The sports world's nearly constant itch to sympathize with recent deaths, tragedies and causes reached a new plateau during the Red Sox-Yankees game Friday night at Fenway Park.

You might have noticed the Sox were wearing GREEN, which is not exactly in their traditional red, blue, and white palate of colors. Why were they wearing green? It wasn't St. Patty's Day.

No, it was something very sad. And I hope you are sitting down when I tell you this... but, um, Red Auerbach died. Yep. That's him -- the legendary face of the Boston Celtics franchise for all these years as coach and general manager.

Hence the green. Get it?

What? You say you've heard about this already? Huh? How?

Oh, that's right. Ol' Red got called up to God's team back in October! Never mind then.

You may ask: "What's the harm in doing this for one game, Czabe? It's a nice gesture."

My answer is that it's not really "bad" or "harmful" in any way, it's just cheap sentiment. Plus, the frequency and tortured logic behind many of them leave you rolling your eyeballs like Simon Cowell watching the first round of auditions on "American Idol." Yes, the Celtics play in Boston. So do the Red Sox. Most of the same fans root for both. So why not have one team honor the other?

Answer: Because where does it stop?

We are a sports culture that is drowning in a sea of "nice gestures." So much so, that the ones which should make people stop and notice have no power to do so anymore.

Oft-injured Celtics forward Wally Szczerbiak summed it up thusly: "I think [the decision to wear the green jerseys] is a very nice tribute to the Celtics. I hope it brings them luck."

Awwww. How sweet. (Pssst. I hope he doesn't mean the "luck" his team is having these days.)

The Red Sox showed they have more than just a shirtsleeve upon which to stitch a symbol of their "caring" and "honor" for somebody. They also had a Virginia Tech logo on their hats.

This was of course, a heartwarming show of solidarity with 32 families that have been buried with an avalanche of grief so profound, that it would take 100 lifetimes to somehow come to grips with it.

(Sarcasm=ON)

And then there's the natural connection with Virginia Tech the Red Sox have because of their three current players who played at Virginia Tech. (Oh, wait. Never mind. They don't have that connection). Or how about Spanky O'Malley, the great Red Sox leftfielder who played at Virginia Tech. (Oh, wait. Never mind. I just made that guy up.)

Again, I ask: where does it end?

When the Washington Nationals were the first team to don Virginia Tech hats just a day after the shootings, most media response in my city was a unanimous: "Wow. That's really cool! Great job!"

My response was: "Eh. Whatever."

And callers to my radio show PUMMELLED me for that opinion. I tried to stress that I didn't think it was a bad thing, rather that I was largely unmoved by the gesture.

"How can you SAY that?" was the prevailing sentiment in our one phone segment on the topic. The ferocity and unanimity of people ready to dub me Satan's Little Helper was almost scary. I suppose I was simply not allowed to be unmoved by the act of nine millionaires putting on a cap that was given to them.

It would be the equivalent of me wanting credit for using a picture of a Thailand resort as the screensaver on my computer in the aftermath of the tsunami.

If sports teams were to start trying to "honor" and / or "support" the victims and survivors of all the nation's tragedies, you would have uniforms that were unrecognizable. You could have the 9/11 shoulder patch, the Katrina alternate jersey, a Columbine stripe, a Virginia Tech sock logo, alternate black and white pants denouncing racism on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's birthday, Iraq war solidarity gloves colored yellow like a ribbon, and on and on and on.

"But come on," you say. "That would be stupid."

"Don't be such a hard-ass," I would reply. "After all, it IS a nice gesture. Besides, don't you have a heart?"