Sunday, May 18, 2008
Sports
Good Sports Marching On
Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images
San Francisco Giants manager Felipe Alou and Braves manager Bobby Cox shake hands during a game in 2006.
Is good sportsmanship dead? Dan Doyle, the founder and executive director of the Institute for International Sport at the University of Rhode Island, doesn’t think so. Eighteen years ago, Doyle spearheaded the efforts that led to National Sportsmanship Day, which last March was observed at more than 14,000 schools throughout the U.S., as well as in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, India, Australia and Bermuda, with discussions and activities aimed at promoting good sportsmanship.
“Without, question we need to foster a strong atmosphere of sportsmanship among coaches, athletes, parents, officials and fans alike,” Doyle tells The Sunday Paper. “There is a continuing great need for this, but I have no doubt that as a society we are addressing these issues, and it is resulting in an admirable commitment to the practice of good sportsmanship.’’
For the 15th year, the Institute held an essay contest, with submissions addressing sportsmanship and ethics or offering a personal reflection on sportsmanship. The college winner for this year’s contest was Charles Nadd, a cadet at the United States Military Academy. With permission from the Institute, an excerpt from his “Hard Work: There is No Substitute’’ follows.—Fulton Shelley
“Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem.”
— Saul Steinberg
Far too many of today’s professional baseball players have tainted that concept of hard work with the unethical, unfair use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. In doing so, they have undermined the sport that we all love and, consequently, the values that define our nation.
Most baseball fans will never play at the major league level. They will all, however, take the values that they learn from the game into their own professional lives. Today’s star athletes have a responsibility to show America’s future businessmen and women, doctors and surgeons, lawyers and judges, politicians and government leaders, that when faced with tough situations, responsible adults ought always choose the harder right over the easier wrong.
I have often thought about what goes through a player’s mind in the moments before he dopes up to bulk up. It must be the saddest of places, knowing that you and the natural qualities that were bestowed upon you that allowed you to make it into the big leagues are not adequate enough to meet your selfish, greedy desires to grow into an artificial super-man.
As artist Saul Steinberg remarked, the keys to the art of baseball include courage, good luck, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem. Through a major athlete’s unethical choice to add such chemicals to his body, he or she forfeits the red badge of merit, shrugs at the concept of luck, turns away from patience about fate, and, worst of all, escapes any thought of that “sober self-esteem” that defines a true “professional.”
This dangerous spiral away from the values that define baseball is troubling, but, fortunately, does not mark the doom of the great American pastime.
With a renewed commitment to upholding the excellence and standards of the game, baseball players at all levels—from the youngest tee-baller to the highest-paid major league star—can remind our nation what it means to sit in the stands behind home plate on a warm spring night and cheer with our brothers and sisters on the field when dreams are realized—thanks to persistent, honest hard work. There is no substitute.
For more information on National Sportsmanship Day, visit www.internationalsport.com.