So far, I am enjoying watching the World Series. The games are long but my interest is there. It's still a bummer that my teams (Dodgers WSox) aren't in the WS but I am enjoying watching how the teams in the Series are playing the game. The Giants have done a better job (as their series lead shows) at doing what they do best: pitching. They are finding ways to make runs and quieting a Rangers club with a strong offense.
The Giants are the classic case of a team that gets into the playoffs and happen to get hot. Their pitching performs as expected and they are riding hot bats. On one hand, the Giants are not the team that I am rooting for because I would rather they lose. However, if the Giants win, I won't be distraught because the Phillies didn't win.
Though I tend to be on the liberal side of the vast majority of issues, I am not taking part in the proxy rooting war of the liberal side, the free-and-easy, kind-smoking, sustainable San Francisco Giants versus the Bush-represented, Lone Star, publicly-funded ballparked (lazy wordage, I know) Texas Rangers. I am going for the Rangers and I don't care who benefits from them winning. I want San Francisco to lose because I don't like them.
I have many external reasons to hate sports teams. I am impressed with the Phillies as a club but I hate their fan base and I hope that the 2008 WS is their last. I hate the Cubs because they are losers and their fan base perpetuates their losing ways (they did historically but not so much recently, though; I still hate the Cubs). And that is just external reasons in baseball. I am way more factious in my NFL viewing. Being factious, judgemental and holding grudges is a lot of the fun in watching sports.
The reasons why I am not getting in on the proxy rooting war are that a) I don't like to let politics infiltrate my sports consumption, b) Texas winning or losing doesn't affect the lives of the people who would be afflicted with joy/disappointment all that much and c) my dislike for the Giants is higher than my desire to root for that infliction of disappointment.
Yes, that means that in my baseball world a viewing of a well-played series>Giants WS loss>Bush family & conservative Texas fans' disappointment
One of the reasons why I like sports so much is that it is a system that lends itself to be analyzed and one that I have been familiar with for most of my life and the outcome of the events are entertaining at best and disappointing at worst. Politics have about the same ceiling but the floor of disappointing can be on the level of devastating (nuclear war, etc.) and the outcome political decisions have a real outcome on our lives. The injected political aspect of this World Series has little to no advantage except to reinforce our political opinions and the dislike for the oppositions' opinions.
I am entertained that the proxy war is a something, as insignificant as it is. Like most contests, the peripherals of the event will fade with time. This Series, I am watching because of what the game has to offer.
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