It may take me a post or two to get my thoughts to where they make as much sense as possible.
Unfortunately, as is usually the case, I don't have an answer that helps one side or the other, or that casts a light on one side or the other.
Where sports are concerned, I'm a baseball fanatic. It's as big a part of my world as motorcycles are, and it has been for just about as long (I started riding when I was ten years old). That said; I don't follow any other sports. I know nothing of football, basketball, hockey, or soccer. I don't follow the seasons, I don't know players, I don't know the rules. I just have no interest.
Now, with that in mind, I'll try to quantify what moves me about baseball. Since I was a kid, I've found it fascinating. It's a chess game on a field. It has strategy, it involves several types of skills, by different types of players, each with different strengths and weaknesses.
It's slow and methodical, there are moments where the tension builds, where the entire game - sometimes an entire season of 162 games - can hang on a single pitch, hit, runner, fielder, etc. You have time - or is it forced to take the time? - to feel the tension.
I wish I could explain the tension when our guys are up by only a run, bottom of the eighth, two men out & a runner at second, with Pettitte staring down the number four hitter, with a full count on him. It can be gut-wrenching. Fast ball, breaking ball, cutter? - what's he going to challenge the hitter with to try to get him to make a mistake? And if he does manage to get wood on it, will Jeter be able to get to it in time?
As far as the representation of city is concerned, I don't feel that as strongly as some fans. The game and it's history are much bigger than any one place. That said, when there are guys who become obnoxious about the contest, I tend to hope their team loses, just so they'll feel the let down. By trying to make it a them against me contest, they bring an ugly side out of me. I want them to be forced to be humble. Baseball isn't him against me - it's a team of professionals against another team of professionals. We're just watching it on TV. I never use the phrase I\we won - because it wasn't me. I don't manage the team, I don't suit-up, nor do I make player personnel decisions. I'm not the Yankees - I'm a fan of the Yankees.
Along those lines, I often times root against a fan base as much as I do against a team itself. The more obnoxious or arrogant the fans, the more I want their team to lose. I used to work with a guy that was a huge Steelers fan, a borderline disturbed fan, with an unhealthy attachment to the team. On Mondays after the Steelers won, he would come to work in a replica jersey shirt and spend all day lording the win over other sports fans - whether they were football fans or not. On Mondays after the Steelers lost, he'd call in sick. On Tuesday when he came in, as soon as people would try to give him a taste of his own medicine, he'd claim he didn't watch the game - had to mow the yard, fix his wife's car, etc, etc. It was a disturbing denial of reality. He completely took the fun out of sports.
After the World Series this year, I posted that I felt a loss over the season ending (I always do). Warbler told me to suck it up - my team won the World Series. I had to clarfity two points for him - I don't own the Yankees, and baseball is bigger than any one team. I feel the loss when the season is gone. Baseball's off-season is also my off-season. It's when I watch movies and read books.
I'm rambling, so I'll try to sew this up. The solitude that is a pitcher on the mound, a hitter in the box, or a center fielder out there alone - there is a connection to that, which I can't explain. It's been that way since I was a little kid. I'm a fairly solitary figure, so that solitude has always spoken to me. In a way that other sports don't. I feel a connection to it that is perfectly summed up in Field Of Dreams;
The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.
And Warbler - yes, I've been following the Winter Meetings very closely. How could the Yankees let Matsui go!? He was a one-man wrecking crew. By the way - nice move getting Halladay. Man, you gotta dig a team that's so solid they can afford to let Lee go for an upgrade - as if there was one.
*edit*
One of my favorite baseball quotes of all time, from Emmylou Harris , in an issue of Esquire, years ago. One of the few I saved.
"I love the game. I love the history of the game. I love the fact that anything can happen but probably won't. But sometimes does."
