On Rooting

AT THIS time last year, I was shuttling between agony and ecstasy. I remain a loyal New Yorker and Yankee fan, but 20 adult years in the shadow of Fenway park have engendered a strong affection for the Sox. The Mets, as an expansion team, are nothing to me because rooting is forged in the fires of youth, and the Mets didn't exist during my stickball days in Queens. So I cast my lot with my adopted Boston and died with the Sox. I will never ever in all the rest of my life be able to think about Game 6 without a shudder.

This October, I found myself in an exactly opposite predicament. While the Series was in progress, I couldn't bring myself to care. Moreover, the entire season had been one long, progressive benumbment, as circumstances snatched interest from me, piece by progressive piece. The Sox were out of it before we began--what with Clemens' holdout, Gedman's erasure, and Boyd's injury. So I followed the Yanks, who stayed on top far longer than they deserved (on almost no pitching worth mentioning) but eventually, and inevitably, faded. Then I swallowed my pride of last October and followed the Mets (I remain a New Yorker at heart). I was sure they would catch the Cards, but they didn't.

I thus greeted the four division champions with less than brimming enthusiasm, but at least I could construct some half-reasonable bases for choosing. I would root for the Tigers over the Twins. After all, they play on grass in an urban park. Moreover, this traditionalist remembers the old 8-team leagues with fondness, and tends to favor the survivors. Shades of Ty Cobb, and all that. The National League was even easier. I decided finally to let bygones be bygones. It has been almost 30 years after all--and San Francisco is a swell place. I would finally forgive Horace Stoneham and root for the old New York Giants on the West Coast. The warm memories flooded in.

1951, 13 1/2 games out in August. Charlie Dressen, Dodgers manager, proclaiming "the Giants is dead." New York papers involved in a grammatical argument over whether Dressen should have said "is dead" or "are dead"--but not doubting the veracity of his statement. Sweet disproof; a three-game playoff; Bobby Thomson's important moment (the eternal antidote to Bill Buckner's legs).

1954. Up against the greatest team of post-war baseball, the Indians with 111 victories in a 154-game season, and a pitching staff of Lemon, Wynn, Garcia and an aging but able Bob Feller. I bet every cent I won (about two bucks) at long odds on the hometown boys, and the Giants win in 4 as Dusty Rhodes emerges from the bench into ephermeral glory. I end up with about 12 bucks and considered myself the richest kid in town.

1962. My heart stops as Ralph Terry (having thrown that pitch to Mazeroski just two years earlier) almost loses another Series in the 7th game, but Bobby Richardson stabs McCovey's screamer. Hey, Roger Craig even pitched for the Bums of Brooklyn, so I can go for San Francisco from both sides of New York's National League past.

I was all set, even in my disappointment, for a Series properly bathed in advocacy. And both the Tigers and the Giants blow it. What was I supposed to do? The Twins or the Cards? Who cares? How could I sing the fan's song in a strange land in a strange land of roofs and carpets?

SOME self-proclaimed baseball afficionados (the effete ones in my book) say that one should appreciate the game for good play and beauty in the abstract--and the rooting might even get in the way of a higher, detached understanding. Bullbleep. Ya gotta root. (I cannot, for example, believe that my erstwhile colleague, National League prexy Bart Giamatti late of Harvard's great rival to the South, doesn't still pull for his beloved Red Sox, even though his present post demands an appearance of august impartiality within his new Leaue, and crusading zeal against his old favorites.)

So what to do? It would be unthinkable to abandon October's greatest source of pleasure (I rank leaves and Halloween as close seconds and thirds), but equally impossible to enjoy without rooting. Well, don't rush me; Kirby Puckett proves that a man can have an ordinary looking physique, much like mine, and still play ball with the best--a fine antidote to the hypertrophy required for basketball or football (not to mention sumo wrestling).

Besides, all the world loves an underdog, and the Twins were once the Washington Senators, who won only once, in 1924. Shades of Walter Johnson, and all that. But then, I could also see pulling for the Cards. They were among the original eight of my youth, and I have a Bowman 1948 Stan Musial card now worth more than a hundred bucks (thank God I didn't throw that set out with the rest of the shoebox). So, now that the time has come I'm there, rejoicing or dying for my newly rationalized champions.

You see, I realize now that only one thing could be worse than the agony of a Red Sox roster last October--the placidity of not caring.

Stephen Jay Gould is Agassiz Professor of Zoology and a displaced Yankee fan.