8.16.2005
Fall Ball, and other Sports Musings
Last toke: 20 days
Last smoke: 13 days
Last night, I played in softball for the first time in about 15 years. This morning, my knee is swollen, and every muscle in both legs is sore. Other than that, it was a fun time. We played two, seven-inning games. I got two hits, made a couple of put outs, blew one fly ball over my head (fell on my ass, too), and made about three good stretches at first base to get outs.
One of the things that whatever readers I have may not know is that I really used to love playing sports, until my left knee blew out when I was 19. I really miss not being able to compete, but the risk of injury is just too great (certain would be a better word when playing basketball and football). So a relatively tame game of softball and golf is about the best I can do. I used to play volleyball after my injury with no problems, but I am really too fat now to play my game above the net.
Sports is something that I believe has a tremendous amount of value in the lives of our children, especially boys. However, just making that statement causes a collective shudder of wheezing outrage among so many in our current culture. Women of all stripes hate that statement because either they think sports are a complete waste of time, or because of the "especially boys" qualifier at the end. Personally, I wish there were a whole lot more women who grew up playing sports, because the effect on their bodies is simply awesome. There was a young lady playing second base on our team last night who's obviously been active in sports for a while. Simply put, I woke up in the middle of the night, and all I could think of were her tanned, toned legs and .... well, you get the picture. It's certainly burned into my memory.
But I digress.
Of my 5 children, only one has ever had any interest in playing organized sports, but that desire has not been nurtured or encouraged enough to give him the full benefits available to him. I got him started playing baseball at 8, and he played for the 3 years that I was able to get him to practice. Then my job moved into another county, and I couldn't make it home in time. His mother just simply wouldn't do it, and because I wasn't a 24/7 influence on him, he quickly lost interest.
My oldest is diligent about staying in shape -- working out and swimming. But it's not from a love of sport. My youngest two are GameBoy junkies, preferring to spend all of their time in front of whatever electronic entertainment is available at the moment. They are both overweight and lethargic much of the time, and I am beginning to become concerned for their health in the future.
All 3 of my boys have been declared ADHD by their school system, and are being fed whatever variation of Ritalin is currently in vogue to enable them to concentrate and focus in the classroom. I believe in my heart that this is directly a result of the removal of my influence from their home, and an overall antipathy to the traditional approach to developing the "All American Boy" in our social, spiritual and educational philosophies in this country.
Granted, there is a lot to criticize in that historical philosophy, but it is my contention that between feminism, the homosexual agenda, and the strategies of the entertainment industries to maximize profits, our country is being weakened through this decades-old attack on traditional masculinity.
Even though we are still a sports-loving country on the surface of things, it appears to me that fewer and fewer boys are actually coming into manhood without the benefits that participation in organized sports can bring. Rather, sport in our country has been co-opted by the entertainment industry and turned into little more than a twisted reality show where the antics of someone like Terrell Owens overshadow the beauty of the games that are being played. Meanwhile, the spectating youth of our land are either encouraged to become self-centered, under-educated, over-paid, celebrities of low character, or to simply find another way to spend their time because the athletic "ideals" of this age are simply and obviously beyond their reach.
I could build on this, but this post is already taking up too much space and time out of my day.
I think I can best summarize my position from my own life. I am almost 46-years old. I played sports from the time I was 5 -- either in organized leagues, on school teams, taking private lessons, or just with the kids in the neighborhood -- on a daily basis until my injury at 19. Despite my destroyed knee, I continued to attempt to make sports a big part of my life for the next 12 years, playing tennis, volleyball, softball, and the occasional game of basketball. Occasional, because just about every time I played basketball in those years, I blew out my knee. When I could no longer justify spending my life on crutches or in a wheelchair, I began working out, walking, and playing golf.
As a result, despite other not-so-good personal habits, most people are completely surprised when I tell them my age, believing me to be about 10 to 15 years younger. Trust me, I feel every bit my age -- and then some. But the years of exercise and competition has helped me to maintain a modestly athletic physique and a certain youthfulness in both appearance and demeanor. Some people will say that this is a result of genetics, but I have my two youngest sons to disprove that.
Beyond that, lessons I learned (often unwillingly) playing sports have helped me in my approach to the Christian faith. Cliches like "play through the pain", "no pain, no gain", "shake it off", "take one for the team", and "rub some dirt in it" take on a whole different meaning as I deal with the struggles I often write about in this blog.
Even Paul uses sports imagery in his epistles, comparing the Christian life to a grueling race and alluding to the punishing training regimens of dedicated athletes as a real-life metaphor for the discipline required to "be in the game" for Christ.
The human body is an amazing, beautiful thing, given by our Creator to exercise our dominion over the rest of His Creation. I think that too many Christians give short shrift to this gift by buying into the culture's beliefs that competition is bad, and that a traditional sports mentality does pyschological harm by making people feel bad about themselves. While it may be wrong to judge people by their external appearance, it is certainly not wrong to take pains to maximize one's physical potential.
I wish my ex-wife, for one, would get it. It sure would save her a lot of money on Ritalin and result in less calls from the school.
Or so I believe.
- posted by The Drake @ 10:16 AM
Comments:
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good job on the toke and smoke.......are you avoiding all other bad habits as well??
me - i struggle and keep telling myself i'll quit. but i can't. or should i say "won't???" hate myself for it.
what am i gonna do Drake?
me - i struggle and keep telling myself i'll quit. but i can't. or should i say "won't???" hate myself for it.
what am i gonna do Drake?
# posted by 
: 8/17/2005 05:31:00 PM
: 8/17/2005 05:31:00 PM
Anon,
Depends on what you mean by 'bad habits'. I still eat more junk food than I should. Occasionally dwell on the charms of women who aren't my wife. Lose my temper and curse much more than I would like.
So, no, I guess not. I've come to the conclusion that these are 'symptoms' of a much more deeply embedded problem of sin and selfishness.
I'm assuming that you're talking about cigarettes? I can't really give much advice, other than God can and will provide what you need to stop.
Quitting any addiction is hard. It leaves what seems like a big hole in your life. For me, it's just always been a question of time. One day at a time, and getting some distance in time from the habit. That's one of the reasons I've started including my day counts in the blog entries. It used to be that I wouldn't keep track of how long it had been that I had been free of these drugs of choice. So when I'd come up against a severe temptation, I wasn't as keenly aware of what I would be losing if I gave in.
Of course, right now a couple of weeks doesn't seem like a big deal, but if I was 6 months or 6 years down the road, I'm hoping that keeping this tally will add another incentive to keeping my body clean from these toxins.
God bless, and good luck in making progress on the road to being clean.
There's a woman in who is one of the leaders in our recovery group at church who likes to say that sometimes the best you can do is to ask God to help you be willing to be willing.
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Depends on what you mean by 'bad habits'. I still eat more junk food than I should. Occasionally dwell on the charms of women who aren't my wife. Lose my temper and curse much more than I would like.
So, no, I guess not. I've come to the conclusion that these are 'symptoms' of a much more deeply embedded problem of sin and selfishness.
I'm assuming that you're talking about cigarettes? I can't really give much advice, other than God can and will provide what you need to stop.
Quitting any addiction is hard. It leaves what seems like a big hole in your life. For me, it's just always been a question of time. One day at a time, and getting some distance in time from the habit. That's one of the reasons I've started including my day counts in the blog entries. It used to be that I wouldn't keep track of how long it had been that I had been free of these drugs of choice. So when I'd come up against a severe temptation, I wasn't as keenly aware of what I would be losing if I gave in.
Of course, right now a couple of weeks doesn't seem like a big deal, but if I was 6 months or 6 years down the road, I'm hoping that keeping this tally will add another incentive to keeping my body clean from these toxins.
God bless, and good luck in making progress on the road to being clean.
There's a woman in who is one of the leaders in our recovery group at church who likes to say that sometimes the best you can do is to ask God to help you be willing to be willing.
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