I moved out of Michigan for work eight years ago and being a long distance Wings fan is its own peculiar kind of devotion that I don't think in market folks fully appreciate. So this is a thread for the diaspora.
My setup has evolved through about four different streaming workarounds, two sketchy VPNs, one very patient sports bar owner two states away who agreed to put the Wings on a corner TV for a party of one, and a group chat across three time zones where we all suffer together at 7pm Eastern regardless of what 7pm Eastern means where we each live. I've watched playoff eliminations in airport terminals. I've explained to confused coworkers why I'm wearing a jersey on a random Tuesday.
Out of market crew, what's your setup, and what's the most absurd thing you've done to watch a game you absolutely did not need to be watching?
out of market means something different when out of market is another continent. i have woken up at 3am local time for years to watch wings games and gone straight to work after. my wife thinks i am insane. my coworkers think i am insane. they are correct. but you cannot explain to someone who has never done it what it is to sit alone in a dark kitchen at 4am cheering quietly so you dont wake the baby. that is real love.
the 3am crew has my full respect honestly. i moved two time zones west and just the 4pm puck drops on a workday wreck me, can't imagine the overseas grind. my big sacrifice is i schedule literally nothing on game nights and my friends out here have given up inviting me anywhere from october to april. they call it my season.
phone propped against a ketchup bottle in a hotel bar in a city that hates us. living the dream.
i'm in market and reading this thread is making me feel deeply spoiled for just being able to turn on the tv and complain in real time. you out of market folks are the real ones. the airport elimination story actually broke my heart a little, watching us blow it surrounded by strangers who don't know why you look like that.
out of market for me means a lot of grainy streams that buffer right as the puck goes in 😭 i have heard the goal horn through a stream with a four second delay so many times that my brain now celebrates twice. once for the stream once for reality. it's a whole condition
You young folks and your streams. I'll tell you out of market in the old days, kid. My brother moved to Arizona in the 80s and the only way he could follow the team was me mailing him cassette tapes of Bruce Martyn's radio calls that I recorded off the kitchen radio. They'd arrive a week stale and he'd listen to a game he already knew the result of just to hear the call. Devotion didn't need a VPN. It needed a stamp and a lot of patience.
@GordieHoweElbows said:mailing him cassette tapes of Bruce Martyn's radio calls
gordie i swear every time i think this board can't get me misty you pull a stamp and a cassette tape out of your coat pocket. a WEEK stale and he listened anyway. that's the whole thing right there. out of market love is just choosing to suffer on a delay and doing it gladly.
This thread delivered exactly what I hoped. The cassette tapes a week stale might be the most beautiful out of market story I've ever read and it makes my VPN troubles feel deeply unserious. The common thread across all of us, continents and decades apart, is that we all choose to arrange our entire lives around a 7pm Eastern puck drop for a team that hasn't made us happy in April since most of you were younger. We are all clearly unwell and I love every one of you for it.