LOVE SPORTS! Hate when people lose.

I've always been a huge sports fan. A New York Giants die-hard basically since birth. A serious Yankee fan (though I'll admit I like playoffs a lot more than regular season games). A huge tennis fan (Roddick, Nadal, Blake, Sharapova, Dementieva and lately, Melanie Oudin). And I'll get into Devils hockey the longer the season goes on. But there's one thing I've never been able to stand about professional sports (aside from the egos, the steroids and the admittedly ridiculous salaries).

It's how much the networks love to show the losers.

The Yankees win the ALDS. YAY! They celebrate. They jump up and down. They tackle each other and run around and act like little kids. As they should. This is a happy moment. So why are you showing me the barely-controlled tears of the Minnesota pitcher who screwed up the ninth inning? Or the hanging head of the dude who totally missed the third-base coach's call and fell down while doing his shotty base running? All I can think about is how for the next two months those guys are going to be wishing they could have those moments back. How much it's gonna hurt. How their kids and their moms feel so awful for them. And I don't want to be thinking that in that moment. I want to be thinking about our big win.

(Plus it's even worse when it's YOUR team that's lost. I'll never forget the Giants-Ravens Super Bowl when we were just completely trounced, how the network kept showing Kerry Collins and Tiki Barber and Michael Strahan and Ike Hilliard and Amani Toomer just staring straight ahead or sitting on the bench with towels over their heads. I actually cried.)

There are a couple of exceptions, of course. I have enjoyed shouting "suck it, Philly!" at the Eagles more than once in my long and storied career as a Giants fan. And you can show me as many heartbroken shots of Tony Romo as you can dig up. But when the G-Men decimated the lowly Raiders yesterday, I just kept thinking, these poor guys. They work their butts off to get to the NFL and then they end up on a team that can't even get some positive running yards. So sad.

Of course, then my husband pointed out that they ARE playing in the NFL, and there are tons of dreamers out there who never even got to be on a SUCKY team, let alone a good one, so they're probably doing okay Which is a good point. I guess I should try not to feel TOO sorry for them.

I can't imagine JaMarcus Russell is gonna be sitting around feeling too badly for me if my next book tanks. :)