BackIn times of violence, the ‘subtler armaments’ of sports
What does sport teach us, if anything, about the great and thorny divides that surround us?
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There are times when your job seems nearly empty, totally pointless, fully futile. In a week when we have seen a singer shot dead after a concert, 49 people shot dead in a bar in the same city the next night, a police officer and his lover stabbed and tortured to death in front of their child, a MP shot and stabbed to death on the street, and who knows what else... in such a week, I have got to write this column about sports.
It’s my job, after all. I get paid to do it. Just as plenty of sportsmen and sportswomen around the globe will get paid for doing their jobs this week, whether it’s the European or American football championships, or cricket in Zimbabwe, or basketball in the US, or hockey in London, or any number of other sports the world over.
I wonder if they wonder about emptiness and futility too.
But I also wonder, are there lessons from sport that apply to these horrors? I really doubt any such ever get through to the minds of killers, but what about the rest of us? What does sport teach us, if anything, about the great and thorny divides that surround us? (Does that question itself trivialize the divides?)
Also this week, oddly enough, there was at least one answer to such questions. At the memorial for the late Muhammad Ali in Louisville, comedian Billy Crystal delivered a moving, but often funny, eulogy to the great boxer. Very little in it was about boxing, though. He spoke mostly about the man he was, and their long and close relationship (Ali called him “little brother"). He spoke of how Ali had been like a light shining in America’s darkest hour, making “all our lives a little better".
And he said this: “This brash young man who thrilled us, angered us, confused and challenged us, ultimately became a silent messenger of peace who told us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls."
I’m not ashamed to admit that when I heard those words, I had tears in my eyes. Ali was a man who battered opponents for a living, and yet today people remember him for his message of peace. For the idea of building bridges, and—notable in a time of Trump—that building walls instead is a putrid thing to do. (Call it empty, pointless and futile as well.)
Still, why should I be surprised that these sentiments come to us from a man who battered opponents for a living? Boxers do hammer each other in the ring; it is a brutal sport I have never liked. But in general, boxers also know that theirs is a sport. They know they are fighting not because they hate each other but because this is their bread and butter. To be sure, sometimes there are bitter rivalries, but those are exceptions—and, in any case, even those rivals are not exactly aiming to kill.
Much the same applies to every competitive sport. One skilled individual, or team, is pitted against another. They play to win, but they know what they are doing is not the final violent expression of long-held animosities and prejudices. When it’s over, they go their separate ways until the next game, whether it’s against each other or some other opponent.
I mean, you know all this as well as I do. It’s so obvious that it doesn’t really even merit mention.
And yet, I can’t help wonder. When we are surrounded by so much hatred and violence, is there a value to mentioning the obvious? Can reminders of the values of sport help us as we face up to the violence?
I’m not sure. But like many of you, I’m even less sure of how we must tackle maniacs intent on murder like Tommy Mair, Maya Kodnani and Omar Mateen. I don’t know how to overturn the hatred for their fellow human beings that drives them, that they act on so readily, that they spread so widely, that the rest of us swallow so easily, that feed other hatreds in turn. Given all that, I’m appalled at the world our children are inheriting from us, even if that’s the same lament parents have made throughout history.
So, if it will make even a tiny difference, I’m willing to take a gamble on the reminders from sports.
You know, everything you have heard about playing hard but fair, respecting your opponent, that kind of thing. Then there’s Ali, of course, and Crystal’s memory of him. Others have inspired too: Arthur Ashe, Henry Olonga and Andy Flower come to mind.
But besides all that, I also think there are lessons from women’s sports—in particular, the way women play. Because women are not as physically strong as men, sports like tennis, volleyball and basketball become much more cerebral spectacles, in a sense, when women play them.
This is what Martin Amis meant when he once wrote about women’s tennis: “Although it’s still a fight, it’s a woman’s fight, settled not by the muscles but by the subtler armaments with which women wage their wars."
Now, I hardly set out to feed naive stereotypes about men and women. But in a week filled with maniacal violence, I yearn for a time when, instead of walls, we will try to build bridges. For the time when, instead of the weakness of slaughter, we will find the strength to deploy some “subtler armaments".
Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Final Test: Exit Sachin Tendulkar.
His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun
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