Baseball.

My father would have been pleased if I shared his passion–his family’s passion–for baseball, but I never could get into it. I’ve always understood the value of playing sports–the exercise and learning how to succeed as part of a team (and how to lose gracefully) but for the life of me I couldn’t grasp why intelligent people spend time watching sports.

When my father was on his death bed and couldn’t so much as remember my name, he could remember that the game was supposed to be on. “What’s the score,” he demanded with crystal clarity. In his life, I imagine, only baseball gave him a sense of true happiness. But why?

I think I get it. There are many reasons why sports and baseball particularly are so loved. With it being impossible to really control anything in life, it feels good to have something meaningless yet meaningful to care about–if your team loses, it hurts, but not nearly as much as a personal failure. If they win, it feels incredible, as if you had something to do with this victory sheerly be being a devoted fan.

But it’s more than winning or losing. Baseball is a slow sport, but really all team sports have this in common–the comeback. No matter what the stats say, there is always the chance for the lower scoring team to play really well and win in the end. This is what we crave as humans–to believe in the seemingly impossible. When life is hard, when we’ve struck out every inning and the other “team” is so far ahead we feel we ought to give up, we want to believe in a happy ending, even if it’s just for one game in a series of many.

There are plenty of other reasons people like baseball, of course. Data geeks enjoy that every player is ranked and their next at bat or pitch has a likelihood of success. Many people grew up going to games with family so it’s more personal–they may not even care for the sport as much as they do the nostalgia. But sport overall is tied to our core needs as humans, our want to feel a part of something, our tribal nature, and our need to believe that no matter how far down we are, we can always get back up and win it all in the end.

I watched a little of the post season this year (I think that’s what it is called) and let myself care just a little bit–just to try to understand what my dad felt each season glued to the tv instead of interacting with other humans… and I think I’m starting to get it. It’s nice, to feel part of something–winning or losing doesn’t really matter… there’s always next season. It’s an excuse to be childlike as an adult without fear if anyone judging you… because we’re all kids wanting to believe in something, to distract us from all of the horrors of the world and the hollow nature of our lives. And, that’s why, sports.