In This Age When Men are Trying to Enter Women's Sports, It is Worth Remembering This

“Sport is where an entire life can be compressed into a few hours, where the emotions of a lifetime can be felt on an acre or two of ground, where a person can suffer and die and rise again on six miles of trails through a New York City park. Sport is a theater where sinner can turn saint and a common man become an uncommon hero, where the past and the future can fuse with the present. Sport is singularly able to give us peak experiences where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential.”  –George A. Sheehan

            A man steps into a ring or field and his reality shrinks to the ropes or lines. His allotted time begins to audibly tick. His life struggle is simplified to the rules of competition. The yards gained or lost, blows struck or received of every play or round are felt as profoundly as life’s jolting tragedies and joyous triumphs. He knows the game, match, or race can make a humble man bold, a sinner a saint. He grits his teeth for the finish line, the goal, the last bell, the checkered flag. All along spectators cheer or jeer and he knows he’ll walk off the field, or be carried off, a loser or a winner; though, either way, he’ll retain his pride only if he fights like the game is a real struggle of life and death. And in the end, if he’s more than just an athlete, he’ll know to leave his blood and ego on the field, because men don’t gloat or point fingers, they walk away tall, content they tried, knowing they’ll strive again on and off the court.

Such is why we love sports, and should. Life is never so simple and clear, and rarely as heroic, as in competition. But it’s also why some don’t love sports, and why some will question its inclusion here among the necessary parts of an ultimate man. They’ll point to the jock who struts arrogantly on college campuses. They’ll say we revere this part of man too much, that sports stars can be downright idiotic when thrust behind a microphone, even though he’s godly on the field or court. They’ll say too many athletes have an excess of what the Greeks called “hubris,” a word best defined as “outrageous arrogance.” They’ll say athletic stars too often don’t have enough of the other qualities espoused in this guide. They’ll scoff that modern spectator sports nurture and reward displays of unsportsmanlike bravado, because though rule bound, sports are poor teachers of ethics. So then, ask the anti-jocks, the nerds, the intelligentsia, is being an athlete really a good and necessary part of being a man?

            Playing is. Being a sports star isn’t. Here’s the difference: athletics is a segment of a man’s education that is lacking without the others. This is why the Greeks combined poetry, rhetoric, and other contests along with their athletic Olympic events. This is why, though being the star of a team offers an opportunity to be everything a man should, if a man is fooled by his fame into thinking being a sports star is all there is, the athlete will be just another clichéd blockheaded jock, a punch-drunk egotist who ages and suddenly finds himself lost in a stupor on the sidelines.

            Men need to be well rounded. But ignoring this part of an education can leave a man without the physical confidence earned from the toil and triumph of competition. This is why the Greeks used sport to teach a boy to push his body, to take his stamina to new limits. They saw it as training for battle and for manhood. They knew the human body is capable of much more than someone who has never really pushed their body realizes. It’s a necessary step on the path to manhood to harness the confidence and self-knowledge that comes from this understanding of one’s body. Whether big or small, strong or weak, young or old, a person who has learned what his body can and can’t do is more likely to tackle life’s conflicts with quiet confidence—and that is manly.

            The athlete is also more likely to deal well with physical discomfort. Complaining about pain and injury is never manly; learning to cope with your body’s weakness is. The best athletes seem to rise above their physical limitations to a higher plain. Many athletes are injured on the field of competition, but the best play through their ailments and still astound. Whether it’s a tight muscle, a bruised rib, a strained tendon, or worse, the great players shrug off pain and play like they’re immortal even when they feel mortality straining in every sinew. Despite a broken hand, Floyd Patterson defeated Tommy “Hurricane” Jackson in 1956, and thereby won a chance at the title, a chance he took and won. In 2004 Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling pitched the sixth game of the American League Championship series despite an ankle injury. The images of his bloody sock carried him to fame as Schilling threw everything he had and won.

            As for the injuries that can’t be overcome, such as when a football player sacrifices his body to make a tackle and destroys his knee, well, such are the times when true champions rise. When they’re taken off the field in a stretcher, and they’re grimacing in outrage at their body’s frailty, we sympathize. The athlete trained his body, honing it into peak condition, as all great athletes do, and finally lost, as he inevitably must, sooner or later. But if he’s a well-rounded man, such an athlete can grow to even larger proportion if he grits his teeth and transitions his life to its next chapter without bitterness. An athlete can lament publicly about a disabling injury and get true pity just once; if he does so twice people will turn away, knowing intuitively that the athlete should move on. Life is a journey, as Shakespeare penned, “One man in his time plays many parts . . . .” We grow, and strive, and learn, but we can’t knockout opponents forever. To be men we must try until the signs are clear, and then move on without remorse.

            This is why Ernest Hemingway wrote, “Ah, Madame, you will find no man who is a man who will not bear some marks of past misfortune. Either he has been hit here, broken this, or contracted that, but a man throws off many things and I know a champion at golf who never putted so well as with the gonorrhea.”

            The sport played isn’t crucial as long as it pushes a man mentally to overcome pain and weariness and to concentrate on the objective, while at the same time, developing his body with his mind. Most sports do that. Football violently tests speed, stamina, and skill, and forces a man to learn to catch the ball despite the impending collision with the 300-pound linebacker nicknamed “Steamroller.” Tennis pits a man against another in contest of power, speed, and skill. Boxing is a crushing sport of skill, stamina, and strength, but has more to do with courage and confidence than most know. Team sports teach more than just individual fortitude, but also leadership and sacrifice.

Nowhere in this distilled truth can we find biological men entering women's sports.