I like a lot of different sports. But not all of them. I love football and basketball, enjoy hockey and rugby, and will only watch baseball live at the stadium. I was reminded of this the other night when I flipped on the TV and tried to watch a Giants game for a few minutes before slipping into a coma. You just can’t compare the euphoria of 100,000 screaming fans at the Coliseum to a few thousand people casually sipping beer and eating sunflower seeds while chubby guys take turns jogging 100 feet at a time.

I think the reason that I never developed a taste for baseball is that baseball fans are exactly like Dungeons and Dragons players, and I could never get into that. RPGs that don’t involve software with killer graphics and lots of explosive weaponry lose my attention pretty quick. A friend of mine tried to get me to play Werewolf: The Apocalypse once and my brain actually crawled out of my mouth and started smacking me around. I like doing math, but not when I’m playing games. Munchkin is the only geeky card game I enjoy, because it doesn’t take itself too seriously and you only have to count on a number line between 1 and 10.

Baseball and RPGs appeal to exactly the same sort of personality; the person who likes being an under appreciated connoisseur, constantly muttering about how the slope-browed masses can’t appreciate the subtle and nuanced game play, the delight of meticulously tracking statistics, and snobbishly one-upping each other with obscure factoids. Baseball and D&D geeks won’t shut up about how all the mouth-breathers out there can’t appreciate the craftsmanship of the game. Blah, blah, blah. None of that compares to TOUCHDOWN!!!

What I really don’t understand is boxing. It doesn’t even qualify as a sport to me. Real sports like football are ritualized warfare, replicating the ancient battlefields when each side sent out its chosen champion rather than engage in mass slaughter. When people pile into a stadium, proudly wearing team colors, it’s no different from the fateful day that Achilles and Hector met outside the walls of Troy and the Greek and Trojan armies looked on.

I’ve sometimes been called a hypocrite for hating boxing because I really love Rocky movies, especially Rocky IV and Rocky Balboa. But I’ll counter with the point that they are in fact fictional movies. I don’t like killing people either but that didn’t mean that 300 wasn’t the awesomest movie ever. Rocky stands as an allegory of good versus evil, the rewards of pursuing goals wholeheartedly, and beating the crap out of commies who killed Apollo Creed. That I can get behind. Two grown men just standing in a ring beating each other up for no good reason just seems stupid to me. At least get a ball and some other guys involved to make it a little more interesting.