Goodreads Bookshelf
Two sorts of hail mary's
I’ve thought quite a lot—albeit in a fairly superficial way—about the relationship between sports and religion. I’m convinced there’s a connection, as these activities both seem so basic to our humanity.
In a perhaps-not-entirely-unexpected way, ESPN seems to agree with me. Waaaaay back on 15 February 2004 I made notes about an edition of the program Outside the Lines which was a feature on the cult following Dale Earnhardt has achieved. There was a guy who won $45 million in the lottery and has devoted this new fortune to turning his home into an Earnhardt shrine, with all the memorabilia he can get his hands on. There’s a goat whose markings are vaguely in the shape of a 3 (his car number) which, because it is owned by Earnhardt fans, is claiming to be virtually divine intervention, and has caused a virtual pilgrimage of other fans to come see this thing. No no, that’s not the whole story—to see it and weep at the sight of it from sheer powerful emotion. The goat is, apparently, a bigger draw than the similarly-marked cat, but people likewise get pretty weepy over the statue they come visit. In fact, a novelist named Sharyn McCrumb has written (though it’s not yet published) a sort of modern Canterbury Tales based on a busload of people on a Dale Pilgrimage. The point is, it’s big and it seems to tap something similar to religious fervor. Some of the fans interviewed on Outside the Lines even admitted as much.
For that matter, does anyone recall that Bush’s state of the union included him making a statement about steroid use in athletics—athletics are important in this country!
I was thinking, once upon a time, how a person’s favorite sports teams are often something like a religion. I don’t just mean the way you make time to watch them once a week (football) or several times a week (baseball, basketball, etc). Nor do I mean the amount of time and emotional energy we spend agonizing over them (though it’s considerable, and in some—perhaps many—cases more thought for sports than religion itself gets). And yet, much like religion, there’s usually something contra thinking involved in the process. For instance, now that I live in western Pennsylvania, I am surrounded by Steelers fans. Why are they Steelers fans? Because they live close to Pittsburgh, sure, but virtually all of them will remain Steelers fans even when transplanted. So why? In the first place, because they probably grew up a Steelers fan, because their parents were fans and so was virtually everyone else around. It helps that the Steelers have had considerable success in the past, but the same thing happens with bad teams. My point here, is that the selection is just as arbitrary—just like religion, where most people are Catholic or Presbyterian or Mormon or Muslim because they were raised that way.
Most fans don’t like the Steelers because their players are any nicer or better or more wonderful than any other team’s players—if they talk about how great so-and-so is, it’s because they liked the team first and not vice versa. Ditto religion—we justify it to ourselves, that our religion really is awfully good, wow, aren’t I lucky I was born into the right one?
I myself am more of a convert. When I was really young, I—like my parents—had a nominal interest in football and a lukewarm interest in the Cleveland Browns. We lived in northern Ohio, after all, but our support didn’t extend beyond cheering for them over Elway and those damn Broncos when—it seemed like every year—they faced each other in the playoffs. So basically, for one day a year, we were fans. Kind of like people who only see the stained glass from the inside on Christmas. On the other hand, like many kids, I had vaguely positive feelings toward the Bengals when they had the whole Super Bowl run and the Ickey Shuffle. I was young enough that a fuzzy tiger mascot still had some appeal, and those helmets were just excellent. It wasn’t until high school, though, that I became a fan. I was converted in large part by my friend Frank Ramon. He explained football to me so that as I sat amongst the other pep band members I might appreciate what the hell was happening, and then go play backyard football with the other band geeks. And he was a Bengals fan. Both as a subtle sucking up to him and out of an unfocused desire to go against whatever grain there was, I shunned the Browns to be a Bengals fan. I got into it, I learned all the players names, I followed them. And, of course, I came in right at the beginning of a decade-long losing streak (D’OH!). Nonetheless, I had been converted and had no intention of turning back to my wicked, unaffiliated ways. And there was no way I would be accused of being a front-runner, either. Cheering for a bad team, as Cubs fans will attest, is an art-form and a satisfaction all its own.
So. We have unthinking sports fans, brainwashed from the cradle, and we have converts. We also have heathens, but I’d rather keep this nice and not mention them. So far, the parallels are stacking up. What about the economics of it? I’m sure that churches get a lot of money, but is it the billions that sports generates? When was the last time you saw a preacher pulling down a $10M signing bonus, plus several million each year? Still, there's a lot of money going into each one.
Let’s add to our parallels the very satisfying sense of group identity. Of us and them. Or the superstitious nature of sports (belief in a supernatural element and the need to appease whatever it is). It’s an outlet for strong emotions. Sports satisfies many of the same needs religion does.
Now, I’m sure there will be objections to the effect that it’s just a sign of how sinful we are that we can be distracted by the bright lights and fast pace of sports and be turned away from god (how often do people rush home from church to catch a game as opposed to rushing home from a game to catch church?). But really, they satisfy many of the same human desires. The difference is that religion has a claim to being True and eternal and beyond the here and now, while sports are only “of this earth,” are “only sports.” But that’s precisely the strength of their appeal—sports are immediate, sports are satisfying right here, right now, no question of whether we get what we pay for. There’s no waiting until you die to see if you’ve won or lost, to see if you get the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. You’ve got it, baby! Right here, right now!
So am I saying that sports are taken too seriously? That religion is? Nah, not really. Whether it's saying hail marys or throwing them, it's in answer to very human impulses. And that’s that. Go Bengals!