Two Latin words, medius (“middle”) and ocris (“mountain”), joined hands in the 16th century to make a new word—mediocre—that described anything of middling stature: neither peak nor valley, neither tall nor short, neither Manute Bol nor Muggsy Bogues. Most of us reside there, between Mount Everest and the Marianas Trench, in the safer elevations of mediocrity.
Sports are meant to be deliverance from all that, with their built-in extremes, their binary heroes and GOATs, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Win or lose, you will feel something, unless of course you draw.