Less Than a Minute to Go Read online

  PART ONE

  PREPARING YOUR MIND TO WIN

  CHAPTER I

  ALL WORK AND NO PLAY

  WATCHING children play we are often struck by their total absorption in the present moment—seriously sifting sand—and their sheer spontaneous joy of the experience. One day I was teaching my son James to ride a bicycle. This may sound like a reasonably easy thing to do but as a father of ten children there is always something else going on around me. As I tried to stay focused on James, I heard one of his brothers yell, “Dad, look at me!” I looked over and another one shouted, “Heads up!” as a ball flew over us. In the middle of the melee I somehow became base for the group playing freeze tag. Now, just before I was pulled away by all of the commotion, James had his feet on the ground and was struggling to balance whenever he placed one of them on a pedal. Fortunately, every now and then there comes a special moment, a once in a lifetime experience when you are blessed to be in the right place at the right time and something wonderful occurs. Literally a second later and that moment would have passed unnoticed. At the exact instant when I turned back to look at James, he put his feet on both pedals and started to move. And this was the blessing: his face. I never witnessed such joy in somebody’s face as I did looking at James’s in that moment. He was entirely unaware of me or anything else going on around him because he was completely absorbed in what he was doing, but I got to see that precise moment when he recognized that he was balancing and actually riding the bike. The joy was so intense that it felt like it physically shot out of him and hit me; it was extraordinary… and that’s play. We tend to think that sport, unlike child’s play, is more adult, work-like and serious, when in fact just the opposite is true. We are attracted to sport because it is play!

  The reason sport is so wildly popular is because every human being from the beginning of time has played. Yes, play. But for some reason most of us tend to think of play as something only little children like James do. Not so!

  Johan Huizinga, in his 1938 book, Homo Ludens (The Being that Plays), analyzed the fundamental characteristics of play and the importance of its role in the very development of civilization. Roger Caillois, a French philosopher, built upon Huizinga’s work and described six general characteristics of play in his book: Man, Play and Games. (1) Play is free, meaning it is not obligatory; you do not have to do it. Think back to a time when you couldn’t wait to finish school or your chores so that you could play with your friends. Perhaps you can’t even wait to get out to the golf course later today! (2) Play is separate since it has its own limits of space and time. Remember playing pick-up football on the street? Even spontaneous childhood games have boundaries: “The cars are out of bounds and the touchdown is past the stop sign. Game ends at five.” (3) Play is uncertain because you do not know the outcome ahead of time. That is why a blowout is no fun to watch or play. You most enjoy a cliff-hanger especially when your team wins. (4) Play is unproductive since it basically ends like it begins. You brought a ball and you hopefully leave with a ball. Unless you live in the Bronx and the football bounces into the street and gets sucked up under a car never to be seen again. (5) Play is governed by its own rules which are created for the moment. “Over the bush is an automatic home-run.” (6) And finally, play is somewhat like make-believe. It is not “real” life but instead steps outside of it in a special way. Suddenly it’s less than a minute to go, you are Johnny Unitas, Roger Staubach, Joe Montana or Drew Brees fading back to throw the winning Hail Mary, touchdown! That is play and like every other human who has ever lived, we have been doing it since our earliest childhood. This type of play, called agon which translated from the Greek means competition, is the focus of this book. Sport is the competitive form of play.

  Sport has been around for a long time. Robert G. Osterhoudt points out that sport’s earliest practice coincided with humanity’s earliest artistic and religious practices. Looking at a game like lacrosse, you can find its origin back as early as 4000 B.C. with the native Indian cultures of the New World. Track and field activities of the Proto-Celtic Europeans were embodied principally in the Tailteann Games of Ireland. These games began around 3000 BC. Nearly a thousand years later, the Proto-Greek Europeans began competing in track and field as well, and it is these games that were the precursors to the Olympic Games, which were first played in 776 BC.

  Classical literature contains many references to sport and also describes how important it was to the life and culture of people from all places and in all times. These references suggest that sport and play were essential to the education and formation of youth. The list of those who have written about the importance and place of sport throughout history may surprise you. They are among the best and brightest that have ever lived.

  The great philosopher Socrates (470–399 B.C.) was recorded to have said, “To have the body active and healthy can be hurtful to you in no occasions and since we cannot do anything without the body, it is certain that a good constitution will be of great advantage to us in all our undertakings.… And, indeed, it is shameful for a man to grow old before he has tried his own strength, and seen to what degree of dexterity of perfection he can attain, which he can never know if he give himself over for useless; because dexterity and strength come not of themselves, but by practice and exercise.”

  Later Plato (428–348 B.C.), a student of Socrates, wrote, “For he who changes the sports is secretly changing the manners of the young, and making the old to be dishonored among them and the new to be honored.” Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), a student of Plato reinforced Socrates claim of the importance of sport, “As in the Olympic Games it is not the most beautiful and the strongest that are crowned but those who compete (for it is some of these that are victorious), so those who act win, and rightly win, the noble and good things in life.” The very fact that these luminaries of Western thought weighed in on sport reinforces the significance of play—of sport—as part of the human condition. Not surprisingly then, the multitude of saints and scholars who have also written about sport only deepens the intrigue about, and the importance of, sport in our time.

  In 1896 the Olympic Games were resurrected for the first time since being discontinued in 393 A.D. by Emperor Theodosius, a Christian, who had disapproved of the corrupt practices and professionalism which had begun to dominate sport. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympics Games, sought to recapture all that was good in sport. The Olympic movement sought to link sport with culture and education, promote the practice of sport and the joy of effort, and help build a better world through sport practiced in a spirit of peace, excellence, friendship and respect (www.Olympic.org/Documents/Reports/EN/en_report_668.pdf).

  In the tradition of Pindar, perhaps the greatest of the Greek lyrical poets who wrote victory odes for Olympic Champions, the Baron asked Kostas Palamus to write the Olympic Hymn which is still honored today.

  O’ ancient immortal spirit, pure Father of the true, the beautiful and the good, descend, appear, shed over us Thy light within the glory of your own earth and sky which has first witnessed Thy imperishable fame. Crown with the unfading branch, victors in the race and in strife! Create in our breasts, hearts of steel! In Thy light; plains, mountains and seas shine in a roseate hue and form a vast temple to which all nations throng to adore Thee, O’ ancient, immortal spirit.

  These words, charged with religious references, describe the aspirational character he hoped would dominate the Games. The movie Chariots of Fire portrayed this character in its depiction of two great British runners who competed in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games: Eric Liddell, the 400m gold-medalist, and Harold Abrams, the 100m gold-medalist. One of the most striking scenes was when Eric Liddell refused to run in the Olympic 100 meters because the race was scheduled to take place on Sunday. While speaking to a crowd he said,

  You came to see a race today. To see someone win. It happened to be me. But I want you to do more than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it. I want to compa
re faith to running in a race. It’s hard. It requires concentration of will, energy of soul. You experience elation when the winner breaks the tape—especially if you’ve got a bet on it. But how long does that last? You go home. Maybe your dinner’s burnt. Maybe you haven’t got a job. So who am I to say, “Believe, have faith,” in the face of life’s realities? I would like to give you something more permanent, but I can only point the way. I have no formula for winning the race. Everyone runs in her own way, or his own way. And where does the power come from, to see the race to its end? From within. Jesus said, “Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you. If with all your hearts, you truly seek me, you shall ever surely find me.” If you commit yourself to the love of Christ, then that is how you run a straight race.

  There are two parallel plots in Chariots of Fire, one following Liddell and the other following Abrams. The latter chooses to focus exclusively on himself by obsessing over every situation and person in his life and how he will be perceived by them. And even after he won the gold-medal, it was interesting to observe that he could barely take it; he continued to struggle with an inner emptiness that no victory could fill. At one point he says, “I’ve known the fear of losing but now I am almost too frightened to win.” His fear was that winning would not make him happy. He soon found out it was true. In stark contrast, Liddell, who ends up winning the 400m gold-medal, is just filled with pure joy. The difference is that Eric’s life centered on other people and how he could love them. He did that because God was the source and summit of his life. God was his center of gravity, his motivation, his inspiration, and challenged him to do the most he could with the skills, talents, and abilities with which he was blessed.

  It didn’t take long before the Olympic Games also became a platform for making grand political statements. In 1936 Adolf Hitler unsuccessfully tried to prove the superiority of the Arian race. In 1968, some U.S. athletes raised black gloved fists on the victor’s podium as a statement about civil rights abuses. In the Munich Olympic Games the Israeli wrestling team was taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists and killed. The 1980 Moscow Games (I still have the letter from President Carter congratulating me on qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Trials and explaining why the United States would not be taking part in the Games) and the 1984 Los Angeles Games were boycotted by the United States and Soviet Union respectively. In Beijing, China attempted to show the world the perfection of Communism but in the end only proved that the individual was a commodity to be used by the state.

  However, not all of the political posturing occurs within the Olympic arena. Well-known professional athletes often influence the public to endorse and vote for politicians and this has not gone unnoticed by the two major political parties in the United States. For example in the 2008 election, former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn introduced Senator McCain at a rally and the NBA’s Chauncey Billups did the same for Senator Obama. Consider all the politicians who were elected in part because of their athletic fame such as President George Bush; Vice-President Gerald Ford; Senators Jim Bunning and Bill Bradley; Congressmen Jack Kemp, Tom McMillan, Jim Ryun, Bob Mathias, Baron Hill, and Tom Osbourne; Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; to name just a few.

  Although religion and politics may be closely associated with sport, in the end, it may be the economics of sport that has the greatest influence on our culture. The growth and sophistication of professional sport as a multi-billion dollar industry has only furthered the economic impact it has on every culture around the globe. For example, in 2011, New Zealand held the Rugby World Cup spending roughly $250 million to accommodate the event. It is estimated that the influx of 1.35 million tourists created well over 10,000 jobs and more than $320 million in the process. Writing for CNN, Doris Burke et al, asked, “Just how lucrative is the NFL? While the league won’t divulge exactly how its $9.3 billion pie breaks down, that figure is slightly more than all of eBay’s 2010 revenues and is roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Macedonia.” The Beijing Olympics provided that city with lasting revenue. The huge stadium built for the Games, the “Bird’s Nest”, has now become the third most visited monument in China after the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.

  In 2010, the FIFA World Cup event generated $1.5 Billion in revenue and it is estimated that another $3 billion was spent on wagering. Revenues for the top-twenty soccer clubs is approximately $6 billion. After experiencing an economic crash, many in Britain hoped that hosting the 2012 Olympic Games in London would provide $2 billion in economic help they so desperately need. World-wide advertising generates over $124 billion a year. Gambling generates another $144 billion. Consider that I have not listed the hundreds of billions of dollars generated by sporting goods manufacturers and retailers, food service providers, the internet, television, radio, print media, legal and medical services, and many more.

  While the enormity of the sports industry often puts it in the limelight, it is important to remember what St. Francis de Sales, 1567–1622 A.D., of all people, had to say about the value and place of sport in our lives: “Games of skill, which exercise and strengthen body or mind, such as tennis, rackets, running at the ring, chess, and the like, are in themselves both lawful and good. Only one must avoid excess, either in the time given to them, or the amount of interest they absorb; for if too much time be given up to such things, they cease to be a recreation and become an occupation; and so far from resting and restoring mind or body, they have precisely the contrary effect.”

  Although we are surely wired to play, we are, first and foremost, wired for the truth. St. Francis may have written his words long ago but they are as true today as they were then. If we do not heed his wise counsel by enjoying sport for what it truly is, play, we will find ourselves drowning in the anti-religious, the political, and the economic morass that now pervades the world of sport. We will find ourselves working at sport rather than playing.

  The steady diet of vice that we receive each day from the sports media would try to convince us that there is no apparent redeeming value to sport. That it is a pure den of inequity. On the contrary, there are far more good things happening in sport than bad but we unfortunately hear precious little about them. During all the years I’ve spent among players, coaches, owners, and many others associated with sport, I’ve met and worked with incredibly gifted men and women who are models of professionalism, generosity, and virtue. In fact, they are exceptional men and women who you would treasure as friends. They are loving husbands and wives, devoted fathers and mothers, and true men and women of faith.

  The following stories are not rarities. They are among thousands that take place every year but rarely reach the light of day because the athletes involved did not lie, steal, cheat, or try to kill someone.

  Amanda MacDonald apparently had had enough of the bad and was moved to write the following award-winning essay about an incident she witnessed during her brother’s little league game.

  Ever since I can remember, I’ve played many sports—anything from T-ball to gymnastics; because of this, I’ve witnessed many acts of good sportsmanship, whether it was stopping to help an opponent in the middle of a cross county race, or a soccer player who helped a girl who fell while fighting for possession of a ball, or just a simple “Good game!” One example I’ve never forgotten took place during my little brother’s 4th and 5th grade little league game.

  It was a nice spring day, I was sitting unhappily in the old wooden bleachers at the dusty little league field behind our town’s police station. Being in 6th grade at the time, I felt that I was way too cool to be watching this juvenile game of baseball, which my Mom had dragged me to. Little did I know that just one classy act performed by a 4th grade boy would influence my life. It was a long game, as most little league games tended to be. My brother’s team was losing, even though they had the best pitcher in the league; he truly was an excellent pitcher, he threw better than most of the eighth graders at the time. It was probably the last inning and the team’s coach let t
he little boy on the team who had cerebral palsy come up to bat. It took a lot of courage just for him to play, but to get up to bat was a whole other story, because he needed someone to run for him. When the little boy who was pitching saw this boy, he looked over to his coach as if to ask permission and walked about halfway between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. He did this even as his team mates yelled, “Strike him out!” He lightly tossed the ball underhand to the batter until, on the third try, the boy with cerebral palsy got a hit and a runner on base. The pitcher did this despite the fact that his team was losing and it would have been an easy out; he did not cave in to the peer pressure his team mates put on him.

  I know that everyone in the stands was amazed by the maturity of this boy’s act and I know that when I look back at that moment I try to remember that if a ten-year-old boy can put aside his pride long enough to help someone feel good about themselves, I should be able to do the same. In today’s world it is very difficult to stop being selfish and give to those who need our help. I still know people, even grown-ups, who would not have had the compassion to do what this little pitcher did.

  This story shows how works of mercy and virtue can touch a life. That little guy who was pitching wasn’t thinking, “Hey I’m going to make a big statement here.” He just did what he believed was right, and you can see through his leadership—which is really what he demonstrated—that his act has had an impact.

  This kind of virtuous behavior is not just for Little Leaguers, either. Sara Tucholsky, a senior softball player for Western Oregon University, was up to bat for the last time in her collegiate career. At only 5’ 2” she was not exactly a power hitter. Not only had she never hit a home run in her life but of her thirty-four at bats that season she only had three hits. Sara found herself at the plate in the top of the second inning with two runners on base in a 0-0 tie with conference rival Central Washington University. On the second pitch something happened that she had dreamed about all of her life. Sara made solid contact, and watched the ball sail beyond the field of play and over the outfield fence for a home run. She was so elated that as she sprinted past first base she missed touching the bag. Realizing it, she spun around quickly to go back to touch it. Unfortunately her right foot didn’t go with her. As she pivoted her cleats grabbed the infield clay and she tore her anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee. Immediately dropping to the ground with a loud yell she laid there in pain unable to move.