Is that part of the appeal? 
Dude, I’m from Texas. Hell, I was born in Big Spring… right up the road from Midland.
My point is that playing sports or being good at them isn’t really the point. My wife hates football (she claims) but she was on the drill team in high school, who primarily performed at football games. I was spirit leader and mascot. Other friends were in band, etc., etc. So football is very central to the culture in Texas but whether or not you excel in it is more or less irrelevant. Way more kids played soccer in my school, but football had a central role in our lives. But it didn’t matter if you could throw a ball or not.
PE, in my school, occasionally had us playing games, but it was usually soccer, something everyone could play, or basketball. But mostly drills.
(I enjoy your posts too. But I think we’re talking past each other here.)
Not in my personal experience it isn’t, and I’ve also lived in both countries. I will, however, admit to a degree of hyperbole for comic effect in the post you were referring to.
What is ‘snobbery’ about not liking something? Are people who don’t like chocolate called ‘snobs’? What about people who don’t like cheese. Or multigrain bread. Or hardwood floors? You either like or dislike something - I suppose how you say it might constitute ‘snobbery’ but just to not see the appeal of something is a simple statement of taste.
Well you seem to be rebutting something I didn’t say. If you’ll reread my words, you’ll see that I don’t care. People are very welcome to like whatever they like. All I said was their reasons are not valid for me.
It wasn’t intended to be a ‘rebuttal’ nor an answer to a question. It’s a discussion of the differences in preferences that may explain why sports appeal to some and not to others.
To the people who say that that sport is character-driven; that may well be, but there’s no conversation to be had. And, frankly, I don’t find the lives and lifestyles of sports stars all that engaging.
When I look for the revleation of character, I’m looking for interesting conversation, not plots worked out by people acting upon each other physically. I also like things pleasing to the ear, and very much dislike noise and unpleasant sounds. Few sports are pleasing to the ear. I gather the racket doesn’t bother the fans but it does me and makes the experience quite unpleasant.
Exactly. For some reason the “I don’t get sports” folks ask questions like those asked of the OP. Sport is so easily analogized with drama, with art, with the human condition, to pretend that you “don’t get it” is to willfully ignore all of the simple connections between sport and other interests, like it’s some bizarre infection that affects some poor souls.
I would never say “I hate art” or “Why do people get into art? It’s just shapes!” Then diversity of all art surely contains something that virtually everyone would like. Considering how long sport has been with us - as old, if not older than civilization itself - it’s about time people stopped asking why. It’s part of who we are. You can dislike football, or overcommercialization, or ridiculous spoiled-brat celebrity athletes, but that’s not sport, those are issues correlated to sport. Who doesn’t enjoy watching little kids playing a game together, figuring out how to help each other toward a common goal? That’s what team sports ultimately are.
I think all of the points I’d make have already been covered. Baseball, to me, is like the most epic of epic stories. There are characters and plotlines and strategies and tactics and triumphs and tragedies. There are guesses and second guesses and heroes and goats.
If you hate baseball, all you see looks the same. If you love baseball, everything is always subtly different.
Except that in the end, Cleveland always loses. sob
Beause we do.
Imagine you and I are at a party. Or a bar. Or any generic social situation.
You don’t like sports? I don’t care. I will certainly try to engage you, however, because I want to talk to you. You might not know what the hell the cover-2 is, but you might know who Peyton Manning is or who Terrell Owens is, because they’re national figures. You might not know what the infield fly rule is or that you just saw an unassisted triple play, but you might know who Barry Bonds or Albert Pujols or Alex Rodriguez is, because they’re national figures.
I’m not trying to question your manhood, I’m trying to find common ground so I can talk to you.
I have no idea what the hell makes Billy Collins so great. But I do know and like William Carlos Williams, and I loves me some Walt Whitman. But not because I like poetry, but because these particular artists transcend their own genre, much like the sports stars I mentioned do theirs.
Maybe, if you stopped making such broad generalizations about us questioning your manhood, maybe if you stopped projecting the insecurities about being picked last for gym class, maybe if you stopped feeling so defensive about not liking sports, maybe if you didn’t adopt the inadequacy that you feel is being projected onto you, you might ask me to find common ground with you, rather than leaving me to do all the work and then complaining about it later.
I’m happy to talk about what you want to talk about. But you won’t let me.
Ha, I guess watching all those sports restricted the blood in your veins, cause I said I played sports, just not watched them. That means I am actually fit and healthy, instead of fat and out of shape watching others participate in physical activity. I would say I would get chosen first, you probably last.
How about reading my post before spouting off.
[Way OT]He’s a good poet but a great ambassador. He’s charming.[/WOT]
I guess being derisive restricted all the blood to yours, because you missed the “edit” field there, bright eyes.
And remember what they say about making guesses about the person on the other side of the screen. You have no idea what athletic background I have, so the smart move is generally to stay away from “I bet you’re fat” as a debating tactic.
I don’t know about baseball or football, but I would definitely pick Happy Scrappy Hero Pup first for greyhound racing. 
As opposed to “maybe if you stopped projecting the insecurities about being picked last for gym class.”
Doctor, heal thyself.
You made the big assumption first, namely that because I don’t WATCH sports (though I stated I DID play them), I must have some repressed childhood emotions based on ‘getting picked last’.
AFTER you “claimed” you didn’t judge those that weren’t into watching sports.
You are a real class act.
As far as I can see, this is a factually false statement. There is an enormous amount of conversation to be had. Consider the Peyton Manning example someone offered upthread; his story is actually a good deal more complex than that brief summary. For instance, Peyton Manning has become an almost ubiquitous commercial pitchman, to the point where some people had begun to question whether or not his focus was in the proper place. Fair or unfair? His father had been a very talented player at the same position who never won, so in many ways Peyton was seen as carrying his family’s name into the game - how does this affect a person, to be viewed as representing not just yourself but your beloved father, to have your successes and failures attributed to him as well? This isn’t a sports story; it’s a story, no different in essence than Jack’s story on Lost or Rick’s story in Casablanca.
To put my question another way, what television or movies do you watch? What conversations are there to be had about those, that have no analogues in sports?
Now, I’m not saying you have to enjoy the conversations that there are to be had related to sports, but to say that there is no conversation at all is just false.
I’d submit that this is not true. Unless your only preferred form of entertainment is staged readings of dialogue-heavy plays, every form of entertainment you have involves people acting upon each other physically. The bench scene from the musical Carousel, if staged with a certain kind of touching, looking, and physical interaction, can make you feel like you’re watching innocent flirting; another kind of physical interaction will reveal crazy person lust. This even if the words and their intonation remain exactly the same. A kiss, a punch, a handshake - all of these are examples of plots worked out by people acting upon each other physically, and all are no intrinsically different from a handoff or a cross check.
Well, this is all subjective, of course, and off topic a bit, but I couldn’t disagree more. My favorite sport is baseball, and the collection of sounds in a baseball game is tremendously pleasing to the (or at least my) ear. You can very nearly follow a baseball game without either seeing it or hearing analysis; the sounds of leather on leather, or wood, or grass, or of formless crowd noise - they tell you what you need to know. I love listening to baseball as much as, maybe more, than watching it.
I see that you still haven’t read my “edit” field in the post about which you’re whining.
The intricacies of sport can not be appreciated by the casual observer. Baseball has a game within a game within a game. The pitcher has 3 to 5 pitches he can throw. The batter has to guess which one is coming and where. The catcher calls the pitches after studying the tendencies of the batters. In a fraction of a second a decision is made and acted upon. The fielders move their positions to accommodate what they think the batter will do.
There are set plays like bunts when fielders move to cover positions. There is bunting and hitting in back of runners. There is stealing and stealing signals. Much evades those who have not played.
Well, actions speak louder than words. Saying a bunch of potentially insulting things and then saying “I’m not singling you our or insulting you” isn’t convincing.
I’m not the other people in the thread that say they don’t understand why others watch sports. I said I did understand, that I played sports (enjoy them too), just don’t find it interesting to watch. Personal preference (and I am a busy person, so I don’t watch much TV anyway).
I responded to your post about how those that like sports don’t single them out. You might not, but you certainly don’t know every sports fan out there, and trust me, they are out there. I’m not saying every sports fan, OR YOU in particular, treat others like this.
However, your actions of derision to those that don’t like spectator sports speak louder than the denials you make in print. You claim you don’t question a person’s manhood when they don’t like sports, but you lash out at me (even though you “claim” you aren’t), by instantly classifying me as a weakling or clumsy oaf that can’t play sport and nobody wants on their team. That is pretty much the opposite of what you are claiming about your actions.
So you claim you extend the courtesy of being polite to those that don’t like sports, but you certainly didn’t do much to being polite to me, just like many other people that have made open fun of me because I don’t have a bunch of facts about professional sports memorized or because I don’t know or care about the score between the Cardinals and the Cubs.
Trying to start a friendly conversation is one thing. If I say “Sorry, don’t follow the MLB” and you are like “ah, sorry to hear that,” thats is great, you are probably polite. If you ask “Why not” and I state that I have other things going on in my life or that it doesn’t interest me, and you make comments about being “last to be picked for a team.” That is rude, and goes 100% against what you said about being polite.
This is a football stadium…a vast curving elliptical basin, its sweeping banks tight packed, the rim of it far up there cutting the sky.
It is alive with people, though from a distance they do not resemble people. their faces are blurred.
What do they resemble? Flowers? No.
More like a hill of pink gravel. The Colosseum of ancient Rome must have looked like this.
This is why people watch sport.
Bloodlust without the blood
That’s the equivalent to saying that I don’t read books, I’d rather write them. It is not a particularly impressive sentiment.
This is absolutely true. I hate baseball, but I’ll definitely listen to a Mets game on the radio. There is something about the sounds of a baseball game that are inherently pleasing.
That’s a good point as well. There are a LOT of different (and at times contradictory) reasons why people enjoy sports, and one of them is the rather Roman pleasure of sitting comfortably at home or in a football stadium, drinking a beer and eating a hot dog, while millionaires beat the bejesus out of each other for my amusement.