Sports

So, should I be worried that last night's Eagles game meant to me as little as it did? I half-heartedly watched the first half as I inputed grades for school, turned it off for nearly a half hour to talk finances and work with my wife, and effortlessly flicked it off in the fourth quarter when I thought the Eagles' cause unlikely.

This might be the result of kids around the house, who give me so many distractions from what used to seem so important.

It might be because of the game the Eagles played against Tampa Bay two seasons ago. I found myself so aggravated over that poor effort I turned off sports talk radio, the sports page, and sports websites for a week.

But I think it's also hangover from the Phils' victory two weeks ago. In their last month and a half, the Phillies played profoundly good baseball. And baseball is a game constructed around players doing their job with precision and accuracy (unlike football which is more about one-on-one physical and mental matchups). After a while, I started to watch those baseball players as if they were more like classical musicians in that they were so trained and disciplined that mere mortals couldn't understand the extent of their proficiency. All the while that playoff baseball is nerve-wracking, there is still the mathematical simplicity of the sport.

When you're coming down from championship caliber baseball, the NFL mid-season product seems so manufacture, so ersatz, so blase.