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Many of us have an obsession with winning.
The passion to be "number one" permeates our entire
society. But winning is not the only thing; it's not even the most important thing. We
need to recapture the true spirit of sports competition.
R
lot of people. today have
becomc experts at win–
ning, but they' re only
amateurs when it comes
lo losing. They know how to win
with wild abandon; they don't know
how lO lose with quiet dignity.
There was a time .when only sore
losers were scorned as poor sports.
Nowadays, losing itself often occa–
s ions ridicule and abuse. For
cxample, in America, land of oppor–
tunity, unless you're on top, you' re
nowhere. The only winning number
is number
one.
This same obsession
with viclory has leached the fun of
competition out of sports spectacles
around the world. When soccer
games escalate into brushfire wars
and Olympic competitions turn into
propaganda devices, it's obvious lhe
healthy urge to win has grown into a
pathological obsession.
The Sports Fan's Blble
The 1977 Guinness Book of World
Records
gets it all together. This
sports fan's bible bulges with ac–
counts of the highest , the biggest,
the fastest, the greatest, and the
strongest in human sports achieve–
ment. The most stupendous chron–
icle of human and s uperhuman
endeavor in history, boast the pub–
lishers. " It's got all the answers."
Trouble is, the questions may not be
worth asking.
But sports fans need not wait for
their annual orgy of record break–
ers. They can gorge themselves on
the daily sports page as one season
merges into another. Newspapers
blazon the good news, with copy–
writers outdoing themselves in forg–
ing hard-hitting headlines: "Yanks
Blast Sox"; " Leeds Swamps Nor–
wich"; "Knicks Bombard Bullets";
"England's Power Pack Crushes
The
PLAIN TRUTH October-November 1977
by
Edward R. Walsh
Scots"; "Jets Slay Lions." Are these
sports results or wa r bulletins?
While we heap honors on our
winning athletes, rewarding them
with fortune, fame, and frequently
favorable press notices, we exact a
terrible price from the losers. To the
victors belong the spoils. That's the
tradition. And to the vanquished?
The ashes of defeat, the ignominy of
not winning. Where in our games of
noisy desperation can we find the
spirit of once friendly competit ion?
Where in
our
abrasive system does
the exercise of skill, the discipline of
tcamwork, and the victory over self
gain rightful recognition? Sports
today demands winners, not just
competitors.
Playing for Blood
The pros now play a brand of ball
devoid of the friendly rivalry of ear–
lier eras. They play for blood.
What's wrong with our values that
they compel us to win at any price?
When rampant team jingoism, vio–
lence, and vindictiveness domína te
our pastimes, maybe it's time lo
throw in the towe l. With games
gone sour, we should end the grim
charade by blowing the whistle on
them. Kids used to have the right
idea : quit playing when it's no
longer fun.
It's bad enough tha t adult ath–
letes must suffer the disgrace
heaped upon them in a losing cause.
How unconscionable that we infiict
such pain upon our children!
Terry Orlick, author and play
psychologist at the University of Ot–
tawa in Canada, details the fallout
from our compulsive competitive–
ness: "[Children's sports] have often
resulted in excessive competition,
exploitation, frustration, destructive
aggression, distress, feelings of fail-
ure, restricted partJcJpation, and
outright rejection. Much of North
American life, including games a nd
sport, involves competition aimed at
proving one's superiority over some–
thing or someone, rather than upon
the improvement of our physical,
social, and psychological state of
being."
Contrary to popular belief, such
values are not shared as part of the
human tradition. John M. Roberts,
an anthropologist at the University
of Pittsburgh, has studied the pat–
terns of games in 186 separate so–
cieties thro ug hout the world.
"Games with winners and losers are
not cultura lly universal ," he con–
eludes. Ethnographers even con–
sider such study too trivial for
anthropological research, claims
Roberts.
Yet in our Western world. sports
have become a proving ground for
masculinity, sometimes an obsessive
way of life for those who can't cut it
elsewhere. The image of the over–
the-hill jock who refuses to retire his
old uniform is more fact than fic–
tion.
In sorne instances, sports have
been credited with a nation's sur–
viva!. Didn' t the Duke of We ll–
ington boast that the English victory
at Waterloo was won on the playing
.fields of Eton?
Certainly in America, winning is
the name of the game. Alex Whea–
den, a national fencing champion in
the under- 16 class, tell s. why: " 1 love
winning medals and
J
like to see
people see me getting award s."
That's a normal enough reaction,
except for thc fact that every win–
ning performance produces d is–
illusioned lo se rs who bl a m e
themselves for failing.
The toll in human health and
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