Ideas and Society

I like sports as much as the next guy.

No, sorry, I was thinking of someone else. I actually don’t care much about sports. They didn’t change my life, except that sports as a kid turned me into an adult who doesn’t care much about sports.

I keep hearing all kinds of wonderful things that playing sports are supposed to do for kids.

Teaching them teamwork, for instance. But doesn’t playing an instrument in a band or orchestra teach the same thing? What about singing in a chorus? You can get a lot more than five or nine or eleven kids going at once, and nobody can hog the ball.

So I listened to Brian Kilmeade’s recording of his own books, It’s How You Play the Game and The Games Do Count with more than a little skepticism.

The concept is simple but rather nice: Celebrities from various walks of life tell why sports were important to them growing up. Kilmeade (a morning personality on the Fox New Channel) then adds some of his own commentary and we move on to the next celeb.

Most of the stories are interesting, some are moving, and only a few are tedious.

Kilmeade does a pretty good job of narrating the audiobook (except for his tendency to swallow the headings, so that the very things that should tell us where we are in the manuscript are almost inaudible sometimes).

The only real disaster is their attempt to include actual recordings of the real celebrity speaking. These are often so rough that you truly cannot understand what is being said in a moving car with road noise as a distraction.

Teamwork

But forget the performance. The real problem is: If you already love sports, then this book is simply telling you why you’re right, and your kids need sports too.

But there’s no “control group” here. Most of the lessons people say they learned from sports I also learned without sports. And the lessons that can only be taught by sports, apart from actual physical fitness, are often lessons I hope children never have to learn.

I actually did try sports as a kid, and I often enjoyed the games. I hit the ball sometimes, I reached the bases, I even scored now and then in softball. Sometimes I caught balls that came to me; sometimes my throws reached the person I was throwing to. It was fun.

Except that the game was so slow. And other players cared so much. They got mad when I flubbed – but how was I supposed to get better except by trying? The lesson I kept learning from softball was, if you don’t already have the skills when you get here, then you’ll be treated with contempt and derision by your “team.”

Yeah, teamwork. Ha. A system of establishing hierarchies based on your degree of skill in a meaningless pursuit.

Bruises

Basketball – loved it. Had a great time. Except that I thought that rule about “no contact” was real. It only took a few elbows to get me off the court. I don’t like hurting people and I don’t like getting hurt, and basketball was all about jabbing and hurting people – about cheating – and not getting caught.

If you complained about other people fouling you, you were a big baby and they despised you – but if you inadvertently fouled somebody, they triumphantly called you on it and got to take the ball out or get a free throw. A game of double standards and rules that were only for losers. I guess that was training for the real world.

Football – hated it. I don’t like bumping into people. I don’t like shoving and hurting people. I’m a nonviolent kind of guy and I always was.

So I listened to the stories these people were telling and I thought: Why did you even care? You weren’t good, so you worked and worked until you were better. Now you’re a pro. Great – so you were talented and people paid you. Good for you. Or you got better but not good enough, and you didn’t make the pros, but you’re still glad you played. Great!

Other Activities

But what does somebody learn from sports that can’t be learned from other activities?

You want teamwork? Put on a play. Join the band or orchestra or chorus.

You want experience working hard at something that many people can’t do well till you’re good enough to really master it? I suggest the clarinet or violin. Or poetry.

You want to learn good sportsmanship? Play Monopoly. Strategy? Chess. Eye-hand coordination? Videogames.

You want to spend your later life crippled by injuries you got in grade school or high school or college? Well, I guess sports beats all the other activities. Never saw a middle-aged man limping along who explained, “Yeah, bad knee – I played cello in high school.”

And the supreme irony? Hearing celebrities who have been divorced several times explaining how sports taught them commitment, to stick with something even when it’s hard. Um, yeah, I guess that lesson really stuck.

The Point

My point is: People who loved sports like to explain why everybody should have sports in their life. But I tried sports and what I found is what you find everywhere:

If you have some talent or a real love for it, you can get better by working hard. Maybe you can even make a livelihood at it.

If you have no talent or no interest then no matter how hard you work it just ain’t happenin’ so move on.

So where’s the book about people who practiced piano as a kid and they wanted to quit but their parents made them keep at it because “I don’t want you to be a quitter” and now they’re glad they learned to play the piano because even though they never became a professional at it, they mastered the skill and they can still take pleasure from sitting down at the keyboard and playing?

I stuck at singing till I got pretty good – not a professional, but I did OK. And I could keep singing till I was way older than any football players keep playing football.

I wrote silly lyrics to existing songs, and satirical poems that I would read out in school assemblies (not with permission – I just stood up and read them to whoever would listen, which pretty soon was everybody, because they were funny). Later that turned into song lyrics for musicals and I had some good lines in those songs. It’s part of the foundation of skills for what I do as a writer.
But nobody has written a book about writing silly poems as a child because there’s no Poets’ Little League or Pop Warner Poetry. It’s not organized.

That’s my point, really. I enjoyed sports till it got serious and organized. Pickup games were fun because nobody expected much, we were just playing. I don’t think Little League is playing. It’s work. It’s a job. Maybe you like your job, but you’re answerable to a boss and you can lose your job – your position – if you don’t compete and win.

Too much like the real world, too little like play. When I wrote silly poems, that was play. That was just flat-out fun. My parents didn’t get involved and nobody yelled at the ump.

Equal Emphasis

I’m glad that people who love sports have had a good time with them. But don’t ever, ever say, “This is a life lesson that you just can’t learn any other way.” There are no life lessons that you can’t learn any other way.

And a kid who’s lousy at sports but good at music or theatre or writing or videogames should get as much encouragement and honor as any athlete.

But he won’t.

And that’s what I hate about sports. That these physical games get treated, by kids and adults, as if they mattered more than activities that are just as valid, just as competitive, just as rewarding – and maybe more so.

There is no excuse for athletes being more respected and honored in school than scholars. But few indeed are the high schools that provide scholars and musicians and actors and poets with anything remotely like the honor given to athletes. And it’s not because athletics is harder than those other activities.

It may well be easier than, say, music composition or songwriting. Heaven knows, they manage to find enough professional football players to fill the NFL every season – but to find a songwriting team that can write an enduring Broadway score … well, that doesn’t even happen once a year.

If my kids were interested in sports, we tried to provide them opportunities and practice and encouragement. But we provided them equal encouragement for any other talent they pursued.

Kids whose parents would be delighted if they went out for a sport often find their parents are baffled, even angry if they go out for band or the school play. That’s where sports do their harm – because they drown out other talents, they teach athletes that they’re somehow better than other people, and non-athletes that they’re somehow worse. It’s not inherent in the sport itself, but it’s the way we use sports in our society.

For every kid whose life is saved by sports there’s a kid whose life is damaged by the way we handle sports in our culture.

Here’s the irony: I really needed athletic activity. And I liked it. If there had been some way I could noncompetitively use my body in vigorous activity without being exposed to ridicule for being bad at it (i.e., not as good as the best athletes my age), maybe I wouldn’t have spent so much of my life with a weak, overweight, unresponsive body.

But the pleasure I derived from athletic activities and games was quickly overshadowed by the ridicule and shame that were heaped on me and other “losers” who simply weren’t talented enough or didn’t care enough to take the games seriously and do well at them.

So I did what any rational person would do in such a situation. I got the heck out and went where I was appreciated.

This article was first published in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.