The worst thing that has ever happened ever

It is the saddest day in the entire history of historiness, the Red Sox have just been swept in a five-game series by the hated Yankees and now thousands of New Englanders are desperately searching for the closest, highest bridge from which to fling themselves.
I could not believe my eyes this weekend as I watched ... well, okay, I didn't watch one single inning of it. Please forgive me if I'm not all broken up because the local nine looked like the Bad News Bears. It's not like I'm not a sports fan, not a Red Sox fan, because I am. I went to my first game at Fenway when with my dad in 1977, I was ecstatic when they came back to beat the Yankees and then won the World Series in 2004. If anything, this weekend was probably pretty unusual in that I went five straight games without watching a single inning.

But the bottom line is that the Red Sox, and every other professional sports team, is played by a bunch of really rich people you and I don't know. Seems to me that the reasonable, healthy thing to do is enjoy the game, feel a little up when the home team wins, and change the channel, shut the TV off, or just basically move on with your life when the home team loses. Yeah, I know, that's not the way it ends up working most the time.

Professional (and college) sports is a great form of entertainment, and at its best, it can rise to be something more. But in the end, whether or not the ball goes through Buckner's leg in the sixth game of the World Series, whether or not Ali knocks out Foreman in the eighth round in the jungle, whether or not Flutie hits Phelan in the end zone of the Orange Bowl, our lives go on pretty much unchanged.

Then again, if the Red Sox just had a %$*&^(*& bullpen...