What Do I Care?

The days are still long and full of sunshine.  For a baseball fan, though, last week was the darkest period of the summer.  That’s right.  The All-star break was last week.

You’d think, as a baseball fan, that I’d love the all-star game.  And I don’t dislike the game itself, although I’m not all that fired up about it either.  It is, after all, just an exhibition game.  Yes, it’s an exhibition game with lots of great players in it, but still, it’s an exhibition game.  It doesn’t matter who wins.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure most of the players are trying.  But the point of the game is not to win.  The point of the game is just to allow all these great players to play and to allow people to see them play.  How well they do is not really relevant.  So it can be fun and all, but that’s all it is.

But what I really don’t like about the all-star break is not the game itself.  It’s the day before and the two days after.  There are no ball games!  That is, after all, what the term “break” means.  But what that means is that last week, from Monday through Thursday, there was only one major league baseball game, and that game did not mean anything.  It was a sad time for a baseball fan.

The question you may be asking, especially if you’re not a sports fan, is “Why do you care?”  I’m not sure I can give you a good answer to that question.  Why should I care about professional sports at all?  Local sports are understandable.  It’s not that hard to understand why I should root for the Potter County Battlers or the Sully Buttes Chargers.  I’ve gotten to know some of those kids.  I know some of the coaches, too.  I know their families.  It’s understandable why I should want them to do well.  But pro sports?  Why should I care if a bunch of athletes, who come from all over the world and have been hired to play for a team based in Minneapolis, are better than a bunch of athletes, who also come from all over the world and have been hired to play for a team based in New York or Chicago?  What difference does that make to me?

I don’t know.  But it does make a difference.  And I suppose, in a way, it’s no different from having a favorite TV program and caring about the characters in that program.  Movies can be the same way.  So can books, for that matter.  We know the characters are not real, and yet we come to care about what happens to them.  We get involved in their fictional lives.  Sports is somewhat the same way.  The athletes are real, but I don’t know them.  Yet, I come to care about what happens to them and how they do.  I don’t know that it makes any sense, but these are things we do as human beings.

Caring is a good thing, of course.  Where it can start to get away from us, though, is when we start caring about these fictional characters and these athletes we don’t know more than we care about the people around us.  Because the fact is that no professional athlete cares about me.  Why should they?  No professional athlete needs me.  Why would they?  

But there are people around me who do care about me and who do need me.  And I need them, too.  These are people whose lives I can actually have a positive effect on.  They can have a positive effect on my life, too.  Those are the people I really need to care about.  Those are the people I really need to get involved with.  Those are the people God has given me to love.

So enjoy a ball game.  Enjoy your TV show.  Enjoy your movie and your book.  But keep it in perspective.  The people who need us most are the people right around us.  Those are the people we need to focus our caring on.