Sportsmanship

It was an uplifting moment--literally. In a softball game between two women’s teams, Central Washington College and Western Oregon University, a tiny batter for Western Oregon hit a three-run homer and started around the bases. She missed first base, and as she turned back to touch it her knee gave-out and she fell to the ground in pain. Because she could not run, and her teammates could not help her, two members of the Central Washington team carried her around the bases, gently lowering her to touch each base. The people in the stands wept. The home run won the game. The opposing players won something greater.

We live in a very harsh world. Each day’s papers bring stories of horrors and atrocities. We read about professional athletes using performance enhancing drugs, abusing animals, or engaging in crude and violent behavior. We are inundated with the win-at-any-cost philosophy of owners, coaches, and players. A losing season often results in the firing of a coach, manager, or general manager. But every once in a while we hear about something fine and heroic, and it renews our faith in ourselves.

Coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers is quoted as saying that “Winning isn’t everything. It is the only thing.” Lombardi was, of course, wrong. He was too stupid to understand what sports are all about. He was too uneducated to realize that the whole reason behind sports is participation, not outcome. There are evolutionary reasons why we participate. Winning is just the icing on the cake.

The Nobel-Prize-winning ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, taught that as a result of evolution, there has developed in animals, including the human animal, a means by which aggression can be avoided. He noted that wolves offer their throats to opponents as a way of deflecting an attack. Most animals, including fish, have evolved rituals in order to turn away from conflict. According to Lorenz, humans have also evolved such rituals, which we call sports. Humans use athletics as a means of channeling those aggressive instincts which might otherwise lead to violence.

It is self-evident that we are not fully evolved. Our leaders still try to resolve disputes through a form of insanity called war. The instinctive blood-lust that lurks in our hearts is not always fully satisfied by a touchdown pass. Sports fans can become rowdy and sometimes downright nasty in the stands. Soccer fans in Europe and South America look upon the game as war by other means and will erupt in combat before, during, and after the matches.

One indication of our evolutionary backwardness is the sound of fans booing their own teams and players. Often, the only reason for the booing is that the players have not played up to the standard demanded by the fans. The players are probably doing the best that they can, but the ignorant boo-birds are dissatisfied. I can understand booing the umpires and referees. That is what they are there for. I can understand booing players who use performance-enhancing drugs, make outrageous statements to the press, or take bribes. But booing your own team simply because they are not winning shows not only a lack of class but also the mentality of an imbecile.

There is, however, something inside most of us that is deeply moved by heroic sportsmanship. Julie Reed says that only women would do what the players of Central Washington College did. That may be. I have never seen anything like it in men’s sports. The most notable acts of sportsmanship by men seems to be found in the more genteel sports like tennis and golf.

I think we yearn for a better world in which heroic acts of sportsmanship and selflessness are commonplace. Somehow, within the process of cultural evolution, we are evolving behaviors which go contrary to our instincts for competition and destruction. Whereas evolution might dictate that we let the sick and starving people in Africa die so that the fittest might survive, our human nature tells to feed those people and heal their children.

Perhaps we will get better as a species. Perhaps we will replace conflict with cooperation. Perhaps we will someday abolish war. Perhaps the young women on a softball team in Washington can show us how to touch the bases.