brief but joyful

The Yankees lost. The Red Sox won. It's hard to say which exactly causes me more joy, but I spent 6+ innings lastnight just smiling and laughing, smiling and laughing. And making encouraging, sometimes a bit patronizing comments to my companion, a Yankees fan. (He seemed to take them badly even when I was honestly try to cheer him from his more and more slumped position in the chair.)

I do like the Red Sox, but I hate the Yankees more than any sports team. Even more than the Jazz or the Lakers (at least at the moment.) And I hate them more than I like any team. I don't have a Mariners hat or shirt. I have a shirt that I had custom-made: I HATE THE YANKEES. (It makes me friends all over the place, I can tell you.) I've often felt that this was a personal failing, a way to channel the negativity that I've been moderately successful at weeding out from many other facets of my life. But today I was thinking it has more to do with the state of sport. There's a whole lot to hate--the high salaries, the doping, which somehow MLB and most fans pointedly ignore, and the diva'tudes. There's just very rarely someone or a group of someones to love without reservation, to embrace as good. You should love the Red Sox, even if they are overpaid and some of them chew. I'll watch the Series, but the Red Sox have already done the hardest part. They've broken the curse, they've made history, and they've handed a humiliating, a CRUSHING defeat to a team that bought its way to glory with pompous pretty boys and a dull void in its chest where a heart should be. The Series is frosting. Boo Yah!