So I’ve got a hard on for Chuck Klosterman and I pretty much consider him to be smarter than all of my readers so I want to share with you some thoughts about some things that we agree on but he can actually explain better than me. I’ve written how I don’t like the Phillies, baseball in general really, and I’m not just going to jump on the bandwagon because they are good. Here’s Klosterman’s wording on rooting for the home team just because.

“I hate the idea that rooting for a team without justification somehow proves that you are traditional, loyal, and a “true fan”. All it proves is that you’re ridiculous, and that you don’t really consider the motivations that drive your emotions, and that you probably care more about geography and the color of a uniform than you do about any given sport.”
People basically just like things because they feel like they should to either fit in because they are insane.

I thought another interesting line from this essay was this:
“Whenever I meet someone who openly identifies themselves as a Republican or a Democrat, my immediate thought is always, well, this person might be interesting, but they’ll never say anything about politics that’s remotely useful to me… If you want to truly deduce how intelligent someone is, just ask this person how they feel about any issue that doesn’t have an answer; the more certainly they express, the less sense they have. This is because certainty only comes from dogma.

He goes on to write that “life is fucking confusing. I don’t know anything, and neither do you.” I think a large part of being a person is trying to convince yourself you know what you’re doing. I’m rooting for the Phillies because I like baseball. No, you’re rooting for the Phillies because they are the best team and baseball and you want to feel a part of it. Tell me how many of you would still be watching every game if they were as good as they were back in 97′ when they went 68-94. I know I’m right about this. I understand why people do it too. It makes life “better”. It gives you something to look forward to. I’m not saying this applies to everyone because I’m sure there are die hard fans who actually like watching baseball for the baseball but these are far and few between compared to all the faux fans out there. People can say I’m being a complete sourpuss on this topic but at least I know I’m for real. I’d rather have my own identity instead of being one of the lemmings about to fall over the cliff.