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Hopelessly Devoted
http://www.sina.com.cn 2005/11/10 22:01  英语沙龙

  导读:“忠诚得无以自拔”的球迷,曾在“信任就是一切”的信念中,盲目崇拜自己迷恋的球队。尽管年事的增长,使纯粹的信任变得愈加困难,但“粉丝”的激情并未有丝毫的消减。对球迷而言,矢志不渝的迷恋缘于“做一个球迷就仿佛拥有自己的时间机器”,它使你成功地往返于人生的现在、未来与过去。

  Hopelessly Devoted

  忠诚得无以自拔

  Being a fan is like having your own personal time machine

  做一个球迷就仿佛拥有自己的时间机器。

  BY MICHAEL ELLIOTT

  It was a little after 5 a.m. in my home in Hong Kong when Jerzy Dudek, the Polish goalkeeper of Liverpool Football Club, saved a penalty from Andriy Shevchenko, a Ukrainian playing for AC Milan. The save ended the most exciting sporting event you will ever see, secured for Liverpool the top European soccer championship for the first time in 21 years, and allowed me to breathe. Within seconds, my wife had called from London, and the e-mails started to flood in—the first from TIME's Baghdad bureau, others from Sydney, London, Washington and New York. In my fumbled excitement, I misdialed my brother's phone number three times. Then Steven Gerrard, Liverpool's captain, lifted the trophy, and behind the Cantonese chatter of the TV commentators I could just make out 40,000 Liverpudlian voices singing their club's anthem, You'll Never Walk Alone. And that's when I started to cry.

  Apart from the big, obvious things—love, death, children—most of the really walloping emotional highs and lows of my life have involved watching Liverpool. There was the ecstasy of being in the crowd when the club won the European championship in 1978, and the horror of settling down in my office for a 1985 European championship game —only to watch Juventus fans get crushed to death when some Liverpool supporters rioted. Through long experience, my family has come to know that their chances of having a vaguely pleasant husband and father on any given Sunday depend largely on how Liverpool fared the previous day. But what on earth makes this—let's admit it—pretty unsophisticated devotion to the fortunes of men I've never met and don't really want to so powerful?

  Fandom—the obsessional identification with a sports team—is universal. The greatest book ever on the psychology of being a fan, Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, was written about a London soccer team but easily translated into a film about the Boston Red Sox. Particularly in the U.S., it seems possible to be a fan of a team that's based far from where you have ever lived, but I suspect the origins of my obsession are more common. I didn't have much choice in the matter. Both my parents were born in tiny row houses a stone's throw from Liverpool's stadium. My father took me to my first game as a small child, and from the moment I saw what was behind the familiar brick walls—All those people! That wall of noise! The forbidden, dangerous smells of cigarettes and beer! —I was hooked.

  We fans like to describe our passion in religious terms, as if the places our heroes play are secular cathedrals. It's easy to see why. When you truly, deeply love a sports team, you give yourself up to something bigger than yourself, not just because your individuality is renderedinsignificant in the mass of the crowd, but because being a fan involves faith. No matter what its current form may be, your team is worthy of blind devotion—or will soon redeem itself. Belief is all. As Brooklyn Dodgers fans said in the 1950s: Wait 'til next year.

  But as you get older, it becomes harder to believe. Yes, the Dodgers won the World Series in 1955; but they aren't ever coming back from Los Angeles. Loss of faith can set in. That, however, is when you appreciate the deeper benefits of being a fan. For me, following one soccer team has been the connective tissue of my life. I left Liverpool to go to college and have never had the slightest desire to live there again, but wandering around the world, living in seven different cities woin three continents, my passion was the thing that gave me a sense of what "home" meant. Being a fan became a fixed point, wherever I lived; it was—it is—one of the two or three things that I think of as making me, well, me.

  But fandom does more than defeat distance and geography. It acts as a time machine. There is only one thing that I have done consistently for nearly 50 years, and that is support Liverpool. To be a fan is a blessing, for it connects you as nothing else can to childhood, and to everything and everyone that marked your life between your time as a child and the present. So when I sat in Hong Kong at dawn last week watching the game on TV, I didn't have to try to manufacture the tiny, inconsequential strands that make up a life. They were there all around me. Tea at my Grandma's after a game; a favorite uncle who died too young; bemused girlfriends who didn't get it (I married the one who did); the 21st birthday cake that my mother iced in Liverpool's colors; my tiny daughters in their first club shirts; the best friends with whom I've long lost touch. What does being a fan mean? It means you'll never walk alone.

忠诚得无以自拔

  凌晨5点多,我在香港的家里。利物浦足球俱乐部的波兰守门员耶日·杜德克扑出了AC米兰队的乌克兰球员安德烈·舍甫琴科的一记点球。这个救球结束了你所看到的空前绝后最激动人心的赛事,保证了利物浦队21年来首次夺得欧洲冠军杯,我也长吁了一口气。在几秒钟内,我妻子从伦敦打来电话,电子邮件也潮水般涌来——第一个是从《时代》周刊驻巴格达办事处发来的,其他的来自悉尼、伦敦、华盛顿和纽约。由于激动得手足无措,我三次错拨了弟弟的电话号码。接着,利物浦队队长史蒂文·杰拉德举起了奖杯,从电视评论员喋喋不休的广东话中,我能分辨出有4万名利物浦队球迷在唱着俱乐部的队歌《你永远不会独行》。我顿时哭了起来。

  除了几件公认的大事——爱情、死亡、孩子——我生活中绝大多数真正算得上重大情感波澜的就是观看利物浦球队的比赛了。其中有1978年俱乐部赢得欧洲冠军杯时置身观众群中感到的那种狂喜,也有1985年欧洲冠军杯时我在办公室里感到的那种恐怖——只能望着一些利物浦队的支持者在闹事,而尤文图斯队的球迷们则被挤得要死。我的家人从长期的经验中明白了一个道理:她们的丈夫和父亲在某个特定的星期天能否显露出某种莫名的欣喜之情,大都取决于利物浦队前一天的战果如何。但是,究竟是什么使这相当淳朴的忠诚——姑且承认,对那些我从未见过、实际也不想见的那些人的命运的忠诚——如此强烈呢?

  恋球——对某一球队的执着认同——是普遍现象。迄今,关于球迷心理的最伟大著作是尼克·霍恩比的《极度狂热》,写的就是伦敦的一支足球队,但轻而易举就被改编成了描写波士顿红袜队的一部电影。特别是在美国,一个球队的所在城市是你从未生活过的地方,而你似乎也有可能成为它的球迷,但我想我迷恋足球的最初原因更为平常。在这个问题上我没有更多的选择。我的父母都出生在离利物浦体育馆咫尺之远的小连脊房子里。小时候,父亲带我参加了第一次比赛,我从那时起就看到了那堵熟悉的砖墙后面的景象——所有那些人!那堵吵闹的墙!那被禁止的、危险的烟酒气味!——我被迷住了。

  我们这些球迷喜欢用宗教术语描述我们的激情,英雄们比赛的地方就仿佛世俗的大教堂。理由很简单。当你真心地、深深地爱上一支球队时,你就投入到比你自己更重要的事情中,不仅因为在整个人群中你作为个体变得无足轻重,还因为做一个球迷涉及信念问题。不管它目前情况怎样,你的球队都是值得盲目崇拜的——或许很快它就会东山再起。信任就是一切。布鲁克林道奇队的球迷们在20世纪50年代时就说过:咱们明年见。

  但随着年事的增长,信任似乎越来越难了。是的,道奇队在1955年世界大赛中赢得了冠军,但他们再也没有从洛杉矶卷土重来。丧失信任可能会流行起来。但那正是你领略作为球迷的更深的裨益的时候。对我来说,迷上一个足球队始终是我生命的结缔组织。我离开利物浦,上了大学,丝毫没有再回到那里生活的愿望,但是,在游遍了世界,在三个大陆的七个城市里生活过之后,我的激情仍然是那给我以“家”的感觉的东西。无论我住在哪里,是个球迷就都是一个固定点;我认为它过去是——现在也是——造就了我的二三事之一,喔,造就了我这个人呢。

  但迷恋足球不仅仅是不分距离和地理位置的。它充当了时间机器。近50年来我坚持不懈地做的只有一件事,那就是支持利物浦队。作为一个球迷是一种幸福,因为它把你与童年联系了起来,把你从童年到现在的生活中的每一个人和每一件事联系了起来,其他任何东西都无法做到这一点。所以,当上周凌晨我在香港坐在电视前观看比赛时,我不必刻意去编织构成生活的那些微不足道的线索。它们就在我的周围。赛事之后在奶奶家喝茶;我最喜欢的过早夭折的叔叔;对我对足球的这份迷恋迷惑不解、不知所以然的女友们(我与理解这种迷恋的那个女友结了婚);21岁时母亲用利物浦球队队服的颜色给我挂糖霜的生日蛋糕;第一次穿上俱乐部运动衣的小女儿们;久已失去联系的那些好友们。做一个球迷意味着什么呢?那意味着你永远不会独自行走。 (陈永国 译自Time May 30,2005)

  ——选自《英语文摘》2005年第9期


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