I’m not generally all that into sports. I used to occasionally watch football, but now I find it either too boring to pay attention to or too intense to enjoy watching (if I actually care about the outcome). I did go to every football game when I was in high school, since I was in the marching band, and for a couple of years I had season tickets for my university’s team. I’m kind of meh on baseball, but I enjoy the cultural ritual of going to a game. The local sports franchise I’ve watched most often is the Texas Rangers, who just won the World Series, and there is some pride and joy about that.

I went to my first Rangers game when I was in high school, at their old, old stadium. My dad took my brother and me to Arlington from our home in East Texas to make a day of it, and I brought a book to read during the boring parts, so I didn’t get invited to join those excursions again. I went to a lot of games at the old new ballpark (the one before the current one). I went with church groups a few times, we had at least one office outing to a game, and I had a friend who had season tickets who would sometimes bring me along. I like just about everything about going to a baseball game other than the game itself. I like the National Anthem, the player introductions, the various things they do to amuse the fans when it gets slow, like the dot races. I actually prefer minor-league baseball games to major league. I think it’s more fun watching people who have a dream and are mostly playing for the love of it than watching multimillionaires.

With the Rangers, you’ve got to love a plucky team of perennial losers. They’d made it to the World Series a couple of times about a decade ago and lost. Before that, any kind of big season was rare, and that history goes way back. This team used to be the Washington Senators, the team immortalized in the musical Damn Yankees, in which someone sells his soul to the devil to play for the team and beat the Yankees. Oddly, I’ve very seldom seen the Rangers lose. I seem to be a lucky charm for them. When I go to a game, they win. My friend with the season tickets was primarily a Yankees fan, so I wasn’t allowed to go with her to games when the Rangers were playing the Yankees (true story). I have not managed to capitalize on this to get free tickets to big games, though.

I must confess to not having watched much of the World Series. For the first couple of games, I was traveling and staying in a place without a TV (not that I would have watched). I watched part of one game with my parents when I got to their house on my way home. Otherwise, I’ve seen the result the next morning when I looked at the newspaper. I’ll admit that I got a bit teary-eyed when I saw in the paper yesterday morning that they’d won the Series. I even read all the coverage of it in the newspaper. There’s a big parade going on today, and I may watch it on TV. And then I will go back to not caring much about sports.