It’s not just you — I hate sports too
This is why:
I’m 21 years old and I started playing sports when I was 12 after my parents came home from a trip to Moab, Utah (why they did this trip without me I still feel upset about; if you’ve been there you’ll know what I’m talking about) and brought along a thrift store find. It was a Rawlings baseball mitt that was clearly at the end of its life. They patched up the fraying pocket with shoe-goo and handed it over to me, saying that I was now old enough to start playing for our town’s rec-league.
They had no idea what they had just started.
I used that mitt for the next two years. It was with me at the first tryout, when I wore cut-off jean capris that made me look like an ill-adapted modern version of Huckleberry Finn paired with white half-calf socks and soccer cleats; it was with me when it covered my face up to my smeared eyeblack as I leaned over to casually talk with the second baseman between outs; it was with me when I rode my bike to the field on the weekends, dangling off the handle of the bat that ran through the hand-opening; and for many more memories that I have that come from those early baseball diamonds.
Thus marked the beginning of a world that would engulf me and force me to become immersed in a world that I really didn’t belong in.
I don’t know where that glove is anymore, similar to my lost love for all organized sports — especially those connected to my high school.
I was never that good at the sports I did, despite what my family might tell you if you asked them. Everyday I woke up thinking, “I’ll never be good enough to really succeed.” The only reason I ever got any playing time was simply because every team I ever played on was about as good as the leadership — over-practiced, and under-succeeding.
I don’t blame any coaches I’ve had for my general dislike of sports. That came naturally, as I grew older and slowly realized that I can set my own expectations for how I want to succeed.
Until the day I graduated high school, I let the constant pressure of peers, coaches, parents, and advisors rule how I saw myself in the world of baseball or football or basketball…it even started bleeding into what life I had left outside of the world that was consumed in a ridiculously dogmatic hatred of the opposition. I was becoming a competitive person in every aspect of my life.
I remember the last baseball game I played like it was over 3 years ago. I left the field steaming angry — we lost. Yet I also sensed that a looming freedom had just descended for the first time: I was no longer bound by an image that forced me to perform.
Baseball is and was a sport that I am still fond of. My contempt grows out of being the product of a system that taught me anger coupled with repetition was the key to success.
I realize now that my own expectations for success are limited only to the strength I have to climb up a rock face, how far I feel like trekking into the woods that day, or how long I feel like running away from my house. In case you are wondering, I’m into solo sports now. Not requiring a head coach hired by a run-down school district, or peer-pressure to perform.
I think I’ll stick to that from now on.
