Red Sox are only ½ game out of first place, but all I can muster is a half-hearted meh.
Folks, I have an announcement to make, one that might shock you, about me:
I am not a sports guy.
There. I said it.
I don't care a whit about organized sports. There's something distasteful about the level of attention we pay to grown men playing children's games. There's something even more distasteful about what we are willing to pay so that the grown men in question can be obscenely compensated for playing children's games. And there's just something deeply and fundamentally wrong when these men are held up as heroes and role models.
Don't get me wrong, there are certainly sports figures who are good role models. However, idolizing someone because they can dunk a basketball or hit a baseball real far is kind of silly. While those at the top of their respective games almost always work extremely hard to get where they are, the focus is never on the hours of training; on the years spent perfecting their game; on the focus needed to attain their goals. It's on the here and now, a sad monument to our instant gratification society.
Is some of this sour grapes because I never played sports at the high school/college level? Quite possibly. Being a heavyset kid who hated football with a passion (because my true love was basketball and I just wasn't blessed with height, speed, jumping ability, or any other discernable talent towards playing hoops...), I never got into the whole sports thing. Chess and billiards were about as close as I came to any sort of organized games (I was on the Chess team in high school - stop snickering! - and played tournament-level pool in college).
So in this regard I'm not a typical male. I don't have a "man cave" with sports memorabilia. I don't block off Sunday afternoons from September to December for sitting on the couch and watching football. I don't participate in fantasy anything. I'll jump on the bandwagon when the local teams are doing well, but even then a quick look at the score so I know who won is all I need.
Another random Jay G. fact. Discuss amongst yourselves...
That is all.
16 comments:
Yessir, and nosir.
I totally agree with aesthetic disapproval/disgust of how much athletes get paid/worshipped etc. However, I am jealous of the fact that sports-followers (which include most men my age) automatically have an enormous repertoire of conversation material on hand. When I'm at the water cooler I have to fumble with movies, weekend activities, books, magazines etc. (NEVER religion, politics or sex, thank you), whereas they effortlessly segue into batting averages and fantasy leagues. Mike will be in charge of making sure any future children are sports-literate PURELY for the advantage in the workplace.
I don't watch TV, either.
So I'm at a double disadvantage around the water cooler.
Triple if you consider that when the subject of weekend activities comes up...
"So, Jay, what did you do this weekend?"
"Took a bunch of folks to the gun range".
Uh, no...
;)
You and me both... Sports = Meh.
I AM a sports guy. Just not at all interested in wasting any time watching/dicussing teams that don't have any of my kids on them. I'll even go watch the local HS football, volleyball, and basketball teams, as my kids look up to those kids.
Kids learn a lot playing sports- how to win and lose, dedication, perserverence, attaining goals.... you can tell a lot about the charcter of a kid by how they conduct themselves on the field/court, both in victory and defeat.
I guess I should qualify my statement... I am not a WATCHING sports type of guy. I enjoy playing sports.
Keeping track of sports teams and players.....that's YAAAWWWNNNNNn to me.
Yeah, I should qualify, too.
I mean so-called professional sports, of course.
Baseball and soccer right now are what my son plays; I've taken him to see the Lowell Spinners (Red Sox A-league affiliate) a couple of times this past summer and hope to see the NE Revolution next season.
Wow, I guess it's up to me to defend the sports fanatics!
The reason they're 'looked up to' by so many males is that they're doing what so many of us wish that we were doing. Who wouldn't want to be Derek Jeter or Tom Brady or Lebron James? Oh, we aspire to business success in the 'real world', but we all know that's reserved for the people who know the right people and are promoted by the right people & if you didn't get a degree from the right school and live in the right neighborhood and hang out with the right people, you're screwed.
Not that I'm saying businesses are a country-club and folks don't deserve where they're at, just that the pure competition of professional sports REALLY brings the cream to the crop (come on, we all know of people in higher management that couldn't wipe their asses if they didn't have someone tell them how). We admire folks like Jeter or Schilling because there's no way in &*(@ that we could do what they're doing, or even at a AA level....they're just too talented. No, we couldn't run Disney, but we could sure make better decisions than Mike Eisner did.
As far as getting paid all those zillions; that's the market. Hank Aaron, Dimaggio, Havlicek, Jerry West & others were admired much more and they were paid a whole heckuva lot less. I heard that George Mikan was getting by on $24K/year social security & he was the greatest player of the first half of the 20th century.
Hey, it's a good escape from our lives & we get to live vicariously through others.
Dude... you realize, the Redsox and Patriots nation are now going to snuff you in your sleep right? You cannot live in massachusetts, be straight and not a college professor, and not like sports. It's not allowed.
Saying you don't like sports to one of the faithful is almost like saying "Hey, I boned yeh mah last night... eh, had bettah".
Don't forget the Celtics, Chris.
Although I come by my disinterest of them the hard way. I earned it.
I IDOLIZED the 1980s Celtics, man...
And to see them fall so far, so quickly... Well...
I'm a college football addict.
Everything else I can take or leave. Don't give a damn about professional sports of any kind but I will watch any sport of any kind as opposed to "Extreme Home Makeover" or whatever the hell it is.
I can't get interested in any of that crap.
I definetly think that part of my brain that is supposed to remember team stats, standings and game stradegy is all used for politics in my mind.
I never have trouble with water-cooler talk. If they don't want to talk guns or politics they DEFINETLY want to hear sea storries! (Yes I know I live in Mass, But if they ask me what my weekend activites are going to be, I'm gonna tell them!)
I do participate in fantasy Politics, in some odd fasion. (Was hoping for Thompson/Hunter '08...I also lost $20 when Hillary suspended her campaign....Palin was my #1 pick for Veep, but I would have bet Romney ect)
I don't have a "Man Cave"...but I do have my Office/Armory in the Basement that works just as well!
I also don't watch TV, gave that shit up in '97, never looked back.
Also in Highschool I swam, and played tennis, but my real passion was for Band.
Yes I do have band-camp stories ; ]
I pretty much gave up watching sports when I moved away from the NYC area, as the only team I really root for are the Mets. (Don't start with me, Sox fans, or I'll have to remind you of 1986...)
Anyway, I just don't seem to have time to keep up with them... especially since I can't get the games and don't want to spend the $$$ to get them on DTV. Now, my WIFE is the Pats nut in the house... I can always get some good range time in when the Pats are playing, as I know where she'll be...
Oh, and Chris? You think that the Red Sox Nation poses a thread to Jay? You DO know he lives in Mass, right? Just where do you think they're going to get the firepower to harm him?
"we all know that's reserved for the people who know the right people and are promoted by the right people & if you didn't get a degree from the right school and live in the right neighborhood and hang out with the right people, you're screwed. " -rw
That kind of crony-ism prevents the best people from advancing, and therefore prevents the best performance of the company in question. That is a weakness that you can exploit, by starting your own business in competition with the crony shop!
Sitting on the sidelines with your sour grapes will never take you anywhere, my friend.
You did correctly identify pro sports for what it is: escapism, pure and simple. Vicarious existence is a waste of time, and you only have 80 years (with luck) and to waste every Sunday reveling in someone else's accomplishments ...... that's sad. But it IS your life.....
"I don't care a whit about organized sports."
I hear you there. Watching most sports bores me to tears. I don't mind watching an amateur boxing match or a good karate match, but watching a team of people playing games is not my thing.
To me, football consists of two things:
1. A bunch of big guys bend over in a circle.
2. Big guys kick a dead pig across a lawn, and then fight over it.
Normally I don't give a rat's tushie about organized professional sport either. However, the Chicago Cubs are 4 1/2 games up in the NL Central. For the first time in 100 years they could go all the way and win the series. Yup, last time the Cubs even played in a World Series was 1945. Last time they won . . . 1908. Damned billy-goat.
Have to interject:
- I am a Sox fan, always have been, probably always will be. (OK, the baseball strike left me boycotting ALL baseball - for years.)
- I am a marginal Patriots fan, but I generally only watch highlights.
- I used to be a Celtics and Bruins fan, but, well, those glory days are long gone, and hockey is just basketball on ice, anyway.
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