DECEMBER 17, 2023 – I see a close parallel between certain team sports and the infinite spectrum of world problems. If the analogy doesn’t provide solutions, at least it allows reconciliation of chronic frustration against persistent reality.
I start, though, with a team sport that’s not parallel to battling issues of civilization: basketball. Played at a serious level, this sport invariably involves high scores on both sides. In NBA or Division I collegiate or AAA high school conferences, fans get to watch one team pass and dribble down court to polish things off with a layup, a jump shot, a three-pointer, free throws in the wake of a foul, or . . . a turnover. In any case, possession then goes to the other team, which replicates the aforementioned process, except in the reverse direction. When the final buzzer sounds, both sides have inevitably racked up points; lots of them. Even in a blowout game of mismatched effort, coaching, or abilities, the losers have put something on the board. Unlike hockey or soccer game scores, a basketball game never produces a score of [some number] to zero.
Moreover, basketball’s “missile” is a “hands only” ball—bounced, passed, or shot, but rarely with enough force to knock off someone’s head. And unlike soccer, in basketball you never see headshot, whether to pass or score . . . let alone dribble. To be sure, the game can be quite physical, but body checking of the sort encouraged in (North American) ice-hockey is strictly verboten.
In basketball, the losers might leave frustrated, humiliated, even angered, by the outcome, but never—even in our older son’s small private school varsity (excruciating) basketball games against the Twin Cities Catholic powerhouse team of De LaSalle—did we “loser” parents or our kids ever say, “Gee, you’d think we coulda scored at least one point!”
Hockey and soccer, by contrast, frequently involve a score of a single digit to zero. In hockey, especially, the puck often travels faster than the eye can follow. Players are in constant motion—and collision with each other. Even in a hockey or soccer game featuring many shots on goal, a good and/or lucky goaltender can keep the puck or ball out of the net. Changes in possession occur not continually, as in basketball, but continuously throughout fast-moving contentious play. Fan and player frustration are such in integral part of hockey and soccer as to be wholly normalized—as is in plain evidence with every swell of “Ohhhh!” or “Ahhhh!” from spectators and players on the benches.
Now let’s move to “Breaking News”—pick your platform. Whether you’re a casual observer or a dedicated ranting partisan, there’s never a break in what’s sold as “Breaking.” Even if by repetition or hopelessness you become unusually jaded by nonsense about nonsense or get snagged (as I did this morning) by a special Times report about human trafficking and slavery involving Chinese online “scam camps” in remote parts of Southeast Asia, you feel as if the world is one giant hockey barn or soccer pitch in which unruly players are whipping slapshots this way and offside killer kicks that way. The refs have taken such a beating they’ve dropped their whistles and changed into street clothes. Even the scoreboard has been so smashed up, the clock no longer works and no one knows the score.
But the slapshots and above-waist kicks continue as players wearing nonuniform uniforms go crazy on ice and turf, wielding ultra-curved stick-blades or, as the case may be, wearing steel-toed spikes and mechanically-enhanced knee joints.
Some people can’t handle the indeterminate commotion in hockey or soccer. They prefer the slower “now they’re up; now they’re down” competition in basketball, or better yet, the series of five- to ten-second, carefully rehearsed and called plays in football, or the “let’s talk about stuff—any stuff—over another hotdog and beer” atmosphere of a major league baseball game, especially during a pitching duel.
Surely policy wonks and partisan political strategists are playing long games of basketball football, baseball and . . . chess . . . but what drives perceptions among most voters is more akin to what occurs in hockey and soccer: from one touch-point to the next, the puck/ball flies as it will, and usually with no clear resolution, let alone definitive scoring.
So it is with most troubling matters of humankind. We pass, slap, kick, and try to move puck or ball to a scoring position and smack it in, but most of the time, we’re not putting points on the board. Do players stop trying and fans stop watching, cheering, hoping? Absolutely not. Likewise, however humanity leaves the arena or stadium after the game or match, we’re always up for the next face-off. And therein lies our everlasting hope: we’re always ready for more “game on.”
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
