Friday Detour: Saving Brain Cells

Like most kids, and probably most of you, I could name every player on every team in every sport as I was growing up. You name it, I knew it. A lot of my knowledge came from collecting sports cards for the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL, but a lot also had to do with my reading of the sports section of the Columbus Dispatch every morning before school.

When I got home from school I went straight to the local baseball card store and would talk about the players and read Beckett price guides until my stomach told me it was time to go home for dinner.

That was double digit years ago. Since then I have realized that, while sports are still my priority, I need to curtail my knowledge to things that really, really interest me and allow my brain to consume information that can help me in facets of my life, other than winning a bar bet centered around a random sports fact.

So, I have recently (within the past 5 or so years) began to parse some sports out of my life, or at least parse some information about sports out of my life.

It used to be that I could name a good majority of players on the PGA Tour. And if not a good majority, I could have probably been able to name at least 50 or so names of guys on tour. Now when I am listening to ESPN Radio, or reading blog postings, covering the Masters, I really only can follow when words like “Tiger,” “Phil,” or Vijay” are used. I would now be hard pressed to come up with 10 guys on tour, much less 50 that I used to be able to rattle off.

Likewise, I decided that I needn’t spend any more energy on the NHL and was given a golden opportunity to sever my ties when they took the 2004-2005 season off. Again, I used to be a HUGE hockey fan, beginning with the Hull and Oates line the St Louis Blues would trot out in the late 80s. For years I pay attention, and follow the NHL, knowing past Conn Smythe winners and could name the previous 10 years Stanley Cup winners. Now, I have no idea who won the Stanley Cup last year, and was only recently told that the local hockey team here in Denver not only isn’t still in the hunt for the Cup every year, but this year’s team is in dead last in the conference. Where have you gone Sakic, Forsberg and Foote?

This is not to say that I have stopped following, watching and reading about sports. It is simply to say that I am more selective now with my knowledge intake than I was in the past. I can still rattle off the hometowns, and for the most part, high schools of everyone on the Mizzou basketball team, but I would be hard pressed to name you the middle reliever, much less the closer, for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

So maybe it is maturity (although my wife would contend that claim) or maybe I just so many other things going on in my life, but for some reason I am completely fine not knowing some of the trivial things I have known in the past. It no longer bothers me that I may not win that bar trivia contest and will lose out on the free beer I would have easily chugged in my younger days.

And you know what? I am fine with that.

Keep sporting!
- Who’s In First