Stephen Dunn/Getty Images, Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Rangers fans, left, and Giants fans

You know what, Giants fans? The Rangers are a wonderful team and I'm glad they're our opponents in the World Series. They're an ingratiating bunch and a pleasure to watch.

How can we root against Rangers manager Ron Washington? Who doesn't love an inveterate minor league player who never quite made the cut in the Bigs, went on to become a sensational major-league coach with the A's for nine years, and then became a manager who inspires rookies and veterans to tap talents they weren't sure they had? Pretty awesome, if you ask me, like having a boss you really like and respect.

Further, watching Rangers center-fielder Josh Hamilton is gosh-darn heartwarming. For the past two years the media has exposed its sappy heart with stories about Hamilton's triumph over alcoholism. Hey, we're happy for the dude, but is he ever going to hit? This year Hamilton's MVP numbers showed he sure can hit. His diamond-sharp focus at the plate signals he truly has given his personal demons the slip. And Rangers slugger Nelson Cruz is a joy to observe, as all naturals are. His smile beams like the sun.

There is, though, one thing I dread about the upcoming games. And that's having to watch Rangers' fans, as they did throughout the division series and playoffs, wave a Texas state flag in the stands. Whatever their motives, it strikes me as an antagonistic act, outside the spirit of baseball. I know Texas has a long tradition of state pride. But America feels like such a riven country. I can't help see the shadows of ugly divisions in those flags.

Baseball is not just a game. Sports never have been. Athletic feats reconnect us to our humanity. We like to think sports are an escape from real life but what we feel at a game is as real as life gets. Our emotions don't care what stimulates them. It could be love. It could be Radiohead. It could be Cody Ross driving a ball over the left-field fence.

Just as we can't turn our emotions off at a game, we can't turn our minds off. All acts resonate in our minds with history and culture. Pretending otherwise is reductive. Besides, it's no fun.

The Rangers-Giants World Series is loaded with cultural significance. It's conservative Dallas against liberal San Francisco. It's Bushland vs. Boxerville. The World Series unreels at the same time as the midterm elections. Who could miss the connection? If only, though, politics could be as transcendent as baseball.

Politics today are as divisive and depressing as ever. Extremists on both the right and left are shouting at each other so loudly that nobody in the middle can hear themselves think. And the exploitative media keeps the camera on the bellowers. Talk about something that's only a game: U.S. politics now are a sad spectacle with half the significance of sports.

Which brings me back to waving a Texas flag in the Rangers Ballpark. If the World Series took place in Texas the month after 9/11, would fans be waving state flags at cameras? I bet not. I imagine they would be brandishing U.S. flags, a symbol of unity not division. Where has that harmony gone?

Major League Baseball and the Texas Rangers are not going to outlaw fans waving state flags at games. It would be foolish to expect them to. So just as this World Series will bring joy to fans in Texas and the Bay Area, it will also bring the sight of a broken country. Here is my one small hope that baseball, for the next week, also symbolizes the few threads that still hold us together.

Kevin Berger contributed this piece as a guest columnist for The Bay Citizen.--eds