‘Moved like small children’

Michael Leahy in When Nothing Else Matters:

I’d always wondered what could draw people, night after night, to what is after all just a game. But in a world marred by so much imperfection and loss, on frigid winter days when the sun died too early and a man felt the chill of his life’s regrets, it was nice sometimes just to drive to the arena with the defroster on and contemplate the possibility of seeing Michael Jordan perform brilliantly, to imagine fallaway jumpers rippling nets, again and again. There is a benefit to being reminded that we are not so hardhearted that we cannot be moved like small children, that there remains room in our lives for something as mysterious as magic. …

There is something achingly prayerful about it -- I don’t mean anything religious -- but prayerful just the same, the screamers wanting something to lift them for a few seconds, to remind them that obstacles are not always insurmountable. People pray with their shouts.