Albert Einstein was once quoted: "You teach me baseball and I'll teach you relativity. ... No, we must not; you will learn about relativity faster that I learn about baseball." I know Einstein said many bright things, but this is by far his most brilliant. OK, maybe it's not his most brilliant, but it is definitely up there with his theory of relativity.
You must be wondering, why would someone writing for the sports section agree with Einstein's quote about not understanding baseball? Well, it's simple: not only do Einstein and I have love for physics in common, but when it comes to sports, we are both illiterate.
It's true: I, the girl who spent her entire high school career on sports teams, am sadly very uneducated when it comes to sports.
I know that the equation of four years of high school athletics plus a few summers spent at recreational camps shouldn't add up to someone that doesn't know about sports. How, do you ask, could this happen?
Well, it's a rather simple explanation: I was never really "into" sports. To be honest, I was just on the teams because that was the thing to do in high school.
In fact, when I was on sports teams, I was the girl who had a lot of "spirit," but not a lot of talent. To put it simply, I was the MVP - not the most valuable player, but the most vivacious.
Once again you must be wondering how this all connects to The Eagle, or rather, the Eagles themselves, our favorite AU sports teams. Well, as all of you know, this past Saturday was the Phil Bender game.
As AU's biggest game of the semester, everybody who's anybody attended, so of course I had to go. Plus, this is my first semester at American, so I was pretty excited to be going to my first basketball game.
As I entered Bender Arena, my excitement began to grow. Not only was this my first school event, but they were giving out free things! That's when it hit me: I was more excited about the free T-shirt and energy drinks I was going to receive than about the fact I was at a basketball game.
As I walked to my seat, I began to re-evaluate my athletic allegiance. Perhaps I wasn't as sports orientated as I had always viewed myself throughout high school. I really didn't know anything about basketball; sadly, I didn't even know how many points a basket was worth.
But that all quickly became irrelevant. As the players ran out and the crowd began to cheer, my worries about not knowing the game melted away and the MVP deep down inside of me came back into play.
People around me explained the rules of the game, and once I caught on, I was cheering and going wild and crazy with the rest of the Bender crowd. Of course there were many moments when I received weird looks from other fans because I had accidentally booed the ref when he did something in favor of our team, but it didn't matter; I was having fun.
If the Phil Bender game has taught me one thing (I know, I must be the only person that has taken a life lesson out of an AU basketball game) it's that it doesn't really matter if you're an all-star when it comes to sports; all that matters is that you're having a good time.
After all, isn't that the point of sports anyway? What it all really boils down to is a bunch of people just having fun and playing a game.
