Very early Saturday morning, I turned in and watched the last few innings of the marathon Game 3 of the World Series. In the last three decades, I have probably watched about eight total innings of baseball. I have friends who would skip life-saving medical treatment before they'd skip a ball game, particularly a World Series game. The sport just stopped interesting me about the time my father stopped taking me occasionally to Dodgers games. I don't recall quite when that was but Sandy Koufax was still pitching then and he retired in 1966.
I think part of the problem was that I could never summon up any interest in who won. I was born and bred in Los Angeles but I didn't see why that was any reason to get emotionally invested in whether the Dodgers or even the Angels won. I didn't get a trophy. I didn't get a bonus or a shaving cream commercial. I hadn't been recognized as being the best at anything. And yet, I'd see people who if their team won the pennant were more excited than I'd be if I won an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Tony, a Grammy, a Nobel Peace Prize, a Pulitzer, a Peabody, a Heisman Trophy, an Olympic gold medal, a Powerball jackpot, sex with any or all of the Deal or No Deal models, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
But I watched innings 15-18 the other night because it was such an oddity and just now when I turned on my TV, it was on the same channel. So I have the World Series on and at the moment, Boston is ahead 3-1. They could take it tonight…and I'm just thinking how little that matters to me. I can't name a single player on the Red Sox and the only Dodger I can name is Max Muncy because he's the guy who hit the game-winning home run the other night.
And since I typed the second sentence of the previous paragraph, it went to Red Sox 4, Dodgers 1. If you took a loved one hostage and demanded I care about one team or the other winning, I'd probably say "the home team" because that would make all those people in the stands happy. I think that's Boston.
If you care passionately about this game, I am not for a second belittling that. I might even in a way envy that. Two more innings and you might get a thrill that is unknown and alien to me…a thrill I will never know.
Then again, I can't possibly get depressed because my team lost.
P.S. Oh, they're in Los Angeles. That shows you how much I'm paying attention.