admit that the Mets’ run this year has been something to behold and, well, even Swift made time for a Yankees game.
Making the field of play even more crowded, of course, is the fact that people -- lots and lots of people -- care about the WNBA finals, which are off to a bang between the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty. According to ESPN, viewership across 17 playoff games was up 142% this year, and the Lynx/Liberty matchup is on track to follow suit. Game 1 of the finals, which the Lynx won in a nutty overtime, was the first in history to exceed one million viewers -- 1.14 million to be exact.
That the ratings have held despite the first-round exit of the Indiana Fever -- and the “Clark Effect” the team brings with it -- is significant not just for the WNBA, but sport writ large, perhaps especially in New York, where no less than three professional teams currently are vying for championship glory, all just a few miles from one another. While the WNBA, especially the Liberty, has had a steady fanbase for quite a while, myself included, the Fever’s “Clark Effect” on attendance this year has demanded new pages in the record books, and not just the record books in Indiana. Long live this embarrassment of riches in sport, and long may it -- with all apologies to Seattle soccer -- reign.
Amy Bass is professor of sport studies and chair of the division of social science and communication at Manhattanville University. Bass is the author of ONE GOAL: A COACH, A TEAM, AND THE GAME THAT BROUGHT A DIVDED TOWN TOGETHER, among other titles. In 2012, she won an Emmy for her work with NBC Olympic Sports on the London Olympic Games.
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