A year ago, during the Dodgers-Giants game in the ALDS, my friend Kasey turned to me and asked if I was alright. It wasn’t that anything was wrong, per se, but that I was rapidly cycling through watching the game intently, then grabbing my phone and furiously tapping out something, occasionally laughing to myself as I did it. I immediately felt self-conscious — which is to say I acted as I usually do — and apologized for being on my phone, before he said not to worry, it just “looked like I was having a lot of fun.”
What was happening was two-fold — I was watching the Dodgers, eating a chicken strip, and talking with four or five baseball reporters on Twitter. I was both extremely present at the game and engrossed with my phone, asking Craig Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus things like “which one of these guys is Gavin Lux?” and “do you think that was a slider?” despite the massive delay between real life and the television broadcast. I’d also have serious conversations with friends of mine about the game as it happened, while also talking to Kasey, while also eating more and more chicken strips.
I usually try — despite my weaknesses — to avoid being on my phone as much around other people, for fear that I would become distant and annoying from the people I was around. However, I’ve found that going to live sporting events and having a direct connection to social networking has, if anything, made me deeply appreciate sport on a level I didn’t grasp for decades before. It’s a more disciplined version of when something…
