I am a sports fan. More accurately, I suppose, I am a Boston sports fan. Over the last 35 years, I have gone to countless Red Sox and Celtics games. I was at game 5 of the 1986 World Series (the one the Sox won at Fenway on a masterful performance by lefty Bruce Hurst, who for a fleeting moment during Game 6 was prematurely named series MVP), the bloody sock game of the 2004 ALCS, Game 2 of the World Series that year, and other notable contests. I also witnessed first-hand the Celtics Game 7 victory over the Lakers to clinch the NBA championship in 1984, Bird's steal of Isaiah's inbound pass for a last-minute win against the Pistons in the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals, Tree Rollins biting Danny Ainge in a 1983 playoff melee, and many more exciting (and some not-so-exciting) games I attended through the Reggie Lewis, Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo eras of Celtics basketball.
Professional sports have changed, and the agent of change has been money. Players who considered themselves lucky to make five figure salaries in the 1960s would be making millions on long-term contracts if they played today. Television revenues fuel the fire. As recently as the early 1980s, only select games were broadcast. Now, for a price, we can watch virtually any game as it is broadcast and rebroadcast over cable networks and the Internet. In a sport like baseball, where there is no salary cap, big market teams dominate small market teams, which allows money to have a strong influence on outcomes. (Except it seems in 2014 - witness the poor performances of this year's Red Sox and Yankee teams, and the near-complete success of the Kansas City Royals.) In some respects, money has poisoned the games, as some of the most successful players have used banned substances to enhance their performances, while some Division I football franchises have used money illicitly to attract future star players. In sports, as in everything else, the love of money is indeed the root of all evil.
We, the consuming public, are passive participants in the sports industry, which depends on our collective addictions to the games. With the rare exceptions of those who reach out to catch a baseball that would have been fielded (sorry Cubs fans), we cannot influence the outcomes, but can only sit back and cheer on our favorite teams. If the cheering at the event is loud enough it can have an impact, but they are called spectator sports because, most of the time, we are mere spectators of events determined by the paid participants.
And all of this brings me to a question: has our conditioning as sports spectators affected how we approach politics? There are some obvious parallels. We choose sides (usually Democrat or Republican), we cheer our teams on, we are happy when our side wins, and we are upset when our side loses. Just as Celtics fans never wish for the best for the Lakers (we tend to chant "Beat LA" when we lose the playoffs to a team that moves on to face the Lakers in the finals), and Red Sox fans never cheer for the Yankees (except in 2001, after the planes hit), so many Democrats, it seems, never want to see Republicans succeed and vice-versa. Mitch McConnell's famous comment at the beginning of President Obama's term that his number one priority was to make sure Obama failed demonstrates a preference for winning over governing.
Like sports, but to an even greater degree, politics have been spoiled by money. The ill-advised Citizens United ruling has unleashed the power of unlimited, anonymous fundraising to shape the results of our elections. The party with the most money (which, almost always, is the Republican party) wins, and the successful candidates are obligated to protect the interests of their generous donors. Just as big market teams dominate in baseball, big money candidates often dominate in elections. And just as with sports, television plays a central role.
Unwavering loyalty to a sports team is fine; in fact, it is admirable. But baseball, basketball, football, and hockey are games. Government is not a game; it is serious business. On a local level, whom we choose to represent us affects our small communities. On a national level, our choices affect the lives of millions. Bad economic decisions can leave millions in poverty. Bad international decisions can cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Bad environmental decisions can put our entire future at risk.
We Americans and the people we elect need to transcend partisan politics and find the common ground that will move our country, and the world, forward. Government should not be a sport where one side wins and another loses. Especially in these dangerous times, it needs to be a joint enterprise characterized by honest and temperate dialogue of decent people working together to achieve the best possible outcomes. It's okay for our leaders to battle for the hearts of the electorate, but once they win, they need to stop fighting their opponents and start fighting for the common good. And for that to happen, we voters need to make sure that we are not transposing our laudable passion for sports into the realm of government.
Professional sports have changed, and the agent of change has been money. Players who considered themselves lucky to make five figure salaries in the 1960s would be making millions on long-term contracts if they played today. Television revenues fuel the fire. As recently as the early 1980s, only select games were broadcast. Now, for a price, we can watch virtually any game as it is broadcast and rebroadcast over cable networks and the Internet. In a sport like baseball, where there is no salary cap, big market teams dominate small market teams, which allows money to have a strong influence on outcomes. (Except it seems in 2014 - witness the poor performances of this year's Red Sox and Yankee teams, and the near-complete success of the Kansas City Royals.) In some respects, money has poisoned the games, as some of the most successful players have used banned substances to enhance their performances, while some Division I football franchises have used money illicitly to attract future star players. In sports, as in everything else, the love of money is indeed the root of all evil.
We, the consuming public, are passive participants in the sports industry, which depends on our collective addictions to the games. With the rare exceptions of those who reach out to catch a baseball that would have been fielded (sorry Cubs fans), we cannot influence the outcomes, but can only sit back and cheer on our favorite teams. If the cheering at the event is loud enough it can have an impact, but they are called spectator sports because, most of the time, we are mere spectators of events determined by the paid participants.
And all of this brings me to a question: has our conditioning as sports spectators affected how we approach politics? There are some obvious parallels. We choose sides (usually Democrat or Republican), we cheer our teams on, we are happy when our side wins, and we are upset when our side loses. Just as Celtics fans never wish for the best for the Lakers (we tend to chant "Beat LA" when we lose the playoffs to a team that moves on to face the Lakers in the finals), and Red Sox fans never cheer for the Yankees (except in 2001, after the planes hit), so many Democrats, it seems, never want to see Republicans succeed and vice-versa. Mitch McConnell's famous comment at the beginning of President Obama's term that his number one priority was to make sure Obama failed demonstrates a preference for winning over governing.
Like sports, but to an even greater degree, politics have been spoiled by money. The ill-advised Citizens United ruling has unleashed the power of unlimited, anonymous fundraising to shape the results of our elections. The party with the most money (which, almost always, is the Republican party) wins, and the successful candidates are obligated to protect the interests of their generous donors. Just as big market teams dominate in baseball, big money candidates often dominate in elections. And just as with sports, television plays a central role.
Unwavering loyalty to a sports team is fine; in fact, it is admirable. But baseball, basketball, football, and hockey are games. Government is not a game; it is serious business. On a local level, whom we choose to represent us affects our small communities. On a national level, our choices affect the lives of millions. Bad economic decisions can leave millions in poverty. Bad international decisions can cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Bad environmental decisions can put our entire future at risk.
We Americans and the people we elect need to transcend partisan politics and find the common ground that will move our country, and the world, forward. Government should not be a sport where one side wins and another loses. Especially in these dangerous times, it needs to be a joint enterprise characterized by honest and temperate dialogue of decent people working together to achieve the best possible outcomes. It's okay for our leaders to battle for the hearts of the electorate, but once they win, they need to stop fighting their opponents and start fighting for the common good. And for that to happen, we voters need to make sure that we are not transposing our laudable passion for sports into the realm of government.
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