For The Love of the Game

Baseball is the "great American pastime", but it doesn't appeal to me at all.   Some live for it and find it highly exciting to watch.   I find it wrist-slittingly boring and there aren't even any cheerleaders for heaven's sake.   I like watching little kids play baseball in little league, but that's the extent.  Six and seven-year-old's kind of suck at everything and I find it funny watching children fall down. One of my few joys in life.

Part of my distaste for baseball could stem from the fact that my parents forced me to play baseball as a kid and I was unquestionably the worst player on the team year after year.    (This applied to soccer as well.)   The coaches would always hand out awards at the end of the season and I always got the Participatory Award, which would have been more aptly named the You Suck Award.   At some point I knew I would just mess up, so I sort of just stopped trying.  I would just stand on the field like a dipshit* and drag everyone else down.  Funny how this notion never went away.  








I teach alot of kids how to play guitar here in NYC.   Frequently, I am asked whether I like the Yankees or the Mets.   My stock answer was always that I don't watch baseball, but I guess I would choose the Yankees.    I have since altered my answer to the Mets ...and that I still don't watch baseball.   The Yankees might lose a few games here and there or maybe even lose the pennant by a game, but their history is still full of successes.    For the Mets, it's quite the opposite.   The Mets are losers, but they keep getting out there and playing game after game, as futile as their efforts might be.  I find the effort inspiring, although most would deem it pathetic.  The Yankees will always come out winners and the the Mets will always be losers.   That's just the way it is.   "For the love of the game", as they say.  

Incidentally, I don't watch basketball either, but my favorite team is the Washington Generals.    I have searched high and low for a Washington Generals jersey to wear, but no one sells them, nor have I ever seen any Generals merchandise on Ebay.   At one point, I thought about going to a game with a hundred dollar bill and trying to buy a jersey off a player.   That never really panned out and I stopped thinking about it until today.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Generals

Thanks to Cliff for the inspiration to have a baseball related blog.   You can read his blog over at: http://titusonetwo.blogspot.com/

*I hope no one is offended by the use of the word dipshit, but it sums up my athletic abilities better than any other word.