can someone explain why my anxiety brain turns to baseball trivia
Watching baseball sits maybe one position higher than "digital slot machine" in terms of what I feel like doing with my time. Absolutely no disrespect to the baseball fanatics out there, of which I know a few, but it is not something I can imagine sitting down and doing.
To a certain degree watching sports is also something I don't necessarily do too often. I'll watch the BIG events: some Olympic events here or there, a World Cup, a Super Bowl, but I'd rather watch highlights or retrospectives than actual games in a regular season. It's why Secret Base as a YouTube channel appeals to me: I think they do a fantastic job of explaining the story behind key events to someone without foreknowledge in a way that a live broadcaster just can't do. Looping back to focusing on baseball in particular: I think Jomboy Media's breakdowns of highlights are also really good at explaining the why's and how's of something in a way that even me, person who doesn't watch baseball can go "Oh, that is interesting when you explain it like that."
I've been pretty bedridden with both physical and mental health problems (there's a severe feedback loop there that's saved for a different post) and one of the things I've enjoyed doing has been reading about the history of baseball teams. Which again: probably weird. But I was just thinking about my last "stuck in bed" experience and I think the last time I also went down a historical baseball hole, which was why I downloaded MLB The Show. But what I don't understand is why lately my anxiety brain, as it's been shutting down, just goes "LEARN ABOUT BASEBALL HISTORY".
Like that's weird, right? I'm not a baseball fan! But I read about how in 1910 the team that would become the Baltimore Orioles of today literally tried to cheat someone on an opposing team a batting title because the guy who was winning was apparently a massive asshole, but then messed it up and tried to bribe the scorer with new clothes to fix their mistake and I go "This is fascinating, please tell me more."
The last time I also ended up writing like a ten page essay explaining the history of MLB licensed video games because I was always curious as to why there are so many different baseball games when you go to a retro game store and while I don't know the why beyond "baseball is popular" I do know every licensed MLB game now so there's that, I guess. Might clean it up a bit and post it here, there are some interesting stories in there I was able to piece together as "random person who didn't talk to anyone who worked on these games, just looked around on various websites for explanations on weird things from other websites."
But yeah, if anyone could explain why I turn to baseball trivia when my mental health goes bad, that would be neat. Because I sure as hell don't know why.