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Jimmy Buffett has always been a sports fan.
He initially and always loved the New Orleans Saints, but was also a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs, Miami Heat, Miami Dolphins, Southern Miss and of course McGill-Toolen Catholic High School in Mobile. There were others too.
Buffett died on Friday. He was 76 years old. There will be many tributes to his life and music, but his love of sport also deserves special attention. When it came to sports, Buffett lived by an honorable code. Support your teams in good times and bad. Those are the rules, and Buffett believed in them.
For Buffett, who was primarily a fan of the Saints, Cubs, and Heat, there were many lean years of misery, but any sports fan with an ounce of honor and pride understands that it’s the tough times that make true fan bases.
True beauty in sport is knowing the painful joy of loving a loser and forever hoping for a better day. Buffett wasn’t a frontrunner, and that’s what made the 2010 Super Bowl championship so special for the Saints. Buffett attended the Saints’ very first game in 1967 at Tulane Stadium. He had met some of the team’s original players while playing locally in New Orleans.
All these years later, he was in the Saints’ celebratory dressing room at the Superdome after New Orleans won the 2010 NFC Championship game in overtime against Minnesota and Brett Favre. According to the story, Buffett flew to New Orleans for the Bora Bora game, but his private jet had to be repaired because of a flat tire.
Buffett later credited Tracy Porter’s pick-six to seal the Super Bowl championship against the Colts as the greatest sports moment of his life.
Raised in Gulf Coast style, Buffett’s first sporting love was minor league baseball. As a child he attended Mobile Bears games and his love for the Minors stayed with him. He later co-owned the Fort Myers Miracle (now Fort Myers Mighty Mussels) with his friend and Cubs fan Bill Murray.
As an actor, Buffett even had a cameo in a 1994 baseball film set at Rickwood Field in Birmingham. The movie was Cobb. Buffett was an unarmed heckler who was punched in the face by Ty Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones). Personally, I was also an extra in this film. As a sophomore at John Carroll Catholic University, I found an old suit at a thrift store and found myself standing in the heat with thousands of others. Buffett gave a free concert after the day of shooting.
What makes his role on “Cobb” funny is the fact that in real life, Buffett was known for targeting umpires and officials. He might have looked easygoing behind the mic onstage, but Buffett celebrated the sport on a different note. In 2001, he was kicked out of a Heat-Knicks game for swearing at NBA official Joe Forte. Buffet was at the game with his son.
Forte didn’t know Buffett. Heat coach Pat Riley tried to defuse the situation by asking Forte if he’d ever been a Parrothead. Forte didn’t know anything about Parrotheads (the given name for Buffett fans) and wasn’t happy about it.
Buffett later recalled the story for Sports Illustrated.
“It was a bad decision. It’s still a bad decision!” Buffett said. “John Starks beat up Tim Hardaway. It was a close game. I just said you’re stupid mother – that’s the worst call I’ve ever heard. People scream all the time but he turned to me. Normally referees do not have eye contact. Although he didn’t come to me, he told the local security guard.
“By that point, the crowd was already in on it. Pat Riley sat on the bench and asked, ‘They kick you out?’ Alonzo (grief) said, ‘Sit down.’ You stay here.’ I told the guard, “That’s probably not a good idea.” Then they came up to me and said they were giving the heat a technical foul. So I said, okay, I’m going.”
Buffett, who was friends with Heat owner Micky Arison, was a regular at Heat games during the Big Three era of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh. When Shane Battier signed with the Heat, he quoted Buffett as saying, “I’d like to quote the great poet Jimmy Buffett and take my chances of ‘reasoning common sense with Hurricane Season.'”
Buffett was a tennis player throughout his adult life and also enjoyed playing baskets. As a child he played baseball and football. He was friends with Kenny Stabler, but it had nothing to do with the Crimson Tide. Buffett wasn’t a fan of Alabama. Stabler was from Foley, which gave him a Gulf Coast connection with Buffett. Buffett and Stabler were in Los Angeles together while Buffett was rehabilitating a broken leg. It was there that Buffett also met sportswriter Hunter S. Thompson.
Something tells me those were interesting days.
In collegiate sports, Buffett often said his family was divided into a large number of teams, including Tulane, Ole Miss, Southern Miss, Mississippi State, Alabama and Auburn. If Buffett had a fan base for a college football team in the state where he grew up, it was either South Alabama or Auburn. Buffett attended Auburn for a year before transferring to Pearl River Community College.
Buffett’s connection to Auburn was brief but important. Here he taught himself to play the guitar.
Joseph Goodman is the leading sports columnist for Alabama Media Group and the author of We Want Bama, a book about togetherness, hope and rum. You can find him on Twitter at @JoeGoodmanJr.
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