If the question is community, then sports is the answer at least for some. My kids love sports, and play them all day long. I look out in the back yard and they are either playing baseball, or wrestling, or playing some version of soccer. Sports are one area in society where aggression is ok, and even encouraged. Of course, you can't go as far as Mike Tyson did and bite the ear off of Evander Holyfield!
But when I look back on my childhood what I most loved was playing sports: baseball, basketball, soccer, (I didn't enjoy wrestling so much because it smelled so bad!), but also riding bikes, and kick the can. I like the all-out quality of sports, but how inside of a sport there is still a certain morality. You have to be able to lose with grace, and win with grace (harder I think to win with grace when you're bursting with pride). Just playing the sport correctly is fun. I loved playing Little League baseball. I always played first base and took pride in bagging a bad throw and still getting an out. As a batter, I loved to smack a short hopping grounder through the hole between first and second for a stand-up double. Get some wood on it! and other phrases that we use in everyday life: a lot of it comes from our love for sports. (Of course today the bats have morphed into aluminum because they do not so easily splinter.) I hate aluminum bats. They seem so fake. I hate the little ping they make when you get a hit.
Swimming, throwing frisbees, hitting golf balls at the driving range, playing kickball, and then at night watching sports on TV with my dad. We loved the Phillies!
Many people hurt themselves or others playing sports. I never did. I never broke or sprained anything until two weeks ago when I sprained an ankle in the rut of a truck tire impression that had been left down in the grass at the far end of the soccer field. First real injury, ever. It sucks, because even after two weeks of lying low I can't do my normal exercise routines, or even play soccer with the kids. Best I can do is hobble from one end of the town to the other.
Sports aren't Christian, per se. You never hear of Jesus throwing a Frisbee with His disciples, or getting a dog to fetch. Jesus was not a boxer, and he was never invited to participate in the gladiatorial combats at the Coliseum (most Christians were executed during the lunch recess, and simply put on crosses for the delectation of the Romans who had their lunch while reflecting on the impaled). Total devotion to the emperor was part of the price for being Roman, and not wanting to do this meant capital punishment. Usually it was murderers and bad people who got the execution, and obviously killing nice Christians didn't go down so smooth as killing a serial killer. Most early Christians didn't like the Coliseum, and resisted the gladiator shows. Slowly Christianity has morphed, and now increasingly includes athletics.
YMCAs and YWCAs are very sports oriented, and yet Christian. How did that happen?
Perhaps it's something about building character. Doing your utmost, and yet not losing control and becoming a barbarian in the midst of an agonistic contest? I don't know. Sports are a mystery. In Eastern European countries they shot up the women with steroids to get extra muscle tissue to create the Bulgarian weight lifter phenomenon. In Colombia their mafia shot a goalie who let in three goals in an international match.
I love America: we are so fair, and so perfect. We are constantly evolving the sense of what's right and wrong in sports and in life. We have referees and they are perfectly impartial, like our judges. This country is so great.
11 comments:
I think there are things to be learned about community, cooperation, respect, courage, the common good, sacrifice, etc. in team sports.
I'm not much of an athlete, and hardly ever watch sports, [yet I do hope the Vancouver Canucks win the Stanley Cup! it's about their turn]. You've got to admit it, us Canadians have produced some fine hockey players-many of them who have ended up on U.S. teams over the years.
It is rather sad to see how the Olympics have turned into "whoever can dope and get away with it is the best and wins" kind of modus operandi. Moreover, such dope based athletes surely are a poor example of health and role modelling for young people.
One final thought, I do not think any athlete, however proficient, is worth the multi-million dollar contracts that society pays them.
Shalom,
Dim Lamp
My wife is Finnish so through that I like ice hockey, but otherwise would have never watched it. I think it's big in Detroit and a few other American cities that are close to Canada.
I'm not sure about the high salaries... I wish more normal people would get off the couch and play. The professionalization of sports has made people feel that unless they're Michael Jordan they shouldn't play. One of the good things that Michelle Obama is doing (I doubt if it is having any effect, but I want to give her some credit for SOMETHING!) is encouraging kids ot get out and play.
That's good. Is anyone heeding her advice?
She's in a dress in the commercial, and probably should be in sweat pants and show us she can shoot hoops at least as well as her husband in order to convince us she's not just jawing PR at us.
But heck at least she's trying to get all the blubberbutts off the couch! The body is the temple and all that!
it's pandemonium it's spectacle
and it is hype
and that is all it is it has nothing to do with people being better being fair being good it is pure indulgence and this oddd lurch into a vicarious enjoyment of watching humans struggle against one another it is both sexual and violent it is the liturgy of capitalism and it is somehow perpetual as long as the electricity stays on once the lights go out we'll be reduced to decent sandlot pickup games and bocci ball afternoons then maybe it will start to get back to normal again but now o my friggin goawd it is horrible to watch these humans out there who don't seem to have anything better to do than chase a ball or a puck around or beat up on one another
the only sport i really like is womens boxing or any kind of women fighting it seems to say to me that cultural perfection is not too far away
we've been over this before why does kirby do this to us he just drags us through these old worn out topics like it's the greatest new thinng on the news
sports schmorts
i can't stand it now they interview the athletes after the games as if this is the information our enlightenment is contigent upon or upon which our...
it's inane c'mon agree with me
just say OK you're right
it is really really stupid
sports in america is a cultural embarrassmentt!!
say that out loud 5 times and see if it still makes sense
what might people be inclined to do if they didn't have the leisure to go brain dead for hours at a time staring at humanoids striving for absolutely no good purpose other than to generate human interest in banalities and insure the transfer of large amounts of money
one couldn't even call it entertainment
when kids play it is entertaining
when grown up people play it is pathetic all this wasted energy and time and for what nothing some blabbering remembrance of tiems past when the goal was made when the tackle saved the day when a homer went over the fence
i suppose it is equally idiotic of me to thinnk that people might read books if they didn't watch sports
life is tedious and i suppose sports breaks up the tedium a bit
but i think our real creativity will come from going into the tedium in stead of running from it or immersing oneself in a blather of digital images and exaggerated voices and thumbnail chewing idiocy
talk about cultural masturbation
there now wasn't that fun let's do it again next week
people will be allowed one hour and a half of hackey sack and then they must return to the library and read
there will be no dilly dallying on the plaza until after 8 pm and then they can play some frisbee or chess before going to bed but everyone must have a book and study do i make myself clear ARE YOU LISTENING
i guess not
another failed tyrant
boooohooo
werzdabotle
urp
scklogschlogogshlocg URP
ehhhhhh
(he cassualy wipes his lips)
all the mystery is gone
alcoholism is the only antidote
i mean of all the worthless engagements in cognitive experience....
what a crock as ed was wont to say once in awhile
before he got all uppity and better than us
i don't know
i would say he wasn't none too polite
the twins are in the damp leaky cellar
it don't look good for lake woeBgone
sports schmorts
sailing and flyfishing will be the only pastimes allowed in
leisureville
everyone will wear leisure suits and drink mint tea
i am busy writing out the possibilities for a new utopia
no sports
only sports suits
books good food
hackey sack frisbee
hoolahhoops
hookahs
on fridays
no tvs
juggling classes
and fishing
that's it - occupations in the new utopia
sex will be a do or die affair at all costs it will always be a matter of making babies and no other kind of sex will be allowed
people can earn the right to be left alone but only after the age of giving birth and mothering and fothering is over otherwise it's al being monitored by domestic servants who report to me daily
sex will always be considered dangerous and always loaded with more possibilities than any one person can handle
girls need to master the arts of the kitchen again
that's all there is to it i know i sound like a mysogynist but i think it's for evryones' good the only way this is ever going to make sense is if women start commanding some respectable authority around the noble conduct associated with kitchens or else
it's frozen pizza and cornfuructosesyrup in your eye
sheesh
our minds have been demented by the media is the message
and we didn't stop to consider the price of it all
life has become an insipid conversation about a a reality tv show and we think it's about something else
i'm reading a chinese travel critique of the rest of the world
hold on to your britches
the porcupine is present
jh
Yes, sports are good, and those professional athletes deserve those millions - as long as you believe in capitalism.
The effect of a Michael Jordan or a Lebron James on the economy of a city, country, and, heck, world, is HUGE. Their corporate bosses make @#$tons more money off of their athletic heroics than they do...
The only reason to worry about player salaries is based on competitiveness - There are those who argue that football is the most popular sport in 'merica in part because there is a far more equitable distribution of talent, which comes from more restrictions on player wages - So you can't continually buy yourself into competition, a la the Lakers or the Yankees.
But if your presence brings in 100 million dollars for an organization, earning 10 ain't no sin.
On a communal level, sports are good - And I would point to pretty much everything else in society Except pro sports for making kids blubberbutts - If basketball players and tennis stars are your heroes, you go out and play basketball and tennis to be like them.
I remember being 10 and watching Wimbledon, and while not much of a tennis kid, I had an undeniable urge to go play. Superbowl-watch-parties were 10% watching football, 90% playing football, and pretending you're Emmitt Smith.
I've recently started a weekly basketball game with my fellow film-kids - a surprising number of them (and generally the ones who are the happiest/most stable humans) are former athletes of some sort.
Especially as boys, sports are invaluable for helping you get to know each other (boys make friends by doing stuff, then talking about it - girls are the opposite. case closed).
Kids need to spend tons of time playing sports, and tons of time having freeplay in the woods, and as much of it as possible outside the direct control of adults. A few hours of learning stuff, a few hours of video games...but the bulk of a day should be exploring and competing.
Lock a 9..or even 13... year old boy into a desk all day and drone on about tests... and he reacts poorly, and 'they' call it a disease and prescribe pills.
F'n crazy.
The Mafia killed Michael Jordan's dad after Jordan singlehandedly won that championship back in the 1980s and forced Jordan to leave basketball for his "illustrious" baseball career.
We're not so nice here, either.
Is anybody watching Nowitzski's championship run? He plays for the Dallas Mavericks. Last night they won the Western Conference title, 3-1. Nowitzski is 41 years old, and still plays like he's 25. The commenters were calling him the ageless wonder.
If JH is right that we just sit and watch it's bad, because pretty soon we'd all be as big as Aquinas! He was what -- 400 pounds? I grant he was an important genius, but he was dead by 51 from a heart attack.
Nowitzski is 41 and thin as a rail, and may yet win the championship. I agree with Brett that watching makes kids want to play. These are role models.
The Obamas are at least thin and sportive. It's too bad BO smokes, but at least he doesn't do it during press conferences.
He shows us restraint in the way in which he hides his cigs before appearing on camera.
If he would just get everyone moving again that would be a good thing. They can also dance, those Obamas. This is a good thing.
Entrepreneurial aggression is a good thing: it teaches kids initiative, and go get em ness.
I admit I'm against football because you have to play according to the play that's been prearranged. I prefer soccer because there's lots of room for individual freedom. In high school our goalie came out of the box angry at our mediocre play, dribbled the entire length of the field and then scored.
He said, "That's how you do it, you idiots."
He ended up a professional player for about a decade.
Not everyone has that kind of talent but those who have it I'd pay to see them play.
What Dim Lamp said about high salaries is something that worries me generally. Luther said no one in a company should make more than ten times what the lowest person on salary makes.
I agree with this, but don't think it should be legislated through the government. It should instead be a personal choice of those making mints to give away a big part of their fortune to the less fortunate.
Nowitzki does have a foundation that gives money to needy African dictators. I'm not sure how much he gives them. Enough to continue the lifestyle to which they are accustomed, presumably.
think i think brett is right about locking young people into desks although i think for weeks at a time chain and lock adn key would be a good thing but i digress what his ultimate judgement is on the activity of cultural growth for the young there is something i agree with completey exploration fun and competition but the competition should not go beyond the size of fish caught and cash bets on the bank of the river
once it starts getting into these big spectacles it gets dangerous i mean c'mon kirb what about those bigass soccer mom stampedes when all the soccer moms are rushing around trying not to stampede their children but they are failing
and their children just run all over them and the headlines read 16 soccer moms dead children stampede
then there's the fans
kids need boredom
we need to reorganize the world around boredom
and not boredom that is easily dismissed i mean real boredom with no electricity and no way out ten miles to town and nothing to do
some books around some sounds of nature outside soem lemonade and a demure little cat in the window
as bewildered with the boredom as you are
my essential argument is that there is way too much distraction
kids are on mood drugs because the world around them is a flurry of insubstatial gobbleDgook and they can't make sense of it
so drugs make sense
maybe the kids on drugs are the normal ones
and the sharpkids are the mutants
society prefers the freaks to the normal ones
once i watched my niece weave into the free throw zone with a basketball surrounded by sweaty feminine opponents and she wove in and jumped back with a beautiful fadeaway like she was that ballerina tallchief or something and she shwooshed this 2pointer with grace and elan and i was suspended in awe at the grace and effort of that moment but later that year she blew out her knee
basteball over for ever i guess
so beauty and tragedy
we like that
i think all the girl sportsters are exerting too much energy on things that are completely stupid
it's nice to watch for awhile like beach girls volley ball you can't help but be impressed with the costumes
but after awile it just gets clammy and stupid you have to admit
adventure challenges intellectual exercise by way of sotries frisbee golf darts things like that yes women playing croquet and OK badmitton - but only in long white dresses - mathematics must be limited to intensive daily manipulations of the stock market
the criminal management of huge amounts of money must be seen as legimate mathematical activity i mean capitalism must grow always like a fat kid with nachos and ice cream
we take sports far too seriously
it is a magetic suckweight a sucking vaccuum into which whole cultures evidently allow themselves to be pulled
we need to take long afternoons blending into twilight times of food and talk and levity on the porches and in the back yards of life
we must cultivate leisure
leisure with christ present
smirking surreally
yo
maybe if we built dams by hand the way the chinese do we wouldn't be so obese
ya gotta love michelle obama
elegant african princess dreamboat warrior for the cause of good and right married to the wise chieftain extraordinaire the prayerful proud warrior ona white horse leading us up the mountain of tructh and prosperity for all
the inimitable barack baruch hussein obama obamarama the basket swooshing cigarette smoking cool dude of the big modern scene the new prototype for world rulers the slick dresser adn teh man with the lovely smiling (nice arms) (nice dress - wow) michelle at his side sayin in a bright whisper hey baby don't get distracted we have some business tonite...then thoughts of this big fluffy bathrobe.... i better stop
i'd play hoops with obama
only if the poetry discussion peters out and the lemonade is dry
onward diligent surreal missionaries
its definitely not worth the effort anymore
but keep trying
jh
For those of you who are sportive and combative don't forget our agonistic contest under the poetry of public transport. We keep getting new additions! we need yours! Just a few bits down. Contest closes this weekend!
i think we have until midnite on the 31st don't we?
or is it we vote on the 31st
now 'm confused
yada
jh
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