S/o Professional Sports

amother

Tue, Aug 27 2024, 3:11 pm

I didn’t want to derail the other thread about the camp that took the kids to a baseball game. But I do want to add that I understand this as an in town- out of town thing. And while I don't think that everything that is done in Lakewood is kodesh hakadoshim (far from it), I think that taking children to a baseball game is a gray area, for all the reasons (both pro and con) enumerated in the thread.

I want to share an experience I had shortly after moving to my out-of -town community (from an in-town community.)

I was teaching limudei Kodesh in a Bais Yaakov.
One day, I came into school in the morning and noticed that the walls were plastered with signs saying "WE WON". There was jubilation in the air. Girls were shouting and cheering.

A girl came running over to me, and, jumping up and down, said, "Mrs Plonis! WE WON! WE WON!"

I smiled questioningly, and asked her, "What did we win??"
She said that our home team (she named the team) won the World Series. She was over the moon excited. We won!!
At the time- I still didn't get it. I asked her, "Who is WE?"

How am I connected to this team?

She tried- believe me, she tried- explaining to me how extraordinary and monumental this achievement was. But I wasn't getting it.

I was struggling to make sense of this phenomenon- that I should be happy that a bunch of players who happen to work for a team that is based in my state - won a championship.

Forget about the fact that players are traded and sold every year.
Forget about the fact that, whether they win or lose, none of the "fans" had any effect on who would win.
And what, in Heaven's name does it have to do with me? Why should I be happy or sad if an entity completely beyond me wins or loses a game? Why should my mood be affected at all?

I get being happy if I won a game that I played in, or even if my kid played. I even get being happy if I was on the color war team and my team won a game. But this I could not wrap my head around.

The student looked at me as if I was completely crazy and out to lunch (which of course, I was. Or one of us was, anyway.)

And neither of us convinced the other. What