George Gilder on Sports

“Sports represent to males a realm where they can collectively test themselves against the highest ideals and standards of human performance. The boy on the Harlem playground endlessly practicing his shots envisages himself as Walt Frazier. The runner struggling up the rocky hill in Van Cortlandt Park or striding loosely through its crinkling leaves pays tribute with every step to the great stars who have preceded him there, undergone the same pangs, and enjoyed the same cool breezes, the same hope of fluid speed and final glory.”

“The fact that most of the contestants will fail to reach the standard does not change the nature of the quest; nor does it deprive them of these beatified moments in the life of every athlete when, however briefly, his usual limits are transcended and he is reborn in the image of his dream. Rabbit sees the shots shots arch flawlessly in the air from fingers possessed and swish repeatedly through the cords. Darling shifts directions three times, feels a tackler slip away, and fiends the field open greenly 80 yards before him. The boy runs back, back in the playground outfield, stumbles around a bush, leaps desperately in the air, glove extended against the sky in the image of Willie Mays and clumps in delectable pain to the ground against the fence with the ball clutched in his hand. He will never be closer to God.”

“Contrary to their currently fashionable detractors, sports for men embody a moral universe. On the team, the group learns to cooperate, learns the importance of loyalty, struggle, toughness, and self-sacrifice in pursuing a noble ideal. At a period in their lives when hormones of aggression are pouring through their bodies in unprecedented streams, boys learn that aggressiveness must be disciplined and regulated before it can be used in society. Boys learn the indispensable sensation of competition in solidarity. The twelve ruthlessly ambitious men on the Boston Celtics- six black and six white, rich and poor- becomes a platonic scheme of unity and sacrifice, reaching toward the fifteen green flags of previous championships hanging from the ceiling above them. They teach the crucial lesson that the more one gives, the more one wins; that the selfish star is a burden on his fellows; and that Arthur "Hambone" Williams- just four years ago an aging playground marvel on a San Diego amateur team- can make all the difference without scoring a point.”

“Athletics for men is an ideal of purity and truth. But when women enter everything changes. For as Ms. acknowledges, most sports are designed for "male musculature." No matter how hard Mss. Bragina and Kraker train, they cannot hope to be more than somewhat distorted and inferior reflections of male performers. Their competitive exertions seem less a pursuit of a noble ideal of excellence- a physical fulfillment- than a struggle against the female proportions of their bodies. Thus the very success of their effort attracts attention to themselves as sexual objects. They run so fast or jump so high not by a realization of the natural potential of their physique but despite it. Despite her womb, her breasts, her hips, her female musculature, her lesser metabolism, Bragina, the marvel of the Olympics, can run almost as fast as a male adolescent. Her achievement is indeed prodigious. But its very essence is flawed as an athletic performance, because it is not a natural and beautiful fulfillment of the female body. It does not aspire to the platonic ideal.”