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Wed 29 Aug, 2007 08:59 am
It's killing me.
I grew up a jock, playing multiple sports and rooting for the Brewers and the Packers and the Fighting Irish. Then in high school I discovered Camel Lights and marijuana and Jimi Hendrix and Ernest Hemingway and largely ignored sports for a decade.
Those were the days.
In the past few years I've reconnected with all my old teams. I was inspired and somewhat nostalgic at first, happy for another hobby and to be able to argue passionately and intelligently about lights-out left-hand relief pitchers and incompetent defensive secondaries.
Today I'm not so joyful. I've wasted yet another five months (let's face it, the Brewers haven't really played a six-month season since 1987) rooting for a young team that's just promising enough, for the first half of the season, to hold me captive until the bitter, bitter end. And how bitter it is, to ride the train home from work with phony-ass Purdue MBAs who don't really care about baseball (also known as Cubs fans), at least not until their team, luckily, gets it's **** together in August, but who love yelling and swilling $6 cups of Old Style.
Why do I watch sports? What good has it done me? Why do I care? I literally went to bad early last night because I didn't want to be awake and angry.
What I really need to do is light a fatty and put on Axis: Bold as Love.
I know exactly what you mean. I've always played and watched sports. In college I was a rabid football fan (at least two teams, pro and college), basketball fan (same), and baseball fan (just pro). And I wasn't just a dilettante, I knew my stuff.
Baseball was the first to be crowded out, then basketball lost its luster once Michael retired for good. (I lived in L.A. when the Lakers had their latest heyday but I just could never really get involved, too many headcases.) The Packers are my last remaining holdout but even that just hasn't been able to hold on in the face of raising a kid. When she was a baby I'd leave her with E.G. (who isn't much of a sports fan) and go out to sports bars to watch games that weren't showing on network TV when I didn't have cable and when evil Chicago TV stations wouldn't show Packers games. Then that just didn't really seem worth it. Now I watch maybe 2-3 Packers games a year, and 1-2 OSU games.
I have mixed feelings. A lot I miss about being more involved in watching sports, but I don't miss it as much as I thought and I'm kind of purposely resisting being caught up in that whole thing again. Such a timesink.
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