Chicago, Get a Grip!

Leave Steve Bartman alone.

I've always been somewhat bewildered by anyone who takes sports so seriously that they schedule their time around televised sporting events - or even live events.

I've played more sports than I can probably count. Some, like football (American, that is) and baseball, were limited to highschool and college (intramural). Others I've played for longer periods; tennis, golf, raquetball, soccer, etc. Still others I've played at various times and places; lacrosse, softball, handball, volleyball. So I'm not anti-sport. When I have enough time to sit in front of the television for the four-plus hours it can take to watch some football or baseball games, I'd rather use that time for constructive purposes: sometimes to actually go outside and play a sport, sometimes to do other things that I need or want to do.

But what could make what should be grown, rational people become so rabid about the outcome of a game played by a team on which they've never played, and/or a sport in which they've likely never played (beyond sandlot) that they would threaten a young fan for momentarily forgetting the world-wide import of the game he was watching and try to snag himself a souvenir? It's beyond me. Really.

Maybe its the face paint; some insidious chemical has worked its way into their brain. Perhaps its the beer. Or the $10 hotdogs (or whatever combination of arm and leg they are charging now).

I meet these fan(atic)s all the time. At work, out and about everywhere I go. I just want to grab them by the collar and yell at them, "It's a game!"

But I refrain. I know that in the fevered mind of a fan(atic), there can be no reasoning.