There’s
a professional hockey team called the Nashville Predators. Thinking about that
name has helped me figure out a lot about the status of cripples in society.
Because
like I’ve said before, at least one thing cripples don’t have to complain about
is sports teams named after stereotypes of us. We're not like the poor tribes,
being hounded by stuff like the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians.
There hasn’t been a team that I know of with a name like the Indiana Invalids.
Hell, there hasn’t even been a team with one of those cutesy cripple names,
like the Houston Handicapables or the Philadelphia Physically Challenged.
But
is this completely a good thing? Why would a team owner want to associate their
team with predators but not cripples?
I
then I thought I figured out the answer. Maybe it’s because cripples are
perceived to be the opposite of predators. We’re prey. And the world of sports is
all about predators and prey. There’s a clash and one side wins and one side
loses. Period. So if you have to choose sides, you might as well choose the
winning side, which is the predators.
But
then I reminded myself that not all teams are named after beasts. Some are
named after birds. They’re often predatory birds, like hawks and eagles. But
there are also cute little tweety birds, like cardinals and blue jays.
These
birds are hardly predators. But then again, aren’t concepts of predator and
prey relative, depending on the point of view of a given species? Aren’t
cardinals and blue jays vicious predators, if you’re a worm or an insect? To them,
tweety birds must look like pterodactyls.
But
when viewed through a human centric lens, which is what we do when naming
sports teams, tweety birds are strictly prey. So that must mean that it’s
acceptable to name your sports team afar some creatures that aren’t predators
first and foremost, but not many others.
Then
this, it seems to me, must be why you don’t see sports teams named after worms,
insects or cripples. We’re all too far down the food chain. Well I suppose
there might be some sports teams named after spiders. At least spiders are scary
to humans. Cripples are scary to humans, too, but not in a way that has any marketing appeal.
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