femminista: thoughts of a feminist rhetorician

Baseball is a beautiful game.  As a kid, I could see it on tv and it excited me, but after going to my first major league game, my love of the game has been stalwart and true.  I saw the Braves (the team that I had always followed, being the closest to a home team that South Carolinians have) beat the Marlins and I was hooked.  It was the most beautiful sport I'd ever seen.  I now understood the sports obsession.  Later, when the Braves played the Yankees in the World Series, I had a new obsession.  The most beautiful playing I'd ever seen, a team with a synchronicity bordering on the preternatural.  Okay, yes I was prone to hyperbole, but actually as I watch them today my opinion hasn't changed much and as I've learned more and more about the game, the more I love it.  And the Yankees.

 And I've gotten a lot of flack for loving the Yankees--they're easy to support; they have the most money; they yada, yada, yada; they buy the  best players.  I'm not sure why rooting for the underdog makes you a better baseball fan and by extension a better person or why rooting for the winning team is something to be ashamed of.  Oh, and I'm glad that the best players are gathered together in the Yankee clubhouse. that means I get to  watch all my favorite players at the same time.  Plus, anyone who puts the onus of Yankee success on their money-making capabilities is working on faulty logic.  There's a chicken-egg situation here.  Are the Yankees good because they have the most money or do they have the most money because they're good?  Do they all come in to the Yankees as the best players?  Let's give Joe Torre a little credit, okay.

As is often the case when I am in love with an entity (author, team, other organization, political candidate, friend), I am fiercely loyal and they can do no wrong. Even if I can see their flaws, it's doubtful that I'll admit to them.  I'm ultimately a loyal person and to me their flaws tend to make me love them more because those flaws don't make up the sum of their being; they don't overwhelm the qualities that I love and respect.  A bit mushy?  Yes, I know.  What can I say?  I'm a marshmallow.  I guess it isn't much different from the way people feel about me.  They love me or they hate me.  There's seldom an in-between.  And trust me when I say, I'm not bragging.  Tending towards a certain degree of notoriety makes my life difficult at best, especially when the balance of the love/hate tends heavily towards the latter.

But back to baseball.  It makes me want to learn geometry.  I know that  there's more to baseball than geometry.  I also want to learn physics. :)  But seriously, there's a logic to baseball that I can only understand on the surface and as with all things I love, I want to learn everything I can about it.  Still, there's only so much time in a day. But tonight watching the amazing technique of Roger Clemens, I'm even more motivated. (Pettit is still my favorite, but there's no denying the legendary talent of Clemens.  Hell, he's only come out of retirement how many times?  The man loves the game and it shows.)  Another aside, after the lengthy parenthetical aside:  I'm a competitive person and so my love of baseball is further reinforced by the fact that it's baseball and not pool that motivates me to learn geometry.  I know that a little knowledge of geometry would turn my sporadic talent into strong techinque and thus, my sporadic winning into a more consistent success.

And now to be fair, I've seen some beautiful playing from the Red Sox (of course their poor sportsmanship yesterday certainly weakens that respect).  I've been impressed (albeit grudgingly) by some of their plays.