The Face of the Devastated Sports Fan

In the immediate aftermath of a sports fan’s heartbreak, there is that sliver of time during which all the emotion passes across their face. The features are contorted or frozen in place. The eyes are wide open and staring into the empty space where something wonderful has just unfolded for someone else. The mouth is open just enough, perhaps because a shout of ecstasy had been ready to escape, if only the fan’s knocking at the door of the ecstatic had been answered.

One reliable venue in which to witness these moments is basketball broadcasts on television. I sometimes think about the cameraperson whose job it is to seek out whoever in the crowd is most intensely wearing their heartbreak on their face. There are classic moments in this subgenre of deflated fandom, ones that you have maybe seen before, even if you do not love or pay much attention to sports. Take, for example, the case of Roxanne Chalifoux, a piccolo player in the Villanova band who, in 2015, was immortalized during March Madness, when N.C. State pulled off an upset of her beloved Wildcats, 71–68. Even with the reality of her team’s loss settling in, even after the final whistle blew, her band had to do its work. There was joyful noise to be made even in defeat, even if the noise-makers didn’t feel emotionally up to the task, even if they were, as Chalifoux was, in the midst of weeping. This is how a singular photo was born. If there were to be a museum (or, at least, a coffee-table book) collecting examples of this highly specific form of ache, Chalifoux would make a worthy cover—a closeup of her face, amid rows of her fellow-musicians, piccolo still affixed to her lips, playing through tears.

It isn’t funny, exactly, though I would be lying if I said that I didn’t take some delight in these low-stakes disappointments. There is beauty for me in the sports fan’s moments of grief, and there is also, to some degree, relief. It is but for the grace of God that I am not the fan in question, two hands on his head, elbows out, sinking into my own universe of pain. It is but for the grace of God that I am not the lone individual sitting in a sea of standing, cheering fans from an opposing team, a camera zoomed in on me, friends texting to tell me that they saw me on television, albeit not in my finest hour.

One such poor soul was televised two weeks ago, after an N.B.A. game between the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers came to what might have been the most absurd ending I’d ever witnessed. By the end of the fourth quarter, the game seemed somewhat in hand for the Lakers. With 12.6 seconds left, the team was up by five points—not the safest lead, though likely safe enough to secure a victory. Then Chicago hit a three-pointer, and the Lakers’ lead was cut to two. Still, all Los Angeles had to do was inbound the ball and make some free throws. But wait! LeBron James threw a bad inbound pass, which was stolen by Josh Giddey, who passed to Coby White, who hit a three-pointer, and now the Lakers were somehow, in a matter of a few seconds, down by one point. But! There was Austin Reaves to the rescue, driving to the basket after a time-out and getting a layup. The Lakers were up by one again, with just three seconds left, and the Bulls had no time-outs. Surely now a victory was in hand. And yet! Giddey heaved a Hail Mary shot from beyond midcourt, and his prayer was answered. The ball slipped cleanly through the net just as time expired, and the arena in Chicago became unglued. A mob formed around Giddey. Fans leapt out of their courtside seats. And then the camera found him: a lone Laker fan, standing still amid waves of joyful jumping and gesticulating, wearing a yellow jersey and a purple Lakers hat.

The man’s face belongs to my favorite subgenre of devastated-sports-fan expressions. He looked to be almost mid-smile, but it wasn’t a smile of joy. It was a smile stained with disbelief and a bit of disdain, the kind of smile you might find yourself making if someone were to insult you with an unfavorable offer, or come into your home and malign your children’s art work decorating the fridge, a smile that seemed to signal that the wearer might, in a moment, lose his mind. The man’s eyes seemed vacant, as if they might still be staring at the net that the ball had whooshed through moments earlier. His incredulity was hard-earned. There were so few ways for the Lakers to lose that game, and yet they’d managed to find all of them.

I cherish this sad Laker fan because I cherish what lies underneath so many of these defeated expressions, beyond the visceral immediacy of tears or shouting or falling to pieces. The moment of a fan in pain is also a moment of a fan in awe. I have been there, watching my team lose in improbable ways. I don’t tweet much anymore, but I recall one evergreen tweet I posted about my beloved Columbus Crew, my city’s Major League Soccer team, which I’ve loved since its inception, in the nineties, and which, in recent seasons, has become notorious for blowing leads or ties incredibly late in matches. Dying-moments-of-stoppage-time late. Nothing-else-to-do-and-nowhere-to-go-but-home late. The tweet reads, “Edgar Allan Poe was haunted and tormented by the word ‘Nevermore,’ I will live the rest of my days haunted by the words ‘another late goal given up by Columbus.’ ” I tweeted it in June of 2023. I remember the moment because I was at a game, in the stadium, where the Columbus Crew held the lead until the opposing team scored in the last few minutes of the game, resulting in a tie. As the stands emptied out, I remained standing, staring at the nets being taken down from the goals, as if more time might materialize to correct the universe’s betrayal. Then I collapsed in my seat, laughed a bit, and typed some words into my phone, words that I have thought of in the time since, whenever I’m watching a Columbus Crew game and another late goal is conceded. The loss might bring me to the verge of madness, but it’s a madness tinged with a kind of pleasure at the fact that I’ve seen a miracle, even if it was a miracle for someone else.

This is just how it goes. Yes, to the camera’s naked eye, there is devastation, but through another lens you can glimpse someone, mouth slightly open or slightly creased, saying, without language, Can you believe this? ♦