What Baseball Playoffs?

Those who live in my area and hate sports usually have a warped picture of sports in American culture. They believe sports permeates through every part of the United States. Not true. I come from a small rural area in the Great Lakes region. The four main sports in popular American culture began cities in my area or in the northeastern part of the United States.

Every city in my area and the Boston-New York area has great endearment to one sport or another. Green Bay is Title town for professional football and houses the stadium that John Madden says should be the shrine for all of football across the country. Detroit is hockey town with one of the most popular teams in the sport, the Red Wings. As much as hockey has dwindled over the years for coverage, Detroit managed to sell out for Red Wing tickets for ten years straight.

My specific area is mainly dedicated to football. The Green Bay Packers are basically a local team being just two and half hours away, but football also gets the most stomach turning reaction. Unless you grew up to love the sport, you're bound to see it as just dumb and violent. The non-stop coverage by ESPN of it doesn't help at all. Football has become the national pass time.

Last year that almost changed. The Detroit Tigers were resurrected from the dead and went on an unbelievable run that lead to an American League Pennant. Just three years ago ESPN called the Tigers the worst sports franchise in history, but all of a sudden they became the pride of the area. It was easy to celebrate because the Packers were having a marginal year.

The casual person who was appalled by football was able to love baseball. It's a simple sport of grace and beauty. Physicality is non-existent and baseball aligns itself to older traditions instead of violence or rap music (unlike all other sports). People were truly excited about the Tigers and followed them during the playoffs. It was easy to do because they were winning everything. The important thing is that many people I didn't associate with liking sports began to say they really did like baseball. I thought, "good!"

Now I'm realizing both and I they got ahead of ourselves. The Tigers aren't in the playoffs but the playoffs are still going on. I'm watching as many games as I can. It's fun to do homework and keep an eye on the game or an ear out for the commentary in the background. I figured I could relate to people about the dramatics of the series, but my attempts are falling on deaf ears. The people I saw as casual fans turned into born again baseball fanatics aren't interested.

I question them and ask why, but they have few answers. They relate how they loved what the Tigers did but watching baseball without rooting for a team was really just boring. The more I thought about it, the more I should have known this. Everyone watched Tigers baseball last year, but only die hards watched their pathetic August and September last year when Polanco was injured and they couldn't do shit. I remember most of them saying I had nothing to worry about because Tigers were in first place and doing awesome.

This just reinstates the fact my area is a football place. Oh well. It's not surprising. Cleveland is a football city but yet has a team in the playoffs for baseball. I remember listening to ESPN radio out of Cleveland a few months ago and radio hosts were complaining that the Indians couldn't sell out a game. People called up and said they didn't want to get their hopes up or that baseball was boring. Now Indians are selling out and it's all because they are doing well in the playoffs. Detroit is a better town for baseball, but the area also experienced bandwagon jumpers once the team got into the playoffs.

Sports still remains for sports fans to appreciate.