05.12.26

Play ball!

Jalen Brunson & OG Anunoby

The New York Knicks are saving me from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Sport is an antidote to political despair. Aside from pure distraction, there’s the feeling of awe at the performance of great athleticism — the skill, strength, stamina, beauty, and concentration of each person and the elegance of a team moving as one organism. Each three-point shot knocked down by OG Anunoby or Jalen Brunson, each pass dropped precisely by Karl-Anthony Townes into a scrum of moving bodies releases a spasm of happiness, an involuntary whoop and laugh.

This is true for any great team or player in any exciting season. But in the last two years, sport is that rare thing that gives back what this evil administration is stealing from us. Fandom provides leisure in a time of too much labor, camaraderie in a time of division, connection in a time of alienation, loyalty in a time of betrayal, belief in a time of cynicism, optimism in a time of dread.

The relationship of a fan to a team is passionate, almost romantic, but it is a collective romance, the kind you see during great liberation movements and revolutions. Watch any arena full of soccer fans anywhere in the world, embracing everyone in the seats around them when their team wins a critical match or weeping and rending their jerseys when their team loses. A team and its fans are a family that, unlike most families, loves unconditionally. The lovers of any given sport are a community that, unlike most communities, welcomes anyone, regardless of class, age, race, education, or political affiliation.

There’s even a kind of democracy among blowhards. Everyone is an expert, even me, a new sports enthusiast whose knowledge is, to be generous, scant.

No institution escapes racism or sexism. In sports racism erupts in violence in the stands and pours onto the pitch. Sexism is written on the players’ and coaches’ paychecks; it is legislated in the exclusion of transgender athletes. Still, the playing field may be the only truly racially integrated institution in American life, and the only place where the superhumanly powerful body of a woman is celebrated.

As political anxiety intrudes on every other thought, the attention focused on a fast and complex game like NBA basketball is total, a noise canceler for the brain. My partner came back from Yankee Stadium and described how the world fell away the minute he and his friend gazed out over the gorgeous green expanse. The nervousness you feel when your player fumbles a ball or your team falls behind can be a kind of erotic pain, pleasurable in anticipation of its relief.

Sports are serious business, in every sense. But in the end their purpose is simple: fun. When catastrophe constantly threatens, how lovely it is to be transported heart and soul by a trivial pursuit. A game, after all, is only a game.