MAYBE I’M SLOW. But it wasn’t until a conversation with my friend Bob that I realized how ideological American sports have become. Bob asked if I’d been to the Washington Redskins football game the day before. Nope, I answered, I gave away my tickets and went to the University of Virginia soccer game instead. Bob was thunderstruck. How could I pass up football for that wimpy, boring sport? It took a few minutes before it dawned on me what Bob was really getting at: I’d passed up a chance to watch a conservative sport, football, for a liberal one, soccer. Bob was on to something. Nearly all sports, I’ve concluded, are either conservative or liberal. Really. The conservative ones are rough, individualistic, obsessed with winning, just as Newt Gingrich is in politics. Liberal sports are non-violent (mostly), collective, and less than triumphal–in a word, McGovernesque. It’s obvious boxing, wrestling, football, and basketball (1990s-style), which involve lots of physical contact and one-on-one confrontation, are conservative. But baseball, soccer, and basketball (1960s variety), where violence is supposed to be kept to a minimum and intricate teamwork matters, are liberal. And not as fun to watch. There are a couple more things that make a sport liberal. If it’s one in which women are as thrilling to watch (and almost as good) as men–you know, tennis and swimming and soccer–it’s liberal. Or if liberals love to participate in the sport or profess to enjoy watching it, it’s also liberal. Baseball is liberal because liberals have idealized the game. Yes, George Will has contributed to this, but he actually likes baseball. I suspect many liberals who extol baseball don’t. After all, the game is often slow and boring. But liberals lurched to baseball’s defense when football threatened in the 1960s to become America’s number one sport. Liberals hate football. Not only because it’s violent, but also because its biggest enthusiasts are southerners and Catholics, two disproportionately conservative groups. Worse, football players often pray after scoring. Baseball, at the major-league level anyway, is heavily represented in the Northeast and Rust Belt, liberal stomping grounds. To stop football’s advance, liberals concocted myths, like the one about a surge of domestic violence during the Super Bowl. Liberals detest the Super Bowl. It’s the summit of conservative sports. There’s another telltale sign of a liberal sport: Winning isn’t paramount. So marathon running, where the important thing is not finishing first but just finishing, is a liberal’s delight. And soccer, in which many games end in ties, is too. The fundamental liberal vision of sports was stated two decades ago by a pro basketball player, Neil Walk. He said no score should be kept. Rather, basketball should be judged like ballet, for its artistry. Walk wasn’t kidding. The conservative view was expressed by long-time Redskins coach George Allen ( father of the Virginia governor): “Winning is life. Losing is death.” Vince Lombardi made the same point: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Certain sports are both liberal and conservative–call them Clinton sports. Hockey is the best example. Remember when the Soviets first sent their hockey squad to North America? The players were a model of socialist teamwork. The played hockey the way liberals like. Now contrast them with the star-oriented U.S. and Canadian players, who are frequently selfish, hogging the puck and taking outlandish shots. They play the game the conservative way. Occasionally, there’s a happy medium in Clinton sports, a mixture of brilliant teamwork and individual entrepreneurship–the Brazilian soccer team, for instance. That brings us to basketball, the sport that went from liberal to conservative. The classic liberal team was the New York Knicks of Bill Bradley’s day. Bradley had few one-on-one skills. He was “the open man,” reliant on others to screen his man so he could get off an unimpeded shot. The Knicks won several championships with that style of play. Basketball isn’t like that anymore. The closest thing to the old Knicks is today’s Cleveland Cavaliers, and they’re barely over .500. Now one-on-one matchups are everything; even the short white guys in the NBA dunk, and basketball is far more exciting. Charles Barkley has replaced Bill Bradley. Barkley, by the way, is a conservative Republican. You know what Bradley is. But if you’re a Gingrichian Knicks fan, don’t fret. It’s fine to like liberal sports. I enjoyed the UVA soccer game far more than recent Redskins games. Under coach Bruce Arena, who’ll coach the U.S. Olympic soccer team this summer, Virginia isn’t methodical and low-scoring. The Virginia way combines clever teamwork with individual flair, fast-paced play, high scoring, and lots of victories. A moderately conservative style, I’d say.
