Why we need sports, now more than ever

My favorite game I ever played began with abject fear. This was back in high school, my sophomore year, and a bunch of 15- and 16-year-olds sat in a basement locker room of a youth correctional facility listening to the adult in charge tell us about the guys we were there to play basketball against.

He meant to ease our minds, and we all tried to act cool. I put on a good face until he casually mentioned a point system based on the crimes that brought these kids here — assault, sexual assault, even manslaughter.

We had two games that night — an A game, and a B game. I was far too uninterested in defense to play in the A game, so I watched from behind the bench as our point guard was interrupted bringing the ball up the floor by a teenager in a jump suit walking across the court looking to fight.

But I also remember seeing a familiar face, a kid we all grew up with named Tony. We’d all wondered what happened to Tony, but there he was, sweeping the floor before our games, a big smile on his face when he saw us.

I remember the first play of the B game, coming around a screen for a catch-and-shoot three-pointer — if I was catching, I was shooting — and hearing a few kids in the center cheer when the ball went in. I’m almost certain they had bets on the game, but in that moment, it turned my perspective.

My 20-year high school reunion is coming up, and that story will be told for the trillionth time. We always laugh about the coaches keeping the trip quiet, and how that would never be allowed today.

But something changed in me after that game. Something good. I thought about those kids, and about how they really weren’t much different from me, aside from a few bad choices. I began that night terrified, and woke up the next day feeling a connection to those kids. An empathy for them, and a gratitude for everyone who’d helped me avoid the worst choices.

I felt that through a 32-minute basketball game. It’s probably the most important thing I learned in high school.

Sports are so great sometimes.

On the best days, this is a place where we make jokes about and embrace the absurdity of sports. I want you to smile. By definition, this space is a reflection of me, and for the next few paragraphs, I don’t have it in me to be anything other than sad and frustrated and angry.

A Kansas City, Kansas police officer is dead, shot in the line of duty. Capt. Robert Melton, a military veteran who leaves behind three children and another on the way, was buried this weekend.

The police have been adamant that this was not a planned ambush, that it was simply a man trying to avoid arrest, and there are a thousand things that have gone wrong to make that both necessary and an attempt at making people feel better. We are many miles and many dozens of lives past the point of needing all of this to stop.

Journalists believe that the news is not ours to create, that it is instead a reflection of what’s around us, and right now the news is as bad as I can remember. Those of a certain age will talk about riots and wars of a different time, and there is little doubt that social media and the modern news cycle can make things seem worse. But people are scared, and angry, across the country.

Melton is the second member of the KCK police to be shot in two months, and, by The Washington Post’s count, the 31st officer killed on duty this year. That’s nearly double the total this time last year.

In the longer view, violent crime is down, as is violence involving police officers. But the divisiveness building around these tragedies and a stack of social issues feels dangerous, and hard to stop, like a boulder down a hill. Polls show race relations declining, and much of the political rhetoric we hear divides us into groups.

Melton’s death is, of course, only the most recent and most local example of high-profile and terrifying violence. Orlando. Baton Rouge. Falcon Heights. Dallas. Nice. Baton Rouge again. Munich. So many others, too many to keep straight, all done against the screaming backdrop of a presidential campaign between two of the most disliked candidates in American history.

For those of us who spend too much time thinking and talking about sports, this can be particularly awkward, hard to find the energy or care for kids’ games played by professionals given the constant flow of events with far more consequence. I don’t think most of us ever forget that the outcome of sports games do not matter in any real material way, but when the important part of the world sends such obvious reminders it can be jarring all the same.

My comfort here, in so much as I have it, comes not just from a family and friends to love but from a belief with all of my brain and heart that this silly obsession with sports is actually not so silly at all.

Naively or otherwise, I believe we need sports in these times more than ever. I believe that we should spend more time watching games, not less, because if you are furious or desolate or confused about what you see in the news you can find the other part of society at a ballgame tonight.

The Royals and Chiefs and Sporting Kansas City and our colleges get most of the attention around here, but you don’t have to look far. Find an American Legion baseball game. Find a girls softball game. A boys soccer game. A co-ed kickball game.

You will find strangers and friends coming together for something positive, for something to invest in. You will find kids learning to be good teammates, and good winners, and good losers. If you go to Waldo Pizza or Minsky’s or Governor Stumpy’s or so many other places around town on a summer evening, you might see them learning to have fun together after the games are over, too.

It’s been said over and over again that America is as divided as it’s ever been. If you follow the presidential campaign, or read about all the violence in the news, it’s a hard point to argue against.

Well, I don’t know any segment of our society where more strangers with more backgrounds and more different worldviews regularly smile and work together than in sports.

What’s more important than that right now?

Ask any fan about their best sports memory, and it is likely to revolve around a particular game, but it is almost certain to be made by something more lasting and more human.

Buck O’Neil used to tell that amazing story about his best day in baseball, and it started with him hitting for the cycle, but it’s remembered for ending with him meeting his wife of more than 50 years.

George Brett says his favorite memory is Game 7 in 1985, which isn’t at all that surprising, but he doesn’t mention 11-0 or coming back from 3-1 or even the hug with Bret Saberhagen. What Brett talks about is feeling what it meant to so many others. He talks about a magic where the 25th man and the equipment manager and the usher and the parking lot attendant all felt that same unbridled joy as the Hall of Fame third baseman.

Eric Hosmer still remembers winning the state championship his senior year in high school, but it’s not the game that sticks out. One of his coaches bought some bottles of non-alcoholic champagne, and they went into some woods behind the hotel and popped them like it was the World Series. Then they sat together, and told stories, and laughed.

That’s sports at its best, and it’s what sports delivers more often and in grander scale than just about anything else. This is the awesome power of sports. Mostly, we see it as entertainment, as an escape, a way to wind down after the kids go to bed or an excuse to get together with friends on the weekends. Mostly, that’s enough.

But there’s another side of this. There are other times that sports can be so much more. They can be the reason a father and daughter speak for the first time in years. They can be the centerpiece of a childhood full of laughs. They can be the icebreaker between a cop and a skeptic.

Sports can be whatever we make them. An escape from everyday stress, or a bridge to more understanding. When is the last time we could better use more understanding?

Yes, we need sports. Now as much as ever.

This story was originally published July 23, 2016 at 11:38 AM with the headline "Why we need sports, now more than ever."