Sportsball
I enjoy a good ball game or race or just about any athletic event really, as long as I am not surrounded by crazy people or subjected to people who are way too serious about it. I'm at a place in my life where I have watched all the commercials that I am ever going to watch, so sports on television are not really an option for me. We subscribed to Peacock for the Olympics and Wonder Woman watched them on her iPad sitting beside me on the couch, so I got to see some of the highlights including Pommel Horse Guy and the British diver who knits while he waits for his turn to compete. While visiting my Dad, the men's basketball team was playing, which would have been nice except Dad doesn't like outspoken athletes of color, even ones as saintly as Lebron James, the once married, never arrested, scandal free guy who sends thousands of poor kids to college. You know who he did like, however, Pete Rose and Lance Armstrong. Go figure.
The area of the US where I live is consumed for several months of the year with our state religion, college basketball. Perennial powerhouses Duke and UNC take up a lot of oxygen. People follow the recruiting season the way Kentucky Derby bettors follow horse breeding. There was a time in my life when I thought major colleges existed to educate our kids, but I have come to find out they exist to sponsor sportsball teams and entertain us. Our flagship university had a brilliant chancellor was a research chemist, a native son, young, with some really visionary ideas for a while but he had to resign from a job he was born to have because the basketball team sent a bunch of players to no-show classes and the alumni couldn't prevent themselves from handing out cash to potential football players. At least we weren't as bad as Penn State where a serial child predator was allowed to continue coaching so as not to upset the apple cart or stress out Joe Paterno.
There have been a few seasons where I felt really invested in a team. I probably watched the 1991 Atlanta Braves play 100 games and it was a real privilege. Three of their starting pitchers from that season are now in the Hall of Fame. In 2015, Wonder Woman and I watched every single Carolina Panthers game as they mounted a 15-game winning streak that ended in a meaningless last game of the season. They lost the Super Bowl too. It was the last one I watched.
I've been really saddened a couple of times by major sports scandals. I loved major league baseball as a kid. I collected baseball cards, memorized stats, attended minor league games and was enthralled by the history of the game. Then the steroids era came and Barry Bonds, a man whose head grew two hat sizes in his late 30s from all the drugs he took, broke record after record until they became meaningless. Professional cycling, a passion in adulthood for me also lost its glow as rider after rider who I'd respected and followed admitted to cheating or just got caught.
My favorite recent sports team was my grandson Forrest's soccer squad last year. Every Monday night for the whole season, we drove nearly 30 miles after our workday was done, grabbing a sandwich to eat on the sidelines and watch him and his friends go undefeated for the entire season. It was an awesome mix of boys and girls, local kids and immigrant kids all playing together so well. The new season starts soon, and I can't wait.
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