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Sports Are Great
I played softball this week. I'd played it before; the fact that I played it this week is certainly not a revelation.
I'd played a couple of pickup games with friends from work last summer, and I recently joined a Tuesday night league in which I am 0-4 (although with two runs scored and an RBI) and have two innings at catcher to my credit.
But Thursday night, I played softball. I mean, I played the hell out of it (not that I played particularly well; I did okay, but "particularly well" is not a phrase that's ever been used to describe my athletic ability (this is not false modesty, by the way; in most sports [except basketball, where I'm clueless], I'm adequate but thoroughly unspectacular), by which I mean I was beaten and breathless by the end. I felt like I'd just gone twelve rounds with Lennox Lewis. Or, 1997 Lennox Lewis, at least.
I work out a little, I hit the Stairmaster, but I hadn't played the outfield in an actual game in ages (though the question of whether or not any game prior to which you and most of the rest of your teammates each put away a couple of beers instead of warming up can be called "actual" is a valid one). I was put in center (for a guy who grew up watching Kirby Puckett, and who now watches Torii Hunter, there's no better place to be in all of sports), and I had forgotten just how much running was involved.
Jogging to a different defensive position in the field each time a new batter comes up. Running to back up every play, because with no outfield fence the outfielders can't afford to let one past (and we had only three outfielders, instead of softball's usual four). Even running out to the position and back to the bench between innings got to be a chore by the end of the game.
But it was as much fun as I've had in ages. And it occurred to me like it never had before: THAT's why we play sports. You and I, I mean. That may not be why Chris Webber plays sports, or why Albert Belle played sports. I don't know those guys, I can't speak for them.
But WE play sports because it gives us a high we can't experience anywhere else. It's not the BEST thing in the world; finding a woman who'll love you for the rest of your life is better. Getting together and laughing with your family over Thanksgiving dinner is better. But the feeling that comes from having worked yourself into a wheezing mess because you overdid it but you just couldn't stop because the game you were playing in was too much fun; that's only sports.
Not just baseball/softball, either (although for me there's nothing better); I'm sure anyone who's ever aced somebody on ad-in, anyone who's ever picked off a pass and taken it to the house, anyone who's ever nailed a three-pointer at the horn or anyone who's ever holed out from the bunker knows exactly what I'm talking about.
And just when I thought I'd learned my lesson for the week, my younger brother called me today to tell me that both he and my 51-year-old -- um, I mean 39-year-old -- father finished a marathon in Duluth, Minnesota this morning. So I got a little dose of humility and perspective to go with my seven error-free innings in center field.
Sports are great.
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