Enlightenment from the Stands: Why Sports Means so Much More
Willie Mays died June 18, 2024.
“It was a chilly September night in 1973 at Shea Stadium in Queens, NY when Willie Howard Mays bid farewell to the game in which he devoted so many summers, and to the fans that cheered him on. It was a school night, so my parents allowed my seven-year-old self to stay up late for what was billed as Mays’ retirement ceremony.” (Center Fielder Willie Mays Has Left the Field for the Last Time
That was the same for my older brother and me. I was 8 and he was 11 and I remember, even if he didn’t, seeing him crying. We were raised as lifelong Mets fans, growing up in the early years in Queens. We were too young to have any of the baggage of the abandonment of the Giants or the Dodgers. Going to see games with our father and meet and greets with the players Willie Mays we a genuine superstar. He gave “You Gotta Believe” a real possibility again. I remember meeting Rusty Stabb and my father calling him the Grand Orange with a Spanish accent (I don’t know why) and him saying my Mets hat looked like home plate after a high scoring game.
This is all an introduction to my blog about the intersection between real life and sports. The lessons we learn beyond sportsmanship and honor, being part of a team and which stats really matter. A friend of mine Allan Lew once said baseball is like life, “you have to leave home to get home.” While I believe this is the message of The Wizard of Oz and The Alchemist, sport reaches a different audience and touches people in a way that a childhood movie or a literary reference doesn’t. Yes we reread books and watch movies over and over again, the thrill of sport is it is both real life and not at the same time. There are profound life lessons from the pastime of sport. Even calling it a “pastime” suggests something about the way we spend our time.
Some sports drag on and some you are forced to watch every second. Some clocks count up and others count down. Some have no clock at all. All of this speaks to attitude and how we relate to time. What is in bounds and what is not is all about the line. Offside is different for different sports, why are we offended by some things and not others? Changing ends is not just about evening the playing field, it is also about perspective. These and many more ideas will be explored and I look forward to reading your comments.
One final comment.
We humans love to play. Over the last 300,000 years, we have come up with thousands, maybe millions of games. We play to appease the gods. We play to push our boundaries and hone ourselves to perfection. We play anywhere. On sand, on snow, soil, water, tarmac. On these playgrounds, we reveal our inner selves. Our joy, our shame…our glory…and our pain. No, no, no. But the origin of play is anything but fun. Play has evolved from our fight to survive. If we didn’t play, we would not be who we are today.