Sports Dude

Since when did I become the “sports guy” at my office? This sucks. Somehow I pigeon-holed myself into becoming the dude everyone feels compelled to talk about sports with. First, a disclaimer: I enjoy watching and playing sports. But I will never understand people who attach their success/happiness/sense-of-self-worth in life with their team’s success.

Like Tom Brady throwing a touchdown and dating models somehow makes a cab driver’s life in South Boston better.

I consider myself a knowledgeable NBA fan, with the Lakers as my all around favorite sports team. (As an aside, what’s not to like about the Lakers? They’re the only consistently legit professional sports team in LA, have sweet yellow jerseys, and with the exception of Bird, Jordan and a few others, have featured the best players in the NBA for the past twenty years.) I also follow the Philadelphia Eagles, my college football team, and international club soccer, but that’s about it.

And I guess it’s my fault, too. I play on a co-ed soccer team, I started the office softball team, and I’m a dude (we have a lot of women in my office). But still, why do I have to be the sports dude at work?

Every day, without exception, one or both of two guys I work with stop by with the daily sports chat, which is torture, especially since I often am forced into pretending to care. Worse still, the combination of the two covers all horrible bases.

The first is the “I follow all sports and all teams” guy. He is like a lame version of SportsCenter: instead of discussing sports news, scores, and updates from relevant topics such as the NBA playoffs, the Super Bowl or March Madness, he feels compelled to wax poetic on topics such as: Iona Women’s College Basketball, the Little League World Series, and Division III lacrosse. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but I did get a Temple v. Xavier Women’s basketball report once. At least he enjoys watching the games and I guess it makes him happy, but it’s relentless.

The other guy is similar, but instead of covering all sports, he focuses on all things sports relating to his hometown. Wait for it…. Cleveland. “The Mistake by the Lake” as I have heard it is referred to. Every morning, “Did you see the Indians’ game?” First off, that offends my past, present, and future soul – to think that if I were to follow any baseball team day in, day out, that it would be the Indians. The only Indians team I’ve ever liked is the one featuring Willie Mays Hayes, Roger Dorn and Rick Vaughan. (Please tell me you got that one.) Anyway, I have since learned more than I care to admit about the Indians, the Cleveland Browns, and of course, his favorite topic, LeBron. (If you happen to be reading this and follow the NBA, I hope you also realize that while LeBron is great, he is no Kobe, he sucks on D, can’t hit clutch shots [yet], and racks up his wins against the likes of the Milwaukee Bucks and the Knicks).

So, there is no hope for my Sports Dude status. As much as I try to underscore that I do not follow neither Iona Women’s College Basketball nor monitor what LeBron had for breakfast this morning, I know that my status as sports dude is cemented. In fact, just while writing this, each of the two independently stopped by my office to share their thoughts on tomorrow’s NFL Draft, which of course, is icing on the cake considering that it’s a bunch of idiots sitting in Radio City Music Hall for 2 days watching team executives briefly announce people’s names.

Then again, while talking about sports when you don’t want to or don’t care about the sports being discussed might be miserable, at least it kills 7 minutes of the day where I’m not talking about work.