People often look at me funny when I tell them I really love sports.
Always have, always will.
I find something bracing about competition, about athletes summoning up the best of themselves, sometimes for a lot of money, sometimes for the pure joy in the pursuit of victory.
Let’s alos remember most athletes got to where they are not because their uncle knew someone. but because they survived the crucible of previous competitions.
Athletes are by their very nature graceful and balanced, characteristics needed to excel on any playing field.
With athletes, what you see is what you get.
This was made chyrstal clear to me a couple of decades ago when I got a job covering the (now-defunct) Montreal Expos for a tabloid newspaper, the (now-defunct) Montreal Daily News.
I had been led to believe that professional athletes were a bunch of over-paid schnooks.
Not so!
The great majority of the players I met turned out to be as graceful and balanced off the field as they were in competition.
Most also possessed a great sense of humour, flavoured with humility and irony, qualities likely stemming from being cheered as hero one day and jeered as a failure the next.
All this, under severe pressure: thousands watching and ready to judge, and a lots and lots of bigger, younger, stronger people ready to take their jobs.
Professional athletes play a game. It’s also their livelihood.
For those of you who might grouse about all that money the athletes make, bear in mind that they would not be making it if owners couldn’t afford it.
They are both the product and the labour and remain just one injury away from having the whole thing end.
My hunch is most professional athletes would be playing no matter how much they are paid. It’s who they are and what they do.
To be sure, my sampling size is relatively small, but the generosity of spirit I encountered seems to apply to athletes from other sports with whom I have dealt.
A tiny minority are jerks, the great majority are anything but.
Most, quite frankly, are a pleasure to know.
When people look at me funny when I admit to loving sports, I refer them to the late chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Warren.
“I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people’s accomplishments” Warren is quoted as saying. “The front page has nothing but man’s failures.”
Warren made the statement in 1968.
As far as I can make out, it still holds true.
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