Intro: Diogenes in High Tops

In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face.

—DIOGENES

I once had a coach who could spit tobacco hard enough to break a window. He smelled like a hamper and only wore pants that came with a drawstring. And every last person on the team loved the guy. He always said to us, “Sports is like a hammer, gents. And you can use a hammer for all kinds of things. You can use it to build a house, or you can use it to bash somebody’s head. Choose wisely.”

In the twenty-first century, far too many sports fans have a headache that is rapidly entering migraine territory. It’s not just the 1,440 minutes a day of televised sports coverage causing the damage. It’s not even the sports talk radio blabbocracy that is making people reach for the Extra Strength Tylenol. The headache comes from the idea that we are loving something that simply doesn’t love us in return. If sports was once like a playful puppy you would wrestle on the floor, it’s now like a house cat demanding to be stroked and giving nothing back. It’s the way it gets harder to sit through a full game, or the way you go a year without making it to the ballpark and fail to even notice. It’s the extra commercials tacked on to a broadcast, as companies attempt to use the games to “brand” our subconscious. It’s when you decide to finally take the trip to the park, look up the ticket prices, and decide immediately to do something, anything, else with your time. It’s the way you don’t feel the same urgency to watch every second of every game for fear you might miss something magical. As economic times get tougher, t