Sports Catatonia

Many of you have been there before. A churrascaria rodizio, all-out fleshfest, a revolving barbeque where a variety of meats are cooked on three-foot swords over open-wood fires in the restaurant's kitchen. Then the swords are brought to diners' tables. The server puts the tip of the sword on a patron's plate, asks the customer how many pieces of meat he or she desires, and then slides the food off the sword and onto the plate. This goes on and on, over and over, until you can take no more, until your stomach is ready to erupt from over consumption and a dizzy haze clouds your eyes from the fatigue of eating. And so it also happens in sports, twice a year, a sporting rodizio of sorts.

Perhaps the finest satiation of sports comes in October. Last year for instance saw the American and National League Division Series Playoff Games as well as the World Series, NFL football games, NCAA football games, the MLS Championship, and the beginning of the NBA and the NHL seasons. On a given weekend one could literally sit hours in a catatonic stupor, clicking channels, staring at the screen until the eyes grew blurry and red, opening beer after beer, consuming chip after chip, and watching the world of spectator sports in all its splendor.

We now arrive in March to the second incident of sports catatonia: March Madness, followed by everyone with their little office pools from secretaries to CEOs, janitors to lawyers, policemen to grammar school teachers. And because this is America, because nothing is ever enough, March Madness joins with the NHL and NBA playoff races making both sports quasi-interesting for the first time since their season's onset, and then, the whipped cream and the cherry on top, baseball creeping forward, exhibition after exhibition until the madness bursts through with everyone's opening days.

The mere quantity however, should not be confused with the excitement nearly each episode brings. How else could I find myself last night spastically channel flipping between 4 different, yet simultaneous conference tournament matchups, a baseball exhibition game, an NBA matchup with playoff implications, and, mystery of mysteries, a NY Rangers overtime match which essentially castrated their playoff hopes?

In times like these, but for the sporting melodramas, the house grows dim as people and pets alike are ignored, phones go unanswered, calls go unreturned, the computer finally gets a rest, and food delivery bills mount with each passing hour.

Are the specifics so enticing? Is life made or broken by the outcome of the Seton Hall-Connecticut match, regardless of the seeding implications? Will the success or failure of civilization hinge upon whether or not the Red Storm is knocked from the Big Dance or if the Nets reassert their presence by knocking the Celtics down a peg or two, or if the contumelious plague of the Yankees over the Red Sox continues, even in spring training games? Of course not.

But just like Piazza tearing after that shameless knave of a pitcher with the 5-11 lifetime record named Mota with a feverish, homicidal rage in his eyes after being plunked yet again, such things might not matter in the larger scheme of things but it doesn't make it any less emotional.

So when the Mets meet the Dodgers twice more this coming weekend and the major conferences hold their tournament finals, the world will know where to find me: planted fanatically in front of all the televisions, surrounded by the sound of sports, and tunnel vision-focused.