Last night was the first night I'd had off in a while, and so I decided to do something I hadn't really done in a couple of years: curl up on the couch and watch the ballgame. And, y'know, some things never change. In 1967, as an eleven-year-old still mostly ignorant of baseball, I sat in front of my uncle's TV and watched the Red Sox lose Game 7 of the World Series. In 1975, sitting in front of a TV that had been temporarily set up in a dorm cafeteria at MIT, I watched the Red Sox lose Game 7 of the World Series. In 1986, in a small apartment in Watertown, Massachusetts equipped only with a small black and white portable, I watched the Red Sox lose Game 7 of the World Series.

I guess I'm not cut out to be a sports fan. This is a sacrilegious confession to make to anyone who really is a devout sports fan, but after watching the Sox blow their lead in the seventh game of the ALCS, I turned the game off at the start of the eleventh inning. It was late, I was tired, and I'd watched the Sox lose the seventh game of three other series before. (I wanna watch reruns, I go back to my old tapes of Red Dwarf and Futurama.) So, I can't claim that this time I actually watched the Sox lose the game, watched them blow it on the same combination of player hardheadedness and managerial hubris that led to their comeuppance in Game 6 in '86, watched them lose their most crucial game in seventeen years, and lose it to a team from a city so benighted that its residents dump clams into tomato soup and call it chowder.

I suppose it's kind of cool that the Marlins are back for the second time in seven seasons, despite having had their first championship team almost instantaneously sold off to anyone who was buying. It might also be mildly amusing, Yankees-wise, that Derek Jeter went to high school about a half-mile away from my house. But instead of watching the World Series, I may use the time to do some recreational reading. Or spend some quality time with my husband. Or buy myself a new pair of athletic shoes and start to actually get some exercise. No Red Sox, no Cubs, no problem.

Nope, not much of a sports fan. Too much frustration and not enough bugs. (Now, if we could get the flying ants to buzz the Tigers again ...)