When you’re out of the country as I was for the past two weeks,
no matter how wonderful your destination or how glorious the
sites you visit, some homesickness tends to creep in. In my case,
although daily blessed to be treading the sacred ground in the
Holy Land, I found myself pining for American sports news.
Now, when I was overseas in October of last year, I was
appalled but unsurprised by the European coverage of our
stock market crash, as reported by the global liberals at CNN
International and the BBC. The countless stories on the failure
of capitalism and tales of galloping greed that filled the TV
screen in my Roman hotel room made me nostalgic for the domestic
versions of same, where at least I’d have some World Series news
to soften the blows. After all, in America, sports are our escape
from an often ugly reality.
So it was that even on pilgrimage in Jerusalem, I found myself
scanning the Israeli newspapers for baseball scores in the
evenings, when the distant sound of gunfire was sometimes heard.
I figured that news of the New York Yankees would be the cure for
the tensions that envelop that holy place; except that I forgot
that sometimes when we are away from home we tend to
over-sentimentalize whatever it is we miss, often creating a
rosier picture than is actually the case.
And so on returning home where happily I found that my beloved
Yanks had embarked on a winning streak, it didn’t take long for
reality to hit me between the eyes like a screaming line drive:
the American sports scene is immersed in the worst aspects of our
culture. Still, I settled in to watch the Yankees play the
defending champion Philadelphia Phillies on the Fox game of the
week. So happy was I to be back in the embrace of our national
pastime, I foolishly neglected to employ my trusty mute button
and was thus confronted by a long promo for an atrocity called
The Hangover.
As I wrote last year, I have given up wondering when sports —
which used to be a way to encourage young men away from more
dissolute pursuits — has now embraced all that is debased in our
modern culture; the objectification of women as sex toys, vulgar
language, egotism, and violence. All of this was on display
during The Hangover promo and another one for a flick
aptly titled, Drag Me to Hell; both of which would have
never appeared in prime time a few short years ago, but now
invade our homes on a Saturday afternoon.
Sadly, the trash emitted from Hollywood has now found its way
onto the playing field; so much so that I sometimes feel that
baseball itself has become some kind of perverted
cross-promotion. There is so much violence and egomania in sports
today, that you get the idea that it’s not enough to simply
defeat one’s opponent; you must humiliate and “own” him. In
watching nearly all of Michael Phelps’s Olympic victories, I
don’t recall any expressions of elation or happiness, just a
series of violent shouts and angry gesticulations.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the joy and sportsmanship went
out of sport, but a good starting place would be with Muhammad
Ali and his worshippers in the American press, who viewed his
ascension as kind of a payback to his supposed white oppressors.
But it is no longer restricted to race. Although he has the best
example of how a great and gracious ballplayer should act in
Mariano Rivera, it seems that Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain
cannot record three outs without furious displays of fist-pumping
arrogance, simply for doing his job. Similarly, the
chest-thumping antics and “look-at-me” poses adopted by home-run
hitters are great examples of humility and team-play for the
kiddies, no?
Yet all of this is tied to noxiously saccharine promotions — MLB
produces PSAs
to teach kids the value of perseverance and teamwork — that
purport to further the message that our sports telecasts are
aimed at and produced for ‘the children’; a horrible and chilling
thought. And this is only baseball, the more genteel American
game; the goings-on in the NFL and the NBA are even worse.
With all that’s going on in our country today, it may seem like a
desire for the return to purity in baseball is a trivial thing,
but those familiar with the relationship between the game and our
national ethos know better. MLB can do more to clean up the game
than pointless drug-screening, and they certainly control the
process of awarding broadcast rights to the networks. Let’s do
our kids a favor and keep the filth, violence, and egotism where
they belong: in Hollywood.
