Spring and sports are a wonderful combination for my life and a terrible combination for my GPA. After a month of wandering in a bitterly cold wilderness, exacerbated by a complete absence of compelling national sports narratives, suddenly it's sunny, and I have three huge sports stories on my mind. Incidentally, this means that I'm not thinking about midterms.
There is something about the first change from the 20s to the 60s that renders my brain incapable of concentration on any subject not having to do with 65 teams or 162 games. I've considered many causes of this phenomenon, but no one factor can account for my total zone out over the past few days. It's the combination of everything that is good about the world returning in the span of a few days: Sunny days, arguments about sports, baseball and the reemergence of my girlfriend's skirt collection from hibernation.
Selection Sunday was the final step in my descent towards mental deadlock. It's not so much that I care about college basketball — I don't — as much as I relish the opportunity to argue over upcoming results. Who will emulate Adam Morrison and sob after getting sent home early? Which good team that everyone is forgetting about will eventually walk away with the title? Did Gary Walters get quiet revenge on Penn by matching them up against the No. 3 seed when they might have had a chance against Washington State? How will popular picks like Kansas, Florida, Georgetown, Texas and UNC eventually blow it? Just how wrong will I be?
Despite my uncertainty, I still love March Madness. There is just something about the sense of community and pointless competition between friends that is intoxicating, even if my bracket is in its fifth incarnation. I can't quite decide whether I know enough to trust my instincts or too little to go with my gut. Luckily it doesn't really matter. Some random stoned dude will probably end up with a close to perfect bracket, win $25,000 from facebook.com and will blow it all in a month while I move full time to my other passions. It's not the result but the process which captivates me.
The coming of real and rotisserie baseball — fantasy for those of you whose primary league wasn't started before your birth — has also grabbed my attention. While the NCAA tournament can only occupy me for two weeks, baseball dominates six to seven months of my life every year. I've been going to Mets games for as long as I can remember; some of my earliest memories are of sunny days with my dad at Shea Stadium. Mention the names Armando Benitez, Chipper Jones or Kenny Rogers in my presence, and you're guaranteed a barrage of profanities.
I remember how 56,357 people went from screaming to silent in half a second twice last October, how Molina swung while Beltran somehow froze. I remember the stands shaking when Todd Pratt sent one deep to dead center in 1999 and how the fans rose in adulation for a departing legend when Mike Piazza played his last game as a Met. I remember Endy Chavez making the greatest catch I have ever seen, and I remember how my brother and I couldn't stop screaming "Oh my God!" and high-fiving each other for about five minutes afterwards. I remember it all, and I will never forget.
My life experience would be relatively impoverished without those memories and thousands more like them. It is with no regrets that I choose these experiences over my schoolwork, for in the long run they are far more rewarding, even when they end in heartbreak. It is with somewhat more regret that I also choose to follow my fake team with the same passion and enthusiasm.
My annual obsession with "The Barrycudas" — pardon the pun — began last week when I realized that I was in the best position I have ever been in before a season. Not to bore you with the details, but my core roster, held over from last season, is both better and cheaper than in recent years. This is as much a burden as a gift, as it requires me to work that much harder on ensuring that I don't blow the opportunity presented to me. With all these distractions, I'm sometimes surprised I get any work done at all. Barry Caro is a sophomore from White Plains, N.Y. He can be reached at bcaro@princeton.edu.
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