Why is America (devoutly to be hoped to be) falling out of love with football?
Because, aside from the brain damage issue (never mind how easy it is to
believe you have to be a little brain damaged to want to play football in the
first place), it is discovering little by little what Mr. Will says to conclude his
essay---football is a degrading enjoyment. "[E]ven though Michigan’s $9 million
coach has called it 'the last bastion of hope in America for toughness in men.'
That thought must amuse the Marines patrolling Afghanistan’s Helmand
Province."
And, as the degrading enjoyment of football begins its annual overlap with
the edifying enjoyment of baseball and its postseason to be, it's useful to
remember the accidental wisdom George Carlin delivered in comparing the
two sports. Accidental because Carlin thought he was delivering baseball
a grand put-down but instead delivered an enduring testimonial:
Baseball is different from any other sport, very different. For instance, in most
sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the
ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive
team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball.
In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he's
out; sometimes unintentionally, he's out.
Also: in football,basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball,
you score with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.
In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a
manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same
clothing the players do. If you'd ever seen John Madden in his Oakland
Raiders uniform, you'd know the reason for this custom.
Now, I've mentioned football. Baseball & football are the two most popular
spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able
to tell us something about ourselves and our values.
I enjoy comparing baseball and football:
Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.
Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called
Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.
Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.
In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.
Football is concerned with downs - what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up?
In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.
In football the specialist comes in to kick.
In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve
somebody.
Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling
on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary
roughness.
Baseball has the sacrifice.
Football is played in any kind of weather: rain,
snow, sleet, hail, fog...
In baseball, if it rains, we don't go out to play.
Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
Football has the two minute warning.
Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end
- might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go
to sudden death.
In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic
feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much
unpleasantness.
In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at
least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a
fellow human being.
And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely
different:
In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field
general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense
by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz,
even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long
bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this
aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes
in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home. And to be safe.
Except that this says it better:
The game is quintessentially American in the way it puts the
premium on both the individual and on the team; in the way
it encourages enterprise and imagination and yet asserts the
supreme power of the law. Baseball is quintessentially American
in the way it tells us that much as you travel and far as you go,
out to the green frontier, the purpose is to get home, back to
where the others are. The pioneer is ever striving to come back
to the common place. A nation of migrants always, for all the
wandering, remembers what every immigrant never forgets:
that you may leave home but if you forget where home is,
you are truly lost and without hope.
---A Bartlett Giamatti, in "Men of Baseball, Lend an Ear,"
16 June 1981.
