When silent even a fool is considered wise. That's from Proverbs. It's not often followed. We Americans had to say something.
|  |
| Many people had no choice but to work through the emotional and traumatic events of last week. |
Americans said things such as "playing the games is not as important as what happened in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania."
Oh?
Americans said things such as what happened "helps put things in perspective."
You think?
Not to come off more grounded than the next guy, I had long held the view that the playing of games was somehow less important than an attack against U.S. cities using hijacked commercial airplanes as weapons. I'd long espoused the heresy that the playing of games is far less important than a whole lot of things.
Most things.
But what the hell do I know? It took me a week to put this down.
I wasn't on the schedule to work SportsCenter for several days after the attacks. I listened mostly to news not sports. There were no sports for the most part.
I watched high school girls play soccer the day after the attacks when my family and I stopped at a park to be outdoors, away from the incessant news reports
for 30 minutes. I didn't think our break from listening to the news nor the playing of a high school girls soccer game was disrespectful to the dead.
Some small college football was played Saturday. That didn't dishonor our country or its victims. As a country we pay little or no attention to small college football games or girls soccer games. But these games matter a great deal to their communities. So, just as community grocers went to work, just as gas stations and dry cleaners and other small business people carried on, what was the problem with small games (so big to their participants) being conducted?
Probably nothing. The grand debate was reserved for our nationally celebrated sports.
|
|
We'd built up our athletes so much,
elevated their status to such a degree, we were
willing to go along with the premise that they
were somehow more affected than the rest of us
Joes. Does anyone really believe the left tackle
for the Green Bay Packers would be more
troubled going back to work than a United Airlines
employee? |
|
|
|
We argued all sides of the question. We weren't even sure what the argument was about. Was it a debate about respect for victims and country? Was it
about security concerns? Did it have something to do with some notion that the players "couldn't be focused" for their big important games?
We'd built up our athletes so much, elevated their status to such a degree, we were willing to go along with the premise that they were somehow more affected than the rest of us Joes. Does anyone really believe the left tackle for the Green Bay Packers would be more troubled going back to work than a United Airlines
employee?
Lots of folks went right back to work. Do you know why? It's because that's what they do. They go to work. Restaurant workers just blocks away
from the World Trade Center site, went back to work. They made meals their employers handed out for free to fire and police personnel who were risking their
lives. They did that while the sports world debated the question about whether the left tackle for the Green Bay Packers could cope.
So this week we're back at play. Football will be played. Baseball started again Monday night. We're clear now that these games aren't so damn important
any longer. The worst ever attack on the United States was enlightening like that. But had we somehow attained such "perspective" previous to Sept. 11, 2001, maybe we could have spared the country such unnecessary debate. If the games are relatively unimportant now we might consider also that this was always the case.
Some racetracks took criticism for not suspending their meets. But I'm not convinced that "open for business" was the worst response one could have.
As it turns out, millions of Americans went back to work long before our athletes did.
Kenny Mayne is a commentator for ESPN.
