Summary & Commentary on Part 2 of Sport in Contemporary Society
The section starts off with a comparison of spontaneous play to the organized competitive team. One theme emerges as dominant: that spontaneous play is about keeping the action going. At the beginning this means negotiating rules everyone agrees to play by, whether or not they are the typical rules for such a game. As play starts, it means establishing handicaps and bending the rules for less-skilled players or teams in order to keep the score close and, therefore, exciting for all involved. There is flexibility allowed for digressions from the norm of play for highly skilled players as long as it does not disrupt play, thereby allowing these players more interest in the game so that they continue playing. The game is an end in itself, with just the play being the primary attraction, so the score is quickly forgotten and the next game is a fresh start.
This is in contrast to organized sports teams where rules are imposed, players are taught the correct way to do the skills and digressions or creativity are quashed. Rather than keep the competition or score close, the goal is to emerge a clear leader or winner and promote one’s self or team, possibly at the expense of others. Whether or not a player is having fun is secondary to accomplishing the prestige or status of winning. Therefore, the game is not an end in itself, but rather a means to an end – that of achievement. And the score is long remembered, even brought up years later if it was a particularly important game.
All this regimentation in organized sports probably makes some of us nostalgic for the good ol’ days when spontaneous play was easy to find. The second section reads as an ode to spontaneous street games in New York City. The main fault for the demise of these games is a change in culture. Although there are a list of changes mentioned, one of the main ones for New York City may simply be the increase in traffic making games in the streets dangerous, if not impossible due to interruption. Fault is also bestowed upon this generation of children, but then a counterargument is that a festival featuring street games – adults teaching over 300 children the games and play through midnight - was hugely successful with children asking when this will be done again. But is it really spontaneous play if the games are taught, organized, and not continued until there is another festival?
Organized sports are a major feature of our society today – for good or bad. As discussed in the third section, they are a part of developing a masculine identity for young boys. Boys who develop sports careers get into sports because it is expected, and they start to like it because they are seen as natural. The compliments and status that comes from it bolster their identity as an athlete. Older male uncles or brothers serve as competition within a family hierarchy for attention from the father. Approval, and even increased intimacy, from the father is a main reason for continuing sports. In fact, sports seem to serve as a place for the intimacy men crave, but also fear. The rules and norms of sports create a safe place for bonding, and yet also set up conditions of love or self-worth based on ability.
Interestingly, though the life histories of the men– from how they entered sport, developed an identity with it and affinity for it, and continued it as a career – are similar across races and socioeconomic status, there emerged a few differences. One is that some young men from the lower classes gravitated toward sport due to fewer or no other options because of a lack of money for anything else or to gain the status needed to be left alone by their peers who turned to drugs or gang fights for status. The men from low SES backgrounds tended to see sports as their only option, or one of very few, for success. This is in contrast to men from middle to high classes who may have left their sports careers earlier to pursue an expanding array of options available to them.
Even with these differences, the stories are largely the same. The author’s main contention is that sports helped with the “gendering” of these men; it helped shape their masculinity.
The view is largely one-sided, though, as the interviews were all with men in an attempt to make up for the dearth of information on men. Feminists have focused more on the femininity of women, and I wonder if there is research looking at the development of femininity through sports. Maybe that seems like an odd topic, but I propose it in light of the slowly debunked belief based on history that sports are for males and, therefore, develop masculinity. Since most of our culture now agrees women are just as suited for sports, perhaps sports also can develop femininity. This question is evoked because I recognized myself, a woman, throughout these men’s stories. I started sports because I needed to learn to swim; it was expected living in Florida. I started to like swimming because I seemed to have a natural ability with it and garnered compliments and encouragement. My dad has always loved sports and admits he wanted boys in order to pass this on. He got his wish with his girls, and his implicit love for sports showed through subtly and conspicuously throughout my career. Part of the reason I swam was for the attention, approval, and love of my father, who was otherwise somewhat distant. We could share a sort of intimacy in this arena. And I developed a bond with my teammates that was unmatched in any other social aspect of my life, even though there was a competitive hierarchy and constant striving for achievement, sometimes at their expense and sometimes at mine. Is this an example of masculine “gendering”? I hardly think so. Some of the qualities are typically associated with men, but females are just as feminine when they incorporate values of strength, competitiveness, achievement, and physical prowess.
However, I have now left those days behind. Although I still value these things, they are employed in an academic arena instead, and I have been newly acquainted with play. I hesitate to say, “spontaneous play” as I think that ceases once schedules get so crowded no one is free at the same time spontaneously anymore. We have to plan our game times. Still, the spirit of an ultimate Frisbee pickup game is exhilarating when the game is all about the game, and the score is long forgotten before play is even over, and play only stops due to exhaustion, rather than smothering the opponent. Players are traded in order to even play, and because we are friends, we throw even to those who rarely catch, just to include them. Still, due to competitive natures, especially in me and another former professional soccer player, the game can sometimes turn ugly as we two turn to the familiar and learned hierarchical competitiveness within an environment not suited for that kind of intensity.
Spontaneous play is an art, one somewhat lost in the organized sport world. However, strangely enough, within organized swimming, spontaneous play crops up often on the pool decks and just outside them during long meets. There is such a long wait, sometimes up to 2 hours, between swimming events, that children can be seen playing wall ball against the gym wall or the outside wall of the natatorium. Other children play hand clapping games in the bleachers. Still others have board games or books, not exactly spontaneous play, but not iPods or portable Playstations either. The electronics are slowly killing the art of play here as well, but if children are left to themselves with perhaps just a ball, or nothing at all, they still tend to play, even in the midst of competition. With more awareness on how important this is, we adults need to foster, rather than crush, this spirit.
