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The Enumerative: Sports as Torture

Jun 3, 2008, 2:00 PM UTC

Welcome to our incredibly innovative new feature, The Enumerative. Because lists are awesome, plus effective time killers, in this space we'll provide a top five based loosely on something that occurred in the world of sports yesterday.

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â†µâ†µAs you may have noticed, there was a rather lengthy ice hockey contest last evening. The Penguins of Pittsburgh beat the Red Wings of Detroit in triple overtime. The game lasted over four and a half hours, which is about four more hours of hockey than we could ever stomach. So, as a result, here are the top five sports that, if forced to watch over four hours of, would lead us to welcoming Chinese water torture with open arms.â†µ

â†µâ†µâ†µ1. Cricket. Unless you bring a pony keg and three meals with you, I’m not watching a second of your fifteen day test match. ~ Spencerâ†µ

â†µâ†µ2. Summer Olympics. I’d like to say all of the events, but because that is apparently against the rules that Spencer is making up as we go, I’ll limit it to the Modern Pentathlon. The event is like a sampler platter of the five least interesting “sports” imaginable: shooting, fencing, swimming, riding, running. Plus, horses are involved. I hate horses. ~ Chris â†µ

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â†µâ†µ3. Yachting. For a time, I lived in Asia. You'd expect nothing on the sports channels but endless kicks to the head and soccer, but as usual, reality won and I lost. All you'll find on Taiwanese sports television is F1, ping-pong, and yachting. Ping-pong is all fine and dandy, but yachting is unbearable tedium, just hours of laundry flapping in the breeze. At least F1 cars blow up every now and then. ~ Spencerâ†µ

â†µâ†µâ†µ4. NBA. This pick isn’t made simply to get a cheap rise out of you, the reader. No sir, I really do find it nearly impossible to watch any professional basketball game beyond the last few minutes of a close contest. Every possession seems to go like this: Give superstar the ball, let superstar a) drive to hoop, get fouled, b) do some fancy dribbling, and take bad shot with hand in face that will go in about 40% of the time. My dislike probably has something to do with all those tattoos, too. ~ Chrisâ†µ

â†µâ†µâ†µ5. Baseball. The universe is mostly empty space; my sporting life doesn’t need to reinforce the point. Baseball began over one hundred years ago as a soporific to pacify the unemployed who, if they were not sitting catatonic in the sun, would be screaming “ANARCHY!” in the streets and tearing each other to pieces. At full employment, there’s still 3% of the population who does not have a job. This means baseball will never, ever die, and that is a shame, since I’d rather stick my tongue to a car battery than sit through an entire nine innings of a baseball game. Nothing happens in baseball; that’s why people resort to accounting to keep it interesting. â†µ

â†µâ†µ(George Will, baseball apologist and total weenie who I could beat in a barfight with one hand lashed to a cigarette machine, once said of football: “Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.” Yes, George: but at least it has violence, sweet violence.) ~ Spencerâ†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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