Are we that desperate
 

Okay, I didn't know whether to put this on the Sports board or here. I decided on here since it's a part of living for some people.

Why do we go so nuts over professional sports teams/games. I felt so sorry for that Cubs fan that was dumb enough to interfere with Alou catching the ball. I was horrified, however, when people were threatening to kill him. I mean, come on, it's a freakin' kid's game, played by adults, who a few years ago, although they make millions of dollars went on strike! (nice run on sentence, no?) Are we that desperate for heroes?

No, we're desperate for violence. Sports is just an outlet for our sublimated ancient tribal warfare impulses anyhow, so it's not surprising that violence and passion would occasionally rear their heads, or that certain professional "gladiators" would be revered and semi-worshiped. The whole thing's (sports) predicated on bloodlust, on harnessing and controlling our violent impulses. We just tend to forget that it's supposed to be an outlet and not an actual arena for violence.

Believing in your team gives life meaning. It gives you a tribe. We've gotten to a point in our survival that we don't need to fight for food and shelter, but all of that energy and all of those instincts have to go somewhere.

So we go way overboard on identifying ourselves with professional sports. Don't need to fight for survival, so instead we fight for 'our team'. It always amazed me to see people in Wisconsin that had painted their house green and yellow.

it makes up for our inabilities/insecurities and ego

I don't know. Some people have nothing else in their lives worth mentioning, so I guess sports becomes everything. They see their team's success as their success. This isn't new, by the way, and there are places in the world where that kind of fan fervor is even worse than here.

That said, I wanted to punch the TV every time the camera went back to that poor slob while he continued to watch the game afterwards. Geez, paint a bullseye on his head, whydoncha?

I don't know, when you grow up doing nothing but play the sport all you want to do as an adult is watch it and talk about it. At least thats what it is for me...i love Football and always will

Yeah, you guys have encapsulated my thoughts pretty well on the subject. A lot of people invest alot of thier spirit into sports and therefore can get pretty wound up and irrational when things dont go to plan. You see thats the thing about sport, it has rules, strict rules. Life is such a haphazard affair and cannot be controlled like sport. So when something like that catch incident happens, people go nuts.