A week ago Saturday our favorite high school basketball teams concluded their successful seasons with a loss. The following day our favorite college basketball team did the same. Monday a cold, dreary rain fell all day. Tuesday the same. Thursday brought blizzard.
Two days of heart wrenching loss followed by days of dismal weather prompted sullen contemplation of sport, of winning and losing, of life's humbling setbacks.
James Michener, who claimed to have "blindly, loyally, and often stupidly cheered for the Philadelphia Phillies through bad years and worse," said the experiences developed character. When a young literary critic told him his writing seemed exceedingly optimistic about the human race and raised the question of whether Michener had a sense of tragedy, the novelist replied, "young man, when you root for the Phillies, you acquire a sense of tragedy."
The same, it seems can be said of those Kansas University fans who spend their winters falling in love with the Jayhawks, cheer regular season victory after regular season victory, then watch their beloved become roadkill on the highway to the Final Four. As opposed to the Phillies, who until recent years had a legacy of diamond ineptitude, the Jayhawks have the winningest record in college basketball over the past decade. But like the Phillies, the Jayhawk season ends early. This year, like Caesar, KU took a shiver in the back on the Ides of March.
More than 600 Kansas high schools took the court in December with their sights set on winning a state championship. In the end, twelve teams achieved their goal-twelve teams cheered at the final buzzer. At the collegiate level, thousands of teams are winnowed down to Sweet Sixteens and Great Eights and Final Fours, and finally National Champions. For all but the chosen few, the final buzzer carries the sound of loss.
We laud the winners-those who pay the price, who spend extra hours in the weight room and gym, who hone their skills, who sacrifice and give their all to the team. They are models to emulate.
But, Vince Lombardi to the contrary, winning is not the only thing. Pete Hamill eloquently wrote of Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Sal Maglie, who in the 1956 World Series "hauled his thirty-nine-year-old body to the mound inning after inning, gave everything he had, held the Yankees to a few scattered hits and two runs - and lost. That day Don Larson pitched his perfect game: no runs, no hits, no errors. Yet, to me, the afternoon belonged to Maglie - tough, gallant, and a loser.
"Winning isn't 'the only thing.' Such an idea muddles the idea of competition, not simply in sports, but in all aspects of our lives. Winning isn't the only thing in love, art, marriage, commerce, or politics; it's not even the only thing in sports.
"Great athletes teach us that winning isn't everything, but struggle is-the struggle to simply get up in the morning or to see hope through the minefields of despair."
Winning isn't everything, Hamill concluded, living is the thing. "...and in life, defeat and victory are inseparable brothers."
Area high school teams who came home from sub-state or state tournaments without the big trophy, and the Jayhawks who fell well short of their aspirations spent the weekend in the melancholy late winter rain and snow. When the sun returned and spring arrived with its revitalizating warmth, the great athletes began anew their efforts to roll the boulder up the mountain.
Whether they reach the peak or not, they serve as a noble example for us all. ~T. Stucky
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