The American value system is mind-boggling. We elect an oil-drilling Texan into the presidency, sue McDonald’s for making us fat and fascinate ourselves with reality television. We are constantly bargain-hunting for cheap commodities yet we will pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for tickets to sporting events.

For example, Americans are obsessed with baseball. True to form, thousands packed Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium this past week as the Red Sox and Yankees duked it out in a seven-game playoff series. Even here, on a respectable university campus, students put off homework, made signs and started riots all in the name of a sport that people refer to as “America’s pastime.” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Ok, I admit, I enjoyed these past couple of days of baseball-mania. However, I’ve never been much of a baseball fan. I think it’s lame that pitchers don’t throw for the entire game and cheap that a batter can have another player run the bases for him. Most of the players don’t fit the stereotype of an athlete in the physical sense and seriously, what is up with the absolute lack of fashion sense in their uniforms? Nevertheless, the past seven games were intense and full of suspense and excitement.

Now here’s the catch. I am a girl, attending a New England school, surrounded by Red Sox fans. But I am from New York. (For a second, I even forgot that you don’t spell Red Sox like “Red Socks” unless you have a death wish…An innocent, if idiotic, mistake). Though I was basically neutral about the outcome of the series, I had to root for the Yankees; it would have been a crime not to. Ha, try telling that to Kayleigh, who, during these games, is constantly yelling at her tv with complaints like, “What are you doing, Pedro?” or “Jeter, you suck!”

It was literally impossible to get my floor to remember that when the Sox were playing the Oakland A’s, I rooted alongside the New Englanders, or to explain that if the Sox were victorious against the Yankees, I would have gone back to rooting for them in the World Series. Maybe I am incapable of fully understanding where they are coming from because I don’t really care about baseball that much. I mean, I understand that there is a supposed curse on the Red Sox and all that…

But I can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, not all of these Red Sox fans care about baseball as much as they claim to. Let me explain: During the regular season, I hear nothing about baseball. But then, the Sox are in the playoffs and all of the sudden, there are baseball fans coming out of the woodwork.

During these playoffs, I found myself, more than once, sitting in my room doing homework only to be interrupted by the entire dorm screaming and cheering over some baseball game. I know through friends of mine at other schools that the situation was similar there, except that most of them were surrounded by fellow Yankee fans…

I don’t know, perhaps it has simply been an exciting event, breaking up the monotony of college nights filled with homework and “Friends.” At least that has been the case for me.

As I admitted earlier, I have enjoyed the past few games and was even able to get into the swing of things. More than that, I’ve been known to get into my

share of hockey games so I understand the way that sports can paralyze people and I know that some people really do care about baseball and the Red Sox. I am just amazed by the way this campus was turned upside down this past week and am not ashamed to say that it was fun…Crazy, but fun.