A Quick Note on the Duality of Sport

I wish I had more time to discuss this, but alas, dinner calls.

I remember in my early high school years when I read the book, My Name is Asher Lev. Much of the symbolism in the novel referred to the duality that is natural to all of life's quandaries and beauties alike. The author stressed a balance, a subtle and indescribable harmony among all things good and evil, false and true, that is evident in all aspects of life. This same theme also appeared in The Invisible Man. The author of this novel also insisted that without darkness there is no light. The existence of one permits that of the other. And then there is my favorite proclamation of duality from The Grapes of Wrath. It is astonishing to me that I remember anything from that book given its length. However, I will never forget that without pain, there is no progress. You cannot have one without the other. They are opposites and yet they are mutually dependent on each other. I do believe that this same duality, this same need for pleasure and agony, good and evil, right and wrong, respectable and despicable, is evident in sports.

At another time, I will explain this theory further and with more examples. Yet, I had to post immediately after seeing the news that Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners had reportedly donated over $1 million to the Japan earthquake relief effort. With all of the controversy about alcohol, drugs, abuse and overblown pay checks in baseball, there are the players who will give as much as they can to a cause that hits close to home. There are coaches who will give a kidney to a player in need. There are major league squads that will do what they can for a college team affected by a devastating hurricane. And this is just in baseball.

I hate to romanticize the past, but it's difficult not to when all you know about the history of baseball came from the words of David Halberstam. I would do anything to flush out the headlines and dilute the hype when it comes to how sports breed dishonesty and athletes are bad role models and so on and so forth. I would do anything to go back to the words of Halberstam, which cast a magical spell on even the slightest of details of sport. My ability to write and know sports will forever pale in comparison to that of David Halberstam. Yet, I do believe that if he were around today, he too would feel the need to look more closely at the duality of sport. He too would start and end the story with the positive and address the negative for the sheer sake of acknowledging that it does exist. He too saw that without the darkness, there would be no light. And if there were only light in the world and in sport, it would not be light at all.