The Sports Fan Project

(Note: The following was also posted on our sibling blog, Middle-Aged Male Musings.)

When one spends nearly 15 hours in a winged steel tube hurtling through the air at nearly 500 miles per hour close to 40,000 feet above the Earth, one has ample time to contemplate life’s choices.

Upon retiring from a career in K-12 education nearly 11 months ago, my new why became my Around the World in 80 Sporting Events project.

When people asked what I planned to do in retirement and I told them, boy did I receive plenty of quizzical looks (mercifully not from my lovely wife, Carol😉) as to why I’d want to do such a thing. Many didn’t understand why chasing some self-curated list of 80 sporting events across the globe was something worth pursuing and – if I’m being honest – I wrestled with that notion multiple times myself. You know, the expense, the time away, the return on investment, etc.

But as I sat in Row 21H of Saturday’s Delta Flight 0159 from Detroit to Seoul, South Korea, I had a moment of clarity. The epiphany struck as I heard a line I’d otherwise not paid much heed to while watching A League of Their Own from 1992; a film I’d seen – literally – dozens of times before.

Rockford Peaches manager Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) tries to convince star catcher Dottie Henson (Geena Davis) that walking away from a game she clearly loves isn’t in her (or the team’s) best interest.

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would be doing it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”

– Jimmy Dugan to Dottie Henson, A League of Their Own

I realize this project is going to be challenging, but I think that’s why I want to do it.

As I reflect on my nearly 58 years of life, it seems as though the one constant has been about accomplishing things I’ve set out to accomplish.

• Become a sportswriter … check.
• Live in Alaska … check.
• Become a teacher … check.
• Serve as my local teacher’s union president … check.
• Serve on state and national boards of directors for my teacher’s union … check.
• Retire at an age that allows me and Carol to actually, you know, enjoy our retirement … check.

Perhaps this odd quest of mine is simply the next thing to check off a list, but after 15 events I have a feeling it’s going to be so much more than that.

It’s about spending as much time with my octogenarian father as I can. It’s about sharing my love of a sports and major events and travel with my best friend of over 30 years and our two adult children. It’s about reconnecting with friends from bygone days (I see you Scott and Jim and Marilyn). It’s about enjoying new experiences with aunts, uncles, and cousins that I get an opportunity to know better because these moments happened. And, finally, it’s about seeing parts of this country, and the world, that I’d have no other reason to see (hello Odessa, TX, and Martinsville, VA, and Oxford, MS, and Seoul and Troon and, probably even Tokyo).

As I prepare to close the lid on my laptop in an effort to catch another hour of sleep before arriving in a city I imagine to be quite different from any I’ve experienced previously, I’m left with Jimmy Dugan’s voice in my head, “It’s the hard that makes it great.”

Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

The journey continues.