SPORTS-RELATED SUPERSTITIONS

A friend of mine returned from a long business trip and remarked that the Sixers always seem to do well when he's out of town. One of my co-workers is a huge Lakers fan, and let me have it for talking smack about them in an email I'd sent to her last week: "Since you said your little thing about Shaq and Kobe, they've lost two straight." And don't get me started on my own superstitions, which border on the absurd and deranged.

Why do we care so much about our teams? Why do we think that our rooting could possibly have an effect on the success and failure of professional athletes who are thousands of miles away? Is this healthy? Non-fans wonder how it is we could waste our time and focus our attention on things that, ultimately, mean nothing. I know that sporting events mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. But on another level, they mean everything. There is a winning team and a losing team, heroes and goats. Both teams play by rules. There is drama and justice and heartbreak and ecstasy.

That's why I love sports. Not to say there isn't corruption, or bad calls, or unfairness. But sports are how we want life to be. Maybe we're rooting for more than our team when we we're doing our rooting.