Sports

In a recent post, Laura Belgray wrote about her recent attendance at a Giants' game (http://talkingshrimp.com/2010/09/28/most-valuable-popcorn-eater/). Not understanding much about sports in general or football in particular, she amused herself by looking at other spectators, especially the large man seated in front of her. He ate popcorn during the singing of the National Anthem and continued to stuff himself with a succession of finger foods, including peanuts and Cheetos, littering the space by his feet with empty cartons and wrappers, until the end of the game, when he headed for the exit. She was fascinated by his utter lack of self-consciousness, since she kept wondering what others would think of her in the unlikely event she made a similar spectacle of herself.

Like Laura Belgray, indeed like most people, I care what people think of me, perhaps overly so, and I also mentally criticize strangers I see in public spaces, until I remind myself that I can't know what stresses they face and that I myself, appearances to the contrary, am scarcely perfect. And like Laura Belgray I understand little about sports and care about it less, except that I'm happy when the Red Sox win and the Yankees lose, a vestige of my youth growing up near Boston. But it wouldn't occur to me to watch a Red Sox game on television or listen to one on the radio, let alone buy a ticket for a game.

There, I've said it in public. If there are other guys who are as bored as I am by watching the exquisitely slow pace of a succession of grown men hitting a little ball with a stick or by watching large men give each other concussions, as someone once defined that sport, they keep it to themselves. If you're a man, you're supposed to like that stuff. But one of the advantages of old age is that you feel freer to do and say what you want. So I'll say it again: I'm uninterested in sports.

Maybe it's a defensive reaction to my own ineptness as a ballplayer when I was in school. Always the last to be chosen for a baseball team, I'd be relegated to left field, where I'd pray that the ball wouldn't come to me. Even if the ball popped into my hand, I'd be unable to throw it all the way back. But my ineptitude may have been the result rather than the cause of my lack of interest. When my father took me out to the back yard on Sundays, I went with him reluctantly. In the forlorn hope of arousing my interest, he would take me to games at Fenway Park and Braves Field, where I'd be quickly bored. I'd ask him questions that revealed my ignorance of the game, questions that embarrassed him because those in nearby seats could hear me.

Why are adults, particularly men, so engaged by children's games? I suppose there are many reasons, among them an appreciation for the beauty, grace, and economy of movement that many players display. Perhaps some spectators derive vicarious pleasure from observing superb athletes at work, imagining themselves in their place. Maybe rituals that are repeated from year to year, which men watched with their fathers and now watch with their sons, provide a sense of timelessness. And still others may enjoy the camaraderie of fellow enthusiasts, although that begs the question of why there are enthusiasts in the first place.

My lack of interest is not a highbrow/lowbrow matter. John Updike wrote a lyrical essay about Ted Williams's last game; Marianne Moore compared baseball to writing; and Roger Angell continues to contribute elegant baseball essays to The New Yorker. No, whatever combination of genes is responsible, they must be recessive in me. But, as the character played by Joe E. Brown says, at the end of Some Like It Hot, "nobody's perfect."