Mudville

One of the things my husband and I never liked about Los Angeles was the lack of community feeling. Yes there are a hige number of synagogues, and each one is huge, but (or, rather, because of this) there was really no sense of being part of a community. Looking back, this reflects a lot about Los Angeles as a whole from my experience. There is little feeling of "this is my home town."

I grew up in a home where we were not so into sports. More importantly, my father held onto to supporting his homwtown team (Philadelphia), especially in baseball. And being in a city where you can get away with that, I grew up with absolutely no feeling towards the Dodgers as being "my team." Of course, since I wasn't from Philadelphia, my connection to the Phillies was also more for fun, a way to be close to my father, rather than genuinely caring. And it never really affected my life because I didn't run into people who were INTO the Dodgers in a major way. (We openly cheered for the Phillies at Dodgers Stadium, and the only thing that was ever said to us was when this ditzy woman said "You're cheering for the wrong team.")

My father liked to give dramatic readings of "Casey at the Bat." for those of you who are not familiar, it's basically about a minor league team in small-town America who are in the final game of the season, one run behind in the ninth inning. The whole poem describes the emotions as their star player comes up to bat with the bases loaded. The last line is, "There is no joy in Mudville, mighty Casy has struck out." This poem always bugged me. Not only because I had to sit through multiple dramatic readings, and not only because I generally don't like emotional descriptions in poems. I really thought it was stupid that their whole universe revolved around this sport. Who cares?

Then we moved to the Midwest.

Now, obviously, I don't think life should revolve around sports. And, in Cleveland, it doesn't as much as in other cities. However, when you live in a smaller city, you have a closer feeling toward your home team. You have a closer connection with your neighbors, and everyone is supporting the team, so you feel more of a community spirit. And, in practical terms, anything to help the economy is a big deal here. The best the city could come up with for a motto last year was the boring "Cleveland Plus", yet for the last two weeks there have been banners everywhere, people wearing Cleveland gear everywhere, and the radio playing "Cleveland Rocks" and "Mambo for the Tribe." Sports promote a city like nothing else.

I was just speaking about how it's good to try to understand what experiences have led people who have different views than yourself to hold those views. I definitely understand why there was no joy in Mudville.