Indulge Me for a Minute

I'm going to lose a few of my readers with this post.  That's tricky with only 10 people reading, but this blog is about who I am and what I think.  So, indulge me for just a minute.  And I hope you'll be back next time.  It's not as if I have anything controversial to say--at least not today (I'm not THAT brave, after all)--but it might be just a bit boring.  Bet you can't wait to keep reading, eh? 

So here's the thing about me.  I love sports.  Love them.  I don't know what it is, because I don't recall being a big sports fan when I was growing up.  I never really played them.  Oh!  Except Little League.  I played t-ball, and maybe another year, on the Langeland's Funeral Home team in Kalamazoo.  They had me in right field.  For t-ball.  I may have been afraid of the ball.  Anyway I picked a lot of clovers but never found any of the four-leaf variety.  Checked every one of the Kalamazoo Little League fields for one, though.

Back to the sports.  I know my dad watched them as I was growing up.  He watched baseball and college football.  He also watched the NFL.  It may have been that he actually watched teams, though.  Like U of M and the Detroit Lions and the Detroit Tigers.  And the Olympics.  We always watched that, too.  I remember being in a hotel room somewhere between here and Vancouver, BC, and watching gymnastics floor routines.  Or, rather I remember pretending I was in the gymnastics floor routines by tumbling across the beds in the hotel room.  I may have gotten in trouble for that.  I also remember being in the winter Olympics and figure skating around my living room while my parents and the rest of their Bible study watched through the windows from the church next door.  And of course I remember the '84 World Series and the '88 Series.  It may have been Kirk Gibson I remember from that last one, though.

In high school I discovered soccer.  I watched it in the heat and in the floods and everywhere in between.  I'm not sure I missed many games during my junior and senior years of high school.  Along the way I also discovered the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Tigers (for myself now) and Notre Dame Fighting Irish football.  The Sports Illustrated subscription has always been in my name, and my husband has to tell me to turn off ESPN.

A couple of years ago I decided to prove to the boys that I know more about football than what Brett Favre's smile is like (though it feels creepy to say that now), and I devoured The Idiot's Guide to the NFL.  And I discovered that I loved two more things about sports: learning the terminology and impressing the boys.

More recently, I discovered Josh Hamilton.  His story is so compelling, and let's be honest--it's a treat to watch him play baseball.  I also came across CJ Wilson in an issue of Sports Illustrated.  I was intrigued by their partnership in staying drug and alcohol free (Hamilton because of his addictions, and Wilson because he is straightedge), and I found it interesting that Wilson went from AAA ball to a relief role for the Rangers to being the Rangers ace in just a few short years. 

And then Albert Pujols!  Don't get me started on how interesting that story line has been this year!

Turns out I'm a pretty big baseball fan.  My interest has gone beyond just cheering for the Detroit Tigers and into watching certain players, observing how they impact their teams, and noting how the fans respond to them.  I'm excited to be watching Bryce Harper and Mike Trout transform and ignite their teams, and I can hardly wait to watch their careers continue to develop as they become even bigger superstars than they already are.  And the stats.  Wow.  There's so much to track.

I know that my minute is almost up, and the two of you who are still reading are about to close your browsers (except Matt Gajtka, who better be sticking around--I blame him for enabling me), but I do have a conclusion. 

Matt and I had a conversation the other day about learning.  I realized that part of what I love about sports is that there's always something more to learn.  My dad helped me see the importance of learning something every day (I don't know if he'd claim that, but it's something that I feel like I learned from him).  With sports I get to do that.

Then, I was talking with some people at a work lunch, and we discussed the psychology of sports.  I find it fascinating the way people are such "homers" and the way that fans can turn on a player and the way that Twitter has changed our access to athletes.  I love the brain and group think and people's motives and fandom in general.

I do like impressing the boys by talking sports, and I like sharing my opinions with more than just my dashboard while I listen to Mike & Mike or Colin Cowherd, and I surely like doing more than just filing the stats in my brain.  Don't worry, I wont hijack Better Than a Hallelujah with sports.  Because then I really will have the Gajtkas as my only readers.  It's just hard to figure out how to reconcile all of these parts of me while still maintaining the theme of what I've got going here.  I may have turned 35, and I may have figured out what I want to be when I grow up, but I'm still trying to figure how exactly who I am and how I should let it out.