So Much for Sports as Metaphor

This is a fun two weeks for me as a sports television viewer. I love baseball-of any kind at any time. I live in Norwich, Connecticut and we have a minor league affiliate, the Connecticut Tigers in the New York-Penn League (I know 'but you live in Connecticut' and earlier in the week we played a team from Aberdeen, Maryland. What's in a name, Rose?) and, warming to my subject and part of today's teachable moment, a very active Little League as well.

Our kids didn't make it to this season's Little League World Series (but some of their parents might be seen on an upcoming episode of "Cops") and that's what I'm enjoying right now. I have absolutely no dogs in the hunt in terms of youngsters for whom I'm rooting. I watched a game Tuesday night where it seemed there were more wild pitches than hits but the players on both sides of the ball gave every pitch their all for the entire game. And yesterday's Mexico/Venezuela game was so beautiful it deserved to be framed.

The announcers remind me every half inning or so that kids learn a lot about life from sports. I learned a lot about cursing though I suspect that's not what they're talking about. Okay; from your lips to God's ear if you mean we learn that sometimes you win and sometimes you don't and often it has nothing to do with how hard you work or try but with how lucky you are.

I actually wish they didn't keep score in the games of the Little League World Series in (South) Williamsport, Pennsyslvania. Anything to make it last longer. The stands are filled every game with people who love to root for youngsters who love to play baseball. The tickets are free and the concession prices would lead you to conclude Ike is still President, except the Interstate highways are all constructed. Every team from around the world shows up as the epitome of sportsmanship and the players behave exactly as our own children would-when we are watching them armed with electric cattle prods. Norman Rockwell would paint the LLWS just the way ESPN broadcasts it.

As I said, the sad and essential part of the Little League World Series is that score is kept and some teams win and move on and others lose and go home. Winning and losing are the two sides of every coin and to savor the former you must suffer the latter but when you're twelve, the last thing you need or want is a mercy rule because you never believe you're out of it and your team is coming back in your next at-bat, you just wait (spit on the ground and hope to die).

I love the grit, the drama, the relentless optimism and the joy of being alive that everyone from the players through the volunteer umpires, fryolater cooks, parking lot attendants, parents with orange slices and Gatorade to the army of brothers, sisters and cousins who unfurl those giant banners proclaiming "We Love Leland!" (or whatever his name is) that are visible from space and cheer themselves hoarse at every opportunity. The championship game is this Sunday afternoon at three and it's a cliche to note that for all the teams it's an honor to have made it to the Series especially because when the championship game is over, the end of summer is that much closer. And autumn brings changes both welcome and unwelcome.

That's one lesson and here's the other. Women's collegiate basketball had most unwelcome change earlier this week when Pat Summitt, the Lady Volunteers basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, one of the premier programs in college sports, in any sport, announced she has early onset dementia. As a devoted UConn Lady Huskies fan who believes Geno Auriemma should be President of the United States, I was much more than saddened to learn of Coach Summitt's condition.

Tennessee and UConn, in my opinion, created the environment where professional women's basketball in the United States was economically viable. Without their classic contests a decade and a half ago fanatically followed by packed houses on both campuses and by millions on television across the country, women's pro basketball would be women's pro soccer in terms of market share and fan interest.

Coach Summitt is the best-known ambassador of her sport in every positive sense of the word and I know all, fans and otherwise, will learn a huge amount about life and living with grace in the coming weeks and months as she prepares her team for this season as if nothing were different when she, and we, know that everything has changed.

Yeah, sports is life and sometimes all the things, good and bad that come with life. Between the Little Boys of Summer and Coach Summitt of Rocky Top are constant reminders that hope springs eternal even if eternal spring is a fantasy and a fallacy. Look around, leaves are brown and the sky is a hazy shade of winter.
-bill kenny