There are several sports that I can make absolutely no sense of and several more that I get the gist of but am stupefied that people commit themselves to playing. Or, even more unbelievably, to watching someone else play.
My family wasn’t a ‘sporty’ family, so sports weren’t ground into us as kids. I probably don’t have to say this but I’m clearly not including hockey in this category. We were a staunch Canadian hockey-loving family like yours, and while we only ever played the game ourselves in the basement with plastic sticks and pucks, we were all-in during those tournaments.
I cannot say the same for Cricket. I am absolutely confounded by cricket, as is a generous percentage of other Canadians. We’ve all had the rules explained to us numerous times by fans of the game but, if I may just say on behalf of the others, we have not retained even a fraction of that information. I know that cricket is an historically rooted game, with evidence pointing to it having been played as far back as the mid-1500s, but back in those days it was considered a children’s game. Things must have certainly gotten complicated as time went along because I can’t think of a single kid, no matter how bossy, who would have invented a game with that many rules or one which would drag on for hours. Kids have limits.
Test Cricket averages between 6 – 7.5 hours per match, and the single time cricket was included in the Olympic Games (Paris 1900) the match was 2 days long. Great Britain won that match with 158 runs. What the heck…?! T20 Cricket, the version that will be making its own Olympic debut in 2028, has tightened things up a bit and it only takes about 2.5 hours to play a game. Cricket is too much of a commitment for me. The white outfits are cute and look pretty comfortable but come ON!
Another long and painful game to watch is Baseball. Now, I know that there are plenty of baseball fans in this room but as much as we had all hoped it would turn out differently, I am just not one of you. Things get bogged down for me because the team that hits only sends up one batter at a time. How can that be seen as a team sport? What if we changed things so that several pitchers simultaneously pitched randomly to a line of like 10 batters and whoever was lucky enough to hit something could start running for first base while everyone chased them? If not that angle, perhaps the game would move quicker if there was another batter waiting to be tagged in once the first guy made a hit and ran off. Better yet, tagging hitters AND two pitchers throwing one right after the other. More balls in play = more action. Doesn’t regular league play seem boring now?
And how could we make Canadian Football a bit less snoozy? I think it would help if the field was smaller, if the number of guys on the field reduced, and if we put big, coloured squares on the players’ jerseys instead of numbers, so that we could at least tell teammates apart. Then heck, let’s give both teams a football at the same time and have each of them throwing AND defending simultaneously! If we put our foot down about games only lasting 30 minutes max, we could all go home early and get on with our lives. Oh, one more upgrade: neither team kicks because, seriously, why?
While we’re busy making the playing fields smaller, can somebody PLEASE do something about the size of a soccer pitch? Watching Soccer is like attending the Santa Claus Parade in person—you can hear that something’s happening, but you can’t quite see that far down the street, and by the time it comes into view, the Big Deal is over and the band is resting between numbers. I can’t imagine why people agree to play soccer. Who agrees to running full out for 45 minutes, pausing for 15 minutes to have a cup of tea, and then getting back at it for another 45 minutes of running full out? How can that even be a sport? And have you seen the sheer size of the goal? You could drive three Zambonis side-by-side through those posts. How is one regularly-sized person supposed to defend THAT? I say we give soccer players fencing swords or perhaps water pistols so that they could at least have something to do while they’re running endessly up and down the field. And we should give all goalies a big stick. BIG.
I watch Golf on TV only when I’m behind on my knitting. I was there in person as it was being played once. Never again! In the game of golf, each player hits their ball much MUCH further away than the human eye can see and then the whole group walks together in that general direction to see where the balls might have landed. The aim is to land a ball in a beer cup that has been recessed into the grass and is so impossible to find that the darn thing has to be marked by a flagpole. When all four people in the party have either found the cup and sunk their ball, or have gone back to the clubhouse sobbing, the whole procedure has to be done SEVENTEEN MORE TIMES!! I had to fake an appendicitis attack at the 3rd hole just to save my sanity. Yikes.
I just don’t have a soft spot for sports and that’s on me. I haven’t put any effort into understanding their rules or studying any of the nuances that they are reputed to have. Logic tells me that the more you know about a sport, the more interest you can muster—the same guideline goes for gossip or the stock market or mathematics in general.
For myself, I prefer to continue on as a tourist in the world of sports. A critical tourist. By not encumbering myself with the rules, I am able to just watch the unusual antics of both the players and the spectators, and then walk away without any emotional investment whatsoever. It’s very freeing and, other than spending time I will never be able to get back, it’s also very relaxing.
