Why sports save us... Part 1

Part 1 of 4

Sports are able to give or distribute that unquantifiable, but, very necessary ingredient in any person’s well-being: hope.
How many lives have professional athletes saved (or, in other words, positively influenced; enabling them to stop taking drugs, to get off the streets, or cease their participation in illicit activity) just because of who it is that’s providing the message?
A professional athlete’s ability to inform, influence, and persuade are uncontested. No other individuals or group of individuals, have such a dramatic impact on the lives of people, especially young people.

“Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.”
--George F. Will

George is on to something… Think about it, if you want to find success-stories, where are you going to look? Amidst the ‘News’ stories of loss, remorse, pain, and shame is the sports section. Here, most of the stories come gift-wrapped with an ultimately ‘feel-good’ element to them; whether it be stories of ‘against-all-odds’, or stories of great accomplishment, sports is the section you want to turn to if you want to feel good.
I think sports save us and our world more often than we give it credit for. The beauty of sport, its grace, parody, the chance, the possibility of anything, allows people to escape into them as a refuge; an escape from reality if you will. It is an arena where anything can happen at any given time.

In the local sense, sport teams donate a lot of money to charity, and athletes volunteer in the community. Internationally, think how the Olympics unify the planet into one for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. But in general, sports ‘save’ people in many ways. For some, it provides a much needed escape from the complications and problems of modern living. It can be a glimpse into a person’s childhood.

Father of two, Gordon Leenders, explains his relationship with sports. “I’m 42, and when I watch sports, I’m a kid again,” he explains. “Or, when I’m angry, I pick up a basketball, and it all goes away.”
Sports are the most potent, and yet easily and readily dispensable anti-depressant.
“It’s my biggest antidote for negativity, and it’s a universal sensation, I’m sure. I don’t think I’m alone.”
You see someone playing in dirt-fields, living in the worst conditions possible, and then you see them succeed. When they excel, you may think, I have more than that, so that could be me. Probably, that could more easily be me with that success.
“I mean, why not? The hope to be derived is unlimited. The success is transferable,” Leenders adds.
The hope is unlimited. What else that is unlimited is how many like-minded individuals there are out there.
Much of our day-to-day life is such a non-spontaneous experience, subject to monotonous repetition. For many, like Leenders, sports are the antidote. Sport is probably the last bastion of true spontaneity in our world of ever increasing scripted media events. Even things that appear ‘live’, including reality television shows, like Survivor (right), are scripted, rehearsed, and pre-written. Other examples include: pre-written presidential speeches, and some artists’ lip-synch (Ashlee Simpson (below) and her SNL blunder comes to mind, below) their songs. However, on the sports field, at any given moment, something out of the ordinary, miraculous, and moreover, completely unscripted and spontaneous may occur. Random occurrences take place all the time in the sporting arena. A star can be born in an instant. Sometimes, it happens by complete accident.