Why I Still Watch Sports

I have intended for a while now to write a post defending my ongoing love of sports, and I am fairly sure that the following is neither novel nor convincing. It's been a rough, rough summer for those of us who love watching people play games. A brief recap:

Baseball, my most beloved sport and perhaps the perfect game, has been beset for years by the steroid controversy, but Barry Bonds' run at the home run record has made steroids implicitly the lead baseball story nearly every single day. The biggest story of the summer was not that the sport's greatest record was broken, but that the guy who did it probably cheated. On top of that, my Orioles are free-falling toward their 10th straight losing season, for the same old reasons.

Tim Donaghy, an NBA ref, admitted to betting on games and conspiring to influence the point spread in games he reffed. Already a distant 4th on my sports radar, the NBA has only fallen.

Michael Vick, a fellow product of Newport News, VA, funded and participated in a dogfighting operation, doing things I don't need to recount here. Football will be dealing with the Vick fallout all year.

This leaves out the misfortunes of cycling and hockey, sports I don't watch anyway.

So. Why do I watch sports? I even admit my own complicity in the sports economy, which makes games into business, and which ultimately blows them far, far out of proportion. Here's why I stick around.
I still think that there are points of tremendous beauty in sports. A 6-4-3 double play, a pick and roll, a perfectly thrown touchdown pass to the corner of the endzone... these things never get old for me. There's something about a perfect jumpshot, a strikeout on a changeup, or the coordinated movement of an offensive line to clear a lane for running that amazes me every time, and which can't be touched by "off the field" stories. Those stories, for what it's worth, are often covered by writers such as Roger Angell, David Halberstam, and Joe Posnanski, whose writing creates a much more nuanced narrative than the ESPN Top 10 plays allow for. Maybe it's simplistic of me to think so, but I see artistry in sports being played at their highest level. This really is the main reason why I still watch.

A second, less defensible reason also should be mentioned. Someday the Baltimore Orioles will win the World Series, and I can't stand bandwagon fans. If I'm going to continue feeling superior to them, it is incumbent on me to put up with the O's current futility.

I'd write more, but Roger Federer's 4th round match at the US Open starts in a few minutes. Watching him play tennis is like watching an unscripted ballet. Gotta go.