Baseball been berry, berry good...

but not to me. I've told this to so many people it felt like I had written it down but it seems I never have before. So here it is.

A while back I tried to figure out why I disliked baseball so much. It is odd because most men, young and old, seem to enjoy playing and/or watching it or it's surrogate, softball. But as long as I can remember I have loathed it. Then it hit me. For many, if not most, American boys and men, baseball is associated with fun and challenge, with self esteem and the satisfaction of a job well done, with popularity and the admiration of girls. And perhaps most of all with teamwork and camaraderie. And then at some point is added the richness of tradition and history. With all that going for it, no wonder it is the “Great American Pastime.”

And all of the above are the reasons I don't like it. First, I come from a line of men who saw games such as baseball as, well, as games. And games were not something all that meaningful to invest a lot of time and effort in. The fact that every news cast every night of the week has a segment devoted to games has always seemed absurd to me. Not so much that it's about something people enjoy, but because the content is always one of two things: “Well, we played well and got the job done and it feels great to win!” or “Well, we've gotta work on our defensive/offensive/throwing/catching game and get out there next time and get the job done.” It's never news. It's the same words coming out of player's and coach's and commentator's heads every single time. Only the kind of ball and the names change. Who wins or looses or whatever happens has no impact on anything really, except selling tickets and hats and crap to the rabid fans who seem to think it's important for some baffling reason. (Okay, okay, don't hate me - I'm just being passionate about my lack of passion.)

With a rare exception or two, none of the men in my family on either side for at least three generations have really given a hoot about team sports. Growing up there was never a game on TV. Ever. I knew nothing of these sports. I had no exposure. I didn't know the rules or the star players or the history or anything. It's not that we didn't like to have fun, it's just that when it came time for that, my dad and I were much more interested in going out and flying an airplane or riding a motorcycle or getting out some lumber and power saws and building something. I enjoyed bicycling and running (until my flat feet put me off that), swimming and water skiing and racing go carts or motorcycles - individual sporting activities and pretty much anything that involved burning gasoline.

But nothing that had a ball. I couldn't throw or catch any kind of ball with any kind of skill whatsoever. As a result, when forced to play games with balls in grade school gym class, it took very little time for everyone to know I stunk. So I was always picked last, or almost last, when teams were chosen up. There were usually a couple of girls chosen after me, a shred of dignity I clung to. I would mess up the catch, throw short or inaccurately, strike out, never make the basket, run the wrong way with the football when I finally got my hands on it. All in all, I would make a fool of myself anytime I had a ball in my hands. So, ball sports became associated with humiliation, rejection, loneliness, and girls laughing at me. And the slowness of baseball in particular added the worst dimension; sheer boredom. It was dreadfully boring to play and absolutely deadly dull to watch. Football was just one notch better because there actually was a little strategy to it, but still not worth the time or effort as far as I was concerned.

So, my context for sports growing up was a virtual lack of context. And when something is so important to most boys and they have a huge head start knowing about it and doing it, it can be very difficult for a kid to catch up. Distinctly below-average skills doom all efforts from the start. So, I followed what I still think is some very wise advise that I gathered up somewhere long, long ago: I didn't waste my time on things I was bad at and didn't enjoy and instead found things that I was pretty good at and did enjoy. I can (well, at least could when I was younger) do some pretty athletic things and had good coordination at them. Motocross riding, water or snow skiing, sailing, scuba diving, playing the guitar - these require coordination but it is entirely different than ball-handling coordination. Hey, I can fly an airplane upside down, can you? Which brings up another point: I would rather invest my time and effort learning to do something that not everybody else does. Something unusual. I just think that's more fun.


But if the ball thing is your cup of tea, then more power to ya. Enjoy. I'll make you a deal: don't laugh at me and I won't laugh at you.