Rangers Fever

Facebook was lots of fun this morning, in spite of the gloom of the Rangers' loss last night. Message aftr message traced the emotions of the evening, although in backward order because you read the newest first. So in reading them it went from disappointment and despair to unbelieveable tension to early elation when we we're winning. Some had really clever comments and others a baseball lingo I apparently don't understand.
I've never been much of a sports fan, though I like baseball better than football because I can follow the game and tell what's happening. For too much of football, all the players pile on each other, and I have no idea what just went on. Basketball is in the middle for me--fast and exciting, and I can usually tell what's going on. But I've never been one to change my schedule for a game or sit and watch with nothing else to do.
I grew up in the era when the World Series, not the Superbowl, was "the" sports events, and I can remember kids sneaking small portable radios into grade school during the Series. Although I lived on Chicago's South Side, I was never a White Sox fan but always for the Cubs--since they never won, maybe it has something to do with the underdog. I really think it was because the kids next door were Cubs fans--and I doubt they had any more reason than I did.
For years in Fort Worth I went to TCU football games dutifully--they always lost, though we heard much about the glory days of Slingin' Sammy Baugh and Davey O'Brien. These days I'm mildly happy if TCU wins, not at all interested in which conference they're in--doesn't make sense to me--but I'm always a bit resentful of all the money poured into sports programs while TCU Press had to squeak by on used furniture and out-of-date computers. My ears are deaf to arguments that football makes money--that shouldn't be the point in a university.
Anyway, rant over and back to baseball. Last Sunday night Megan and Brandon were watching the game, so I thought I'd be sociable and take my book in by the TV--I often stay with my book at the big granite slab in the middle of their kitchen but not this night. I'd read and glance at the TV, but the more I watched Derek Holland, the more often I put the book down and watched the game. I was mesmerized by the concentration, the pressure, the decisions that they had to make. When the manager finally went in to take him out, I could see Holland begging to stay in--and I wish he had, so he could have gotten closer credit. But that night, baseball and the Rangers began to mean more to me. I've watched off and on this week--one eye on the game and one eye on something else. Last night I went to sleep in the 8th, sure we'd won. What a shock the headlines were this morning.
So tonight, I'll mute it, try to write, and keep an eye on that little box in the upper lefthand corner. Trouble is--I have to get up and walk to the TV to see what it says!