Comics vs. Baseball

The past two days have provided me with more reasons why Baseball should be favored over comics, at least seasonally. I saw this morning at Comic Book Resources pictures from Wizard World Chicago, one of the summer’s big Comics Conventions. The fact that I share an interest with these people is frightening.

While CBR has plenty of pictures of kids dressed up as their favorite characters, for every picture of a young Captain America beaming because he got to go to a convention in costume, there are more than three dozen like the one above. Here Butterball Superman, 15 year old Batman, and what appears to be Keanu Reeves in a bad wig as Green Lantern, pose for their picture. And while it’s obvious that these three like the attention their receiving from the comics fan press and no doubt their fellow fans at the con, there seems to be to be something unreasonable about a fan that goes to such heights. Where Superman’s smirk betrays a confidence, I’m just a little embarrassed for him by how the costume accentuates his man boobs. Is this just an expression of self-neglect and social stigma turned into a strange expression of prideful abnegation? Really, I think there are better ways to go. Even secret shame seems a more dignified response. Or even making fun of those who clearly have no secret shame.

The more positive aspect to this comparison is that I was recently inspired to work out harder by the Dodgers, thus avoiding a Super-Belly and Super-Heart Disease and Super-Diabetes. I was at the gym the other day and the game happened to be on. It was the top of the sixth, and the Dodgers were loosing to the Marlins, one to three. I planned on a fifty minute run and intended to leave when my time was up. But as I was running the Dodgers began to turn the tide, mostly due to the ineptitude of the Marlins’ pitching staff, which walked in three runs. By the end of the seventh inning The Dodgers were up four runs and I was nearly done with my run. Not only did I want to see the end of the game – another post-trade Dodgers victory – but it dawned on me that in running, I was in fact being more athletic than any of the ball players out on the field that day. While certainly they could all outrun me, out hit me, and out field me, a lot of the time they were just standing around waiting for a hit. By running at a constant rate, I was in fact getting more of a work out than they were. When the work out program ended towards the beginning of the eighth I decided to run for the rest of the game, and I ended up running about eight miles for about eighty minutes.

The recruiters should be knocking on my door any day now.