My Baseball Obsession?

Last week, thanks to T.R. Sullivan, baseball fans were given an inside look at what Rangers players and their families were having shipped down to Arizona for training camp, swing set and all. Spring training is now officially in full swing. Fans are itching for another season, and it seems that during spring training more than at any other point in the season, fans are grasping for any piece of information out there. It’s at this time that we get blogs about A-Rod bringing his own cooler of food around with him rather than ordering off the menu, and quotes from batting practice that are a little out of the ordinary. It is in this time, before the season gets under way that we care that Tony LaRussa turned up at the Tigers’ spring training--and need assurance that he’ll make an appearance at the Cardinal’s training camp, too. 


But why do we care? Why should we care? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that fans want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than itself. Maybe it’s because we like to be reminded that these athletes we hold up on a pedestal are real people, too. Why else would US Weekly’s “Just Like Us” on-going picture slideshow be so popular, as ridiculous as it is to know that they grocery shop too? 
 

How much should we care about our favorite teams and beloved players? It’s a hard question to answer.  Fever Pitch, the 2005 film starring Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, seems to make it okay to be in your thirties, still have Red Sox sheets on your bed, and be taking time off from work to go act like a college kid on Spring Break at spring training. Of course, Waugh’s life is simply a figment of Coover’s imagination, but seeing that extreme sure can make you wonder, how far does “fan” go before you get to obsession?

In Robert Coover’s book The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., readers shown an extreme example of the obsessed fan when the main character creates his own dice game in which he is essentially playing God with his own league. The players in his league have lives, careers, and memories that all come from Waugh’s mind. Being a fan of MLB just wasn’t enough for Waugh and so the Universal Baseball Associate was born. But when his imaginary player Damon Rutherford “dies,” as a roll of the dice commands, Waugh falls into a depression so real that it affects his job and makes others around him believe that a relative has died, and worry about him. As mentioned, this of course is an extreme case of obsession, but it certainly did spark my curiosity as read through the details of these real players lives. Why do we care so much? Why does it matter that A-Rod is on a high protein diet and skipped on guacamole while he was hanging out poolside? Why do we need to know Cabrera is yelling, “Si, Motherf*****r!” after every hit over the fence? When does it stop being our business and remain purely the business of the person who is living the life we’re reading about---celebrity or not?