Yankees-Angelzzzz.... zzz... zzz... zzz...

Here's what happens to you, Dear Reader, after A Certain Age: you start to fall asleep on games. This happened to me last night with the Angles-Yankees, which eliminated the chance to crank off a list of snarky goodness over how the game was a classic case of two managers seeing who could over-manage the game more, and thanking Mike Scoscia for injecting drama into the proceedings by pulling John Lackey for Darren Oliver, or how between the Vladdy Daddy and Bobby Abreu, I'm certain that the Angels would totally dominate your weekend softball league.

But all of that went by the boards, and I wound up waking up to a "Seinfeld" rerun an hour after the game ended. (Julia Louis-Dreyfus in HD? No favors.)

I'd like to tell you that this is a new occurrence, a sign of temporary overwork at the day job (lots of transition and stress there, and I'd say more, really, but there's a reason why I keep the two gigs separate), the change in seasons, the (non-existent) speed of an MLB playoff game, or the simple fact that the games seem designed for people in a non EST time zone. With my commute, I get up earlier on a daily basis then I ever have, and the sleep has to come from somewhere. A quick nap, and I'll be right as rain for the late innings.

Or, well, not.

The awful truth of it is that sports does not matter to you as much after a certain age. If your laundry breaks through and wins, it's a feeling of relief more than triumph, and if they are in the mode of maybe winning again, the experience gets compared to the earlier win, rather than just enjoying it. Watching for just the game's sake seems childishly unsophisticated; the fact that I had no action in last night's Yankee-Angels game (no fantasy play, no exceptional wager) takes the starch right out of it. I've become like a guy eating spicy food; if I don't have some Tabasco to go with the meal, I'm eating cardboard.

The other night, when the Phillies clinched, the eldest had a Halloween family fun night event at her school. The Shooter Wife gave me permission to skip to see the game, but I went anyway for the Dad points, because I knew the game was going to go on for 3 hours after the event was over, and because, honestly, seeing my kids after my 13-hour work day and commute matters more. Had this been 1993, I'd have been glued to the set and intractable. Had it been the A's, maybe I'm there and awake, but in all likelihood, no.

It might also help if these teams weren't my second and third least favorite clubs in the AL, and the ones that have dumped the most misery on my laundry in recent years. I have no rooting interest here, other than injuries, and seven games, so that there is less time to recover from injuries. But I digress.

So if you are (inevitably) younger than me and still waist-deep in your infatuation with Sports, I envy you, on some level. Just know that it won't last forever, and that eventually, you're going to be finding that overly comfortable couch/womb and losing your edge. There is a reason, after all, why the games are played and watched by young men.