post #4

The ideals and culture of a community do a lot to shape people and i have personally seen this first hand. Upon moving to New York i had met a lot of new people and i actually became good friends with this kid names Andrew who had just moved to the same town as me. In this sense, the culture of our new town had already been created and we were yet to find out how it was going to shape us.

A few years later it was the spring time and i saw Andrew after school and we got to talking. Remembering when we had first met, i asked him if he was going to try to play baseball for the school because i remember him telling me he was a ball player. long story short Andrew went out for the lacrosse team. At the time i never thought to much of that, but knowing now how my town truly is, lacrosse is the biggest sport and through the athletic director and the districts support for the team is it clearly evident. Andrew may have tried out for many other reasons, but the fact that we were now living in a lacrosse are definitely had a lot to do with it.

"33", by Klosterman exposed a lot that i had never thought about previously. Being a life long sports fan, i have heard all my life about the great rivalry of the lakers and celtics back in the day. But living in the era we do today, racial topics are much less apparent than they were 30 years ago. It was interesting to hear the racial side of the rivalry because all i had known up to this point previously to reading the piece was that Larry Bird and Magic are legends of the game who created memorable series after series in the 80's.

In addition, when reading these i couldn't help but unconsciously relate this to the red sox yankees rivalry. I have been to Fenway Park, the old yankee stadium and now the new, and that truly has helped me understand the way that a city can define people. The vibes from outside the park, from boston to the bronx, to even just being around the people from each area are significantly different each have their own feeling. If you live in NYC and are a yankee fan it is almost as if you are a certain type of person because of it and the same goes for Boston citizens who are Sox fans.