( CNN ) -- Why do we watch ? Bob Greene says athletes like Lebron James show us the difference between ordinary effort and excellence . The question applies not just to Sunday 's NBA All-Star Game , although that is the immediate case in point . The outcome of the game is not important -- few people remember who wins the All-Star Game from year to year . The players , while attempting to win , do it with barely concealed smiles on their faces . All-Star weekend is mostly a class reunion for basketball 's elite . But all the games , in all the seasons , in all the big-time sports leagues -- what is the real reason we keep on watching ? You might think that we 'd finally grow weary of caring , with headlines about Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds , with the sports pages often reading like the business pages ( contract disputes and stadium bond-issue negotiations and salary arbitration ) , with police-blotter details sometimes pushing aside the box scores . Why do we watch ? The answer may be found in a single sentence written by a man who died at the age of 76 in this still-new year . John Updike , his literary brilliance aside , was prolific almost beyond belief -- he wrote more than 50 books , and hundreds upon hundreds of essays , short stories , articles , poems and works of criticism . All those careful words , year after year , decade after decade . But of all the sentences Updike ever wrote , there is one that I have long encouraged people to carry around with them -- if not literally tucked into their wallets , then somewhere in their heads and in their hearts . In that sentence of Updike 's lies the secret to a lot of things -- including the secret that answers : Why do we watch ? The sentence appeared in Updike 's 1960 nonfiction piece about Ted Williams 's last game for the Boston Red Sox . That piece is famous for how Updike explained Williams 's refusal to come out of the dugout and acknowledge the cheering , crying fans after his home run in his final at-bat : `` Gods do not answer letters . '' But it is another sentence in the story that explains everything -- not just about sports , but about the lives the rest of us can lead . Referring to Ted Williams , Updike wrote : . `` For me , Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday , before a small crowd , when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. '' There it is , right there . That tissue-thin difference , when you do n't necessarily know anyone is watching -- there is the answer . We all face the choice in our lives every day : to make the extra effort or not , to stay at the desk for the extra fifteen minutes or to go home , to revise the project one more time before handing it in or to settle for something acceptable , if not quite excellent . On fields of play -- baseball diamonds , football fields , a basketball court like the one on which Sunday 's All-Star Game will be held -- the tissue-thin difference is there for the world to see . The lights are dazzlingly bright ; the television cameras carry the close-ups around the globe . If a player is dogging it , we can tell ; if a player is jogging instead of sprinting , it 's self-evident ; if a player 's mind is already at the party that will be held after the final buzzer , we know . Yet once in a while -- we can see it in a player 's eyes -- we are rewarded . Once in a while , sometimes when we are least expecting to witness it , it 's there : a tiny move , an all-but-imperceptible lunge , an additional thrust , a reach beyond that which should by all reason be reachable . It was true during small and glorious moments in the days when Bob Cousy and Elgin Baylor were on the basketball court ; it is true during small and glorious moments today , when Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are on the court . Updike 's tissue-thin difference . A thing done well , when the player could have gotten away with a thing done ill. Are the rest of us the same as the players on the court ? In most ways , no . We lack their athletic skill , their physical grace , their monetary riches . They hear cheers every working night ; we toil in silence . And yet , the one way in which we can be the same , or at least strive to , is in that pursuit of the tissue-thin difference . The thing that makes the best of them different is the thing that offers us , too , the potential to earn that difference -- the effort beyond mere effort , the desire beyond standard-issue desire , the pride so strong that it becomes the definition of pride . Why do we watch ? We watch for those moments . They may be fleeting ; they may come and go so quickly we 're not even certain , for an instant , that we actually saw them . But they 're real , and they can be ours . We wait for them . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene .
Bob Greene : What explains why Americans watch sports so intently ? He says professional athletes bore us with steroid and scandal stories . Greene : We watch for the greatness the greatest athletes can achieve . He says it reflects the top - notch effort everyone can afford to contribute .