God vs. Sports

Sooo the godfearing holiday of yom kippur is now upon the jews. its kinda like catholic confession, except that
A) it's one day a year
B) your sins are heard between you and god, not you and a child molesting quaker lookalike
C) we dont believe in jesus

a lot of bad bad shit has happened to the jews on yom kippur. like, there was even a war in 1973 (i am not going to google it, i just hope i am right) where israel was invaded by the most intelligent breed of arabs known to date... pick a day when everyone is off guard and praying and just bum rush the country. i guess its not intelligent, more like cold calculating war strategy that started an unwinnable war between our little desert country surrounded by a continent of people who hate us.

so between rosh and yom, we were supposed to be thinking of all the sins we committed over the past year. on yom we get to pray to god to forgive and to write us in the book of life for another year. i guess being in the age of the internet where science and technology replaces god for some people, this concept may be slightly ridiculo... but nevertheless, i will be attending just like i have for the past 23 years.

someone who may not be in attendance is 1st baseman for the LA Dodgers Shawn Green. ya see, there are some jews who are athletic in this world who arent windsurfers. the problem is, the LA Dodgers are in 1st place in their division by half a game. this weekend is basically make it or break it for them... san diego is hot on their tail and there are like 11 games left in the season.

another example of this god vs. sports concept happened in 'School Ties' when the new QB was secretly jewish at a 60's anti-semitic anti-black boys ivy league school. he of course had one of his first huge games on yom kippur, and opted to lie to his father and play and catch up on his sin atonement later.

also sandy koufax had to decide what he should do, stay true to the faith or stay true to baseball. i think he was fined for not playing.

i think the answer is obvious, but maybe thats because i am old fashioned. despite all your career success and your personal job related goals, even if its a tossup between wildcard or 1st place status, i think you should still go to synagogue like a good jew. i mean how can you justify selling out thousands of years of history for one sports game? and it kinda sucks that the pressure is bigtime on his shoulders... 1/2 game lead is cutting it really really close. but the concept of baseball is team, and if your team cant fill in and step up while you are observing your faith's most holy of holy days, then you dont deserve to be in the 1st place anyway.

maybe tomorrow i will make a list of all my sins over the past year. ha! who am i kidding.... that would be the sketchiest shady ass list of all time. so until next time, may we all be written in the book of life for one more year....at least (?)