Let me begin by saying that I love sports. I was a multisport athlete in high school, and continued to play softball and indoor soccer well into my adult years. My favorite team is the Detroit Lions, because Barry Sanders was my favorite player when I was a kid. I still love the Lions to this day. I was also around for "refuse to lose" years for the Seattle Mariners in the mid to late 90's, and there has never quite been a duo in Seattle like Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp.
As a lover of sports I looked up to many players. As mentioned above, Barry Sanders was the reason I fell in love with not only the Lions, but football in general. In baseball, our home town team was the Mariners, which meant almost everyone loved Ken Griffey Jr. Hard to argue with his greatness, but I was always a fan of our lesser known players, Dan Wilson, who is a legend around here as the best catcher to dawn the Mariner uniform.
As time went by, the Payton and Kemp broke up (or the team broke them up), the familiar faces of my youth all moved on and a new era of Mariners took the field, and after just 10 prolific years, my all time favorite athlete retired from the Lions. I still love those same franchises, minus the Sonics, because you will never find me rooting for the Oklahoma City Thunder (#bringbacktheSonics).
As I reflect on my passion for sports, I find the business of sports in todays era has broken the loyalty that use to come when a player stayed with one team their entire career. I understand that players want to get paid for their talent. Then the question comes are you more loyal to the person or the entity. I will be honest, I am more prone to root for a player than a franchise. Don't get me wrong, I love the home town team, but I remember that my love for football was kindled and fueled by a player, on a team, in a state that I have never been to.
Being a people person, I found that when my favorite players left Seattle, I rooted for them to be successful and wished the best for them wherever they ended up, even if it was playing for the Yankees. Fortunately Barry Sanders retired a Lion, so somehow my loyalty stayed with the team. But when Randy Johnson went to Houston, then ended up in Arizona and won a World Series, you bet I rooted for him.
As I have gotten older, I find that I have detached myself from most sports. Sure, I follow the Mariners, Lions, and even the Seahawks (they are my home town team), and even find myself looking into the Seattle Kraken (our new NHL team), but I haven't followed hockey in about 10 years. What I found is that the amount of time I invested in sports seemed excessive, and I watched many people whom I am close to become obsessed with their favorite teams.
I enjoy a game as much as the next person, but around 2016, I realized that if I never watched another game my life would be very minimally altered. The worst part is not knowing what someone is talking about when they ask me if I watched the game. So, I do try to keep up, mostly through brief highlights about my teams, that way I will still be informed, but I have distanced myself from placing personal value on myself based on how my team is doing.
My day will never be bad based upon the outcome of a football game. Which is good, because the Lions are perpetually terrible. I love the social aspect of sports, thus following the games so I can engage in conversation, however, if every professional sports team dropped off the face of the planet, I would still find something to talk to people about, because in the end, people are more important than sports.
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