NEW YORK, May 3 – I like watching men hit balls with sticks.

I also enjoy watching men throwing the balls that the other men are trying to hit, and, upon the occasion when one of the balls is actually swatted, I enjoy watching yet more men run around with outsized leather mittens trying to catch or recover these balls and throw them to one another in an attempt to interrupt the progress of the stickman as he sprints around a diamond, springing from one pillow to another.

Why wouldn’t I enjoy this spectacle? It is, after all, America’s Favorite pastime.

And yet, yet, I was not always like this.

Shamed as I am to say so, there was a time I thought baseball a dreary bore. Going further back into my youth, way back there in the dark corners where the of garbanzo beans and the fruitcakes of Christmas past are lost and forgotten, I found sports in general, and professional sports in particular, to be a waste of time and something of a blight and an obscenity.

I was young. It happens.

This was the period of time in which politics were my bloodsport of choice. The mano y mano struggle of opposing politicians trying to rip the veins from one another’s throats while still maintaining a façade of civility was not only far more entertaining to me, it was also, and more importantly, something that mattered.

I was young. It happens.

Somewhere in there something else happened.

Somewhere, the impulse to vomit at the thought of the resources and energy the people of not just this country but the world over put into the elevation of the professional athlete and the act of simply watching them play (as opposed, say, to going out and playing for themselves) was transformed into a gag reflex that kicks in just about any time I see an elected official open his or her mouth to utter some phrase intended to increase their odds of keeping the dirty job they’ve all but killed for.

Kind of a law of conservation of cynicism I guess.

I mean, it’s hard to hold two activities in such a high level of mutual contempt.

But I try sometimes.

I love baseball. And, with virtually no encouragement in my childhood, based upon a brief attendance at CSU San Francisco in a house full of black and orange fanatics, I am, and have been for nearly two decades now, a genuine Giants fan.

This is another stone I’ve placed in my father’s heart, another seeming rejection of my heritage as a native of Oakland California, but he has only himself to blame on this one. I may have willfully cast away the Raiders despite his best efforts to pawn them off on me, but he made no real push on behalf of the As and can only blame himself that green and gold hold no attraction.

Besides, I bought into the Warriors, and look at what that’s got me.

It gets me laughed at in public any time I muster the guts to actually don a piece of Golden State sporting apparel before going out. Knowledgeable basketball fans snicker behind their hands and point and make little Mongoloid faces. Thanks, pop. The check’s in the mail.

Why do I care? About any of it?

Adults, physically anyway, men, with whom I have pretty much absolutely nothing in common with, getting paid absurd amounts of money to play games for which I have not one ounce if natural ability (watching me swing a bat has been known to make people cry out of sympathetic embarrassment at my lack of coordination and grace), in order to perform their feats publicly for the even greater financial benefit of a very few filthy rich topfeeders and the fattening of the coffers of various corporate sponsors and merchandising concerns.

When I put it that way, I remember what bothered me in the first place.

And there are times, moments when I find myseilf on my couch, arms folded, jaw clenched, muttering curses and clearly not enjoying myself in the least as the Giants enter the late innings of a close game, that it feels like a fucking curse.

Watching me spectate one of my teams in anything but a clear wire to wire blowout of the opposition in which they play sublimely well, one would swear I was reenacting the brainwashing scene from “A Clockwork Orange”. I give every indication that invisible restraints are forcing me to sit through this outrage, this obscenity; tiny claws peeling my eyelids open and pinning them in place, as I fight an all but uncontrollable urge to scream in pain and spray streams of vomit about the room.

My wife so looks forward to the airing of a Giants game on national TV.

Why do I indulge in this misery?

Well, it just feels so damn good when they win.

Which, seeing as I have nothing at all to do with either victory or defeat, is pretty fucking sick.

So I’m sick. Trust me. I know it.

And look at the alternative.

Pro sports may be a dirty business, but next to the festival of scumbaggery I see when I flip on CNN or open the front page of the Times, it feels like a wholesome sanctuary amongst willful, but innocent, children.

It’s bread and circuses season, man, let’s play two.

Willingly being distracted from the real issues,
Charlie

But It’s A Dry Heat

I will be at the Atomic Comics store in Chandler Arizona this Saturday, May 6 from about noon to 5pm.

Atomic Comics: Chandler Arizona
3155 West Chandler Boulevard
480-940-6061

Also at the store will be Scott Kolins, James Owen, Madam M, and Rob Hand. This is part of Atomic’s Free Comic Book Day celebration and they’ll have comics creators at all four of their stores. More Details here.