While visiting Dickinson for the first time, President Durden said something that significantly influenced my decision to become a Dickinsonian. Lecturing a group of prospective students, he tossed out the notion of a “real world,” emphasizing that it is when we decide to define certain things, groups or worlds as “real” or, for lack of a better antonym, “unreal,” that we hinder our ability to fully pursue and engage the world. I’m pulling off some major paraphrasing here, but that was the message I absorbed and was inspired by.
Browsing through old sports columns during spring break, I read an article that brought me back to this separation between our real world and sports. Written by David Halberstam following the 9/11 attacks, the column attempted to put sports in perspective with the real world, a task I’ve been struggling with for some time now. Halberstam offered great insight, as he started his journalism career covering the civil rights movement for the New York Times, but shifted to sports later in his career to write several of the most outstanding books in the genre. In this particular article he places sports well below our “reality,” writing that while it can inspire, bring together and heal our society, when it comes to importance and priority, the world sports offers no even parallel.
It’s not like sports and the real world don’t come together often. Halberstam points out that the Yankees’ World Series championship in 2001 was a moment that brought together a mourning city. The Saints and Hornets did the same for New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Here at Dickinson, the women’s basketball team holds an annual Pink Zone game to aid the fight against breast cancer, just one of the many efforts that several teams make to bring together the Dickinson community and engage our world.
But during the first two days of March Madness, when President Obama interrupted a close game to give an address concerning American Military action in Libya, I witnessed plenty more outrage at the interruption on twitter and other social outlets than opinion or concern for the issue, the reality at hand. Is this, as President Durden might have been alluding to, just our sad attempt at forgetting the problems that the world is facing?
It was a different story this month, when news of Osama bin Laden’s death immediately stole attention from several live sporting events, including the televised Mets/Phillies game. Cameras captured fans chanting U-S-A! in the stands in celebration. But does it take something as large as bin Laden’s death to mesh sports and the real world?
Personally, I’m still figuring out my own stance on the issue. I come from a city, Pittsburgh, where absolutely everything rides on the success of our sports teams. When the Steelers lose, downtown looks like an abandoned Gotham, yet we throw parades bigger than any war protest or campaign to commemorate a sports championship. So if I were asked to put sports in perspective, I would have to consider it part of my own reality. That being said, it is also my responsibility as a human, student and more specifically a Dickinsonian, to delineate what holds precedence. Finding your way back here to the sports section shouldn’t signify an exit from reality. For me, it is merely a different perspective on things.
