THE WELL-PLAYED GAME
Sports can do so much. It’s given me confidence, self-esteem, discipline, and motivation.
—MIA HAMM
Successful competitors want to win. Head-cases want to win at all costs.
—NANCY LOPEZ
The late Tom Landry, former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, said sports are a great teacher. I wholeheartedly agree. The world of sports is both a classroom and a laboratory. Through competition we learn from a young age the value of training, practice, and discipline, as well as the meaning of fair play. Sports teach us how to persevere. How to deal with adversity. How to become part of a single heartbeat that defines a team. Sports teach lessons in leadership, respect, and courage.
In sports, unlike other, more vague areas of life, there is a scoreboard, time limits, rules, and a level playing field. When Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball, former executive Branch Rickey reminded the future star that a baseball box score is democratic. It doesn’t tell how big you are, what church you attend, what color you are, or how your father voted in the last election. “It just tells what kind of baseball player you were on that particular day.”
Runner George A. Sheehan compared sports to the theater “… where sinner can turn saint and a common man can become an uncommon hero… . Sport is singularly able to give us peak experiences where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential.”
At the recreational level, sports are about doing your best and having fun. Unfortunately, coaches, parents, and even young athletes (who take their cues from adults) often forget the purpose of competition. They look at professional sports, which is a business—winning and losing translates into dollars and cents—and lose perspective. Youth coaches scream at kids and kick the dirt in anger, imitating big-league managers. They behave as if coaching Little League is their livelihood. They lose sight of what’s most important at this level—success is measured not in wins and losses but in the personal growth and development of young players.
Roger Staubach, the former Cowboys quarterback, said, “The only successful youth sports program is the one with the coach who will accept the losing along with the winning, last place in the league along with the first place, and still be able to congratulate his team for their efforts.” But how many coaches do that? The behavior of some coaches and moms and dads leaves you wondering who is more mature, the adults or their ten-year-olds.
In Alvin, Texas, Nolan Ryan’s hometown, a police sergeant who is an assistant coach on a Pony League team for thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds was ejected for arguing a close call at first base. He went home, put on his police uniform, returned to the ballpark, and waited for the game to end. When the umpire left in his car, the officer stopped him and gave him a warning ticket, saying the umpire had failed to signal. For this stunt, the officer was demoted and put on six-month probation. The umpire later said, “This was all real juvenile, over a baseball game.”
The policeman/coach should have been with me last summer at the Goodwill Baseball Series in Japan. In Asia respect for the game is very important. Players at the high school level bow to the umpire. They also bow to the field. It is a sacred time and place. Today we hear kids say “Don’t be disrespecting me.” If the game of baseball and other sports could talk they might be saying the same thing. Sadly, we have gotten away from civility and good sportsmanship.
A survey of five hundred adults in five Florida counties showed that 82 percent believe parents are too aggressive in youth sports. A North Carolina soccer mom was charged with hitting a teenage referee after a game, and a Cleveland father punched a fifteen-year-old boy on the soccer field because he said his son was being pushed around by the bigger player. In Massachusetts the fathers of two ten-year-old hockey players came to blows during a game. One man died from head injuries. In Jupiter, Florida, an athletic association required grown-ups to take a class in how to be good sports. Parents were instructed to watch a nineteen-minute video on the roles and responsibilities of a parent of a youth athlete. They also signed a code of ethics pledging to behave at sporting events.
Americans are obsessed with winning. In our society, if you don’t win then you’re a loser. Fans are unforgiving. In Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, sports fans are said to be so tough that when the local teams aren’t in town they go to the airport and boo bad landings.
When your favorite team wins, you feel energized. Even the food tastes better. TV announcer John Madden had a good line: “Winning is a great deodorant.” When I was in graduate school at Arizona State University, social psychology students counted the people wearing caps, sweatshirts, and jerseys bearing the ASU logo after football games. They found that the number of fans wearing the school colors was 30—40 percent higher after the Sun Devils won than after they lost. It is called the BIRG syndrome—Basking In Reflected Glory.
We need to redefine winning. Vince Lombardi said winning isn’t everything but making the effort to win is. A winner is one who walks away from competition knowing he has done his personal best regardless of placement, rank, or standing.
“Being the first to cross the finish line makes you a winner in only one phase of life,” said Ralph Boston, a former track and field Olympic gold medal winner. “It’s what you do after you cross the line that really counts.”
We also need to examine the mixed messages from professional sports. The National Hockey League claims it doesn’t condone violence but the assaults on some players on the ice would qualify as a crime if they occurred on the street. The National Football League fined former Arizona Cardinal safety Chuck Cecil $30,000 for two acts of “flagrant unnecessary roughness” involving the use of his helmet against the Washington Redskins. Yet each season NFL Films splices together a collection of greatest hits and puts them to music. Violence is glamorized.
What does the well-played game mean to you?
Do you believe it’s not cheating if you don’t get caught? Is inflicting injury a justifiable part of the game? Your philosophy about sports determines how you play the game.
Play hard. Play clean. Play fair. Play your best.