this ain't no love letter

I grew up with sports. I loved sports. To me, sports were magic. The crush of a baseball as it hits a bat, the whoosh of a soccer ball as it skims the net, and the nearly silent whistle of a perfect spiral were sounds that I looked forward to with heightened anticipation.

But I've fallen out of love. It wasn't a sudden and unexpected breakup that left me weeping in a pint of ice cream, but rather a slow and unknowing growing apart. One day sports and I were laughing while having picnics in the park, and the next I couldn't look at the screen without feeling a tinge of betrayal. How could I love something so violent and blind?

Football players crash into each other running at their fastest speeds with every muscle in their body aimed at crushing another human being. Baseballs fly off the ends of bats towards the faces of awestruck pitchers. Brains jostle inside fragile skulls. The perceived danger once intrigued me but now I see it isn't just an illusion, the danger is real. Real lives are affected with every hard hit, every knee twist, every helmet-to-helmet collision. 15 yard penalties don't equate to 15 years of lost life. The violence scares me. The violence that captivates a nation.

The curtain was pulled back this year as headlines shone with stories of domestic violence and child abuse. I stopped reading the stories about young men coming from nothing to achieve everything. I read about coverups by league officials and cover up on the faces of wives. I saw pictures of bruises on young bodies and scared gazes plastered on nephews and sisters. I heard expletive laced racial slurs aimed at strangers and cringe worthy bullying aimed at teammates. The tallest, strongest and most powerful individuals in our country were shown to have grown the least. As the world around them grew, sports remained stunted.

I still watch sports. I'll watch the draft, a meaningless Wednesday night baseball game, a friendly international soccer match, but the glamor, that once shined so brightly, is gone.  Wins don't mean as much and losses don't hurt the same.

Stats and stories will still stick in my mind. It's a habit I will never kick. I'll always remember the first time I fell in love with each game, like my own personal highlight reel running through my mind.  I will remember the old highlights with fondness that can't be recreated. A tape playing on a VCR, the quality fading with every rewind.

My life will never be free of sports, it's grip is too tight, its a first love I will never be able to shake. But something happened. Maybe as I grew, sports and I grew apart. Maybe our busy lives are just to hard to sync together. Maybe the real world hardened me to show me nothing is really magic.

I could fall back in love with sports, like a long lost friend who you suddenly see in a new light. But they need to change. Sports: its not me, its you.