The Sports Dilemma

The Olympics are back, and they’re worse than ever. Combined with the debut of On The Mark and this could be the worst week in the history of television.  Strong words, surely, but if there’s anyone fit to make a statement like that, I’m the man because I’ve seen every television show ever broadcast.   

I watched these Olympics, too.  And like millions of otherwise sane Americans, I stared fascinated as an 80 pound 18 year old gymnast with torn ligaments in her ankle hurled herself down the vaulting runway at speeds I could only dream about even when I was that small.  Like every Little-League parent in the audience I cringed as this tiny fireball literally threw herself headlong straight into the emergency room.

The first thought that came into my head was that this whole thing was completely crazy and everyone involved in it should spend a week in the stocks.  (In fact, I’m convinced that a good set of stocks placed up in the middle of the Hingham rotary would do wonders for the misbehavior rate around here.)  Drill Sergeant Karolyi and his parental co-conspirators are disgustingly cavalier with the lives of the girls entrusted to their care.  They disguise their own pathetic ambitions by pasting notions of courage and honor onto kids whose idea of a difficult life decision is whether to re-talc their hands, or which dismount to use.  Now that I think about it, a week in the stocks is much too good for this crowd.

This first thought sticks with me like a pesky cough, cropping up again just when I think it’s gone away.  It flares up whenever I see Bela’s hideous smirk as he carries the stricken girl around the medal platform, or when the infuriatingly vacuous John Tesh slithers through another violin-laden recounting of Strug’s ‘heroic’ performance.

Ultimately though, this criticism is entirely hypocritical.  Looking back,  I’m amazed that it took me so long to realize this.  You see, I watched all this, and condemned Strug, Karolyi and Tesh to the stocks, while lying in bed with a leg broken courtesy of an ill-advised slide in an over-30 softball game.  That’s only the worst, and most recent injury, too.  One shoulder clicks (softball), one finger is permanently bent at a funny angle (also softball), and one ankle doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to (frisbee).  In fact, like most weekend warriors, I’m a mass of orthopaedic injuries, and I don’t regret a single one.

There’s no question that Kerri Strug’s presence at the Olympics is the product of a sick system, where adults who’ve abdicated their responsibilities fulfill their own ambitions through the sacrifice of little girls.  However, Strug’s decision to hurl herself down the runway that last time was a valid one, perhaps even a good one.  And most important, that decision was a personal one.

Strug’s dilemma is one that softball players, and other adult children, confront every week.  To risk permanent injury to an amazingly frail body, or to sit on the sidelines and admit that you just can’t do it.  The reward for such a risk is not heroic adulation.  Even an 18 year old knows that today’s hero is tomorrow’s nobody.  Nor is it the approval of an evil coach.  An athlete on the field knows that she is all alone, that tomorrow Bela will have a new darling.  No, the real reward is nothing more than that feeling you get when your body in motion matches the dream that brought you to the field. 

In the end, the decision to compete is merely magnificently selfish, risking the only thing you really own to attain a memory you can take with you to the grave.  You may walk with a limp for the rest of your life.  You might not win.  You might end up like Joe Theisman, waving a broken leg on national television as you get sacked for a ten yard loss.  But in a society where avoiding risk and assigning blame are the two favorite sports, you can’t ask for any more than the opportunity to make that decision for yourself.

Next week: If cigarettes carry warning labels, why don’t softballs?

As a softball player, John Rodley fields like Mo, runs like Jose, and hits like The Rocket.  He is also the worst basketball player in America.