Heartbreak and Joy

I am always suprised when I meet a person who does not enjoy or follow sports.  Don't get me wrong, I can still be friends with that person; it just always seems to me that these people are depriving themselves of one of the greatest things that human beings can experience.  Sports, simply put, are the competition of one or more individuals against either one person or a team.  Now if we wanted to we could further define those sports into different groups (basketball is different then racing for example) but at the heart of all these events is the desire to best someone or some team in physical competition.  This desire stems from our very nature, as at some point all of us were competing against each other for resources such as food, water, shelter and the ability to not get eaten by some giant Saber Tooth Tiger.  Now that we have relativley stable societies, there is no longer any need to compete for survival.  Now, more then ever, we have channeled that natural instinct to compete into organized activities and games.

Still, this does not answer the question that I have asked myself over and over again: Why do we bother watching sports? 

Most of the time the outcomes of the games that we so avidly follow does not affect our lives directly. (Unless you are a professional gambler)  Yet I know from personal experience that following a certain team and supporting them leads to lots of moments that make me question why I put so much of myself into following sports and actually caring about them.  There have been lots of times where the simple fact that my team lost a game affects me the next day.  I spend hours agonizing over what went wrong, what could have happened, and avoiding the frugal highlights and analysis that SportsCenter provides on the game.  For what?  In the long run, I will either forget about the game, or it will just be a footnote in the annals of sports history. 

The simple answer is to go back to our instincts again, that we all want to "win" and be part of the winning team or tribe to achieve success.  However, I think the answer is more complicated.  There is no better feeling in my opinion then executing an athletic play exactly as you see it in your minds eye.  The reality is, there are some of us that are meant to play professionally and some of us that are not.  For those who cannot play for a living, watching, and analyzing is the one thing that we can do in order to feel more attached.  To take that one step further, rooting for one team or area is the closest we can get to feeling like we belong.  This quote from Michael Novak sums this up quite nicely: " Athletic achievement, like the achievements of the heroes and gods of Greece, is the momentary attainment of perfect form–as though there were, hidden away from mortal eyes, a perfect way to execute a play, and suddenly a player or a team has found it and sneaked a demonstration down to earth. A great play is a revelation. The curtains of ordinary life part, and perfection flashes for an instant before the eye." 

Beyond even these reasons, the best answer that I can think of is that a game is a microcosm of society as a whole.  Those who have played sports for a long time can attest to this as well.  I have learned almost all of the life lessons that have been taught to me while being on a baseball field or basketball court.  In fact, most of these lessons pervade throughout all of society.  If you don't believe me have you ever heard the term "in the ballpark" as referred to an idea? What about the general rule that if you mess up for the third time, its "strike 3 and you're out".  A "hail mary" as referring to a 1 in a million chance.  The list goes on and on. 

Diving even deeper into the metaphor that a sports game=life, there are a few key areas that need to be talked about.

Teamwork

No one likes to be alone.  There is always more joy in sharing something with other people, especially when that feeling stems from the combined effort of individuals.  This is almost always one of the first lessons you learn from your coach at a young age, and I'm sure even those who don't understand sports have heard the saying, "There is no I in team".  Regardless of the task, when people come together and work as a team, their output will ALWAYS be greater then what is produced by an individual.  People, at their core, want to be connected to others.  Following sports gives us an easy way to feel more attached to other people, it gives us a bond that can't be duplicated by talking about other hobbies or the weather. 

Sportsmanship

Sports are always stressing rules on how to get along, or play nice with the opposing team.  This lesson helps us in the real world as well.  There are certain rules in life, some being legal laws, and some not, that help us succeed.  Even if they are unwritten, (like most of the sportsmanship rules) people will notice if you do not follow them.  Generally, those that observe customs and rules in life will succeed; it is a lot easier to get along with someone that is friendly then someone that is an asshole.  Sports help to highlight this, and the teams/businesses that follow these unwritten laws are always the most admirable.

Failure

This could easily be called perserverance or redemption.  This is perhaps the most important point that I have to make, one that could answer the question as to why we watch sports just by itself.  As a kid, we are always told that we can do whatever we want to do in life, that whatever we will do we will succeed in etc.  The fact is that is just not true.  Everyone in life fails at some point or another, and in varying degrees of severity.  It is what you do after you fail that shows your character.  A man is not defined by his success, he is defined by how he responds to failure.  It is easy to be a good person when everything is going your way.  You learn in sports at an early age that you can't win every time; thats why teams that go undefeated are as celebrated as they are.  This is most clearly illustrated in baseball where if you succeed and get a hit 3/10 times in your career you would go to the Hall of Fame.  But the same holds true of basketball or any other sport.  If you succeed only 50% of the time in business, you would be a terrible business person.  But in basketball, you would be a HOF player.  Sports show us that in order to succeed, you need to not focus on failure and to move on and try to succeed at your next endeavor.  There is no use to dwell on the past because you can only control what is going to happen, not what already has.  You need to persevere in order to be successful and not give up at the first sign of disappointment.  Having said that, the second part to this argument is redemption.  Knowing that we will fail, no one wants to end on a failure.  Everyone is always longing for another chance.  I believe that at heart, humans are optimistic and that this optimism allows us to overcome our failures.  This is illustrated clearly by sports; the fact that every jump shooter wants the ball again to redeem himself, he knows that his next shot will go in.  If I had to pick one reason on why we watch sports; this is it.  As much as we all love to hate (myself included) there is nothing we like to see more then someone finally succeed.  Its the reason that we keep coming back even after we swear to ourselves that we won't care or that we won't watch anymore.  It's the reason that Cubs fans think that they will win a World Series.  There is no better feeling then watching someone or some team overcome adversity and pull through.  It is the hope that success is coming that keeps me and others coming back to the TV even though failure is probable.  Plays like this vindicate all those times of frustration. 

Simply put sports help us transcend our daily lives.  They make us feel like children again, when we had no worries or responsibilites other then pure unbiased competition.  They allow us to be a part of something bigger then ourselves and teach us valuable life lessons along the way.  I, for one will teach my kids and anyone that I can to love sports; even if I have to throw a few remotes at the TV and walk away in disgust a few more times.  The feelings of Joy always last longer and stick with us more clearly then the pain of heartbreak.