McCARTHY: The column I didn’t want, but grew to love

Full disclosure: When I first applied for a writing gig with the FreeP, I didn’t want to write about sports. In fact, given the opportunity, I probably would have taken any other assignment presented to me. But sports was where the sole opportunity to write was, and the necessity to build my at-the-time thin portfolio overcame any initial apprehensiveness regarding the subject. So, despite my misgivings, I somewhat abruptly found myself as a sports columnist for this fair paper.

Now, this is not to say that I don’t love sports, because I do. It’s also not because I don’t know what I’m talking about, because, well, I do. In actuality, the aforementioned desire to distance myself from the sports section had nothing at all to do with my own personal feelings towards sports as a whole. It was part of a calculated (and in hindsight, ill-conceived) effort to re-prioritize my life.

For as long as I can remember, my existence has orbited around sports in one way or another. Like most moderately athletic young boys, the majority of my childhood was spent either at a game or practice – or en route to one. Countless hours of my youth were spent in a never-ending rotation of hockey tournaments, lacrosse games and baseball practices. In addition to the sports I actually enjoyed, I also put in the requisite five agonizing years of youth soccer. And, due to my older sister’s own personal success as a competitive swimmer, I also spent far more time on swim teams than I would have otherwise preferred.

By the time I reached high school, nothing changed. I dropped baseball, added football, and due to my status as a three-sport athlete, was easily convinced that I was an athlete with a capital “A.” This being the case, I never bothered to attempt to be anything else.

So, when the cumulative hours playing sports added up, I had little freedom to do anything else as a kid. I did not act, I did not draw, I did not play an instrument. In high school, I didn’t participate in theatre, write for the paper or help out with the yearbook. I played sports – and had neither the time nor the desire to do anything else.

By the time I reached college however, my aspirations and goals changed dramatically, as is common for most young adults. I decided to major in international relations, something I was immensely passionate about, and set my sights on a life of writing about things worthy of what I viewed to be the most noble of professions. While I played lacrosse at the University of Kentucky prior to transferring here, I did so because I wanted to. I had no misgivings about who I was or what I was going to be.  As a result, I attempted to distance myself from sports in the professional sense. I still spent each Kentucky basketball game fighting off full cardiac arrest and complained about the utter ineptitude of Larry Lucchino at the same unhealthy rate. However, I also began watching far more cable news than ESPN.

Seemingly all of a sudden, I was spending hours perusing Politico.com and Salon.com, rather than trolling the various sports blogs I had for years previously. For the first 20-plus years of my life, sports were both what I enjoyed and who I was. Over the last couple of years though, they had become nothing more than something I was immensely passionate about.

And, surprisingly, I was perfectly content with just being a fan. It became something close to a relief to be able to rip myself free of a life that at one point had seemingly revolved entirely around sports.

So that is why I was apprehensive about taking this column. I had formed this idea about the role I wanted sports to play in my life, and sports journalism ran counter to this. As an aspiring writer who deep down imagines himself in war zones, not locker rooms, writing about sports was not necessarily the means to the end I was looking for.

That being said, over the last year, I have gotten more out of writing this column than I could ever have imagined. Certainly, I have progressed as a writer (I hope). And, at the very least, it certainly fattened up my portfolio for prospective employers.

Most importantly though, this column has given me a gift that I will never be able to reciprocate – it has rekindled my love for sports.

Each time I dug down to find the necessary passion to finish a column, I found myself remembering why I loved sports in the first place. I remembered the car rides to Fenway with my dad and the priceless conversations that we had. I remembered the chills that ran down my spine the first time I walked into Rupp Arena. I remembered going to games at Walter Brown as a kid, and learning what it truly meant to be a hockey player.

Sports are simply a part of who I am, as they are for so many people around the world. They will never only be a form of entertainment for me, and I will never be able to separate my sports fandom from whatever I want to be. I am as much a Red Sox fan as I am a Democrat, a brother and a Bostonian.

Wherever I go from here, whether I write about sports or not, my life as an athlete and sports fan will be tied into the fabric of my being. My therapeutic writing of these columns has reminded me of this reality.

So, thank you, FreeP, for giving me the opportunity to remember this. And thank you, Terriers, for sticking with me as I found my way back.