Sports

So the first thing on my mind right now (besides the fact that I should be asleep for my midterm tomorrow) is baseball. Which is odd if you've known for a very long time but haven't talked to me recently. What I mean to say is, I've never liked sports. Like, at all. I played baseball and was an affront to the skills of the game. I gave my all, don't get me wrong, but all of nothing still isn't much. I accept this with no personal disappointment. Until this point, my sports interests really ended with the USC football team and that was primarily because I went there! [At a hell of a time to be a student too. The entire Leinart-Bush era was mine.]

For some reason, starting towards the end of last year, I really started to love the Dodgers. I've been going to see them play since I was a little kid with my parents and brother. I've taken friends to their first baseball game. I've made Elena and out and out fan. And while in my heart of hearts I know that this and other sports are, at best, a distraction of other parts of life...I don't care.

There are not a lot of things I have access to in this that I can truly get entirely silly stupid about. I have the video games I play, but they're interactive and require something of me, which I love at times. Sports, however, I get to just sit back, turn off most of my critical thought process (often in overdrive thanks to law school :P) and enjoy. Sports provide real life dramas that are truly subject to any possible outcome. Unlike TV (even "reality" tv; check how many shows where someone gets voted off have small print saying that producers are often involved with the eliminations; not a true knock, but "real" it ain't), sports are entirely unscripted.

Impossible things happen in sports. USC doesn't make 4th down and long against Notre Dame in South Bend with seconds left. 20 years ago, Gibson doesn't slam a game winning long ball off a future, lights out, hall of fame closer. Moments occur that, if you really let yourself be attached to a group of players, will make you so excited that your only logical response is to scream your head off. Other than maybe a great live concert, how many things can make you do that?

Of course, the flip side is the agony of defeat. [E.g. Vince Young doesn't score a touch down in Pasadena to win a national championship.] Yes, my beloved boys in Blue lost tonight, ending a roller coaster year. But you know what, this is the inevitable otherside of the coin. It's only by letting myself be so excited for a postseason and the possibilities that come with that today I watched the final out with a level of...dejection. Nothing that will actually have a long term impact, but enough to notice. And I'm ok with that, because I wouldn't give up the elation when the team is up to avoid the disappointment when the team is down.

At the end of this season, there is nothing left to do but look ahead. Torre is big on keeping core players together, and he love his young group of up and coming Dodgers. So long as he can keep his sway with the powers that be, Martin, Kemp, Loney, Ethier, DeWitt, Broxton, Kershaw, and others should be names called out in Chavez Ravine for years to come. [And yes, I'd rather keep that group together then sell them away to hold on to one dread headed slugger. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to keep him around, but not at the expense of the young talent that can keep us strong for years after Manny likely becomes a DH.] We had a good year. And with good off season development and a good starter or two to potentially replace Penny and/or Lowe, next year looks to be even better.

In the end, I love the feeling that following team through it's highs and lows give me. That feeling of hope, of anything being possible, of being truly excited for people who are essentially strangers. I love that I can go watch a game that has no real bearing on the rest of the world, but that can belong to me. The same goes for when that game goes the wrong way. I was fan since a kid, and a big Dodger fan starting more recently. And I was a fan opening day, a fan the day they clinched the postseason, and I'm a fan today when they lost the pennant to the Phillies. I'll be wearing my Dodger hat tomorrow. I hope I won't be alone.