Freddy Sez!

Freddy and Confetti, NY Giants Superbowl Champs, originally uploaded by Tony the Misfit.

Commercial sports have two distinct yet organically related roles.

One is the generation of profit for the benefit of shareholders, an economic activity with an array of effects for the firm's employees and independent contractors.

The other, and perhaps the most conspicuous, is the cultivation of other forms of corporate identity, from a model of cooperation that can be applied across organizational contexts to such discrete identities as team, city and nation.

The guy with the sign is himself a sign of how commercial sports is more than commerce. He's Freddy Sez, a genuine New York icon. If you've ever been to a Yankees game you probably know who he is, even if you've never seen him--he's the guy responsible for the sound of someone banging on a pan that you hear throughout most games.

As the New York Times noted, Freddy himself has risen to quasi-mythic status as a symbol of the Yankees and the city--so much so, in fact, that the Yankees let him into games for free.