Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: King Kaufman:

"A few weeks ago, I told a friend that I'd been lucky enough to see a triple play in a Northern League baseball game in Schaumburg, Ill. He responded by saying that enjoying sports is a matter of suspension of disbelief. If you convince yourself that a triple play in a bush-league game is somehow important, he said, it becomes exciting, just as a triple play in a major league game is exciting only if we've convinced ourselves that it's somehow important.

But the thing is: It's all important. Not because the Schaumburg Flyers really needed to get out of a jam in their game against the Sioux Falls Canaries, but because it gives us something to talk about, something to connect to each other with, something to appreciate. It's important the way Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" is important, not because we need it to live, but because we use it to give shape and meaning to our lives.

I know that sounds silly. A Randy Johnson fastball equals a Rembrandt painting equals a Shakespeare sonnet equals a Kobe Bryant dunk. I can enjoy Rembrandt as much as the next guy. Love what he could do with a dead peacock. But if a tackle-breaking run through the secondary by a tailback gives me the same pleasure, fills me equally with wonder, inspires me in the same way that a Rembrandt painting does, what difference is there? Rembrandt was just as meaningless last Sept. 12 as Emmitt Smith was. "