I’ve written before about how over the past few years I’ve fallen out of love with sports and that’s still half-true.
Logically, it’s silly to spend thousands of hours and dollars watching other people play a game, but it’s even more silly to let it affect your mood. I never understood people that couldn’t get out of bed on a Monday morning if their team lost the day before. The players and coaches shook it off, why can’t you? Does it affect your life or family or career? In 2009, Bleacher Report published a piece titled, “A Lesson We All Need to Learn: There’s More to Life Than Sports.” Really? You needed to learn that lesson? It wasn’t intrinsic to your basic human nature?
Like Sonny told C in A Bronx Tale: “Mickey Mantle? Is that what you’re upset about? Mickey Mantle makes $100,000 a year. How much does your father make? You don’t know? Well, see if your father can’t pay the rent go ask Mickey Mantle and see what he tells you. Mickey Mantle don’t care about you, so why should you care about him? Nobody cares.”
I always related to that. I guess I’m not a superfan.
The other half is that sports are best enjoyed by people that have plenty of time on their hands.
I love the NBA. The NBA Playoffs could be my favorite sporting event and I haven’t watched a single game thus far this year. I’ve been in the office until 10 every night this week, but even when I’m home I’m doing something else. I treat sports more like entertainment than a religion.
I used to have Phillies season tickets, but even then we treated it like going to a movie or a play or watching TV show. I never based my life around it and I never eschewed living my own life – weddings, family events, or even just a beautiful day outside – in lieu of watching a game on TV. That’s a passive existence. I have a beautiful home, wife, and daughter and I choose to live my own life and chase my own dreams rather than watch someone else live and chase theirs.
With all that said, I hope LeBron wins another ring this year.
Here’s what I wrote this week:
Bonus: Captain America: Civil War opens today, so before you go to the theater check out my rundown of what is and is not a Marvel film
“Men are way too invested in sports. They care too much. You’re a machine for turning beer into piss. That’s what you are. It’s so sad when the team wins and they go, ‘We won!’ No, no. There’s no we. You didn’t win anything. Ten black guys who would hate you if they knew you won. The people that actually do better when the team wins [are] the strippers and the hookers in that town.”
– Bill Maher
Christopher Pierznik’s eight books are available in paperback and Kindle. His work has appeared on XXL, Cuepoint, Business Insider, The Cauldron, Medium, and many more. Subscribe to his monthly reading review newsletter or follow him on Facebook or Twitter.
The Passion of Christopher Pierznik 