The courage to stand up to team spirit

Idon’t regret for a moment any of the time I spent playing sports. I was the kind of boy who was most comfortable as a quiet member of the tribe. I liked having an assignment and being able to accomplish it and seeing how the team might benefit as a result. There were things I was very good at—and things I only thought I was very good at. I had good coaches and bad ones, and when I made mistakes I did not expect either sort to treat me tenderly. I did not talk back, protest or complain because I treasured my place on those teams.

It was comforting to be part of a group; I was insulated by my belonging. My teammates were something more than friends, even if did not like all of them. (I remember fighting one boy, whose name I still recall, after almost every football practice in eighth grade. I don’t know what we had against each other other than we were fairly evenly matched and competing for the same positions. We never got it out of our systems and I wonder, if I saw him today in his reading glasses and Brooks Brothers suit, if we would immediately lunge for each other.)

I was not a leader. I was always among the youngest in my class and probably a little too happy to be included. While I do not remember any instances of group cruelty I participated in, I do know that the most virtuous thing I could have ever have done had I faced that sort of situation was abstain. I was never a bully, but I was never brave either. I was lucky to be the sort of boy that others left alone; I was conventional, and though I often felt bad about the kids who seemed unable to fit into the social biosphere of whatever school I was attending at the time, I made no special effort to help anyone out.

The best lesson that sports taught me—the best lesson it teaches most of us—is that we are not the biggest, strongest, toughest or fastest.

All of us have limitations we cannot will ourselves beyond. It does not matter how much you may want something, how much love you have for the game or any of the nonsense your coaches may say to fire you up. And while it may be good to strain up against those limits, to find and test our true boundaries, in the end we must accept them. We must acknowledge that we are not all created equal, that gifts are distributed as they are distributed and that we can only do what we can do.

You might think that knowing this about ourselves—that there are things that we simply cannot do no matter how much we want to do them—would compel a certain kind of empathy, that we might better understand other people face limitations just as insurmountable as our own. They can no more will themselves to be bigger, stronger, tougher or faster than we can. They cannot will themselves to be less gay or more manly, they can only disguise and belie their true selves, and in the process invite whatever psychic and spirit damage denial occasions. You might think that, having grasped and acknowledged our own weakness, we might receive the inevitable weaknesses of others with tolerance. You might think that understanding our own edges might make us kinder.

That it does not is abundantly clear.

This is because sports occupy a peculiarly prominent place in our culture. We have deeply invested ourselves in what are essentially trivial activities. People really care who wins a given game. Billions of dollars circulate in support of the games. Universities exist to provide college football to television networks. People will tattoo themselves with logos in their effort to identify with “their team,” which often as not is a corporation more interested in profiting from the exhibitions it stages in concert (in league) with other similar corporations than the on-field results.

Sports does not make us kinder—and it may make us meaner— because the watching of games has become more important than the playing of them. If we only played the games—if no one was watching then or betting on them or writing about them in the hyperbolic ego-inflating way that some do; if they had retained what sportscasters and columnists habitually call “innocence”—then they might really do for us what the coaches who talk down to those who “never played the game” claim. If only it wasn’t so important, if only so many of us didn’t think nonsense shibboleths like “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” are profound. Then sports might genuinely ennoble us.They might make us more alert to the marvelous diversity of human aptitudes and actually instruct us in the ways of dignity and honor.

It was only as an adult that I felt secure enough to confront bullies, who’ll you’ll find in every walk of life. And when I did confront them it was an intellectual decision. I saw the damage they inflicted and I did what I could do to mitigate it. I calculated that they either wouldn’t take a swing at me, or if they did that I was physically competent enough to handle myself. But in those cases, I calculated that my risk was small, that I had nothing to fear from little tyrants. It is easy to say that the best way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him. But we ought to keep in mind that crazy is crazy and guns aren’t hard to get. We need to keep our limitations in mind and just walk away from crazy.

I don’t know anything about what happened between Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito.

I know what’s been reported, what’s been said on the sports talk shows and in the media in general, but I don’t know anything about the dynamic that existed between these two giants, these offensive linemen for the Miami Dolphins. All I know is that it’s a sad story and that I feel bad for both of them. Its easy to assume Incognito (the name has the air of a nom de scandal, like “Carlos Danger” or “Ron Mexico,” but it’s real) is a bully and a racist because I have known bullies and racists who act as he is alleged to have acted. And it’s easy for me to identify with Martin because I suspect he is the kind of offensive lineman I would be were I possessed of his physical gifts. I would take the money, I might even love the game, but I wouldn’t be all that sure I was providing anyone an essential service.

I’d hope to receive all the obligatory posturing that goes with playing organized football in this country with a certain bemusement. I hope that if the situation called for it, I’d be brave enough to walk away from crazy.