Blogtrek

Sports Society

We live in a sports society. I found this in the newspaper this morning. It was an editorial describing a hypothetical sale of baseball caps. These caps have pictures of birds on them with the name of the bird below it; nothing else. The birds on these caps are oriole, blue jay, goldfinch, and cardinal. The article commented that the goldfinch hat will sell much less than the other three, because it is not the name of a major league baseball team. That says something about our society. We are too hung up on sports. When we talk about Indians (either from India or American), there is a good chance we mean the ones from Cleveland. Mariners are not on ships but are on ballfields, quite often in Seattle. Reds are not communists or lefties; they are from Cincinnati. The Land of the Brave is Atlanta, Georgia. Vikings came from Minnesota, not Scandanavia. The only place which has patriots in this country is New England. And where does jazz come from? Certainly not from New Orleans. From Utah! Now, listen to all that Utah jazz. Cool, man.

It's not just baseball and football. This is a country where the death of Dale Earnhardt is more important than the death of Richard Nixon. It's all over the place. Maybe this is just a way of getting levity in a world full of bad news. But I rather either watch the news or go out running or swimming then watch sports on television. And maybe you will see me wearing a goldfinch hat some day.