As this is about as much holiday as I have coming up I am allowing myself a slight break this week on the ol' sports-faith-muckraking beat. Rather than a full-fledged blog entry, I'm working on the blog in a different way.
While real-life events virtually never seem to leave me short of material, I also want to open up an exploration of relatively recent literature on sports, which may open up avenues of thought on the intersection I'm trying to patrol. Thanks to some newly-recieved gift cards I'm loading up the ol' e-reader (nook, not Kindle) with some future reading on the subject (in addition to one hardcover received for Christmas as well).
First I'll mention two books already underway:
Sexton, John, with Thomas Oliphant and Peter J. Schwartz. Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game. New York: Gotham, 2013.
Upon first seeing this title a few weeks ago I was rather suspicious. Baseball geek that I am, I'm not a big fan of the more mystical, mumbo-jumbo-ish literature on the sport. Still, I decided I needed to take a look. So far (I'm three "innings" in -- apparently there is a Constitutional stipulation that any book or movie or series on baseball must be divided into "innings" instead of chapters or scenes) the volume (which derives from a seminar the author, president and professor at NYU, teaches on this same theme) manages to steer clear of such indulgences, although barely at times. Decidedly interfaith in scope, the book includes anecdotes and illustrations from the history of baseball, both well-known and more personal in the author's experience, and interweaves meditations on such themes as faith and doubt, "conversion" (leaving one's team behind, or having it leave you behind), miracles, blessings and curses, and other -- not a few of those sound familiar enough to a baseball fan or a theologian, for sure. For now it seems to be a book that can be read as deeply or as simply as one chooses; it can be a full-fledged meditation on how baseball and its impulses might become a starting point for a more overtly metaphysical journey, or it can be rendered as a simple set of sermon illustrations if one so chooses. More, I'm sure, when the book is completed.
Fainaru-Wada, Mark, and Steve Fainaru. League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle For Truth. New York: Crown Archetype, 2013.
Accompanied by the PBS documentary of the same title and filling in many of the gaps necessarily left behind in the brief scope of one broadcast, this book (by the author of Game of Shadows, the most successful exposé of baseball's steroid era so far) lays waste to the NFL's claims of ignorance at the effect of concussions and day-to-day head trauma on its players. It also exposes the creepy turns of those emerging organizations looking to engage in research on the brains of former players, and doesn't flinch from describing in awful detail the degeneration of those lives affected by CTE. A hard read. I'm close to three-quarters done.
Still to come:
Pomerantz, Gary M. Their Life's Work: The Brotherhood of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, Then and Now. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013.
No, I'm not a Steelers fan, nor have I ever been. But the Steelers, particularly the 1970s dynasty, have the unfortunate distinction of being at the epicenter of the earthquake rattling the NFL, with figures like Mike Webster and Terry Long numbering among the first publicly identified figures to be associated with the CTE diagnosis in the game.
Benedict, Jeff, and Armen Keteyian. The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football. New York: Doubleday, 2013.
Purports to be a look at the ugliness of the college football business, and where all the money goes.
Jackson, Nate. Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile. New York: Harper, 2013.
From the point of view of a former player, not a star, one who took HGH in an attempt to prolong his career, but apparently had enough forethought to seek out ways to spare his brain any further punishment during his career, among other things.
So there's gotta be more, right? Football can't be the only sport needing consideration, can it? So, if you've got any suggestions for books that invite further consideration please send them on. I'm not interested in gloppy homilies about the glory of this or that sport, the first one on the list notwithstanding. The warts can't be avoided if I'm going to get anywhere in this mission to understand where the business of sports collides with the honest pursuit of faithful justice.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Ryan Freel and the sorting point
I have admitted, in this space and others, that I can't really watch football anymore. I just can't. I keep up, to some degree, and I know that my Ph.D. alma mater is in the alleged national championship game for college football's Football Bowl Subdivision, and that the NFL franchise in the nation's capital is having a rotten year, but actually sitting and watching a game is beyond me at this point, when all I can do is wonder how many years that hit took off a player's memory or cognitive function.
I have also admitted, in this space and others, that I'm a big baseball fan.
Therefore, specifically because I know my own biases, I am compelled to devote this column to the first confirmed case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a Major League Baseball player.
Ryan Freel was a utility player. He played for several teams, the Cincinnati Reds for six years and spent shorter terms with the Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs, and Kansas City Royals. According to his own account, he suffered "nine or ten" concussions across the course of his career, from being hit in the head by pitches or other thrown balls, from collisions with opponents, teammates, bases, walls, and all sorts of other things. A sentence from the ESPN.com report linked above offers a pretty good description:
Freel showed no fear as he ran into walls, hurtled into the seats and crashed into other players trying to make catches. His jarring, diving grabs often made the highlight reels, and he was praised by those he played with and against for always having a dirt-stained uniform."
He was the prototypical "scrappy" player, one who didn't necessarily have the natural gifts of other players but hustled relentlessly and played with reckless abandon, without regard for his own body -- a phrase which rings eerily prescient now, after Freel committed suicide one year ago Sunday (December 22).
Like so many football players after their careers ended, Freel's life after baseball was increasingly consumed, apparently, with symptoms like headaches, loss of attention or short-term memory, and swings from depression to explosive emotion, not to mention a family increasingly wondering what had happened to their son, husband, father.
Freel is somewhat of an atypical case for baseball. While players hit in the head by pitched balls can and do suffer concussions -- Justin Morneau (now of the Colorado Rockies), Brian Roberts (just signed by the New York Yankees after years with the Orioles) and Corey Koskie (once of the Minnesota Twins, Toronto Blue Jays, and Milwaukee Brewers) are examples of players whose careers were derailed by concussion-related symptoms -- most of baseball's concussion-sufferers have been catchers. Possibly the most well-known example is Mike Matheny, who actually had to retire from baseball due to ongoing symptoms. Matheny may also offer some hope; he is now manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, taking that job five years after his retirement, and having pretty respectable success in it (the Cards made it to the World Series this year, in case you've forgotten). Possibly the highest-profile catcher to see his career affected by concussion symptoms is Joe Mauer, the All-Star catcher of the Minnesota Twins, who is moving to first base next season (the position occupied by Justin Morneau, when health allowed, until he was traded this past season) in hopes of avoiding any more concussions.
Catchers are easily put in the most situations that might lead to concussions and their complications. In addition to the risks any batter faces of taking a pitch to the head (rare, and frowned upon), catchers also face particular risks associated with the position they play. When a fastball upwards of 90 mph (sometimes even 100 mph or more) tips just slightly off the bat of a major-league hitter, it is physically impossible for a catcher to react quickly enough to keep the ball from slamming into his face mask or helmet, if that's where it's headed. More rarely, the end of a hitter's swing just might slam the bat into the catcher's helmet. These are not intentional; they happen nonetheless.
More dubious is the home-plate collision. If a runner happens to be approaching home plate at about the same time a throw is reaching the catcher in an attempt to get that runner out, a collision is a frequent result. Sometimes a catcher is attempting to block the runner from the plate even though the ball hasn't arrived yet, sometimes the runner is attempting to knock the ball loose from the catcher's mitt or hand. Either way, the result is typically the most violent play in baseball (though a few accidental collisions between fielders come close at times). All the padding in the world can't necessarily stop the catcher from sustaining a head injury in that situation.
Of course, Major League Baseball, like its companion league the NFL, has taken a head-in-sand approach to the issue, moving to deny any responsibility for such injuries and claim that the problem is a distinctly minor . . . .
Wait, what? Actually (and amazingly), MLB has done quite the opposite.
Even before the results of the tests on Ryan Freel's brain were announced, MLB had already taken steps to cut out one of the major contributors to baseball head injury; the elimination of those home-plate collisions. Already MLB had instituted a seven-day disabled list specifically for head injuries -- an opportunity for a player to recover without missing more time than might be necessary if the problem is diagnosed quickly and accurately.
This is frankly mind-blowing. The same league that turned a blind eye to drug scandals in the 1980s and performance-enhancing drug use in the 1990s is actually being shockingly proactive. MLB and its owners can be profoundly corrupt, whether it comes in the form of holding municipalities up for glossy new stadiums or ignoring some of the horrifying practices involved in the development and signing of baseball players from the Caribbean region. In this case, though, there seems to be genuine sorrow when a player like Matheny has to retire, a sorrow which in this case seems to be prompting genuine and surprising willingness to address the problem, even if the rules of the game are affected.
One of my least favorite parables in the Gospels is the so-called parable of the sheep and the goats, Matthew 25:31-46. It is probably familiar to most folks with much church experience at all; the nations are gathered before the Son of Man, who separates them as a shepherd separates sheep from goats, sheep to the right and goats to the left. The Son of Man then praises those on the right (who are now not sheep but "the righteous") for their responses to him when he was in need; feeding the hungry, clothing those with no clothes, visiting the sick or imprisoned. Those on the left, the "accursed," are upbraided and even cast away, for exactly their failure to do those things the righteous did. In each case, the rationale is offered that what you did to "the least of these," you did to Christ.
To me, what has lately jumped out at me about this passage (a troublesome one to me and others) is that, even as a sorting is portrayed at the beginning of the story, the "righteous" and the "accursed" had actually "sorted" themselves well before coming before Christ, by their actions towards those they encountered in need. They fed hungry people or didn't. How we respond to needs, to crises, to harms, to injustices in the world matters. Those responses reveal us. Further, they shape us -- ignoring one injustice or one need makes it easier to ignore the next one.
Grantland writer Brian Phillips penned a column this week pointing towards the particular quality of the sporting year 2013 as one in which the fan's increasing and unavoidable awareness of the corruptions of sports (the CTE horrors of the NFL being only one of many addressed) somehow failed to intersect or connect with the sports watching experience. Baseball had a frankly amazing season, even as the Biogenesis scandal unfolded; the NFL continues to thrive even as the increasing tide of CTE stories vies with murder, bullying, and who knows what else conspire to stain the sport; worldwide soccer is as huge as ever even as it becomes clear that next year's World Cup will take place in a deeply dysfunctional (and yes, fatal) atmosphere. Somehow fans simply keep the two separate. Fans do care, Phillips claims, about CTE and match-fixing and murders and suicides and murder-suicides, but kept watching as if unaffected.
To which I have to ask, how long? How long can the two be held apart from one another? How long can the two go on, coexisting, before the fan sorts himself or herself in among the sheep or goats? Another scripture, Matthew 6:24, points out that serving two masters doesn't work out so well. You end up serving one or the other.
Eventually a fan will serve one master or another; his or her attentions (and dollars, the stuff that actually hits sporting leagues or players where it hurts) will turn away from unrepentant exploitation in sports towards other pursuits, or he or she will keep on watching, less and less fazed by the mounting toll in bodies or brains or children in poverty in the shadow of flashy new stadiums.
I can't help but wonder if we -- not just the NFL or MLB or FIFA or whatever league you care to name, but we -- the people who put down the money to buy tickets or subscribe to cable to get ESPN in its various guises, or buy the merchandise or devote eight Sundays or six or seven Saturdays to tailgating, who buy product X because King James endorses it instead of product Y endorsed by Kobe Bryant, we -- are at a sorting point, slowly aligning ourselves with the sheep or the goats when it comes to the excesses and the abuses that are intricately bound up in the sports-fan experience.
This may require people of faith to make a leap many are not willing to make: to realize that one who may be an exploiter in one circumstance may well be the exploited in another. For example: male athletes have, to put it mildly, a reputation as being sexually active, taking on groupies for pleasure (witness the claims that the late Wilt Chamberlain bedded at least 2,000 women in his lifetime). An athlete who buys a prostitute? Clearly not paying attention to the women waiting in the hotel lobby. By no means does every athlete do so, but many do. When you're on the road, have plenty of money to blow, and plenty of women to enjoy, it's easy to do both.
Exploitative behavior? Sure. But does that make the athlete any less the exploited party when, after years of his league telling him concussions were no big deal, his brain ends up on an examining table in Boston or Pittsburgh? I don't think so. What are those millions of dollars (if they haven't been squandered by then) worth in that case?
Athletes are at a sorting point, too. Are NFL or NCAA players going to stand by and continue to participate in their own brain damage? Just how much are major-league baseball players willing to pump themselves full of chemicals in pursuit of a competitive advantage?
The tricky part is, one of the options requires an active choice. You have to choose to walk away from your sporting passions, or at least to scream like Howard Beale in Network. If you don't, you eventually go numb. Of course, you can choose to let the corruptions pass unobserved, and go numb voluntarily.
Either way, you will go numb, eventually, unless you choose not to.
I have also admitted, in this space and others, that I'm a big baseball fan.
Therefore, specifically because I know my own biases, I am compelled to devote this column to the first confirmed case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a Major League Baseball player.
Ryan Freel was a utility player. He played for several teams, the Cincinnati Reds for six years and spent shorter terms with the Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs, and Kansas City Royals. According to his own account, he suffered "nine or ten" concussions across the course of his career, from being hit in the head by pitches or other thrown balls, from collisions with opponents, teammates, bases, walls, and all sorts of other things. A sentence from the ESPN.com report linked above offers a pretty good description:
Freel showed no fear as he ran into walls, hurtled into the seats and crashed into other players trying to make catches. His jarring, diving grabs often made the highlight reels, and he was praised by those he played with and against for always having a dirt-stained uniform."
He was the prototypical "scrappy" player, one who didn't necessarily have the natural gifts of other players but hustled relentlessly and played with reckless abandon, without regard for his own body -- a phrase which rings eerily prescient now, after Freel committed suicide one year ago Sunday (December 22).
Like so many football players after their careers ended, Freel's life after baseball was increasingly consumed, apparently, with symptoms like headaches, loss of attention or short-term memory, and swings from depression to explosive emotion, not to mention a family increasingly wondering what had happened to their son, husband, father.
Freel is somewhat of an atypical case for baseball. While players hit in the head by pitched balls can and do suffer concussions -- Justin Morneau (now of the Colorado Rockies), Brian Roberts (just signed by the New York Yankees after years with the Orioles) and Corey Koskie (once of the Minnesota Twins, Toronto Blue Jays, and Milwaukee Brewers) are examples of players whose careers were derailed by concussion-related symptoms -- most of baseball's concussion-sufferers have been catchers. Possibly the most well-known example is Mike Matheny, who actually had to retire from baseball due to ongoing symptoms. Matheny may also offer some hope; he is now manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, taking that job five years after his retirement, and having pretty respectable success in it (the Cards made it to the World Series this year, in case you've forgotten). Possibly the highest-profile catcher to see his career affected by concussion symptoms is Joe Mauer, the All-Star catcher of the Minnesota Twins, who is moving to first base next season (the position occupied by Justin Morneau, when health allowed, until he was traded this past season) in hopes of avoiding any more concussions.
Catchers are easily put in the most situations that might lead to concussions and their complications. In addition to the risks any batter faces of taking a pitch to the head (rare, and frowned upon), catchers also face particular risks associated with the position they play. When a fastball upwards of 90 mph (sometimes even 100 mph or more) tips just slightly off the bat of a major-league hitter, it is physically impossible for a catcher to react quickly enough to keep the ball from slamming into his face mask or helmet, if that's where it's headed. More rarely, the end of a hitter's swing just might slam the bat into the catcher's helmet. These are not intentional; they happen nonetheless.
More dubious is the home-plate collision. If a runner happens to be approaching home plate at about the same time a throw is reaching the catcher in an attempt to get that runner out, a collision is a frequent result. Sometimes a catcher is attempting to block the runner from the plate even though the ball hasn't arrived yet, sometimes the runner is attempting to knock the ball loose from the catcher's mitt or hand. Either way, the result is typically the most violent play in baseball (though a few accidental collisions between fielders come close at times). All the padding in the world can't necessarily stop the catcher from sustaining a head injury in that situation.
Of course, Major League Baseball, like its companion league the NFL, has taken a head-in-sand approach to the issue, moving to deny any responsibility for such injuries and claim that the problem is a distinctly minor . . . .
Wait, what? Actually (and amazingly), MLB has done quite the opposite.
Even before the results of the tests on Ryan Freel's brain were announced, MLB had already taken steps to cut out one of the major contributors to baseball head injury; the elimination of those home-plate collisions. Already MLB had instituted a seven-day disabled list specifically for head injuries -- an opportunity for a player to recover without missing more time than might be necessary if the problem is diagnosed quickly and accurately.
This is frankly mind-blowing. The same league that turned a blind eye to drug scandals in the 1980s and performance-enhancing drug use in the 1990s is actually being shockingly proactive. MLB and its owners can be profoundly corrupt, whether it comes in the form of holding municipalities up for glossy new stadiums or ignoring some of the horrifying practices involved in the development and signing of baseball players from the Caribbean region. In this case, though, there seems to be genuine sorrow when a player like Matheny has to retire, a sorrow which in this case seems to be prompting genuine and surprising willingness to address the problem, even if the rules of the game are affected.
One of my least favorite parables in the Gospels is the so-called parable of the sheep and the goats, Matthew 25:31-46. It is probably familiar to most folks with much church experience at all; the nations are gathered before the Son of Man, who separates them as a shepherd separates sheep from goats, sheep to the right and goats to the left. The Son of Man then praises those on the right (who are now not sheep but "the righteous") for their responses to him when he was in need; feeding the hungry, clothing those with no clothes, visiting the sick or imprisoned. Those on the left, the "accursed," are upbraided and even cast away, for exactly their failure to do those things the righteous did. In each case, the rationale is offered that what you did to "the least of these," you did to Christ.
To me, what has lately jumped out at me about this passage (a troublesome one to me and others) is that, even as a sorting is portrayed at the beginning of the story, the "righteous" and the "accursed" had actually "sorted" themselves well before coming before Christ, by their actions towards those they encountered in need. They fed hungry people or didn't. How we respond to needs, to crises, to harms, to injustices in the world matters. Those responses reveal us. Further, they shape us -- ignoring one injustice or one need makes it easier to ignore the next one.
Grantland writer Brian Phillips penned a column this week pointing towards the particular quality of the sporting year 2013 as one in which the fan's increasing and unavoidable awareness of the corruptions of sports (the CTE horrors of the NFL being only one of many addressed) somehow failed to intersect or connect with the sports watching experience. Baseball had a frankly amazing season, even as the Biogenesis scandal unfolded; the NFL continues to thrive even as the increasing tide of CTE stories vies with murder, bullying, and who knows what else conspire to stain the sport; worldwide soccer is as huge as ever even as it becomes clear that next year's World Cup will take place in a deeply dysfunctional (and yes, fatal) atmosphere. Somehow fans simply keep the two separate. Fans do care, Phillips claims, about CTE and match-fixing and murders and suicides and murder-suicides, but kept watching as if unaffected.
To which I have to ask, how long? How long can the two be held apart from one another? How long can the two go on, coexisting, before the fan sorts himself or herself in among the sheep or goats? Another scripture, Matthew 6:24, points out that serving two masters doesn't work out so well. You end up serving one or the other.
Eventually a fan will serve one master or another; his or her attentions (and dollars, the stuff that actually hits sporting leagues or players where it hurts) will turn away from unrepentant exploitation in sports towards other pursuits, or he or she will keep on watching, less and less fazed by the mounting toll in bodies or brains or children in poverty in the shadow of flashy new stadiums.
I can't help but wonder if we -- not just the NFL or MLB or FIFA or whatever league you care to name, but we -- the people who put down the money to buy tickets or subscribe to cable to get ESPN in its various guises, or buy the merchandise or devote eight Sundays or six or seven Saturdays to tailgating, who buy product X because King James endorses it instead of product Y endorsed by Kobe Bryant, we -- are at a sorting point, slowly aligning ourselves with the sheep or the goats when it comes to the excesses and the abuses that are intricately bound up in the sports-fan experience.
This may require people of faith to make a leap many are not willing to make: to realize that one who may be an exploiter in one circumstance may well be the exploited in another. For example: male athletes have, to put it mildly, a reputation as being sexually active, taking on groupies for pleasure (witness the claims that the late Wilt Chamberlain bedded at least 2,000 women in his lifetime). An athlete who buys a prostitute? Clearly not paying attention to the women waiting in the hotel lobby. By no means does every athlete do so, but many do. When you're on the road, have plenty of money to blow, and plenty of women to enjoy, it's easy to do both.
Exploitative behavior? Sure. But does that make the athlete any less the exploited party when, after years of his league telling him concussions were no big deal, his brain ends up on an examining table in Boston or Pittsburgh? I don't think so. What are those millions of dollars (if they haven't been squandered by then) worth in that case?
Athletes are at a sorting point, too. Are NFL or NCAA players going to stand by and continue to participate in their own brain damage? Just how much are major-league baseball players willing to pump themselves full of chemicals in pursuit of a competitive advantage?
The tricky part is, one of the options requires an active choice. You have to choose to walk away from your sporting passions, or at least to scream like Howard Beale in Network. If you don't, you eventually go numb. Of course, you can choose to let the corruptions pass unobserved, and go numb voluntarily.
Either way, you will go numb, eventually, unless you choose not to.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Way more important than what?
A headlines roundup/linkfest in rant form:
/rant begins/
Back in the first entry on this blog I made reference to the saying back where I come from, "Football ain't a religion. It's way more important than that," from which this blog takes its name.
Of late I find myself wondering about sports, "Way more important than what?"
The headlines have asked the question: more important than having a functional mind and body when your playing days are over?
More important than getting through high school?
More important than getting out of a game alive, even if you're not playing?
More important than having a functional country?
More important than being yourself?
More important than not being jerks to a people who've already experienced plenty of jerkishness?
More important than basic functional decency to loyal (and successful) people?
More important than basically getting legal justice right? (Don't assume I'm on "your side" here. I think all sides have royally f***ed this one up, pun intended.)
More important than, basically, life?
/rant ends/
/for now/
/rant begins/
Back in the first entry on this blog I made reference to the saying back where I come from, "Football ain't a religion. It's way more important than that," from which this blog takes its name.
Of late I find myself wondering about sports, "Way more important than what?"
The headlines have asked the question: more important than having a functional mind and body when your playing days are over?
More important than getting through high school?
More important than getting out of a game alive, even if you're not playing?
More important than having a functional country?
More important than being yourself?
More important than not being jerks to a people who've already experienced plenty of jerkishness?
More important than basic functional decency to loyal (and successful) people?
More important than basically getting legal justice right? (Don't assume I'm on "your side" here. I think all sides have royally f***ed this one up, pun intended.)
More important than, basically, life?
/rant ends/
/for now/
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Mandela, fan hope, and desperate churches
Upon the death of Nelson Mandela earlier this week it was almost impossible to get a word in edgewise in social media, amidst the tweets and Facebook statuses of quotation or tribute. This is all well and good and appropriate.
My mind, not surprisingly, went to one of the ways in which Mandela demonstrated an unusually cagey and creative understanding of how to bring people together. There are two different movies -- a documentary, The 16th Man, and a more Hollywood effort, Invictus (with Morgan Freeman as Mandela, also starring Matt Damon), which recount the story of how Mandela, relatively new leader of a still-fractious and uneven South Africa post-apartheid, made a concerted and emphatic display of public support for South Africa's white rugby team as a means of bridging the gap between himself and white South Africans, who ranged from fearful to suspicious to angry, and of nudging black South Africans away from their own suspicions. One can quibble about the long-term effectiveness of the maneuver, but in the moment it was an inspired and savvy move.
To me it seems that Mandela (who was apparently a boxer in his younger days) grasped something about the effect of sports and sports fandom that has, at times, the power to be good. By no means does it always work out that way, but there are times that a sporting event has (at least in the short term) transformative and unifying powers that the church only wishes it could experience.
Whatever else may be true about a sporting event, it's unpredictable. You might think that just because the Yankees are perennial powers and, say, the Royals are not, the Yankees should always beat the Royals; still, on any given day, the Royals might just beat the Yankees. This glimmer of hope, no matter how unlikely the upset or how little it might matter in the grand scheme of life (or even in the grand scheme of a sporting season), makes a game an opportunity for a particular kind of bonding in hopes of that unexpected outcome, that small shining moment.
That bonding can cut across lines that would prove uncrossable outside the stadium (including, quite often, in the church). The flaming lib and the Tea Partier unite over that unbelievable double play or no-look pass and thunderous dunk, without worrying about political affiliations. It's temporary, to be sure, but it's not any less striking for that. If it happens enough times, maybe it turns out to be less temporary after all.
No, it doesn't always turn out well. Fans can turn ugly, seemingly at the drop of a hat. Maybe the ultimate manifestation of this (aside from online flaming done under the cowardly cover of anonymity) is the post-championship riot. Bizarrely, this is often the work of the winning team's fans. I don't understand where this comes from; is it a consequence of forgetting that you didn't do a damn thing to help your team win? Or something like that cowardice of anonymity, giving the weak-minded permission to behave like an ass because they're part of a crowd?
Still, I have to acknowledge that I've felt that strange passion, that sweep of hopefulness and despair and then unexpected hope again, even if it was a meaningless late-season game for a last-place team. The unexpected connection has power, no matter how small it may be. It has that momentary effect of exaltation, of something like joy; and if it urges the fan on towards the experience of real joy, so much the better. Even today, as the only person in the whole sports bar watching and trying to will Sporting Kansas City to the MLS Cup win (and they did win), I could see the sellout crowd at Sporting Park (some of whom would probably terrify me in real life) and take on some form of shared passion.
Mandela picked up on something, from who knows where, and found a way to break down a little bit of mistrust in a deeply divided and mistrustful nation. Of course, it helps that the rugby team did cooperate by winning the championship. One has to suspect, though, that Mandela might have felt he didn't have a whole lot else to work with at the time, and made a play with what he had available.
What, then, is the church's excuse?
Too often, it seems, the church teeters towards resembling the more hopeless or even destructive effects associated with fandom. We get tribal, sometimes destructively so. We look at declining attendance numbers and disappearing societal status and plunge ourselves (active verb) into despair. Despite being the faith tradition that sings "my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus's blood and righteousness," we tend to act as if our hope is built on something less, something far, far less.
This leads, circling back around to sports, to some odd intersections between faith groups and games. One Christian tradition will, in a bizarre way, somehow cling to the hope that because our quarterback is better, our church style must be better. Or we transfer our religion-like passions onto the playing field (remember where this blog gets its title: "football isn't a religion, it's way more important than that"). Feats of physical strength take the place of spiritual humility and wisdom (does anybody else remember the "Power Team"?). More effort is put into displays of religious zeal than in practice of that zeal. Writing as the second week of Advent approaches, I can't help but see some parallel in the impatience of many churches or Christians with the waiting and anticipation implicit in that liturgical season and the horribly impatient stance of so many fans for their team (Cubs fans excluded, I guess). Win. Now. Or Else.
I have to suspect that Mandela was not so naive as to think a rugby championship was going to "heal" South Africa, that there was much hard and painful work left to do (and still is even at his passing). The church isn't going to be reformed (in the manner of Calvin's reformata et semper reformanda) by quick fixes or feats of strength, any more than the Seattle Mariners are going to win the World Series just because they signed away the Yankees' second baseman. The work is hard, but we have a hope that is so much more than any earthly hope. If a mere rugby team could work for Nelson Mandela, why in the world are we in the church so poor at acting like we have an even greater hope?
My mind, not surprisingly, went to one of the ways in which Mandela demonstrated an unusually cagey and creative understanding of how to bring people together. There are two different movies -- a documentary, The 16th Man, and a more Hollywood effort, Invictus (with Morgan Freeman as Mandela, also starring Matt Damon), which recount the story of how Mandela, relatively new leader of a still-fractious and uneven South Africa post-apartheid, made a concerted and emphatic display of public support for South Africa's white rugby team as a means of bridging the gap between himself and white South Africans, who ranged from fearful to suspicious to angry, and of nudging black South Africans away from their own suspicions. One can quibble about the long-term effectiveness of the maneuver, but in the moment it was an inspired and savvy move.
To me it seems that Mandela (who was apparently a boxer in his younger days) grasped something about the effect of sports and sports fandom that has, at times, the power to be good. By no means does it always work out that way, but there are times that a sporting event has (at least in the short term) transformative and unifying powers that the church only wishes it could experience.
Whatever else may be true about a sporting event, it's unpredictable. You might think that just because the Yankees are perennial powers and, say, the Royals are not, the Yankees should always beat the Royals; still, on any given day, the Royals might just beat the Yankees. This glimmer of hope, no matter how unlikely the upset or how little it might matter in the grand scheme of life (or even in the grand scheme of a sporting season), makes a game an opportunity for a particular kind of bonding in hopes of that unexpected outcome, that small shining moment.
That bonding can cut across lines that would prove uncrossable outside the stadium (including, quite often, in the church). The flaming lib and the Tea Partier unite over that unbelievable double play or no-look pass and thunderous dunk, without worrying about political affiliations. It's temporary, to be sure, but it's not any less striking for that. If it happens enough times, maybe it turns out to be less temporary after all.
No, it doesn't always turn out well. Fans can turn ugly, seemingly at the drop of a hat. Maybe the ultimate manifestation of this (aside from online flaming done under the cowardly cover of anonymity) is the post-championship riot. Bizarrely, this is often the work of the winning team's fans. I don't understand where this comes from; is it a consequence of forgetting that you didn't do a damn thing to help your team win? Or something like that cowardice of anonymity, giving the weak-minded permission to behave like an ass because they're part of a crowd?
Still, I have to acknowledge that I've felt that strange passion, that sweep of hopefulness and despair and then unexpected hope again, even if it was a meaningless late-season game for a last-place team. The unexpected connection has power, no matter how small it may be. It has that momentary effect of exaltation, of something like joy; and if it urges the fan on towards the experience of real joy, so much the better. Even today, as the only person in the whole sports bar watching and trying to will Sporting Kansas City to the MLS Cup win (and they did win), I could see the sellout crowd at Sporting Park (some of whom would probably terrify me in real life) and take on some form of shared passion.
Mandela picked up on something, from who knows where, and found a way to break down a little bit of mistrust in a deeply divided and mistrustful nation. Of course, it helps that the rugby team did cooperate by winning the championship. One has to suspect, though, that Mandela might have felt he didn't have a whole lot else to work with at the time, and made a play with what he had available.
What, then, is the church's excuse?
Too often, it seems, the church teeters towards resembling the more hopeless or even destructive effects associated with fandom. We get tribal, sometimes destructively so. We look at declining attendance numbers and disappearing societal status and plunge ourselves (active verb) into despair. Despite being the faith tradition that sings "my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus's blood and righteousness," we tend to act as if our hope is built on something less, something far, far less.
This leads, circling back around to sports, to some odd intersections between faith groups and games. One Christian tradition will, in a bizarre way, somehow cling to the hope that because our quarterback is better, our church style must be better. Or we transfer our religion-like passions onto the playing field (remember where this blog gets its title: "football isn't a religion, it's way more important than that"). Feats of physical strength take the place of spiritual humility and wisdom (does anybody else remember the "Power Team"?). More effort is put into displays of religious zeal than in practice of that zeal. Writing as the second week of Advent approaches, I can't help but see some parallel in the impatience of many churches or Christians with the waiting and anticipation implicit in that liturgical season and the horribly impatient stance of so many fans for their team (Cubs fans excluded, I guess). Win. Now. Or Else.
I have to suspect that Mandela was not so naive as to think a rugby championship was going to "heal" South Africa, that there was much hard and painful work left to do (and still is even at his passing). The church isn't going to be reformed (in the manner of Calvin's reformata et semper reformanda) by quick fixes or feats of strength, any more than the Seattle Mariners are going to win the World Series just because they signed away the Yankees' second baseman. The work is hard, but we have a hope that is so much more than any earthly hope. If a mere rugby team could work for Nelson Mandela, why in the world are we in the church so poor at acting like we have an even greater hope?
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