The old law in romance decrees, “Opposites attract.” Well, the Romantics—Lord Byron, the Shelleys, and whomever else you fans of early 19th century literature may conceive of—might have developed their forum on similar interests, but the swooning saga that is sports derides half of its pleasure from opposite archetypes creating legendary personas on the field. When Billy Beane, in Moneyball, asks, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”, it’s not merely the game he’s talking about: It’s every nook and cranny on the diamond. And that, too, expands outside the game.

I can think of few better examples than two of the most dominant pitchers of the 1990s: Hall of Famers Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux. Two completely different molds created two of the greatest arms in baseball history. Maddux, undersized for the position, whose fastball rarely touched 90, induced weak contact and turned the batter-pitcher relationship into a Socratic dialogue. Case in point: This clip, of Barry Bonds and Maddux discussing one of their showstopping back-and-forth battles. It’s the mental side of baseball at its finest. What Maddux understood, better than anyone else, is that the batter is a human being. He capitalized on that weakness.

For Johnson, the show stopped the second he walked on to the mound. A towering 6 feet, 10 inches, all the Big Unit had to do was drop the ball into the catcher’s mitt. That’s how close he would land on release; unfortunately for batters, the fear factor was dialed up a notch once the radar gun got involved. Shoot, he didn’t even need a shotgun to go bird hunting, that’s how hard Randy Johnson threw. 100 miles an hour coming from fifty feet would make any bird explode.

Both pitched for around 22 seasons; both won 300 games; both struck out over 3,300 hitters, even considering Maddux only had one season with 200 punch-outs. Yet I could not imagine two players being more opposite, in terms of playing style and physique.

Of course, I don’t have to imagine it: They do exist. For every ultra-athletic freak wide receiver, a la Julio Jones or Calvin Johnson, who mashed together unholy size and speed, there were the Antonio Browns and Steve Smiths and Julian Edelmans of the world, undersized players who utilized elite route running to make names for themselves. There are, of course, poorer examples: For every five-tool player like Mookie Betts,1 or every superstar passer like Josh Allen, there’s a Luis Arraez or Josh Rosen, guys who have one usable trait to keep them on the field, or none.

Diversification is the crux of what keeps sports interesting. Imagine, for a moment, if every basketball player looked and played like, I don’t know, DeMar DeRozan. It would get pretty boring after a while, no? A bunch of 6’7” athletic wings who played solid defense in their prime and had the best midrange since the 1990s sounds fine and dandy, but wait until that 30th midrange pullup swishes through the net. Or, better yet: What if every NFL player looked, played, and acted like Marshawn Lynch?

On second thought, that might be the best version of the NFL.

These are, however, rather arbitrary examples of variance; as integral to modern society as they are, sports are only a microcosm of the human experience. Human history has often sought to maintain an in-group, out-group dynamic, tribalizing for the sake of it. Today is no exception. Political polarization divides an already divided nation, and the metaphorical Mason-Dixon line is starting to bleed once more, no thanks to Thomas Pynchon.2 It is a friendly reminder, sometimes, that those differences do not take away that most central quality in all of us: our humanity. It is hard, now, to think about sports, or writing, or writing about sports, without acknowledging the constant atrocities occurring within and outside this nation’s borders. Like great fantasy novels, sometimes sports are the best model for the way life operates.3

Whether you’re watching the NFL playoffs, or Jaylen Brown carry the Celtics to a top seed in the Eastern Conference, or, perhaps, the news, seeing innocent lives being taken by the actions of a government that does not serve its people, understand that the “others,” the ones that are being detained for no good reason other than petty, baseless suspicion, the ones slaving away, day after day, to barely make ends meet, or the ones grinding away on the gridiron for your entertainment, year after year, are people. They are humanity at its core.

Whatever inhabits the owner’s box lost that attribute long ago.4