‘The fascinating thing about this,’ Owen told me as we watched the bird come back and stain another marker to replace the one I had pulled, ‘is that when an overly aggressive male invader comes along, he ignores the outer boundary, comes right across, showing no fear of the more puny male inhabiting that area. But as he flies closer to the heartland of the occupying bird, he begins to lose his aggressiveness, for now he knows that he is inside that little core of territory which the occupying bird must defend to the death. The bully may make a few half-hearted passes at the little defender, but when he sees the fury in the little bird’s manner, he quickly retires. At the outer margin it’s a game, at the inner core, death.’
The male deer that inhabit my woods do not shy away from competition; if they did they would be outcasts. I hear them clashing horns, not to the point of death but rather in the joy of competition. My dogs compete furiously for stones, but only so long as the game is fun. The minute boredom sets in, my little female, who seems more intelligent about these things than the male, calls it quits.
We live in a competitive world whose rules are harsher than we might prefer. But competition is inescapable, and much superior to a bland existence with no challenge and no defining rules. When a young athlete goes out for a basketball team, there are forty aspirants and only five slots. When he takes examinations, there are thousands to be graduated, but only one summa cum laude. When he applies for a Rhodes Scholarship, he has to go up against a host of young men, many of them better qualified than he.
Whenever I got a job, I did so in competition with others; one of the great disappointments of my life came when I applied for a professorship at a western university and was rejected on the grounds that my years of studying in Europe had not given me the precise bit of paper which I would have obtained had I stayed home and studied in the more conventional manner. I said, ‘To hell with it,’ and became a writer.
In politics I have competed against the best, and messy though the American system is, I see no superior alternative. Certainly, those nations which have eliminated political competition have failed to produce acceptable systems. It seems to me that after reverence has been paid to the lofty phrases of our great public documents, the finest axiom of American civic life is the old war cry, ‘Throw the rascals out!’ Whenever I have lived in an area long dominated by Republicans grown careless, I have been inclined to vote Democratic, and vice versa. I feel it my civic duty to do so, because the natural competition of the two parties is healthy for the nation. I would deplore the day when such competition died.
When I write a manuscript, it competes with a hundred others, each equally worthy of publication; when I work in television or theater, the competition is even more severe. In recent years I have done a good deal of consultation with young painters, and the job of each is to find a gallery which will exhibit his paintings; to do so he must compete with scores of others equally gifted who are likewise searching for space. In fact, I find no aspect of life which is free from competition, and I find it in no way degrading to enter that battle and to throw my talent upon its mercies.
Nations, too, respond to challenge. If they don’t, they perish. I remember sharing a podium with Arnold Toynbee when he first uttered that simile which has become so widely quoted. He was ridiculing capitalist America’s reluctance to face the competition of Soviet Russia. ‘Nations are like trout who have a sluggish stream to themselves. They grow fat and perish. Therefore, it’s a good thing now and then to throw a couple of fighting carp among the trout. They make the lazy trout bestir themselves so that the whole stream becomes more vital.’
Similarly, the human mechanism responds creatively to challenge. It is inherently good to expand the lungs, to put moderate strain upon the heart, to test the leg muscles and keep them in tone. One of the most compelling groups of statues left us from the days of antiquity are those which show exhausted athletes, such as the Charioteer of Polyzalos. When you look today at such a statue, you cannot tell whether the man has won or lost; all you know is that he has just completed a grueling test of some kind and that he is content. These statues represent the finest aspect of sports, the personal depletion at the end of the game, the exhaustion that leads to re-creation. It is this that the competitor seeks.
Finally, I believe that the human intellect also prospers from competition. It seeks challenges. It has got to test itself against tasks of magnitude. It wants to weigh itself against the great norm of its time. On the lowest level it is the small-town pool shark who dreams of the day when he can challenge Minnesota Fats. On the highest level it is the burgeoning scholar who wants to test himself against Spengler and Einstein. Flamboyantly, it is Ernest Hemingway boasting that he went into the ring against Flaubert and Pio Baroja and fought them to a draw. Less flamboyantly, it might be the businessman who says to himself, ‘I think I’ve put together something that may stand for a while,’ or Hank Aaron saying quietly, ‘If I make it through till next April, I know I can break Babe Ruth’s record.’ Bruce Ogilvie, who has spent much of his professional life analyzing competition, has summarized his findings in these words.
The moment of truth is axiomatic in the life of the great competitor. Therefore, it is to be expected that those who excel will have a higher than average potential for coming to grips with reality. Successful athletes are achievement-oriented people and derive personal satisfaction from their striving. All things considered, the successful athlete is at his very best when the odds are slightly against him. Ambitious people derive slight joy, if any, when their ability remains uncontested. The great athletes that I have interviewed do not dwell upon their losses, but concentrate upon that part of their performance that limited their excellence.
Those who are not great athletes can derive a comparable benefit from reasonable competition, and the best is when the individual assesses the capacities allocated to him by his genetic inheritance and determines to use them to the best of his ability. Such a person can ignore outside norms; if he plays baseball, he does not mourn because Hank Aaron can hit 750 home runs and he can’t. He achieves his own sense of accomplishment by performing up to his standard. But for life to be meaningful, there must be competition, either external or internal; I therefore reject all recent philosophies based upon a theory of non-competition, because such theories run counter to the experience of nature, of the individual and of society. Destructive competition carried to neurotic levels, I cannot condone. Creative competition, which encourages the human being to be better than he or she might otherwise have been, I applaud.
Without apology I side with St. Paul, who at various times made cogent observations about athletics and competition: ‘Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain … Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places … I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.’
I know of no comment on competition more felicitous than the famous editorial which appeared in an English newspaper on the eve of the 1966 World Cup final, when critics acknowledged that Germany stood a fair chance of winning the next day: ‘If perchance on the morrow Germany should beat us at our national game, let us take consolation from the fact that twice we have beaten them at theirs.’ The strangest comment came just prior to the 1952 Olympics when Japanese sportswriters began to realize that their swimming phenomenon, Hironoshin Furuhashi, was not going to sweep the races the way the general public had been led to believe: ‘If tomorrow we hear that our beloved Furuhashi has lost, it would be improper for us to rush into the streets and commit suicide.’ He did lose, they did rush into the streets, and some did commit suicide.
The problem, therefore, is not with competition per se but with the violence that excessive competition arouses. This
should be the grave concern of everyone connected with sport. It is getting out of hand, in all nations, and a halt must be called. A philosophical analysis of the problem can be found in Michael D. Smith’s ‘Sport and Collective Violence,’ in Ball and Loy. From some fifty savage incidents, I remind the reader of these, some of which he has probably seen on television:
• Of the many riots which have overtaken baseball in recent years—some extremely destructive and all disgraceful—the worst occurred in Cleveland on the night of June 4, 1974, when the hometown Indians and the Texas Rangers met for the first time after a bench-clearing brawl had marred an earlier game. They played, unfortunately, on a night when ten-cent beer attracted a boozy crowd of 23,134. In the seventh inning, the Texas manager had to close down his bull pen in right field; Cleveland fans were bombarding the relief pitchers with firecrackers and beer cans. But real trouble erupted in the ninth. Photographs taken of the fray show drunken fans invading the field, climbing atop the Texas dugout and threatening the lives of the visiting players. Only quick support from the Cleveland ballplayers averted a tragedy. Said one Texan, ‘If it wasn’t for the Cleveland players tonight, we would have got killed.’
• Basketball, with its fans practically sitting on the floor, is an invitation to rioting, and there has been plenty. Television viewers learned how ugly it could be when the nationally televised game between Marquette and South Carolina erupted into a free-swinging donnybrook, but a short time later they were horrified when a dreadful affair occurred during a Big Ten Minnesota-Ohio State game held in the former’s gym. Minnesota had been expected to win, and prior to the game their hyped-up players had put on a Harlem Globetrotters routine of fast passing and wizard gimmicks calculated to excite the spectators. It did, but it didn’t help Minnesota much, because Ohio State, by virtue of extra cautious play, went into the final thirty-six seconds with a 50-44 lead. I will not attempt to report what happened next, but it involved a knee in the groin of a player extending his hand for a conciliatory handshake, a player kicking a downed player in the face, and a general riot that could have resulted in loss of life. Some weeks before the game Minnesota’s Coach Musselman had made his statement that defeat was worse than death; the governor of Ohio called the affair, ‘A public mugging. Gang warfare in an athletic arena.’
• On May 14, 1974, I was lucky enough to have a ticket to the fourth game of the Stanley Cup play-offs between the Boston Bruins and the rugged, new-style, cut-them-to-shreds Philadelphia Flyers. The opening period, which should have been played in a little over thirty minutes, required sixty-seven because of the incessant fighting, stick waving and general mayhem. The game was a disgrace, with the Flyers winning 4-2 on their way to the championship. I was distressed at this exhibition, for I was not accustomed to games in which players were actually encouraged to engage in brutal fistfights with opposing players. However, a Flyer partisan told me, ‘How do you think we defeated New York last week? Our knuckle boys beat the living shit out of them and they were afraid to skate.’
• I was not surprised, therefore, when two young men were killed playing hockey in Canada and when, on January 4, 1975, Boston’s Dave Forbes smashed Minnesota’s Henry Boucha in the face with the butt of his stick, damaging Boucha’s eye so seriously that he needed hospital care for many days. Judging this to be a common assault, Minnesota police arrested Forbes and charged him in court with a felony. The sports world exploded. Hockey players protested that the courts had no right to interfere in a game. Coach Fred Shero of the Flyers said, ‘We have to police our own. We don’t have to go to court. I don’t think the law can dispense justice in sports.’ Bobby Clarke, most valuable player for two years, said, ‘If they cut down on violence too much, people won’t come out to watch. It’s a reflection of our society. People want to see violence.’
• Boxing has produced more than its share of riots, a typical one having occurred at the Felt Forum in New York on the night of December 9, 1974. Pedro Soto, a likable kid from Puerto Rico with ten straight wins against carefully selected pushovers, was finally going up against a real fighter, Mike Quarry, brother of Jerry, who had been grinding his way through the mill for some years. It was a massacre, with every judge awarding Quarry the victory. Soto’s adherents, who had laid out good money to see their boy triumph, could not accept the fact that he had been outclassed. So they trashed the Forum, ripping out seats, tearing down ceiling panels, wrenching toilets from the wall, and setting fire to the joint.
• Horse racing, with its opportunity for outrage when the stewards disqualify a winner or hand down an unpopular decision, has produced more than its share of disgraceful performances. At Roosevelt Raceway on Long Island on November 8, 1963, an accident in the sixth race caused six of the eight horses to pull up. Fans thought the race should be declared ‘no contest,’ but the stewards allowed the abbreviated results to stand, whereupon a major riot ensued, with a good percentage of the 23,127 spectators smashing the tote board, setting fire to a sulky in the home stretch, attacking a patrol judge inside his booth, destroying concession stands and overturning cars in the parking lot. Firemen had to douse the rioters with water, and the chief of security at the track suffered a fatal heart attack.
• Football, the most violent of all games, has escaped such major riots, lending credence to the belief that seeing aggression acted out in a game diminishes the likelihood that the spectator will engage in it himself. (This is refuted by certain ingenious studies which tend to prove that watching aggression does inspire aggression.) At any rate, if the big teams have escaped, the little ones have not. In one American city after another, football games between local high schools have either had to be canceled because of threatened violence, or played on distant neutral fields, or played in secret before no spectators. Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit, St. Louis have all experienced this phenomenon, but the Philadelphia case in the fall of 1968 was perhaps the most typical. Race riots and school rivalries were hot that year. Ugly incidents had proliferated, so when the big Frankford team (mostly white) was to play powerful Edison (mostly black), an ingenious bit of scheduling was devised. Ron Howley, assistant coach at Frankford, says that neither the players nor the coaches of either team were allowed to know where the game was to be played. All personnel were placed secretly on buses at each school, with only an official riding beside the driver knowing where the bus was to go. When the teams reached the playing field, reporters were sworn to secrecy, on the grounds that other games that year might have to be played there. Frankford won, 32–12, but I wonder if it should have gone into the records as a game.
• Box lacrosse, having been advertised as even more brutal than ice hockey, had to prove it. On June 3, 1975, the Philadelphia Wings met the Maryland Arrows in undeclared warfare, and the game grew so rough that ninety-six minutes’ worth of penalties had to be imposed; both benches emptied for a prolonged fracas; and, as if this were not enough, the state’s attorney charged three players with having broadened the fray by attacking fans with their lethal sticks.
• Because soccer is the most widely played sport in the world, it naturally provides the largest number of riots. We have seen that on May 24, 1964, in Lima, Peru, nearly three hundred spectators were killed in a brawl following a disputed referee’s call. In Glasgow, Scotland, on June 2, 1971, the final minute of what had been a scoreless tie between the traditional rivals Celtic (Catholic) and Rangers (Protestant) produced a soccer marvel, followed by a great tragedy. With less than a minute to play, Celtic put together a fine drive and scored the winning goal. Disgruntled Protestants in the audience cursed and started to leave. But in the remaining seconds the Rangers retaliated with an unbelievable goal, and the wild cries from the stadium could be heard at the exits. So those who had already left rushed back, only to be met by a crush of exultant fans trying to leave. Sixty-six were crushed to death.
• The Glasgow tragedy should not, perhaps, be charged to sports. It was an accident that might have happened anywhere; com
petition between Celtic and Rangers had merely exacerbated emotions which made the tragedy unavoidable. But there had been other incidents when British teams traveled abroad that raised serious questions about the decline of British sportsmanship. Barcelona, Rotterdam and various towns in Belgium had felt the lash of British hooliganism, but the apex came on May 28, 1975, when Leeds United journeyed to Paris for the finish of the European Cup. The game against Bayern of Munich was being played on neutral ground to escape partisan excess; Germans would hardly want to make asses of themselves in France, and it was supposed that Leeds would seek to make amends for earlier British misbehavior. Sad miscalculation! After a 2-0 defeat Leeds fans set out methodically to ravage the stadium and anything else that got in their way. It was an appalling performance, so disgraceful that the British ambassador had to make a public apology to both the French and German governments. Ian Woolridge, of the London Daily Mail described the typical Leeds fan as a ‘foul-mouthed, crude, drunken, intolerable oaf, bereft of reason, poisoned by prejudice, grotesque with self-invested arrogance, bent on destruction of property and intent on abusing anyone who speaks a foreign tongue. We are not feared, we are despised. We are not seen as “characters” or “tough.” We are seen as morons and degenerates.’
• No game escapes the violence. Recently on a golf course in Maryland two foursomes became embroiled over the slow play of one, and a general melee ensued, with golf clubs being used like machetes. The climax of the battle came when two golfers revved up their carts, made a cavalry charge, and knocked the enemy into a bunker.
• In his book The Nightmare Season, the psychiatrist Arnold J. Mandell tries to relate such violence to larger forces than sport. While relating a horrifying account of his experiences with the losing San Diego Chargers’ football team, he tells in detail of one crucial game in which the fans turned against their team and came close to physical violence: