| | Spring upon us, which means baseball is back in all its magnificence and glory... People puling over how many otiose hours are whittled down consuming the game... The inevitable grievance: why care so much about a red sox team that you have no stock in? Why die and live with every loss and every win when they have no bearing on your own life? My answer is simple: it's not about the team, it's about me. It's about how i feel. Because anyone who has ever been a fan knows what it's like to die and live for someone else. The highs and lows are intoxicating, retching and exhilarating all at the same time. People who are not fans and who have never played sports at a competitive level don't understand. Because once you give yourself entirely to fandom, the sensations are as addictive as the whitest powder, as life-changing as fighting the vilest war. Ultimately that's what fandom is: a war without the physical perils but with the emotional roller-coaster, able to roil away the ennui of the most tedious 9-6 existence. Sure, more often than not you'll end in dysphoria, dejection; that's just the nature of the beast when 30 teams vie for one title. But how to quit? Or for that matter, why quit? I mean, imagine having a kid and watching him or her hit in little league... You know there's a one in a billion chance he or she will become a ballplayer, it's a given that there will be more disappointment than glory, but is there a greater feeling than watching your own offspring hit a walk-off home run? Is there a more helpless feeling than watching him or her go through a slump? And are you getting more satisfaction from anything in this world than from watching him or her swing out of that slump? No, no and no. So you take the good with the bad because you know the few good moments are what shake you out of your everyday stupor. That's what being a fan is all about. Besides, it's either that or fighting in afghanistan. |
| | Posted 5/17/2009 9:29 PM - 1 View - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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