Somewhere around the 7th inning of last night's snoozefest of a baseball game, my wife asked this most basic question.
Last night's game was utterly un-enjoyable. The weather was horrible. The play was horrendous. There was no sense the Phillies would make any comeback. The good play from the West Coast trip was missing. The winning opponent was the Mets.
In a season of 162 games, the only reason last night's won't be ranked toward the top of the list of worst games of 2014 is because hopefully we will all have forgotten about it by the time the next game starts.
Nonetheless, with the Phillies down 6-1, the stands almost completely empty, the rain coming down harder and harder, I found myself on the couch watching. And it wasn't like I was watching possible Hall of Famers or even likely All-Stars. I was watching Mario Hollands pitch to Josh Satin's eyebrows.
At that moment, my wife, who has very little interest in regular season baseball (and only ever-so-slightly more interest in post-season baseball), turned to me and asked me what she thought was a very reasonable question: "Why are you watching this?"
To her, this was a completely sensible thing to ask. After all, there were other much more worthwhile and enjoyable ways I could have been spending my time, such as ridding my closet of old t-shirts, sorting through partially-used condiment jars in the refrigerator, or cleaning behind the kids' car seats. Why was I subjecting myself to this instead?
To me, though, this was an insane question. "Why was I watching?" was the wrong question. The better question, in my mind, was "Why wouldn't I be watching?"
But, in the spirit of marital honesty, here's my list of reasons why I was watching last night, in the seventh inning, of a rain-soaked cold game, that the Phillies were lifelessly losing, with Mario Hollands on the mound, pitching to Josh Satin.:
1) It's still baseball and I love baseball.
2) Without a clock controlling the game, you never know when a comeback can happen.
3) Great plays can happen any time.
4) I'm still curious about new players like Hollands.
5) There are certain established players, like Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Ruiz, Ryan Howard, and David Wright, who are special and worth suffering through the tedium to watch.
6) With young active kids filling my life and making it hard to watch the Phillies as much as I want, I'll take what I can get.
So even if last night's game was horrendous, I still watched while I could. Those are my reasons. What are yours?