How I Quit Sports, Cold Turkey

Several months ago, without warning, John Swansburg found he was no longer a sports fan. He just quit cold turkey and never looked back. “Somewhat to my surprise, I don’t miss any of it,” he writes for Slate. Being a sports fan in 2009 simply takes up too much time. There’s almost no week of the year when there isn’t some big game or big story, and thanks to our expanded media, it’s possible—nay, required—to watch and know about them all.

“I woke up one day and found that I had a Google alert for ‘Kevin Garnett knee,’ a subscription to Baseball Prospectus, and a genuine interest in the Twitter updates of Juan Pablo Montoya,” he writes. Besides, in the end, sports deals up much more defeat than victory. When Swansburg caught Jonathan Papelbon blow a lead to the Angels in ALDS Game 3, he just shrugged. “It was a liberating feeling, not to care. I went and read a book.” (More sports stories.)