Sports: They're Not for Pussies

Well it's that most American time of year once again: baseball season! Like all good white middle class American males, I'm watching my team religiously and dying a little bit inside with every loss (usually due to forces well outside of my control, but one of these days my telepathic skills will help us win I swear) and getting worked up emotionally over a sport more than I do about most of my personal life. I honestly can't explain to you why I spend so much time watching other people do something on TV that I completely sucked at myself as a youngster (kind of like porno I guess?), but I do it anyway so shut up.
Being bad at sports when you were a kid, where I'm from, was like being born with a club foot or a terrible, terrible snaggle tooth; everyone, even your extended family, accepted the fact that you were destined to a life of mediocrity and that the only way to prepare you for the hard life ahead of you was to break your spirit through poorly constructed jokes and shame. Of course I was forced to try everything in hopes of finding something I was good at. Basketball: I was a short, chubby white kid so what the fuck was I doing on the court? My only lasting memory of playing on a middle school team was running down the court ahead of the ball after we got a rebound and while imagining the crowd cheering after my layup being smacked in the back of the head with the pass I was not looking for. I ate the floor pretty cleanly and bore a nice floor burn on my face for the rest of the week (Hey floorface! was the chant) Football: I spent the majority of the season laying on my back for one reason or another and could never quite get rid of the smell of yak pussy that was rubbed into my chin by my mildewed chin strap. Soccer: During an indoor practice in the gym during highscool I was playing on the skins team for a game and while running towards the goal my scottish, eurotrash coach beamed a nice strike square into the middle of my back which made a sound like a porkchop being thrown against a brick wall and I let out a yelp that sounded like an infant being given a titty twister and subsequently collapsed in a fleshy heap for the next few minutes. Baseball: after striking out, which happened a lot, I would normally sit alone in the corner of the dugout having a sort of rage seizure and mumbling curses at myself, which to say the least did not help my chances at a starting position or for making the lifelong sports friendships that I'd heard so much about.
So, after a childhood filled with miserable, demoralizing sports experiences and many a drunken Christmas lecture from one of my uncles about how no woman would want to marry a "chubby faggot" and that no one would hire me unless I "proved to them that I had some big, big balls" why in the name of Vishnu do I still watch/ enjoy sports? Because I'm an American goddamnit and that's what we do! Sure, maybe it is kind of like listening to rap music to make myself/others think I'm really not racist, but guess what? It's really hard to tell the difference between an actual winner and a pretend one who just happns to know a lot about actual winners... unless, of course, you really do have to play.