Sports (Not a Vegas post).

The older I get, the less I give a shit about sports.

I've always been pretty selective about what I follow sports-wise anyway. I didn't share my dad/brother's passion for sports as a kid, I was much more interested in playing with Star Wars toys than watching sports with them. I didn't play any sports as a kid, I was in a youth basketball league for one season probably just at my dad's pleading. I sucked at it. I got into martial arts around when I was 13 or so, but that wasn't really a sports thing, it was an idolizing Bruce Lee thing.

I didn't play or follow anything sports-wise until I picked up tennis when I was in high school. My mom had been into tennis and I had hit the ball off the garage door here and there but when I finally started playing in my sophomore year, I went crazy. I was obsessed. Played pretty much every day, sometimes twice a day in the summer from my soph year to my first year in community college.

When I wasn't playing, I was reading tennis magazines or tweaking my rackets or watching it on TV, even women's tennis. I thought it might be a career. Then I realized I had started too late to be a pro, and hated being a teaching pro, so I started to drift away. A bad knee has kept me entirely off the court for about 8 years now, and I still miss it but don't obsess like I used to. I barely watch tour tennis anymore as the game has changed so much, when Federer retires I doubt I'll even make an effort to watch at all anymore.

Even though I never played, I've been a pretty committed Giants fan since moving to the Bay Area in the 80's. Been to many games and followed the team closely. Now though I rarely watch the team or make it out to the games anymore, even though AT&T is right down the street. When they went out of the playoffs a couple days ago I was bummed but it didn't really bother me. I can still name the roster and follow the season/offseason pretty closely but it's less and less as the years go on.

I've never closely followed football, and certainly not hockey. I was very much into the PGA Tour when I was playing golf, and was pretty passionate about the game then too but since getting rid of my car and sticks and having no way to play it's fallen to almost zero too, outside of watching major Sundays on occasion. The sport I like to watch most now is probably F1, but only a few races per year allow me to watch them live, so after the first part of the season my interest wanes.

I've been a moderate level basketball fan through the Warriors the last few years, probably follow them more so than a casual fan but don't make an effort to watch them unless I'm in a bar. Really the only time I watch ANY sports anymore is when I'm in a bar. I don't follow college sports at all, never having been to a four-year college.

Essentially at this point I know enough about most sports to be able to have reasonably intelligent conversations about them in a bar but I'm not really passionate about anything anymore. Suppose that's part of growing up. You don't see a lot of 60-year old guys yelling at the TV screen in a bar over their team. It's background noise now. Things to vacantly stare at in the bars in Vegas, at this point.