Everyone plays for a reason. The reason for most is obvious, the will to win. Some play for exercise, others play simply for the opportunity to have some fun with their friends.
I play for all of those reasons, but surprisingly, despite the intensity I generally play with, none of that is the driving motivation that keeps me coming back the ball diamond or the hockey rink time and time again.
Even from a young age I've never really been overly competitive. Most would be confused to hear this given the level of intensity I generally play most sports with. That isn't to say I don't want to win because everyone does, but at the end of the day, when I reflect back on games, it isn't the win or the loss that I look back on.
Why I really played baseball and hockey and other sports was difficult to articulate. That driving force was something I couldn't ever really put into words.
Several years ago while watching the final episode of Battlestar Galactica, Sam Anders, an elite pyramid player, has a flashback to an interview he did during the latter part of his career in which he was asked if he felt that not winning a championship would leave his career incomplete.
This was his response:
"You wanna know the truth? I don't really care about the stats, or the cup, or the trophy or anything like that. In fact, even the game's not that important to me, not really. What matters to me is the perfect throw, making the perfect catch, the perfect step and block. It's perfection, that's what it's about. It's about those moments when you can feel the perfection of creation, the beauty of physics, the wonder of mathematics, the elation of action and reaction, and that is the kind of perfection that I want to be connected to."
(youtube clip of the interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48_xPLVZxKo)
I'm far from a perfect person, and I that will probably never change, but every so often on the ball field, the hockey rink, the basketball court, or whatever other sporting arena I find myself on gives you a chance to experience perfection. It's an opportunity that rarely presents itself in everyday life the same way it does in the heat of competition.
Sliding across for that perfect pad save on a one timer, arriving at the last possible moment for that shoestring catch, those are the moments that I play for. The perfect slide into third to avoid a tag. The perfect glove save off a hard wrister from the slot. The perfect hit between the shortstop and third baseman. The perfect throw from the outfield to gun a guy down at the plate. It's the pursuit of perfection that drives me.
Maybe it's fitting that Anders turned out to be a robot in the end, and maybe that says something about me (maybe I'm a Cylon!), but it's the truth. It's what I truly love about sports. Yeah I want to win, yeah I want to have fun, but I also relish those opportunities to be perfect, albeit for a brief moment in time.
-matt
