Why are sports important?

Some of my favorite conversations with Greg were about sports. Greg loved talking about sports, loved great writing about sports, and if he clearly hadn’t been prescient about the fall of print journalism would have likely stuck it out at the Bay City Sun writing sports until he’d at least earned a minimum wage.

We’d talk about the Cincinnati Big Red Machine baseball team from the time in our lives as separate kids in separate cities we were learning the same names of the same players. We talked about the Bulls. We’d talk about the Redskins. Mainly it was just a chance to talk. Especially as we drifted further away from each other geographically over the years, it was always something we knew the other would know just enough about to get the conversation going again.

But for me it was almost never really about the sports. I think Greg loved that no matter what the stats said. No matter the odds, the little guy might just show up and surprise you. Watching them play was a reminder that people are imperfect and sometimes even when they do their best they lose. But sometimes, sometimes, they change the world. He certainly changed mine.