HOW SPORTS LIFE GUIDES REAL LIFE

Sports life not about winning and losing, but how you play the game?

Real life says sports life isn’t an accurate reflection, that winning is the reason, the only reason, to do anything.

People in the winning camp like to say winners do what losers won’t do. They’re not wrong, they just don’t know what winning is all about.

Mary Decker wasn’t a loser for dropping the biggest race of her life to really bad luck. Bitter and angry and hurt, yes, but not a loser.

Sports guided the two rivals to a better place.

Where is that better place?

I found a sports moment by doing what I’ve pledged to never do: Play adult basketball.

So much for my pledge.

One of the guys wanted to play a shooting game in the gym. I said, “let’s play old man basketball.”

Everyone was sixty or better if you wonder why the old man reference. My guys for two on two liked the old man reference?

If they didn’t I explained the rules: No running. No jumping. Just dribble, pass, and shoot.

If you’re a sports guy you can read between the lines. Let’s start by asserting I’m not a bully, which is what every bully likes to say.

Who needs a sixty four year old bully? No need, but I know what a bully is all about. If Army drill sergeants aren’t the best bullies around, they are top three. It’s their job.

I learned from the good work of of Drill Sergeants Easterling and Daybell.

To be clear, I don’t initiate bully behavior, but I know it when I see it.

So a no running and jumping game of old man basketball began. Since I made the rules, the game started in my favor: plenty of contact and spinning and bumping from the start. It was done gently yet firmly.

The biggest asset in old man ball was blocking out. After the first shot I cleared my opponents away from the ball, which meant a rule change.

Maybe a little running and jumping for rebounds? Fine.

Five minutes into the most fun I’ve had playing against old guys ended with a sprained ankle. Someone got bumped on a block out and their foot rolled off their shoe. (Sorry, Rick.)

Real life or sports

Sports life, games, competition, whatever you want to call it, come with a strict set of rules, boundaries, and penalties.

Real life not so much, but the idea of rules, boundaries, and penalties still apply.

Taking a sports ethic to real life is always a good idea, even when it sets the bar so high.

Sports life people abide by the culture that defines them the same way others follow the beat of their drummer. Problems occur when the drummer takes over.

Rules say one thing, drummer boy says another. Who is right? A calm reading of the rules of order usually answers the question, except when the drummer is so loud no one can hear anything else.

Where most people operate according to the law, or shades of legality, the drummer claims a new way forward.

A big world looking for harmony and grace gets a solo of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Wipeout instead.

Sports give the command to “Play Ball” or “Ready Wrestle” or the sound of a starting gun; drummer keeps playing to a deaf audience who break rules and run out of bounds but say they didn’t break rules or go out of bounds.

Sports people know the game and how it’s played. Real life people count on short memories and make their own rules, their own games, then wonder why no one wants to play.

Eventually they stray so far out of bounds they get lost, lose their drumbeat, their drum, drumsticks, and the lasting memory is of a confused looking person waving their arms while the rest of limp around with the rewards of playing the game the right way.

They are called winners.