"Vicarious Insanity"

Much to the chagrin of the National League's Colorado Rockies and perhaps more so to Mr. George Steinbrenner and his New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox captured this year's World Series baseball championship in a four game sweep. Whoopee! I say that tongue in cheek. Don't get me wrong, for any sporting team to win a recognized championship, having pitted their skills in a defined season against equally striving foes, is by no means a minor accomplishment. To celebrate the ultimate culminating victory in any competitive endeavor should be duly recognized. I doff my hat in appreciation to all such athletic achievements.

That having been said I also recognize that the team's accomplishments is theirs and theirs alone. Other than the minuscule part I may have played as a "fan," either as paying customer or a viewer of their exploits on television, I can lay no claim to hoisting them on my shoulders and carrying them forth to victory. I'm not singling out the Boston Red Sox fans exclusively. They just happen to be the latest examples of some the more vociferous fans who have elevated "their" team's accomplishments to a level of irrational fanaticism. To listen to the majority of these "fanatics" you would think the Red Sox World Series victory was a parallel to man's landing on the moon! Hardly.

What intrigues me the most (and perhaps disturbs me equally so) is the propensity for some die hard fans to wrap their entire identity in total allegiance to their favorite team, dying a thousand deaths when expectations fail to achieve idealistic goals or insufferable sociopaths when any success is achieved. Defining oneself vicariously to any extraneous entity is dangerous if taken to the extreme. Dissolving into abject depression or delirious euphoria over a team's performance boarders, in my uneducated opinion, to mental instability. It's just a game with winners and losers. If one has chosen to define one's opinion of one's worth on a school's or team's win and loss record, there exists a hollowness that desperately needs filling with a better sense of person.

Sports can most certainly provide a viable means for connectivity between sport's minded people. But it never should evolve to become the be all and end all of social interaction. Sports in America has become the opium for the masses. We idolize our teams and heroes that make up those teams. It is one thing to be an enthusiastic supporter of sports, it is quite another to elevate that type of allegiance into worship. That's idolatry and that's quite another matter entirely.