The
recent ugly thrust of sports news had me talking with my brother about
the last comparable sports-related outrage in the US, which was the
steroids scandal in baseball. We were talking about how quaint that
seemed compared to the rash of shocking violence from football players,
but how (so far anyway) the steroid scandal wrought a greater financial
consequence than the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson stories have for
football. To explain it, I said that it boiled down to the way the
sports are looked at. "Baseball is like a family film and football is
like a horror movie, " I texted, "the former is more likely to prompt
outrage because horrible things are supposed to happen in the latter."
That's
a flip way of putting it, but recent events have caused me to think
more about this theory I've kicked around for a while about what sports
have to say about America. Each of our three major team sports,
baseball, basketball, and football, reflect our nation's character in
distinct ways, like a dressing room mirror. Each reflection is equally
accurate, but each is incomplete. Every sport shows something different
about who we are, and if you want to push it a bit, one could say that
an American's favorite sport reflects exactly which sort of American he
or she is.
Baseball
represents our national philosophy and literature. The "nation of
immigrants" narrative fits comfortably within baseball as its appeal
stretches to the most countries, having significant followings in
Central and South America and across Asia, particularly in Japan and
South Korea. Baseball shoulders the responsibility of representing the
US as a progressive nation, as it was the first of our sports to
integrate. Further, it is the only sport whose figure of integration,
Jackie Robinson, is a national icon, or even a known name to the
American public.
Baseball
in its nature boils down that peculiar American worldview that combines
existentialism and triumphalism, the idea that proclaims, "We are alone
in a Godless universe; isn't that great?!?!" Our proud individualism
is best represented by this game that, as Bill Simmons (our nation's
contrarian sports journalism gatekeeper) put it, "is an individual sport
masquerading as a team sport." America's fascination with both triumph
and defeat is perfectly encapsulated by the at-bat. Can the pitcher
outmaneuver, out-scheme, or overpower the hitter with his repertoire of
throws and collection of fielders, or can the batter, armed only with a
finely crafted piece of wood, his physical gifts and his wits,
successfully anticipate the pitcher's plans and find success? The
outcome (especially a true outcome of a strikeout or a home run)
guarantees roughly half the viewers will be exhilarated and half
crushed. Still, as the unheralded giant of American letters Barry
Hannah once wrote from the perspective of a war veteran who has just
seen a close game end in disappointment for the home crowd, "Fools! I
thought. Love it! Love the loss as well as the gain. Go home and dig
it. Nobody was killed. We saw victory and defeat, and they were both
wonderful." Still, that fluffy position makes baseball the most
vulnerable to scandal and a lowering of estimation in the eyes of the
nation, as with the steroid case or the Black Sox scandal.
Basketball
represents those most American art forms, the ones that take a format
and challenge the artist to come up with something on the spot,
something new and daring. It represents jazz, hip-hop, and street art,
yes, and also comic books, Westerns, and improvisational acting. All
these forms are noted as being uniquely American not just because our
nation is their birthplace but because they are all structured around
the idea of continuously inventing something new. Like baseball,
basketball is a celebration of the individual, but not of his capacity
to defeat or be defeated. Rather, basketball illustrates the ability to
create.
Basketball
players, and specifically point guards, face many decisions of creation
every time they bring the ball up court. They can run or set a
deliberate pace. They can pass (i.e., collaborate), or not. They can
shoot from deep, or dribble into more heavily defended areas. This last
option is the most exciting, because it requires immediate, impulsive
decision making, improvisation, and gusto. A guard slicing into the
lane in basketball is like a rogue trumpet player or rapper making his
way onto a stage near the end of a refrain in a jazz club or a battle,
armed with knowledge of the tune and technique, but required in a matter
of moments to come up with something new, compelling, and hopefully
successful. Well-played defense in basketball is something to be
appreciated, but we watch because we want to know what the men with the
ball will come up with. On the flip side, just like with rock and roll
and hip-hop, mostly black artists give the audience indelible memories
of brilliance, but they ultimately serve to enrich often loathsome white
businessmen, as Donald Sterling and Bruce Levenson recently reminded
us.
And
then there's football. Football represents those other parts of
America, the ones that make me feel kind of icky, the parts that our
friends hate about us. Football is not about individuals. It's about
the unchangeable, hierarchical relationship between thinkers and
workers. There are those that plan and those that execute. Football,
our most popular sport, is a microcosm of the sort of hyper-stratified,
paternalistic capitalism that makes this country tragically
self-defeating and sometimes seemingly impossible.
Let's
get at that by looking at the constant, creeping militarism that
surrounds the sport. Football, as we all know, is extraordinarily
violent and its repulsive, Neanderthalesque concepts of toughness have
been flaunted for the public to see, first in the wake of the Jonathan
Martin episode, then in the context of all these domestic violence
cases. People often harp on the ludicrousness the parallels drawn by
analysts, fans, and athletes are between participants in a game and
participants in a war, and certainly the differences are many and
essential. But in truth there are legitimate similarities to be drawn.
Soldiers
aren't supposed to think. They are supposed to follow orders. In that
sense, when a football player says "I'm a soldier," he is correct;
someone holding a clipboard with better job security and better health
insurance has told him exactly what to do, and if he follows orders, he
will be rewarded. If he decides to change the plan and do something he
thinks will be beneficial to him or the team, he will most likely be
reprimanded, especially if things don't work out as the player/soldier
hoped.
This
extends to all players, even quarterbacks who are often mislabeled as
"Field Generals." Within the parallel military structure of a
professional football team, the generals are, fittingly, the general
managers, head coaches are colonels, coordinators are majors, and
position coaches are either captains or lieutenants depending on their
perceived importance on a given team. Players can never hope to be
anything more than NCO's. Peyton Manning is likely regarded as a
Sergeant Major, but the most decorated enlisted man still has to answer
to the lowliest officer. It is probably worth noting here that football
players are the lowest paid athletes of any of the three major sports,
despite the fact that football's profits run laps around both baseball
and basketball.
Granted,
in every sport the players answer to the coaches, but in football they
have the least autonomy over their actions. As compensation, they are
credited with the "warrior mentality," wherein the willingness to do
insane things that will cause permanent bodily harm because your
coach/commanding officer told you to is a virtue. Not only that, but
when left to their own devices, warriors are expected to be as
aggressive and destructive as possible to one another in order to
establish a hierarchy of toughness to be respected within the ranks of
the enlisted. All the while, soldiers and football players are
accumulating bodily damage that will last them the rest of their lives
even though they won't have health insurance from the institution to
which they've given absolute allegiance once their careers end, which is
on the day they are deemed no longer useful.
These
principles within football don't just reflect the military paradigm.
They reflect an American economy where CEO's get paid 204 times more
than their workers. They reflect an American political system where
many poor people have been convinced that they want Medicaid slashed and
lower taxes on the rich. They reflect a worldview that thinks bringing
up any of that is crass and constitutes unspeakable and un-American
principles like "socialism" and "class warfare."
And
yet, I am not completely immune to the sport or to what it represents.
I cheer the Saints every Sunday and marvel at Sean Payton's technical
innovation, just as a part of me cheered when a CIA drone strike killed
Al-Shebaab leader Ahmed Godane a few weeks ago. I know that the radical
form of capitalism that is on display in this country, while deeply
troubling, has also been a driving force of making us the most powerful
economic force in the world, a status of which I am proud in spite of
myself. It feels good to belong to something, it's great to imagine
we're tough, and it's comforting to think that things are the way they
are for a good reason. I get it. These things are a part of what we
are.
But
as we read the repulsive details of the actions of Ray Rice and Adrian
Peterson and Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald and Jonathan Dwyer, and as we
recoil at the callousness of Roger Goodell, we cannot pretend to be
shocked. This, unfortunately, has been here all the time, staring back
at us from the mirror.