When I was a little boy in Queensbridge we were close enough to the Brooklyn border to be avid Dodger fans. When the Dodgers would win a game we boys went out and held a parade and we'd chant "we won the war in 1944" having not the slightest idea what we were shouting.
When the Dodgers left town I was devastated.
When the Dodgers left town I was devastated.
I adored these guys, Duke Snyder, Carl Furrillo, Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, You could tell that these guys loved us and loved each other. They were a team. And they were special because they wee the first big league team to break the racial taboo.
When Walter O'Malley took them away I was crushed and I never could work up an enthusiasm for any professional sports team since then.
Now of course thee is no team loyalty on the part of players. They seek the best deal, each for himself.
And competition has become as rationalized and perfected in sports as it has in all other areas of life in our society. So we have athletes taking illegal drugs to enhance their own individual performances.
Competition is not the normal human condition.
Our hunter gatherer ancestors worked together to find good and not become food. Cooperation is the normal state of being for adults. Ask Chuck Hagel or anyone who has been part of a team, a real team, one that is welded together by love, which is also the normal state of being.
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