Politics and Sport...both sliding away from their gentlemanly heritage

I enjoy sports, always have. I have always enjoyed playing sports and there are many sports I have enjoyed watching, particularly ice hockey. As I age, however, I find my interest in sports waning. In particular I find little joy in watching sports on TV anymore, and my interest in participating in team sports has all but disappeared. This is not a result of a middle-aged beer gut (I don't have one) or of slowing down too much to be competitive (I think I can still outperform most young people in their physical prime). Part of the loss of interest, at least in sports on TV, is the constant barrage of marketing, something for which I have no time in life. Marketing is so pervasive on sports broadcasts these days that it is unavoidable. Gone are the days when you could walk out of the room for a refreshment or bathroom break when the commercials come on. Now, television, and particularly sports broadcasts, include marketing at every turn. The playing surfaces, and even uniforms in some cases, are littered with corporate logos. Every instant replay is sponsored by a corporation. Each half-time or pre-game show is "brought to you by" someone who wants you to buy their product. Marketing is a big turn off for me, so I've largely tuned out sports on TV. But there is another, more important factor that turns me off sports both on TV and in real life, and that is the unsportsmanlike conduct that is now often considered the norm. In the past, my perception of sports was that a set of official rules governed the game, but there were also a set of unofficial rules that governed the conduct of the players. It was understood that you were in competition to find out who would win within the set of rules. Now, the only thing that matters is winning. Now, most athletes, both professional and recreational, would rather cheat and win, or act in an unsportsmanlike manner and win, than act professionally and courteously and lose. Coaches who subcribe to this philosophy abound. "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," is a well known quote in professional sports (which likely originates from Henry Russell Sanders but was made most popular by Vince Lombardi. Really though? Winning is the only thing? Would you really rather win and see four or five opponents (and teammates perhaps) end up in the hospital, than lose and have everyone walk away at the end of the game and go home to their families? My personal philosophy on this is the exact opposite of this quote. Sportmanslike conduct is everything. Winning within that conduct is very important.

I am no fan of C.S. Lewis's Christian writings, but his children books are generally well-written. In the last of his Narnia Septet, there is a scene in which Eustace Scrub, a young boy caught in a sword battle, yells insults at his enemies after they perform a particularly dastardly act. His leader, King Tirian hushes Eustace, and explains that an honorable warrrior has only two forms of communication with his enemies: courteous words or hard knocks. I have always felt that is an appropriate approach to the sporting arena as well.

Ice hockey is my sport of preference. It is a highly skilled and fast-paced sport. It requires teamwork, good skating skills, and a deep understanding of tactical skills to be successful at. But, there is a darker side to hockey as well. For some reason, likely historical, the culture of hockey in North America condones violence as a means to resolve conflict. Fighting is essentially allowed in ice hockey, with some relatively light penalites for the combatants. Fighting has always had its place in hockey and, while I think it does not belong in any sport, it has seemed to fit into the culture more respectfully than one might imagine. The players have typically understood that there is a time and a place for a fight, and that fighting demands accountability for generally clean play. But lately, an even nastier, dirtier, and more violent side of the game has reared its ugly head. Plays made with the intent to injure an opponent have become commonplace. Coaches have subscribed whole-heartedly to the maxim: "Winning is the only thing." If an opponent ends up in hospital, or having to take significant time off due to injury, or even having to prematurely end their career then, oh well, so long as we won the game it's just fine. An example of this was the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, the culmination of two months of playoffs that results in the crowning of the Stanley Cup, hockey's holy grail, which hockey players spend a lifetime pursuing. Last season the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks faced off in the Stanley Cup Finals. One of the themes that emerged from this series of seven hockey games was Boston's willingness to do anything to win, even if it bent or broke the rules, and certainly if it involved unsportsmanlike conduct. Several players did end up in the hospital. At least three or four Vancouver players required surgery, including one for a broken back. In the end Boston won. I'm sure they figured it was worth it. I'm sure other teams in the league that watched from the sidelines figured that their model of play was one worth eminating if it resulted ultimately in victory. I didn't. Had I been a Boston Bruin fan or even a player, I would have felt that I had cheapened the sport. I would have felt unsportsmanlike. This is not all to say that only the Boston players behaved unsportsmanlike. Many of the Vancouver players also did so, but that is not my point in this example. My point is that winning was worth behaving that way for the Boston players. Nothing else mattered, so long as they won. I would have felt like my family was disappointed in me, not proud for me winning. I would much rather lose gracefully than win through unsportsmanlike conduct.

I find there are many analogies between sport and politics and this shift seems to also be occuring in politics. I firmly believe that democratic political systems, when they were originally established, where intended to give everyone an equal voice, and then to make decisions based on the majority of opinions, assuming that everyone who cast their voice did so in an informed manner. Playing within the rules, and within the bounds of politicalmanlike (is that a word?) conduct. More than almost anything in life, I value the opportunity for everyone to have their voice heard. I hate scenarios in which people are cut off mid-sentence by someone who can shout more loudly. Inclusiveness is key to democracy. Opposition voices are an important part of the process. Not just to be heard and then disregarded, but to be heard, debated honestly, and then to contribute to the overall process of decision making.

That process never happens in politics anymore. In Canada at least, decisions are made based on party-loyal vote casting. Members of Parliament (MPs) are often asked (told) to vote along party lines to match a decision already made by the party leader, before any debate has taken place in the House of Commons. Why have the debate at all? (Indeed, I worry that that is a step we may end up taking in our political system).

An example of this approach is a decision that will be made in the coming two years here in Canada. There is a proposal, by a corporate oil giant, to build an oil pipeline from Northern Alberta to Northern British Columbia to ship Albertan oil to Asian markets (i.e. China). Currently, a process of hearing both sides of the debate on this controversial project has begun. A government body will, for the next two years, hear voices from both sides of the table. On the one side, the very well funded oil corporations will lobby the government for the economical benefits this project will undoubtedly bring. On the other side, poorly funded environmental groups, Aboriginal peoples, and local communities will lobby for their voice to be heard on the issues of safety, health, and environmental destruction. What is interesting in this process is that, already, before the process has even begun, both the Prime Minister of Canada (Stephen Harper) and one of his cabinet members, have spoken out against those with an agenda to stop the pipeline project from happening. The Prime Minister has said that those with an environmental agenda have "hijacked" the process. His cabinet minister has essentially said that those who are against the pipeline are "radicals." So where is the debate? How can the government have made a decision, in the best interests of all Canadians (not just those who voted for the current government), without having heard one day of debate from either side of the table? The decision is already made. Mark my words. The pipeline will be built, no question about it. Billions of dollars of money will win out over clean water, potential oil spills off the coast, and the destruction of Aboriginal culture everytime.

The process is rotten. Voices are not being heard. Unsportsmanlike conduct is the rule of the day in the modern political arena. What is most alarming about the above example is the classifying of one set of voices in a debate as "radical" or as having "hijacked the process with their agenda" as though they have no right to be heard in the debate. You can almost hear King Tirian scolding the Prime Minister now. But, the distinction I would draw that I suspect most of my fellow citizens would not, is that I don't believe all politicians fall into this category of win at all costs. Indeed in Canada, I would even go so far as to say that I find the win at all costs is relatively specific to the Conservative Party. In one of the leadership debates in the most recent election in spring of 2011, Stephen Harper kept referring to the bickering of the opposition parties in the House of Commons everytime his government took any action. Finally, in frustration, Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada at the time, told Harper that it is not bickering it is democracy. Sadly, he sounded like a tired old man whining and complaining, and it only served to illustrate to voters what Harper was saying. But, the point is, Ignatieff seemed to understand that there was a process that should be followed, that debate and dissent were part of the process. As much as he wanted to be Prime Minister, he didn't give me the impression that he would sell his own mother to do so. But even more noteable in his respect of the process before his untimely death was the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, Jack Layton. Layton spent a long time as a city councillor in Canada's biggest city before becoming elected to parliament and eventually becoming leader of the official opposition. I suspect the council type approach to decision making had a profound impact on his approach to politics. City councils tend to run much more like democracy should, with voices being heard and then decisions being made, than do federal politics in which the leader typically decides everything based simply on policy or party agenda. Jack Layton seemed to really have the interests of Canadians at heart. Unfortunately, perhaps because he was such a genuine person, he was attacked harshly by other parties, notably the Conservatives, as someone who was only interested in raising taxes on Canadians. Again, smeer your opponent with untruths and win at all costs.

Winning is the only thing. That is a scary proposition. The only thing. That is not to say that it is the most important thing, that somehow, if you could add up all the other things, they might be of equal value in their summation as winning is. No, it is the only thing. The other issues not only don't matter, they don't even exist. Nothing else matters at all. Hearing the voices of your opponents does not matter because it might interfere with you winnning the next election.

I dream of a government and political process that would respect the process more than winning. A party that would prefer to see the process of democracy continue in its best form than gain power themselves. A leader that recognizes that mis-representing another party's leader in an attack ad is actually counter-productive to the process of democracy, effective though it may be.

I have written in a previous post about the similarity between religion and some sports cultures. I have always enjoyed sports. As a child and teenager, playing sports was all I ever wanted to do. I was a pretty decent athlete too, usually one of the best players on whatever team I played on and usually the fastest or second fastest runner in my grade. As I grew older, though, I started to migrate away from team sports and towards more individual sports. At the time I started to become fed up with what I perceived as some of my teammates complaining all the time and others not pulling their weight or putting in the full effort. A few times I remember being downright embarrassed by my teammates actions in a game, and wanted nothing to do with them. This happened whenever a teammate of mine showed no respect for opposing players or even referees. I hate trash talking. When I played sports I kept my mouth shut and played hard.

Ice hockey is an interesting sport. It is a game that requires a huge amount of skill to play well. Not only does a player need to have all the technical, tactical, and strategical skills involved in most team sports, but in addition the game is played on skates. You can have great hand-to-eye coordination and a fantastic ability to read plays in sports, but if you can't skate well then you'll be a lousy hockey player. The finesse, speed, and skill of the game are fun to watch. Sadly, though, in North America there is a culture surrounding ice hockey that I see very few positives in. From a young age players are taught to be "tough", to never show any pain or emotion of any kind other than anger at opponents, retaliation for an intended or accidental slight by an opponent is a must. If someone accidentally trips you, then make sure you slash him across the wrists with your stick next chance you get. Hockey is a physical game. Part of the game is using your body to check someone and take the puck away from them. Knowing exactly when and how to hit someone to body check them effectively takes some skill. But in hockey culture, if someone effectively body checks you (legally) then you are encouraged to take offence, remember their number, and get them back later in the game even if it means stepping outside the rules of the game or the normal conduct of sportsmanship. This payback can often take the form of a fight, a pervasive part of ice hockey in North America. The penalties for fighting in hockey are minimal compared to most sports. Indeed, one could argue that fighting is encouraged in many ways. Traditionally, each professional team would have an "enforcer" or designated fighter who would make sure that anyone who hit a star player was challenged to a fight. As with any such system that uses force to discourage violence by an opponent, an arms race develops. In the case of ice hockey, each team has an enforcer, so often all that ends up happening is the enforcers fight each other ultimately having little to no effect on the intiiation of hits against star players. Thus, the whole system of fighting in the game is entirely futile. There is no question that if hockey leagues properly officiated their games, then star players wouldn't get targeted for dirty hits because opposing players would know that their season or their career would be over.

So, with that background, I recently read the autobiography of Bob Probert, an NHL enforcer (fighter) who played professionally from the mid-1980s to 2002 for Detroit and Chicago. I won't make this post a general book review, the book itself is far to poor quality to deserve an actual review, but I will make a few comments on the sad and pathetic life of Bob Probert. Probert grew up playing hockey and, as a big man or 6'3" and 225 - 230 lbs, he was probably destined to be a fighter if he ever made it professionally. He knew his role, and one can't really fault him for playing his role in the sport given the money on the line. But, Probert's life was a tragedy. A raging alcoholic and drug user, throughout the first two thirds of his career he was drunk most days. He never took his training seriously, and often stayed up all night partying before a game. Somehow he managed to keep playing at a hight level. But, as expected of someone who can't control their drinking urges, he was caught numerous times driving while drunk. He was also arrested several times with cocaine on him, once while he was trying to cross the border from the United States into Canada. The man's life was a disaster zone. What surprised me about the book was not the number of times he was in trouble with the law, but how irresponsible he was towards everything and everybody in his life. In his autobiography, he never takes any responsibility for any of his massive foul-ups. He always blames the cops when he gets arrested, the reporters when the story appears in the papers, his teammates when they tire of his antics and say they expected him to get in trouble again, his coaches when they demand accountability from him. In short, anyone whom he perceived to stand the least between him and a lifestyle of pure unadulterated fun with no accounatabilty. Probert recounts going into rehab at least half a dozen times. Most of the time he was in rehab he treated it like any overgrown adolescent would: with an attitude that simply betrayed his disinterest in changing, but rather simply going through the motions to pacify the authority figures in his life. At least twice in rehab he had sexual relationships with staff or others going through treatment. His sole objective during rehab appeared to be to find a way out and get another drink. Countless times in his book he talks about being clean for a few days or weeks and then caving the moment anyone asked him if he wanted a drink, as though it was their fault for failing to keep the alcohol away from him. As far as the reader can make out, he was unfaithful throughout his pre-marriage relationship with his future wife, and throughout their marriage as well. When his wife confronted him with infidelity his response was to more or less shrug it off and blame the booze. In short, there is no other conclusion to come to than that Bob Probert was a first class asshole who happened to be good at playing hockey and fighting while standing on ice skates.

And yet...he was revered by the hockey world. Fans adored him. Teammates generally respected him as one of the "good guys". When he died, at the predictably young age of 45, in July 2010, the hockey world paused and mourned the tragic loss of this great man as though none of them could have seen it coming. It is simply stunning, given his reckless approach to life, booze, drugs, women, and driving, that he made it past 30.

So why do people in the world of sports get so revered? If Bob Probert had not been a professional hockey player, I am convinced he would have been considered a collasal foul-up and loser. He would likely have ended up in jail long-term. (As it is, he did a significant stint in jail, and faced huge legal problems which were only handled in his favour because of the large financial backing involved in professional sports). In his book he must recount, in passing, driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs dozens of times. How many hundreds of other times did he drive drunk that he doesn't mention? He was staggeringly lucky to never kill anyone while driving drunk.

To me, the cultures of sports and of religions are interesting. I find many similarities in the cultures. There are unwritten and written codes that one must follow for no particular reason. People are blinded by irrational thought.

Had Bob Probert not been a hockey player and had instead orphaned some kid during one of his countless episodes of impaired driving, he would be remembered only as a total loser. The fact that he was lauded and rememberd as a "good guy" by all of the hockey world at his funeral and in multiple media stories only illustrates the insane, irrational thought processes in the world of sport. Sport is a religion, plain and simple.

Don’t Think, Just Follow The Code

Image courtesy of Google Images.

The following is a transcript of Don Cherry, a Canadian ice hockey commentator who has a regular segment called Coach’s Corner during the first intermission of hockey games on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) show Hockey Night in Canada. This particular broadcast was made on June 10th, 2011, and was originally transcribed from this link, starting at about the five minute mark.

“Now, I hope we got a little time for this. I’m sitting with you [Ron McLean] watching, you know how I get made fun of: “There’s a code. Oh, that silly code, you know. There’s a code in every sport, and you and I are watching the Red Sox, and I saw Ortiz throw his bat, and I went wild and you kind of looked at me like I was nuts and everything. But watch Ortiz throw the bat. [Video transitions to baseball replay]. This is a big thing in the States right now. This has been going, well you’ll see it the second time [video repeats]. He throws it. This is a big thing in the States right now. In the papers, the U.S. day to day, and Giordaro, what is his name? [Ron McLean interjects] (unintelligible), he just goes nuts on the whole thing and he got up the next time, we’re not going to show it, he got dinged. The next game he got dinged. And he made a little apology, he said: “You know, I,...380 home runs and I throw my bat once.” You DON’T DO IT [yelling]. You don’t, there’s a code that you people don’t know about. Because you saw that and say: “So what? He threw his bat.” It’s the same thing as when I got ripped, what did they say? Entertainment. Watch Ovechkin same thing, he doesn’t do it anymore. I tried to tell you about all this stuff. There’s a code in hockey of how you act, kids, and look at this, he never, ever did this again [video of Alex Ovechkin worshiping his “hot hockey stick”]. Bruce [Boudreau] talked to him and everything. There’s a code in hockey, there’s a code in baseball, and be sure to follow it or you’ll really get it like Ortiz did.”

The first thing that I hope strikes the reader is the appalling grammar and perversion of the English language that comes through even in writing that has been edited for clarity (for example, the term “everythink” to “everything”). Christopher Hitchens has stated that anyone who can really speak properly can write, but then goes on to ask how many people have really speak properly. But, this is besides the point.

The “code” that Mr. Cherry speaks about is a real entity in the sporting world. During the recent Stanley Cup finals in ice hockey, there was an incident in which one player was accused of biting another players gloved finger. The accused player was ostracized as being classless, even though all around him other players were witnessed punching opponents in the face, slashing the back of their opponents’ legs with hockey sticks, and hurling verbal abuse at each other. But, biting is considered outside the code, while all of these other disrespectful actions are considered within the code. There is no rhyme or reason to the code in some sports such as ice hockey. The code simply evolves, much like a religion, over time. Certain actions are considered disrespectful while others, seemingly equally as bad, are not. In ice hockey, for example, yelling obscene insults about an opponent’s wife is perfectly fine. Saying anything racist is not.

The “code” that Mr. Cherry refers to, and demands that kids learn and obey, is really a code of conduct. In his baseball example, a player is ostracized for tossing a bat to the side after hitting a home run (despite the fact the bat was not thrown dangerously, it was merely tossed to one side rather than the other). The reality in that case is that the action was perceived as cocky by the player. This is a laughable offense in the world of professional sports where the participants are applauded for being cocky in most scenarios.

In Mr. Cherry’s world, people should not question. Do not question the code, just respect it. Don’t question why it is unacceptable or disrespectful to throw a bat or to kick an opponent, but it is acceptable (and tough) to punch an opponent in the face or hack him with your hockey stick. Don’t question it, just respect it, or else. (Note the introduction of fear into the equation indicating that there will be dire consequences if you ignore the code).

The similarity between some sports and religion is an interesting topic that probably deserves further attention, but at this point I thought I would introduce the topic with the “code”. What is the equivalent to the code in religion? The law. Don’t work on the Sabbath, but it’s OK to have slaves. Stone your children to death for disobedience, but don’t eat pork. Marry as many women as you can afford, but don’t marry a non-virgin. Don’t wear clothes made of more than one fabric, but do cover your head at all times. And most of all (you can hear Mr. Cherry’s gravelly voice interjecting here)...DON’T DO IT. Be sure to follow the code or you’ll really get it. And whatever you do, don’t question the code.

Haphazard rules with a good dose of fear and you are ready either to establish a major league sport or found a religion.