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I have stopped following professional sports for at least a couple of decades, despite being a sportsman of the real variety--of practice and not attendance as a spectator.
A friend sometimes invites me to see G League basketball games—he has season tickets—and sometimes I go, more for the company than anything else. I watch a spectacle, dreadful, terrible. Every time out is a good reason to blast loud, annoying music and show a group of dancing children on the jumbotron, for a cheerleading exhibition of people who are over 60 or under 13, for a competition in which the girl, or the middle-aged man in attendance, tries to score a bucket with bio-mechanically unsound movements that herald an expensive visit to the orthopedist, for a toss from the in-house entertainers either of T-shirts or socks that gets retirees, who are struggling to get out of their chairs, all excited. Cops on the court checking that the retirees themselves are not throwing a fit, tickets to be scanned, metal detectors ringing for a key in the pocket, a $15 draft beer.
When I leave, I'm exhausted, mortified, wondering who made me do it. Give me back the sport of 50 years ago, or never invite me again. |