Dwyer: When sports can break barriers

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

I believe in sports.

I believe Nelson Mandela was right when he said sports have power greater even than governments to shake established racial boundaries. And I believe he proved it with South Africa’s 1995 victory in the Rugby World Cup. (Read the book “Playing the Enemy” by John Carlin rather than watch “Invictus.” It’s better. It always is – another thing I believe).

I don’t think that I will ever see a performance again that is as racially inspiring as Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, or Jesse Owens humiliating Adolf Hitler’s Aryan master race in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Thankfully, the world has come a long enough way that the circumstances don’t exist for such a showing.

But to say there are no boundaries left to be broken would be hopelessly naïve. There will come a day, in the near future I think, that we will see Iraq or Afghanistan or another country absorbed in war earn a trip to a World Cup. I think that the guns will silence, if only for a few days, and the warring factions will find at least one thing they can unite behind, even if it is something so superficially perceived as sports.

I believe there was a glimpse of that power when, in 2008, the Philippine government called a ceasefire to watch Manny Pacquiao, local hero and best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, fight Juan Manuel Marquez. When Gen. Hermogenes Esperon was asked what the rebels would do, he offered only this: “I suggest that they watch the fight also.” There were no attacks during the ceasefire.

There is a certain beauty in coincidences, and it was particularly evident when the death of Osama bin Laden was announced two Sundays ago at a game between the Mets and the Phillies that was tied at one in the bottom of the ninth. To rearrange those numbers: that’s 9, 11, with teams from New York and Pennsylvania. I believe the “U-S-A” chants were particularly loud there.

I think there will be an openly gay professional athlete in a major sport in our lifetime. Soon. I think this man will be both hero and goat, as Robinson was. But the courage of that one man to endure the emotional beating he will surely take will open eyes and further discussion well past what we can even imagine right now. He will, by displaying his own bravery, give courage to young people to endure the same. And I think not fearing who you are is a wonderful thing.

I believe that, as a child, playing baseball for my father was one of the most influential moments of growing up. Seeing his work ethic, his passion, his ability to control the room outside of the house, was essential in developing my work ethic, passion and charisma. My dad never feared making a decision as a coach. He never feared repercussions from parents or from the league. If he thought it was the right thing to do, he would do so. And so that lesson passed to me incalculably more fully than if he had simply said, “Boomer, stand up for what you believe is right.” I believe sports shaped me into the man I am today.

I believe, as I ready myself to walk down that hill in a couple weeks, that I have witnessed the sheer joy that sports can bring here at Kansas. Anyone who was in Lawrence three years ago was probably with me, and witnessed it in their own right. On April 7, 2008, the flight of a brown leather ball out of the hands of Mario Chalmers sent a jubilant group more than twice the size of the student population of Kansas – 80,000 people – hurtling into the streets.

They did not go to riot. They did not go to burn.

They went and they embraced and they cheered and they high-fived and they danced and they drank.

For a night, the elation of winning brought together 80,000 people, most of who had never met each other and would never see each other again. But for that night, they were joyful together, regardless of class or race or sexuality or religion.

That’s what I believe in.

— Edited by Caroline Bledowski

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