My new friend Jeter

It's too bad I am not in high school anymore, because I could have been a lot more well-rounded. My new-found appreciation for math and science is now joined by a tentative appreciation for sports. The only sport I ever liked was Lacrosse, which I played in high school. I liked it's grace and aggression, and the fact that I was good at it -- unlike soccer, basketball, softball and all the other sports I was forced to play as a child.

Even so, I never liked watching sports. I could never understand the close relationship some people -- even the most unathletic or aetheistic -- found between sports and religion. The closest I ever came was last month, watching the US Women's soccer team win in overtime at Athens. Holy shit.

I CERTAINLY never understood this city's obsession with the Yankees. I come from DC where we have losing teams so the fervor here was completely lost on me when I moved here. The Yankees always kind of pissed me off, because I thought they made too much money and the hot-spot-hopping Jeter seemed like too much of a pretty boy. To say nothing of A-Rod. Jesus.

Then yesterday I watched an interesting movie on HBO which I do not know the name of. It was about the 2001 World Series and how Yankee fans hung all their emotional stability on the back-and-forth drama between the Yankees and the Arizona what's-their-faces. That I can understand. Of course I missed the Series, but condensed in the movie it looked fantastic. Considering my emotional stability was completely M.I.A. in the fall of 2001, and I was a blathering mess, perhaps I should have looked into baseball.

There was an interview with a man who had been at game 7 (I think) out at Yankee stadium and he said he felt so good after the game that he didn't want to leave the Bronx. As he took the subway back downtown, the feeling disappeared and he could smell again that thick, plastic smoke that was all in the amtosphere for months. His story was mostly presented in voiceover, accompanied by nighttime scenes of ground zero, all lit up with floodlights. I had forgotten about that smell and about those floodlights which prevented nighttime darkness (such as it is in the city) from letting you forget about it for a minute. Although I didn't go to ground zero for three years after 9-11, I knew about those lights and hated them almost as much as the smell.

None of these feelings are fresh for me now, but I still remember that raw anguish and wish I had had something like the escapism, joy and community bonding of the Yankees to make me feel better at the time. I don't need any of that now, but it does make me think that maybe baseball isn't so bad.