Many years ago I read the novel Jack Gance by Ward Just. It tells the story of a young man who goes to Washington, DC with idealism and a desire to make change, but the political machine slowly wears him down. He eventually gets sucked in by that machine that rolls over anyone who tries to push it off its course. If there is a lesson in that book, it is that you either conform or you get out.
Or the machine crushes you.
I've never been good at conforming. It was one of the reasons I stopped attending Catholic church in my twenties; I would attend out of a sense of obedience/shame and would leave with a massive anger-induced headache every time. My mental health won out, and I got out.
I couldn't change the church, so I left. (Eventually, I found a church that allows me to be me where I can attend without feeling like my head is going to explode in rage.)
Last night, after a conversation with D, it occurred to me that I have been wrong about this whole sports thing ever since N was in middle school.
I've written once on this blog about my failed sports "career" as a kid, but it wasn't even failed. It never began. What I realized even then was that sports was focused on results, on winning. People were a means to an end, not an end in themselves. That is what sports is; to try to change it would be like trying to change the spots on a leopard.
But for me, people have always been more important than winning.
In a real sense, sports rejected me, and so I rejected sports back. Some people react differently, I suppose. They continue to love a game that didn't love them. They continue to want to be part of the team. There is an entire field of sports psychology, and I can't even pretend to know all the iterations of people's feelings about sports, winning, losing, self-esteem, etc. But I imagine that for every kid for whom sports gave a leg up, there are as many or more for whom sports let down and so they found something else that they feel a meaningful part of.
I can find parallels between why I left the church and why I rejected sports: both were an exclusive club. If you didn't meet certain requirements or qualifications, you were out. Or you might be part of the team, but you weren't really part of the team.
And, of course, there is a need for requirements. I want there to be requirements for lawyers and doctors and mechanics. I don't want some idiot willy-nilly sawing on my brain if I have an aneurysm.
But religion and sports seem different to me with sports being far below religion in importance. The state of my conscience is way, way, WAY more important that tossing a ball around.
[I mean, when I really think about it, there is a whole lot of angst/drama/anger/money spent over tossing a ball, and it seems like something Samuel Beckett should have written a play about. But he stuck with religion, which is also often absurd.]
Eventually I found a church that has an open-table. This doesn't exist in sports at least not that I have seen or found yet. The goal is, above all else, winning.
And my conversation with D last night made me recognize that I have been wanting sports and asking sports and demanding that sports be something it is not, and I'm in the wrong for that.
My view about sports seems the exact opposite of what sports enthusiasts think. I see it as exclusive and full of drama and half-truths and a whole lot of mind-fuckery. I cannot reconcile "We are a team; let's work together" with "We want to win and will isolate/ignore you in order to do that." Those same ideas are at work in sports, and they seem, to me at least, to be irreconcilable.
Perhaps the problem is in the openness of joining. "Come join the team" is often followed by "But we're only going to play the same people over and over again."
For some people who love the sport, I guess that is good enough.
For me, it has never been good enough. (And gives me a deeper appreciation of women who have said "F you" to the Catholic church's refusal to allow women to become priests.) If you are good enough to be on the team, you are good enough to play. And if you're not good enough to play, coaches should have the guts to cut people, even if it makes the players sad (as it did me when I was a kid). They are going to be sad and/or angry anyway, but especially if they are being told "We love you; we're a team" but then actions are different.
[As much as I felt rejected when I didn't make the A, B, or C basketball teams as a 10-year-old, it wasn't as bad as what I would have experienced if I'd made the team but was too shitty to actually put on the field/court.]
I truly try to understand sports dynamics, but after seven years of watching my kid play a sport (and I only watch when my kid is actually on the field), I have gotten nowhere.
Another thing I suppose I've always known about sports but never specifically focused on is that it is a power imbalance that sometimes makes people do things they wouldn't otherwise do. I understand now how Larry Nasser was able to abuse girls. Parents may have spoken amongst themselves, may have wondered or questioned or felt uncomfortable or been downright angry. But to fight and fight and fight means their child loses something valuable to them. Their child would lose an opportunity, and their child would be stuck in a quagmire of uncomfortable. I have seen this dynamic play out in real life so I get it now.
Parents may be angry as hell and speaking loudly and proudly amongst each other but quiet as mice when the coach is around. I both love and hate that I cannot just be silent, that I can't just let it go, but what I really hate is that other parents allow me to speak out without speaking up with me. I understand why they don't, but I hate it anyway.
Even parents whose child plays a lot put up with stuff they despise so their child will continue playing a lot.
I'm fairly sure someone who loves sports would read this and call it a major case of sour grapes, and they aren't wrong. But if I were to care about sports at all, I would care for the underdog most. I would care for the kids who aren't the all-stars but who just enjoy playing. (And yes, this is what my kid is like, and so I know I have that bias, but I would have that bias anyway based on who I've been my entire life.)
How much shrieking and gnashing of teeth would occur if coaches decided to bench their all-stars and only play the other kids? How quickly would those same parents who think everything is great when their kid plays a lot suddenly find themselves angry and frustrated? When we're in a privileged position, we can quickly call someone else's frustrations sour grapes. "They're just angry because their kid isn't playing much," and they are right. If they put those shoes on their own feet, they would feel the same.
They just don't have to wear those shoes.
As a rule, politics doesn't change and religion doesn't change and sports don't change. The power imbalance won't allow it. And if it happens, it takes many, many, many people working together.
Somewhere along the line, I forgot that I cannot change the animal that is sports. It can bend me if I allow it, but I cannot bend it.
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