The thrill of victory ... the agony of idiocy

This happened in the ancient past, oh, say two or three weeks ago, and I am late posting on it, but I am just catching up on some things that I have put aside to blog on. I accept your forgiveness :-)

I have to admit it ... I am somewhat of a sports fan. Part of my cultural upbringing, I guess. I was a baseball fanatic when I was a kid. I regularly memorized every statistic there was to know. Sandy Koufax was and still is "my hero". One of my fondest memories is going to a Dodgers game with my father one summer night to see them play the SF Giants. Juan Marachal was pitching for the Giants and Sandy for the Dodgers. What excitement. Those were the days.

While my interest in baseball has greatly waned, I still watch the playoffs and the World Series. Basketball is now the only sport that I pay any close attention too. But I like to watch other major sports events on TV, particularly when championship series are being played. Therefore over the last month I watched a bunch of the World Cup matches. I enjoyed watching the matches, the spectacle, the skill of the players, and the overall strangeness (to me) of the sport, which I hardly ever see. I was in Paris on business in 1998 during the time of World Cup was played there and recall a general mood of excitement and the great interest of the locals.

I know that they are just games, and that they are all too human, but when an athlete, particularly one whose skill I admire does something that is so seemingly out of character and appalling as what Zidane did with his vicious head-butt to the Italian player, I am disappointed and saddened. Likewise when Kobe Bryant was revealed having acted as such a louse, to put it mildly, I was genuinely depressed at having been exposed to a truth that reveals the illusion of people who are among the best at what they do acting in such horrible ways.

There are so many ways that life can disappoint us.