Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Let’s Root, Root, Root for the Scrappy Team

In baseball and politics, Americans love the underdog.

November 3, 2016 at 3:21 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

It’s easy to love the Cubs (unless you’re from Cleveland or St. Louis).
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images

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There’s a theory in psychology that we root for underdogs because we perceive them as scrappy. They work harder than the other guys. For champions, it all comes easy. For the underdogs, it’s all struggle and sweat.

Wednesday night, a pair of scrappy underdogs in the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians gave us the gift of a World Series Game 7 that pundits are already saying will live in the annals of history. Probably they’re right.