My Sudden Interest in Baseball

I don't come from a very sports-centric family; my dad, the only male, could care less about watching any kind of sports game.  The only sport I have become fond of is European football (soccer), but that isn't very American of me.  However, occasionally I begin to perk up when the Boston sports teams get far in their respective competitions and I become one of those ephemeral fans, who suddenly becomes interested only when it's exciting to do so.  So this morning when I read an article in the Boston Globe about the Red Sox improbably making it to the World Series, I decided, hey maybe I'll actually watch a baseball game on Wednesday (the first night of the World Series at Fenway).  It's hard not to get excited about a team like the Red Sox winning; they are the heart and soul of Boston, a city I love, and they make up the definition of an underdog story.  However, what also interested me about this news story is the fact that the owner of of the Red Sox, John Henry, recently bought the Boston Globe.  There was some concern originally that this might present conflict of interest in the Globe's coverage of the Sox, as the Globe had traditionally been known for not shying away from criticisms of the Sox.  In this particular article obviously the tone was in favor of the Sox because they had just won a place in the Word Series.  I would need to read more of the Globe's coverage of the Sox to accurately make a determination as to how this transition worked out, but Henry's purchase of the Globe in general reveals an all too common tension in the news industry today of conflict of interest and the growth of corporations.