The events in and around Saturday's Yankees-Red Sox playoff game have sparked a discussion among the baseball blog world about fans becoming too emotionally invested in their teams.

Edmund Cossette at Bambino's Curse started the discussion, and David Pinto followed up at Baseball Musings. Now, Alex Belth has put in his thoughts and invited all to comment on the collective postings.

I particularly like this comment from David:

I would suggest what is really bothering people like Edward is that there was a shift of virtue from the Red Sox to the Yankees Saturday. It's been going on for a while, but Saturday the fault line moved. When it was Nettles and Jackson and Rivers against Lynn and Fisk and Lee, it was easy to see the Yankees as the evil team that deserved to be vanquished by the Red Sox. But on Saturday, it was Pedro and Manny who caused the trouble. Here they were in game the Red Sox had to win, and their antics came close to having them thrown out. Up until Zimmer charged Pedro, the Yankees did nothing wrong. Someone watching a baseball game for the first time would come away from Saturday thinking the Red Sox are a bunch of evil jerks and the Yankees were just defending themselves.

External perception of one's team can really affect one's self-esteem (although, as my wife told me last night, self-esteem is something that is hopefully formed for you in childhood, in such a manner that independent events in your adulthood don't affect it).

As for me, I wrote about this topic back in March. That entry really explains why I've been writing this site in the first place, so if you haven't read it already, I'd love for you to. As I say in a comment at Bronx Banter, there's a reason for the adverb in the message at the top of my site, "Jon Weisman's outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers and baseball."