For the Love of Distraction

You know how, sometimes, when you're a bit boozed, the NBA can be palatable? Especially when you're at the bar with some old buddies, and you've run out of stories, but not beer? Or how sometimes baseball captures your imagination, and you decide to damn the torpedoes and leave it on in the background? Even hockey - irrelevant since Bettman - can, for the briefest of periods, capture our attention. And football, well, there's always football.

My point is this: even if you don't love every major American sport, they are at least always there, ready to be turned on. It's comforting, in its own way, to have that and to know that there are men and women out in this world exerting huge amounts of energy and pushing the very limits that make us human. In watching this display, there are two equal parts of fascination. One part of me is thrilled that there is somebody out there who was born the same way I was, and can do things with his body that I cannot. The other part is me on my couch actively atrophying my own muscles saying "boy, I'm glad I'm not that guy right now" and stuffing another bit of fried chicken flesh into my mouth. There are better men, at least physically, than I who are at least doing something at that very moment. It's proof, to me, that the world outside my own dingy apartment exists and is turning even if I do nothing to contribute to it. It is why today is the most depressing day of the year.

Oh sure, it's the middle of July and the weather is nice. Ok, a bit humid, but it's the kind of humidity that allows you to work up a good sweat without really doing any work at all. Then you can walk around your house all steamy and sticky and pretend like you've done something worth the lather. The days are long, giving the impression that your 24 hour allotment is grander that it really is, and by God, you're going to go fishing this afternoon, except you never do. Instead, you wake up, go to work, get home and cook dinner. If you're lucky, you can catch a bit of the ballgame before you go to bed and lather, rinse, repeat. Except for today. Today there is no ballgame. There is no little reassurance that the world ok; no packed ballparks; no drunken fans; no diving catches. Today, the day after the All-Star Game, is the only day in America that a major sporting event is not held.

And we'll get through it. Hell, we probably won't even realize it except in passing; that fleeting moment this evening when a distraction from Everyday, America is needed. You see, that's what sports are: a distraction. That's not to say that they aren't meaningful as such - with Typhoons and Cyclones and Wars and McCain and Obama and how America is going to save the world even if it takes its destruction to do it. Add into the mix the fact that the dog needs walked, the baby needs changed, the lawn needs mowed, and you still haven't picked up that wedding present for that niece and it's no wonder sports are so important. But today, and only today, there is no distraction. There is no 5 minutes to sit and watch a game played by young men who never age.

So for those 5 minutes you get before your life beckons again - and you'll heed the call, just like you always do - we'll miss sports, because even if we don't watch them (or really like them) we know they are there. And you know what? Maybe tonight I'll finally go fishing.