Thoughts on Sports

I know I say it every year. Even I don't understand my attraction to televised golf. But when the Masters and the US Open come around, I'm helpless to fight the urge to turn it on and multi-task my brains out. I think even my dad (who got me into this misunderstood past time) would admit that it's hard to just watch golf and do nothing else. He's usually paying bills or doing a sudoku or cleaning while golf is on. I usually read or write or do some needlepoint while it's on (yes, I'm 85 years old, so sue me). It's pretty easy to split your attention and still know exactly what's happening on the green.

There's something about the quiet nature of the competition that really draws me in. While you're theoretically playing against a whole field of other golfers (sometimes 100 or more, depending on the tournament and the day), you're really only playing against yourself. It's a game that you can actually play competitively on your own. You really can't do that with football or basketball. Or baseball. Or really any other sport. When a golfer plays a hole, there's only one other person there playing with him. It's not a clusterfuck on the green, and no one is really affecting how that golfer plays except himself. It's a game of immense skill, thought, and planning. And even if you have the brain to correctly read the green and plan out the best way to hit a shot, you then have to battle with your own athleticism in actually making the ball land where you want it to. That's why, when a golfer plays a hole perfectly, when he gets a hole in one, when he bails himself out of a sand trap, it's actually so amazing. The actual chances of getting it right are statistically so slim. I guess it can seem kind of lame, watching a small white ball rolling around on a patch of grass. But I somehow found both the beauty and entertainment in it.

Recently, I have started incorporating the internet into my viewing, using the Masters official website to stay updated on scores by the second, and to check out my favorite players. And by favorite players, I mean the new crop of young, attractive golfers. Seriously, it's me a whole new reason to watch. There are some seriously good looking players out there, and I'd love to see them eclipse some of the current players in popularity, like Vijay Singh (kind of a misogynist), Ernie Els (kind of odd looking), Phil Mickelson (kind of floppy but cute and good natured), and Tiger Fucking Woods (the bane of my existence, the man who sucks all the fun out of golf).

Let me move on to baseball, the only sport really going on at the moment, now that March Madness is over (golf is more an occasional thing, and name me five people you know who actually pay attention to the NBA). As the years have gone by, I've gotten into baseball more and more. I check the stats every day, I'm remembering the names of players, what positions they play, what those positions actually are, etc. And even though I think baseball on TV can get kind of boring, I'll catch a game on TV every now and then (and now that I have NESN, the New England Sports Network, I'll be watching the Red Sox all the time). I'm coming off of a pretty good year, baseball wise. Last year, the Phillies made history by coming back from a six game deficit to edge out the Mets for a playoff spot. The Red Sox won the World Series for the second time in four years. The Yankees sucked. I couldn't ask for more (though a second New England team winning their sport's ultimate game would have been nice, Patriots). And though we're scarcely six games into the new season, the Red Sox are sucking it up, Manny and Big Papi are killing me, and Matsuzaka and Papelbon can't seem to hit the broadside of a barn. They're already last in the AL East, a place that's usually reserved for Tampa Bay. The Washington Fucking Nationals have won more games than the Sox, and that's an embarrassment no matter how many games you've played.

So here's hoping the Red Sox get their fucking shit in line so I don't want to renounce my New England residency like I did when Tom Brady let Eli Manning and the Giants kick the shit out of him and take the Super Bowl win. Not that I'm still bitter or anything.