I’m what used to be called a “regular guy.” House. Wife. Job. Taxes. Scared of street crime. Frozen pizza. Flannel shirts. Draft beer. Used car. It took me six months to pay off the new mattress I bought.
But I don’t like sports.
By that, I mean I have never seen a complete basketball or hockey game, I can’t name five professional baseball or football players, I don’t know what a “touchback” is, and I don’t own even one piece of clothing with a team logo.
I like to watch boxing, but I can go six months without watching a fight, and if there were boxing on television five nights a week, I wouldn’t watch boxing five nights a week.
And a couple months ago, I attended the gay pride festival in our town, not because I’m gay (I’d remember a thing like that) but because it was a nice day and there were going to be hamburgers and ice cream. I took a selfie with a drag queen. Nice guy, even if his wrists are a little too big to get away with it.
People complain all the time that the “gay agenda” is “being shoved down their throats,” which is a metaphor too horrifying to contemplate.
And I know how they feel. The sports agenda has been shoved down my throat for decades.
There are far more sports bars than there are gay bars. I take my wife to a modestly priced restaurant for a couple steaks, and there’s a television everywhere, each one showing some kind of sweaty, all-male sport.
“So, ya think the Bulldogs are gonna win the series?” a new employee says to me on the job. No one’s bothered to tell him that I’m the guy in the office who “doesn’t like sports.” Sooner or later someone will tell him.
“Wanna buy a square in the pool?” some co-worker asks me when it’s time for May Madness, or February Feeble Mindedness, or whatever it is.
I used to throw the guy $5 just to make him go away, but I went 23 years without an office pool win and I finally “came out” as someone who doesn’t know what a “point guard” does. They leave me alone now. Very alone.
And, I swear to God, I’m manly. I hunted quite a bit when I was younger, and I’m a good shot. I can ride horseback. I have a pretty wife. I drink straight whiskey and black coffee, no sugar. I have a filthy mouth AND I smoke.
But it’s not enough. Everywhere I go, they try to shove the sports agenda down my narrow throat. There are T-shirts everywhere. Sometimes, I see a team name on a shirt, and I don’t even know what sport that team plays.
And, look, I don’t care what you and your buddies do behind the closed doors of your “man cave,” on Sundays when you’re all liquored-up and there’s no women around and the testosterone is thicker than perfume at a high school dance. I don’t care at all, but my God, can’t you keep it to yourself?
And you people recruit our children! I’m tall, and I’m fairly good-sized. Do you know how many well-meaning (I think) high school coaches asked me if I’d “like to try out” their way of life?
There are no sports in the Bible. The “Hail Mary pass” wasn’t even a thing then, but you people are so brazen that you shove your sports agenda into our cherished religious phrases.
I’m done with this column. I’m going to go read now. There’s probably a game on because there’s always a game on, all the time. And they took your pension, and broke the union, and shipped the jobs to China, and your kid died in Afghanistan, and you never missed an inning.
Marc Dion, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a reporter and columnist for The Herald News, the daily newspaper of his hometown, Fall River, Massachusetts. For more on Dion, go to go to www.creators.com.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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