A quibble, before I get into the real meat of this. In a recent interview, Kobe talked about the “fourth wall” of sports (okay, neither he nor the interviewer said fourth wall, but think about it that way from this point forth please) and how the fan’s experience or at least knowledge of the athletes’ experiences has become that much wider, that much more pervasive, that much more “real.” When I heard this, the first thing I thought was bullshit. Bullshit, because it’s just like an all-access pass to a rock show. You don’t get to see the cocaine and groupies backstage. No, you get the watered down version. So when this all-access pass gets closer and closer to 24/7, that means what happens during the “behind the scenes” that is not actually behind the scenes becomes that much less real. In essence, if you open up the world of the athlete to perpetual viewing, you stop getting the Charles Barkleys and Guns N’ Roses of the world and you get a lot more of the Jonas Brothers or the Donnie and Marie show. This is what I was talking about when I said I was sick of these consumer conscious athletes.
So, following FreeDarko's twitter account, I read this article by David Barash talking about the folly of watching sports. Incensed, I dashed off an entire piece in response, and now I’m kinda sorry. Barash doesn’t even really deserve a response. His posturings are so juvenile. At one point, he spouts some terribly inaccurate evolutionary theory, saying “women are inclined to exaggerate the redness of their lips, the lushness of their hair, or the size of their breasts, in efforts to enhance their appeal to men.” He says this elicits a “larger-than-ordinary” response, as a means to segue into talking about susceptibility to “the blandishments of large groups.” I mean, it’s just all wrong. It doesn’t account for the evolutionary reasons for large breasts (more milk? well, recent research suggests there was actually water-dwelling ramifications to breasts, since largeness wouldn’t seem to be an evolutionary assist when dealing with upright survival), nor does it account for trends towards slimness and subtlety (see: geek chic). It also gets the whole point of March Madness wrong. Most of the people who watch aren’t rooting for the home team; they’re rooting for their brackets, their predictions. People watch March Madness for the upsets and the Cinderella stories, which totally discounts what Barash is trying to do. Furthermore, he warns against the danger of group-think in its relevance to genocide. C’mon! The point of sport is take that kind of energy and channel it into positive arenas. The point is to take battle and make it civilized. Seeing all this now, I wish I hadn’t written the whole damn thing below in response to him, but I’m going to leave it since I like a bunch of the ideas.
2007 MLB Baseball All-Star Game - Counting Crows performance, originally uploaded by Al_HikesAZ.
In his article, Barash offers a list of things we might be better off doing instead of watching a sporting event. He suggests “reading a book, talking with your family, going for a walk, wrestling with the dog, listening to some music, smelling a flower, making love.” Problem with that statement is half those things are spectator events too. I’m not going to argue with spending quality time with your family or dog, and I’m certainly not going to argue with making love. I think most people would agree that if we could just do those three things in life, we might be better off. But you know as well as I that this world doesn’t come close to that of wouldn’t-it-be-nices. I offer the reasons that come from negativity because those are easier to understand for those who are not familiar with the positive aspects of watching sports. Look, sometimes you have a bad day. You’re in a foul mood. You’re feeling low, maybe even so low that you don’t really feel worthy of your family, maybe so foul that trying to make love or even be cheered up by one you love would only make you feel worse. Going for a walk is nice, but what about those times when you feel too defeated to even do that? In those cases, I can’t see the wrong in turning to some achievement of someone or something else to cheer you up or console you. Reading a book I’ve already covered. Listening to music is the same. You’re listening to someone else’s masterpiece. That’s just watching with another of your senses, Holmes. Smelling a flower? That’s not your achievement, that’s the flower’s. Even spending time the family dog, it’s old Rover’s achievement that he can always cheer you up. It’s not yours. Oh yeah, and Barash thousands of people cramming into arenas, but what about the stat that says museums around the country average more visitors than do sporting arenas? No one finds time to criticize reading, listening to music, going to a museum, or smelling a flower. Why attack the act of watching sports? I suspect it’s mostly because of the cash cow aspect of March Madness. Don’t blame that on the rabidity of the fans. Blame it on the people who run manage the madness.
I think Barash also mistakes fame for glory. There’s a difference between wanting to be a rock or movie star and wanting to be a sports star. The desire in wanting to be the best athlete in the world is not about wanting to be famous. It’s about wanting to be victorious. It’s not about wanting to be known. It’s about wanting to be remembered.
There’s something else going on here that Barash doesn’t take in to account. Sports are often used as an excuse for two certifiable opiates for the masses (his opening criticism of sports watching): alcohol and television. When we talk about industrial revolutions and technological advances, long term events with widespread consequences especially seen in workplaces, these things take a large socio-emotional toll on the great majority of people who do the legwork. This idea comes from Clay Shirky saying some really smart things about how gin got people through the industrial revolution and how tv has done that for people in recent years. A kind of opiate (to use Barash's word) that we needed before we could learn to move beyond it. (Shirky goes on to talk about civic surplus and how it's being realized now through huge projects done by many people, such as Wikipedia. The whole piece is worth a look, a spectate.) But look, sports is not meant to be that. It is an outlet, for sure, but it’s also an allegiance. In a increasingly globalized world, it’s harder and harder to find local, relatable things to tie oneself to. It’s hard to find an emotional anchor outside the so often breakable family unit. (And why is that family unit so breakable? Because it’s asked to stand alone when really it’s supposed to function within a larger community unit, but I digress) Furthermore, rites of passage have all but disappeared from our society. The closest is graduation, but it has so little meaning. It is no longer a recognition of excellence and accepted preparedness for a world of social responsibilities. Rather, it is a casting off of young people untested in anything but test taking abilities. It’s society saying, “Go. Try. Fail. And then try again. Maybe go to college. That’ll postpone your necessary inclusion into the sad social reality of the working world.” It’s a damaging system. Sports is one of the last vestiges of true social rites, and as such also one of the last bastions of the allegiances/responsibilities these rites usually promote one to. I’m not saying sports is perfect or that it should be seen as the only redeeming facet of a quickly eroding societal structure. Far from that. Rather, I see it as getting some things right. I see it as a model which other professions or sectors of society might examine.Of course, it’s not without corruption. This generally happens on the money side of things, which I don’t think Barash is tackling and which I shall also steer away from. People who know more and have had more time to mull it over have been over that (link?). What I do want to address is the fan side of things, the people who are not professional athletes, because I think they’re the most important part of the equation. Barash says the very things I’m talking about above are what make sports fanship insidious. He says fans, and youth in particular, are susceptible to the desire for identification with a hero and for the inclusion in a community. I say, what’s wrong with that? It’s not sports’ fault that society has failed to offer up alternatives. Barkley told the world he wasn’t a role model, and yet in some circles he’s becoming one. That’s beside the point. Barash takes athletes to task for not being more admirable role models, and he laments the inculcation of today’s youth into the kind of society that struts its “alcoholics, misogynists, sociopaths, and violence-prone dimwits and miscreants.” (He also says small wonder since they’re adults playing children’s games. Where does he think children’s games come from?) He offers some exemplars he’d like children to emulate, like Einstein and Gandhi. Last I heard, Einstein wasn’t big on hygiene, and Gandhi, cool dude that he was, seemed to like to get in bed with an awful lot of young people. My point is not that there is no one to emulate. It’s just that we shouldn’t look to anyone to be perfect, but rather look at the good things they do and try to take those things into our own spheres of experience. Toting role models as perfect people just makes for untenable expectations and disappointment. Let’s look at all role models as real, fallible people who do some great things.
Look, at it’s most elemental, sports boils down to a civilized form of gladiatorial competition. Prized athletes destroying themselves and each other for the amusement of the masses. (Take that sentence without a grain of irony, and I think you have exactly what Barash is afraid of. But read on, it’s simply not that simple.) What sport better exemplifies this than “professional” wrestling? When I first thought of writing this piece, it was not in response to an article in The Chronicle, but rather in response to The Wrestler and Mickey Rourke’s incredible performance. It’s a sad, beautiful, poignant film and I suggest you see it if you haven’t. It’s all these things, but it works because it’s also equal parts gruesomely gory and drably grey. The stark reality between the wrestler’s real life and that which is glorified under flood lights and the chants of rabid fans. The scary reality presented by the movie (semi-spoiler alert…but the ending’s really achieved by the viewing, not the knowing) is that this athlete is killing himself, literally killing himself just for the glory and seemingly for the adulation of his fans. I mean, its elegiac nature makes it poetic, of course. But taking industrial strength staples in the back just to make for a better show? There’s nothing poetic about that.Okay, so look. After watching that movie, I asked myself exactly the questions Barash is asking. Only I have a lifetime of appreciation with which to shore up my answers and to keep me from upending the glass, pouring out all the contents, and declaring it bereft and void of meaning. I asked myself: What does an athlete get out of this kind of adulation, and what does an athlete get out of making life a competition? Certainly it doesn’t make him or her a more well adjusted individual. And: Is it really morally sound for fans to cheer these athletes on? Can we not be held culpable for the physical and emotional damage they might be doing to themselves, and shouldn’t we be a little more self-reflective in our role in this whole gig? I mean, sometimes it really does feel like I’m mooing along with all the other sheep. Kobe this. Lebron that. Phelps up to bat. Who cares? But more importantly, why do we care?
It’s not for nothing. Here’s the point of appreciation. It’s not like these people we’re watching are strangers. Okay, we don’t eat dinner with them. We don’t know what they do or think in their spare time (at least, we didn’t). But this is what we do know. We know the game. And, honestly, no matter what the non-appreciators may say, we know why they play. We know why MJ cradled that ball in tears in ’96. We know the things we do to get through pain or to overcome doubt or to exult in the face of all life’s myriad grayness. We know how to fight for one inviolable outcome that can define us beyond any words, any amount of money, any acceptance or rejection. And we know how to fight for that outcome even when it more often than not comes out as a loss for us. Because we know how it feels to try. Because we are human. Because they are human. That is why. We know because we too have shot that ball until our arms wouldn’t lift, until the lines and dimples smoothed away from the constant feel against our fingers and palms, until the blacktop cracked underneath our perpetual shot at momentary glory. We know because we have had dads keep us in the batting cage until our hands bled, because we have had mothers who haven’t let us sleep with our glove, because we have had coaches who made us do a thousand push-ups, a million wind-sprints, get some water and then do it again. We know because we’ve had teachers who didn’t believe in us, and we’ve had those who did. We know because no matter how fast we go (or how relatively slow), still we know what it feels like to run until the air burns in your lungs and you’re not sure what the difference is between pain and fun. We know because we know what it feels like at the end of a day. That’s how we know, and that’s why we watch them play.
