Bill Reynolds: Sports Produces Flowers Of Hope

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

        12.27.98 00:25:21
        BILL REYNOLDS
        Despite grasp for dollars, sports produces
        flowers of hope

The past few years I sometimes wonder how much longer I
can keep writing about sports, how much longer I can
continue to care about a world that seems more and more
to be about money and greed, hypocrisy and
exploitation.

There is much not to like about sports in America, as
we head toward the end of the century. The ongoing NBA
lockout is the most visible example, tall millionaires
feuding with short millionaires about how to split up
billions. But it's not the only example. Not on your
life.

The signs are everywhere, constant reminders that money
is the fuel that drives the engine, the business side
of sports always in your face, slapping you upside the
head.

This is the landscape, and it can wear you down.

But just when I'm about ready to say it's all nonsense,
something always happens. Some reaffirmation that
sports are indeed worthwhile, always some flowers that
grow up through the pavement.

This year was no exception.

And it's more than what happened on the national stage,
with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa again showing us that
sports can be transcendent, can make us all feel better
about ourselves. Not only did McGwire and Sosa combine
to give us a memorable baseball sumemr, they also did
it with grace, dignity, and sportsmanship. And McGwire
even added the Maris family, too, a homage to history
and baseball's tangible link to its storied past.

And it's more than Michael Jordan nailing a jumper to
give the Bulls another NBA title, and John Elway
finally winning a Super Bowl after all these years, two
freeze-frame moments from athletes in their twilight
who we've watched their entire careers.

This year is full of people and moments to remember,
from Doug Flutie's comeback, to Drew Bledsoe's two
last-minute heroics that saved the Pats' season, to the
quiet efficiency of the Yankees. From URI's great run
through the NCAA tournament; to Sara DeCosta, the
Warwick kid who went to Japan as a goalie on the U.S.
Women's Olympic hockey team and came home with a gold
medal; to Mike Cloud, the former Portsmouth All-Stater
who recently was named an All-American running back.

But it's more than all that.

For me, it was another reminder that when you take away
all the money and all the commercialism, all the the
things that seem to drain so much of the joy out of
sports in America, the essence of sports is still there
all around us. You just have to look a little harder
for it.

The past few years I have done that by going to high
school games. It's usually an instant antidote, a
reminder of what I liked about sports in the first
place. Sometimes I'll write about some kid, and
invariably they thank me. But they've got it all wrong.
I should thank them. It's them, and their stories, that
keep me writing about sports.

For there always are new kids.

New kids with the potential to take us along in pursuit
of their dreams.

That is one of the great things about sports; just when
you start to think you have everything figured out,
that you have seen and heard it all, along comes some
new kid to break the stereotype.

In 1995, Tyson Wheeler was a freshman from New London,
Conn., on a bad URI basketball team, a kid who
essentially had been overlooked by bigger schools, just
another freshmen in a college world full of them. Last
March he led the Rams to the upset of Kansas, the
biggest win in the school's history.

Four years ago Jamel Thomas was a freshman at
Providence College and, on the surface, he seemed
locked inside some personal prison, withdrawn, wary, as
though the baggage he'd brought to PC from the Coney
Island streets was so very heavy. Last March, on the
night of PC's basketball dinner, he gave an emotional
talk about Pete Gillen's leaving that can only be
described as eloquent.

Sometimes you never know.

Isn't that one of the reasons we keep watching?

Isn't that one of the great restorative aspects of
sports?

There have been countless times through the years that
I've gone to some interview feeling jaded and worn out,
beaten down by the sameness of it all, the sense that
sports is all one big season that simply goes round and
round, a season that I've already seen to many times
before, only to have someone tell me their story and
hook me all over again.

So I suppose sports are a little like the human spirit.
Just when you think it's been stifled, it comes out
again, inextinguishable. Or you can cover sports with a
patina of money and greed, you can do everything to
cheapen them and make them ugly, but somehow,
somewhere, they will find a way to survive.

For there're always new kids with their dreams.

Always someone else coming along that gives us a reason
to care, always a few flowers that keep growing through
the pavement.