First Entry

Last night, I watched the first half of a documentary about Steve Bartman, the guy who supposedly kept the curse alive on the Chicago Cubs by interfering with a foul ball in Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series. I had no idea the guy took such a beating from the public. I mean, I knew he was made fun of and received threats. But the people at that game acted like little children.

It's easy to sit back and watch them and think, "Those idiots." But I was an idiot, too. I'm sure I made fun of him at the time. The issue here is letting things like sports take us completely out of who we are. Sports are fun. Sports can be entertaining. But we have to keep things in balance. When we pour all of who we are into something like sports, we're finished. We're completely at the control of a random sports team to tell us how we should feel. When we step back and think about it, we see how silly this really is.

This is the same thing that the guy who wrote the book, God and Football, was trying to say a couple of years ago with this survey of how people react to SEC football. Sports is sports. What matters is how we react.