Can you say "rally monkey"?

M! and I were discussing this last night: what's up with people who don't like watching sports?

Because the thing is this: a ridiculously high percentage of people in the world actually do like sports, and one of the fastest ways to break the ice with somebody is to talk about it. Sports are neutral enough that nobody gets too seriously offended by differing opinions (British football hooligans aside), but interesting enough that your natural personality can shine through. A Chicago Bear ate your mother? Fine, watch luge instead. Just pick something.

As you all should know by now, I'm pretty much in love with baseball. This doesn't mean I can give you a year-by-year breakdown of Ozzie Smith's batting and fielding percentages as compared to the Cardinals' post-season record, but I can hold an intelligent conversation about whether a sacrifice bunt by the catcher is appropriate with one out and a man on first. I can make fun of chubby, midget infielders named Bubbs. I can talk about how much I adore Baseball Tonight.

But I'm not limited to discussion with other baseball fans. I can argue for hours with E2 about why baseball is better than football, and if you knew how rarely E2 even uses compound sentences in conversation, you'd see what a valuable tool this is. I can have nerdy English major discussions about how baseball is a metaphor for life or how Major League Baseball is a representation of the decline of American morals. I can even argue about fashion: baseball uniforms were way better in the era of pulled-up socks and rainbow jerseys. Baseball is like the Swiss Army knife of communication tools.

I realize that my little spiel probably isn't going to convince anybody who doesn't like sports to actually like one, but I wanted to at least point out that there's more to sports than male bonding and obscure statistics. It's a way to connect with a huge number of people (particularly male people, if you want to get predatory about it, girls). If G.W. and Saddam could discuss the relative merits of the dh vs. pitchers not being big babies, do you think we'd be in this mess right now?

I doubt it.