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I don't discuss sports. For most men, talking sports is as basic and natural a transaction as watching TV or going to the toilet. I only wish I could be involved in the dime-store philosophizing, the displays of technical sophistication, the vicarious passions of virtuosity, victory and defeat. There is a sense of belonging that better men than I have long embraced but I can't help it; when talk turns to the most fundamental bond of our fraternity, my overwhelming response is tedium.

I only wish I could be involved in the dime-store philosophizing, the displays of technical sophistication, the vicarious passions of virtuosity, victory and defeat. There is a sense of belonging that better men than I have long embraced but I can't help it; when talk turns to the most fundamental bond of our fraternity, my overwhelming response is tedium

When I can, I pretend knowledgeability to head off embarrassing silences and spare others discomfort. When that fails, I diffidently explain that I don't follow the activity under examination.

I go to a baseball game every other year or two, after all, and if necessary I can even admire the athletes' prowess in the final minutes of a basketball playoff. Call me stubborn in my refusal to get interested, but I have better things to do with my leisure than surrender it to the commercialized, banally competitive, jargon-ridden, overexposed, overbearing domination that sports exercises over our culture.