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"Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Matt 18:4 |
Becoming Humble
On Thursday, September 13, I was having coffee with my friend Mark. He’s a banker who happened to have been transferred from an office near the World Trade Center to a building uptown six months ago. One of our mutual friends had been "missing" since Tuesday. In the background, from downtown, smoke was rising above where the Twin Towers used to be.
Mark asked me how I planned on returning to work. "Our jobs seem totally irrelevant now," he said.
I hesitated before I answered. Then, finally, all I could say was, "I don't know." This was the best answer I could summon. Everyone in our office dowtown had been stunned by what had happened. Many of us knew people who were affected by the tragedy. And I agreed with Mark: my job did seem irrelevant, and working on fantasy sports games in particular seemed trivial.
I didn't have a second response to Mark's question until Sunday, when I came across a story in The New York Post about the Giants visiting "Ground Zero." Many of the players noted that their roles had been reversed -- instead of being the focus of cheers, they were now fans of firemen and other support workers who had worked tirelessly since Tuesday.
The story went on to describe how Joe Jurevicius introduced himself to a fireman. The fireman claimed that he was disappointed in Joe because he had the Giant on his fantasy football team and Joe had underperformed against Denver. Kerry Collins was standing nearby and was quick to note that he underthrew Joe on a pass, that it was really his fault, and then the three of them -- Kerry, Joe and the fireman -- shared a chuckle.
This story resonated with me. Even now - and maybe especially now - sports matter to Americans. They bring out our sense of humor and they connect us. After reading this story, I asked myself, Are fantasy sports games trivial? Yes, I answered, absolutely. But do we need trivial diversions to help us reconnect as a society after what’s happened? Yes, I answered again, absolutely.
We at the TSN Fantasy Games division have been moved profoundly by the tragedy. We are first and foremost sorry for the friends and family of the missing and deceased. We recognize that our jobs are irrelevant compared to the events that transpired on Tuesday. But we're going to keep creating our fantasy sports games this week, recognizing that they are unimportant products, because we believe our members need trivial diversions at a time like this. And like Joe and Kerry and the fireman, we’d like to reconnect as Americans over fantasy sports.
In honor of the tragedy, we will be donating $1 to the Red Cross Relief Fund for every purchase of our upcoming Playoff Baseball game, which will launch on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.
We hope that you’ll play. But more importantly than that, we hope that you’ll support some charity involved with the crisis and that you’ll find some connective tissue in our fantasy sports communities to help bring us together once again.
- Erik Barmack
General Manager, TSN Fantasy Sports (ebarmack@sportingnews.com)
The Sporting News Fantasy Baseball
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