The Salt Mine

Like a child the parent suddenly realizes is no longer a child, the idea of sports being “just a game” grew up, at least it should have. While basketball, baseball, football and other popular sports may have been originally created as games, played mainly by children, they are far beyond that now. In the most rudimentary sense they are games--hit the ball, run to first base, score; get the ball to a designated area called the end zone and score six points; shoot the ball through a hoop for two points--all simple games played by children. They become very serious very quickly, though, when they shift from games children play to games grown men and woman play. For one to continue regarding them as “just a game,” after they have clearly evolved into an enormous economic and social institution, is to be like the child that never grew up. Far more than being child's play, high level sports in America today --which by definition translates to high financial and economic stakes --has become a pillar of popular culture and mass consumerism.

Many people have difficulty understanding this new culture. The astronomical salaries of today's professional athletes have prompted the oft-voiced complaint, “Nobody's worth that much money.” In a simplistic, egalitarian construct that casts everyone as equals, that might hold true, but such an assertion reflects a juvenile understanding of the nature of capitalism. It must be understood that the heart and soul of capitalism is profit, without which there can be no capitalism. On that premise, workers, the engine powering the capitalist machine, will only be employed and evaluated on the basis of their relation to profit and loss. The assessment, therefore, of a worker's salary is determined not by the amount of the salary, but by the effect the salary has on the company's profit-loss statement. To put this in graphic terms, it makes no difference if a player is paid $20 million a year or $20 million a day as long as his/her services provide the company/team with a suitable profit. It is that determination, a worker's relation to profit and not a dollar mount, that formulates what the worker is worth. It should also never be forgotten, although it usually is, that is what professional athletes are --workers --labor in a capitalist system, distinguished only by their comparatively enormous salaries.

Particularly in the early days of capitalism, a worker was never worth but so much no matter what the profit-loss statement revealed, or no matter how much output the worker produced. An athlete, therefore, is worth whatever ownership, in response to the current market, decides he or she is worth. Again, this is difficult for some to grasp because, psychologically, they cannot get beyond the enormity of the salaries in relation to the microeconomic level to which they are accustomed.

Despite the majesty of the numbers, there is more to the hypnotic lure of sports than money, something even more fundamental. As expressed in the Foreword, everyone wants to “be somebody.” In the world of sports, that longing finds expression in the popular egocentric slogan, “We're number one.” For those who actually fulfill that dream of becoming king or queen of the mountain, they are then able to claim a status that socially authenticates their worth --personally for the individual and collectively for the group --for they are now a “champion” and undeniably “somebody.”

It is unlikely that there has ever been a more resounding demonstration of the social and emotional impact of sports in general, and one individual in particular, than in the case of Hideki Matsui and the nation of Japan. Matsui, a Japanese native and national hero in Japan, was a member of the New York Yankees baseball team in 2009. On November 4, the Yankees won the decisive game of the 2009 World Series, installing them as the year's champion of baseball, and Matsui was selected the Most Valuable Player of the series. When the game ended, it was around 10:00 p.m. in New York, where the game was played, and around 12:00 noon in Japan. That entire nation then shut down for two hours in honor of Matsui's achievement, which brought international honor to the country. For an entire nation to respond in such fashion to an athlete and a sporting event signals far more than the workings of a mere game. In New York, following the series, children were officially allowed to miss school in order to attend the Yankees' victory parade, which, because of the team's success over the past decade and a half, had become a common ritual.

In football, during the week preceding the 2010 Super Bowl, a judge in New Orleans, where the game was played, postponed all court cases for that week because of the Super Bowl mania that had gripped the city by virtue of the city's team, the New Orleans Saints, playing in the game. Added to all this is the everyday news media coverage given sports, from the professional ranks to high school. Across the nation, when local teams win or vie for championships, they are accorded front page coverage and heroes' glory, often as lead stories. Major college teams --“amateurs” -- such as the universities of Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina in basketball, and Texas, Oklahoma and Michigan in football, provide major revenue to their respective schools. National and world news become secondary so that these all-important sports contests and stories can receive optimum press coverage. All of this is engendered by the salacious fascination with sports operating at the heart of American culture. No mere “game” could produce this type of emotional and psychological devotion, which some consider an obsession.