"a Social Shorthand"

It's all one big community now, our interests all the same. It's hard to believe that sports wasn't one of the main reasons for the ultimate settlement of this country. Everyone shares a common language now, thanks to sports. It's how we talk to each other-discussions of race, gender equality, drugs are likely to take place in the form of athletic debate. Happily, there is (we're pretty sure) something intelligent enough to moderate that discussion, shape it, incite it when necessary.

Just as our energy is discharged harmlessly (perhaps pointlessly—but that's another story) in pursuit of sport, so are our differences now muted by shared passion. We're on different teams, sure, but all in the same conference.

Our businessman has landed now and walks the pale hallways of the terminal, passing the same franchised outlets he saw in Philadelphia's. Here's a bar, comfortingly uniform in its configuration, and its luminescence slows him. The televisions—there are three—flicker with the news of the day, the crawls at the bottom of the screens unable to keep up. The same news he saw in Philly, yet it matters just as much in L.A. "A social shorthand," he thinks. Deep thoughts!

He looks on just a little longer before completing that last leg of his trip back to the suburbs, home and family. Here it comes: Bruins win!

He had a feeling.