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For some reason few are remembering the Sox were favored going into the Yankees series. I know what happened and all (and my blame stick points to Rivera, who's blown bigger games before, i.e. game 7 of the W.S.), but the Sox were really the biggest "fake underdogs" I've ever read about. I don't believe in curses and magic and the fact of the matter is the Sox were favored going into each series they played, including the one against the Yankees. There was a reason for this: they're good.

Was it a choke? Huge. Not only that, if you take away the game outcomes, the games themselves weren't all that great either. If this was a team other than the Sox winning it I think most would admit this was a pretty boring baseball playoffs.

Anyway, as a Yankees fan I expect them to have the biggest wins and the biggest losses. It's the Cy Young effect. Most wins, most losses. In the end I'll remember the wins more and that's still what the Yankees will be remembered for, but if you're put in the situation the most times you're bound to come up with the most highs and lows. This was a big low. Losing in game 7 to the Diamondbacks was more heartbreaking IMO (I mean, outs away from a championship is much bigger than outs away from a pennant); but everyone measures that stuff in their own way. C'est la vie.

I find it intriguing that anti-Yankee fans take so much pleasure in their loss. Is it really that big a deal? Sure, they blew a 3-0 lead, but you can't tell me losing four games in a row is anything remotely close to cataclysmic. After Game 4, you could almost feel what was going to happen.

I have a hard time accepting the possibility that fans actually take sports more seriously than the participants themselves. I've always thought Red Sox and Yankee fans derive a disproportionate amount of self-esteeem from the success/failure of their clubs, and the fact that "bragging rights" are consiered so important gives me the impression that these fans take more pleasure in the opponent's loss than they do their team's win.

Maybe I'm just over-thinking, but there's something mildly sadistic about that. Then again, I suppose all sports fans have that kind of hatred in their bones, to some degree. I think it says something about the nature of sports culture - I wish I knew what the hell it is.

God knows the media help foster this obsessive baseball culture we live in. The sports talk hosts spend every day convincing everyone in the country that this series is bigger than the election itself... Is it any wonder someone was killed over such a massive national event?

I can't help but wonder if folks that take sports this seriously are looking for some kind of hope in their lives. They're looking for something positive to grab onto - camaraderie, success, taunting rights, who knows? There's an emotional attachment to these players, even though most of us have never met these guys, never will, and don't seem to understand that what their doing isn't comporable to some kind of religious quest.

Or maybe it is.

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