I miss sports.

You know what?

I should start with a caveat.

I understand that the loss of sports is one of the least important losses of our historical moment.

Sports don't matter in the scheme of things, but I missed the luxury of caring about stuff that doesn't matter.

Like there's this great William Carlos Williams poem about a baseball game that begins.

The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly by a spirit of uselessness, which delights thumb.

And I miss that crowd and that game and that delight.

So here's where I'm getting a bit of that feeling in the meantime, slightly off topic.

But it occurs to me that the phrase, in the meantime, is a real winner for describing right now, like we are living in the meantime.

But right Hank First and most importantly, there is marble racing, yellows, marble runs, marble.

A one season has been an absolute joy for me.

Like most people, I started out watching the Marble Olympics because it was somewhat sublime and somewhat ridiculous.

But now I am all in, and for me, marble a one has been a real lesson in how fandom works because I started out being like I guess I'll root for the Green Ducks because we share a name.

And now, two months later, I'm like the Green Ducks are inarguably the greatest team in the history of marble racing and the lime er's suck and I hate thumb.

Then there's swift racing.

So Hank Swift is this video game that connects to your bike trainer.

And when you move the pedals in real life, your avatar on the screen also moves, and you can climb through the Alps and sprint through New York City's Central Park and draft off of other writers.

And if you're like me, you can also experience the joy of being passed on long climbs by cyclists who, after their name have in parentheses.

84 years old and loving it.

Swift is one of my favorite forms of exercise, and I also love watching swift racing on YouTube, where cyclists achieve speed and power levels that I can only imagine another game that I played terribly in love to watch people play well.

Tetris Every month there is a classic Tetris tournament where the world's best players of a 36 year old video game.

Battle it out and it is pure Joey.

I just find Tetris extremely soothing and calming.

And for me, watching competitive Tetris is an opportunity to experience mesmerized wonder and that I've also been watching sporting events that are from the past.

But where I don't know the outcome, like part of the pleasure of sports for me is that you don't know what's going to happen, which is an interesting phenomenon, because now, of course, I am surrounded by lots of uncertainty, and it is horrible and terrifying, and there is nothing to recommend about it.

But the uncertainty before a live sporting event is bearable or even exciting precisely because sports don't matter.

Or at least they don't matter on anything like the scale of the current uncertainty.

For me, most of the joy of watching a live sporting event is not knowing how it will turn out that feeling at the beginning of a game that all things air still possible.

And I found I can experience at least a version of that by watching old games like I love soccer, but I don't watch a lot of Italian soccer, or at least I didn't.

But then yesterday, while exercising, I watched the 2012 Italian Cup final, and I didn't know who was gonna win.

It was thrilling that William Carlos Williams poem goes on to say that the crowd at the ball game is enthralled by all the exciting detail of the chase and the escape, the error, the flash of genius, all to no end save beauty.

And for me, at least, that's the key, whether it's sports or something else.

We all need things in our lives that have no end save beauty for me.

I'm finding that mere beauty right now, among other places in competitive Tetris and marble racing, I wonder where you're finding it, whether sport adjacent or not, let me know in comments and Hank, I will see you on Friday.

But first, a PS ps.

Many of you know the work of Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who beckoned so much lovely into this world and helped me and many others sing and hope that we're here because we're here because we're here because we're here.

Amy's husband, Jason, has just published a book about their marriage and Amy's illness and his life afterwards called My wife said, You may want to marry me.

It's a wonderful memoir, highly recommended links to that and everything else in this video in the Dooby doo.