HONESTLY?  I JUST DO NOT CARE

Please let me preface by saying I think it is just fine if you do care.  I am not judging those that do, I am simply pointing out that I don’t.  I am not a better person than you for not caring, and you are not better than me for caring.  You see, when it comes to watching sports, I am a huge fan of “the moment”.  The only time I really care about the game is as I am watching it.  And care may even be to strong a word.  Perhaps it is better to say the only time the game matters is when I am watching it.  If my teams win, I give a little fist pump and move on.  If they lose, I shrug my shoulders and move on.

Do not get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy watching games.  But I do not let the result affect the rest of my day or night.  I love living vicariously through the athletes, thinking about what could have happened if I could have hit a curveball when I was 13, or if I could have learned to dribble with my left hand as well as I could with my right.  I wonder if I would have been any good at football if I was not such a wussy growing up or if I would have been as skilled at ice hockey as I was at floor hockey.  I swear to this day I could have been a professional goalie if my Mom did not get pregnant with my little brother the winter she planned on teaching me how to skate.  There Jeff, I said it – it is your entire fault!!!!!

I really love thinking through the strategy of all sports, but mostly baseball.  What will the manager do?  What will the pitcher throw?  When I see a football, basketball or hockey game live, I really enjoy focusing off the ball or puck, watching what you do not get to see on TV and realizing there is a lot of coaching going on, it is not just a bunch of guys out there running or skating around willy-nilly.

With that said…

Player V signs with Team W for X dollars over Y years and GM Z is an idiot.  Honestly?  I just do not care.  It is not my money.  Most teams just print money.  And for the others, it is damned if they spend it, damned it they do not.  I understand you can go over to Fangraphs and look up a player’s WAR, then find out how much money each win is worth then compare to see if the contract is “good” or not, but again, honestly, I just do not care.  I do care how the signing will affect the player’s production.  I do care about the impact on the rest of the lineup or rotation.  I do care about how it matters to yours and my fantasy squad though.

Why did Team X sign Player Y when they already have Player Z?  Honestly, I do not care.  I might if I was Player Z, but even if I was a fan of the team, I have more important things to worry about.  I assume that when I flip on the TV to watch the game, either Y or Z will be in the lineup and on the field, so we will not be playing a man down.  But again, I do care how this might impact playing time with respect to fantasy stuff.

Can you believe Bert Blyleven didn’t make the Hall of Fame?  How about those morons that voted for no one?  Or the idiots that did not vote for Robbie Alomar even though he was very publicly forgiven by John Hirschbeck?  And the tools that voted for Pat Hentgen and David Segui – they should have their voting rights taken away.  Honestly?  I do not care.  As I mentioned earlier, for me, the game is the thing.  I do enjoy reading about the history of the game and its personalities.  But the fact Jim Rice made the Hall of Fame on his last chance does not enhance the enjoyment I received from watching him play.  And if he did not make it, that enjoyment would not have been diminished.  What I do care about is the wonderful memories I have as a young teenager, arguing with my Grandpa that Fred Lynn is better than Rice.  Whether or not a player is deemed a Hall of Famer means nothing to me.  It does not alter my perception of them.

Since he admitted to using steroids, I think Mark McGwire’s 70 home run season should be stricken from the record book.  Honestly?  I do not care.  Truth be told, all talk about records bores me, regardless of the record or the sport.  There are actually two reasons.  The first is similar to how I feel about Hall of Fame voting.  In my not so humble opinion, unless we are comparing apples to apples, ordering and ranking accomplishments in different years, decades and eras is meaningless to me.  And yes, I am aware of the attempts to normalize such things using ERA+ and OPS+, etc.  And while it may seem like the comparison moves from apples to oranges to apples to apples, it is more like comparing a Granny Smith to a Macintosh.  Sure, they are both apples, but they are not the same thus it is still opinion which is better, even if you find a means to quantify the difference.  The second reason may seem a bit elitist, but it’s my blog and I’ll say what I want to.  I honestly do not care if someone hit more homers than someone else, or scored more goals, or caught more touchdowns or blocked more shots.  None of this makes them a better person and like I mentioned, for me, the in-the-moment game is the thing.  I can even extend this to something real and that is the attempt by the National Fantasy Baseball Championship to generate lifetime standings and to present all-time money leaders.  Really, I honestly do not care where I sit on these lists.  What I care about is the fact that 6 years ago, I was a horrible drafter and have worked at it to a point I now feel I can hold my own with anyone when it comes to a snake draft.  What I care about is six years ago, I could calculate a dollar value to the 4th decimal place, but it did not help me win an auction.  But now, I care about the fact I have learned valuation is a tool and the proof is in back-to-back championships in the NFBC NL-only auctions.  But does winning these leagues make me a better person than I was six years ago?  Hardly.

I am not really sure why I decided to write this.  Perhaps it is therapeutic because I am dealing with a situation in my personal life that requires a great deal of my care, thus rendering the rest of this scantly relevant.  But I would like to think that much of this would be true regardless.

Thanks for “listening”.

And do not get me started on Tiger Woods or Leno/Letterman/Conan or Jennifer Aniston or American Idol or Brett Favre or ….