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Experience of Masculinity 7

Not all Men watch sports for the same reasons, but the experience of Men watching
baseball, for example, can be especially revealing about why some Men do.

What's happening when Men sit down to watch a World Series game, for instance (?)

Is it just this specific game today that's on their minds (?)   Only the teams and
players actually out on the field today (?)   Who wins and who loses today . . . and
that's all there is to it (?)

If you observe carefully and listen attentively . . . you'll discover that there's often an
implicit context that they bring to watching the game.

And the context will typically be revealed in conversation something like this:

Man A: "Wow -- that's his second home run today and it's only the 3rd inning.   What's
the record for most home runs in a World Series game (?)"

Man B: "It's three, isn't it (?)   Reggie Jackson for the Yankees, back in the '70s sometime."

Man A: "Yeah -- I remember that (!)   My dad and I watched that game together when
I was a kid."

Man B: "I think Babe Ruth had the record before that -- like for 40 years."

Man A: "Geez, can you believe it's now been another 40 years (?)"

The context here is Eternity, which can be understood as the Unity of all individual
moments of Time.

It's about a Man's first baseball glove as a young boy . . . about going to games (or
watching them on TV) with his father or grandfather . . . about success or failure in little
league . . . of past dreams of being a professional ballplayer someday in the future . . . of
physical youth and how it passes away (think of the movie "Damn Yankees") . . . of famous
players and how their exploits pass into history (think of the book "The Boys of Summer" )
. . . about teaching one's own son how to hit and pitch . . . about the cycle, year after year,
of spring training in March, opening day in April, the dog days of August, and the World
Series in October . . . each year different than any other and yet also very much like every
other.

Watching and remembering sports events is a kind of concrete form that the intuitive
experience of Eternity, the Unity of Time, can take for Men.

Indeed, men sometimes organize their awareness of calendar Time . . . by sports events.

The end of January is the Super Bowl . . . March is baseball spring training and NCAA
basketball “March Madness” . . . the first week of April is the Master's golf tournament. . .
the first week of May is the Kentucky Derby . . . Memorial Day is the Indianapolis 500 . . .
early July is Wimbledon tennis . . . October is the World Series.

And every four years . . . there's the Olympics . . . or World Cup soccer.

So it's not really just about watching and thinking about sports.

It's about an experiential, "Big Picture" context for all of Life that watching and thinking
about sports reflects . . .