Of Sport and Art

I like lots of things. I have yet to find anyone who likes exactly the same things that I like. I haven't found anyone who likes all of things that I like within a certain area of likeable things (that sentence makes sense). I haven't even found anyone who likes all of the things that I like, simply because they like everything. Even those people don't like something that I like. And that's fine. I don't like everything that other people like. I suspect that I'm not alone in this, and probably far from it. Besides, meeting someone with the exact same interests would probably be boring, and at the very least, would never lead to finding new things to like.

As you may have already guessed, sports are among the things that I like. They have been at least partially involved in my life for as long as I can remember. I've been supporting the local teams before I even knew how to say their names. The Patriots, Bruins. Red Sox, and Celtics. I have memories for all of them. And while much has been made lately about how "spoiled" New England sports fans have been, I've seen the other end of it too. Don't get me wrong, I know that at 28, I've seen more from my sports teams than most other sports fans will see in their lives. I don't say that to brag or rub it in to the less fortunate sports cities, I say it because I know how special it is (as a sports fan) to see what has happened over the last decade. And I know I would love my sports teams just as much if none of it had happened.

Now, I have a lot of friends who share my love of sports. Many of them even love the same teams I do. There are some people, however, who don't like sports. More than that, they actively dislike sports, and they think my love of sports is foolish and a waste of time. They think my time would be better spent doing almost anything else. The interesting part is that I share many other common interests with these people. Music, literature, film, television. We have more in common then we don't, and yet these people still can't get past my love of sports, and often take a moment or two to tell me about it. And the more I think about that, the less I understand it.

When it comes to art, there is no accounting for taste. Most people seem to know this, even if they don't understand it. No one expects everyone else to like their personal favorite song or movie or book. They don't always understand why someone won't like it, and may even get mad when someone else claims to dislike it, but everyone seems to know, that's just the way things work. But even though we all like different things in the art we choose to take in (depending on the form), how different are the things we take away from art?

Whether we listen to an album (and I mean really listen, not just throwing it on as background music), or watch a movie, or read a book, aren't we all doing the same things? We allow these artists to take control of our lives, even if just a for a few minutes. We let them put ideas in our minds, making us think about things that never occurred to us or look at topics from a different perspective. We let them make us laugh, cry, smile, or get upset. We surrender ourselves to them, temporarily. We hope to get a glimpse into their lives, and hope to be able to take something away that will make some sense of our own. Sports may not give us the same insights into our lives, but it does allow us to escape from our own for a little while. Getting ourselves worked up over a game gives us a chance to not be worked up over our own problems.

There are those who will try to argue that athletes are nothing but mindless jocks, overpaid men who are simply products of superior genetics. Listen, I know that there are more than a few stories about athletes that would illustrate that very point. I'm sure almost every Division 1 college has, at some point, looked the other way while one of their "student-athletes" forgot the full meaning of that designation. At this very moment, there is no possible joke I could make about Plaxico Burress that hasn't already been made. But does that mean they are all bad? The truth of it is, most professional athletes are probably decent people. Let's be honest, most of the time, news is just barely disguised entertainment, and that's especially true of sports. There is no room for stories about a baseball (or any other sport) player who comes in, works hard, and goes home to his wife and kids everyday. And make no mistake, every one of them, even the spotlight seeking "divas", works hard. To say that any professional athlete got where they are because they were born that way isn't giving them enough credit. Yes, many of us were born with bodies that never would have made it as a quarterback or power forward, no matter how much work we put it. But being born with a body that could make it doesn't guarantee that you will. Many of these men and women have worked their entire lives to be in the shape that they are in, to do the things that they do. Which is just another way sports can be like art.

We, as people, tend to believe that the artists (again, choose your medium) we love are among the best in their field. There is nothing wrong with this belief (provided you understand that it's a subjective one). We want to see the best do what they are good at. Of the four major sporting leagues in America, all of them are the premier leagues for their respective sports. Whenever you watch a broadcast from the NFL, MLB, NHL, or NBA, you are watching some of the best in the world at what they do. We tend to forget this, because we compare professional athletes to other professional athletes, and we do it all the time, even though it isn't always fair. Player A is matched up against Player B. Player A is an average athlete, while Player B is a perennial all-star. On most nights, even is Player A is performing up to his usual standards, he is going to look bad. Fans of Player A's team are going to call local radio shows to criticize him. And that's okay, that's the way sports work. But does that actually make Player A bad? He's still better than you at whatever sport he plays, and he's more than likely better than anyone you've ever known (A common phrase in sports, that the worst player of X is still better than anyone you've ever known at X. Most of the people reading this probably know someone who knows Rocco Baldelli, so I felt the need to alter it slightly. Rocco Baldelli wasn't exactly Babe Ruth, but he was never the worst player in baseball).

Not everyone gets exactly the same things out of the art they choose to open themselves to. There may be someone out there right now reading this who never thinks new things when they read a book, or doesn't think there is (or is unaware of) anything remarkable about the musicians they listen to. While that may be the case, I'm willing to bet that everyone has talked about the music/movies/books that they love with someone else. Think about your close friends. Think about the conversations you have with them. How much time is spent talking about these things? Probably a pretty big chunk. I would even be willing to bet that it's the second most common thing people talk about, with "other people" being the most common (everybody is a gossip). This is because art brings people together. And sports are no different.

My dad is not a very vocal person. He's opened up a bit more as we've both gotten older, but no one would ever call him effusive. I'm not sure my father has ever experienced an uncomfortable silence. Silence of any sort works well for him. Don't get me wrong, I love my dad, but as a young kid, I didn't always understand it. Except when we were watching sports. When a game was on, we didn't need to say anything. We both knew what the other was thinking, because we were both thinking the same things. We loved our teams, and we loved each other.

I took some time out of work recently to make sure I was able to watch the Stanley Cup. Of course I wanted to be able to pay more attention to it than I would have been while at work, but more than that, I wanted to watch it with my dad. There were a lot of great moments from those seven games, but all of them were made better by the fact that he was watching it with me. For 2 weeks now we've been randomly shouting "Stanley Cup Champions!" to each other, but the reason it has meaning beyond the words themselves is because we were able to shout them the first time with each other. It's possible you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, but if you got your love of sports from your father, like I and so many others have, you don't even need to read this to know what I mean.

Sports and art aren't the same thing, I know that. I know that as happy as it made my father and I, the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup didn't really change anything about the world. Neither did the Mavericks beating the Heat in the NBA finals, a point a petulant Lebron James was quick to make. When an athlete is competing, he or she is almost never trying to "reach" the fans or get a larger message to them, where as every artist almost always is. Even when art is supposed to mean nothing, it was actively constructed that way. Sports aren't actively constructed to convey anything, other than the sport itself. But just because there is no meaning behind sports, that isn't to say they don't have meaning.