I remember when I was a kid, I would watch sports on TV with a ravenous passion. I didn't much care who was playing. I had teams I liked but it was enough to watch the formal green expanse of any field fill up the shimmering screen and to see things happen on it; balls bouncing, flying; officials at their marks, measuring, assessing; cleated players with uniforms bearing bold, block digits. A numerological world of ineffable mystical representations. Formal chaos.
I once watched, enrapt, an indoor soccer game on the dining room TV of the Colbys' apartment in New York. It was me and Lis and Lenny, the parents had gone out. What delight there was to be visiting this manic, thrilling place; and within it to be safe at a table looking up. Watching the ball careen ferociously around the curved boards, to be cleared or kicked on goal with momentous urgency by this player or that one or the other; the ones in lime green or the ones in orange, it didn't matter, it was happening.
Lenny's mom had left us a pan of brownies with Swiss milk chocolate bars melted on top.