What is it we feel when truly alive? What is that intangible feeling, that pulsation through our veins, heightening our awareness, sharpening our senses? How do we continually find that glimmer of curiosity, an innocent yearning for hope burning within our eyes?
How does one trap that feeling, grasp it forever, never let it go? Does it become an addiction? A detriment?
What is the cost of these prices we pay for each other?
In Odessa Texas, circa 1988, the routine is racism, the sting of reality staggering. The people feel used and abused, prostituted for profit by their own country, useless oil equipment lining their dried, deserted fields. The values they based their existence upon have crumbled, a mere house of cards. Foreign countries have the cheapest oil. More oil.
They don’t.
It doesn’t make any sense.
This impossibility of reason becomes a lifeless black hole. Football becomes a radiant beacon.
If life is joy, routine is death. So they work, they complain, they hate, unabashedly, universally. The High School Football team, the players, the coaches, rise above them, a functionary reflex to circumstance.
For all their intolerance, for all their blatantly obvious displays of hypocrisy, of utter and complete disregard of education, for all they know must be wrong deep down in their hearts, in their conscience, they still have the lights.
The lights.
Born of an ethereal energy that turns players into gladiators, morphs fans into caretakers of a better place.
The lights.
A Texan representation of all they hold sacred, the better angels of their nature swooping from the heavens and gifting them football, granting them perpetual grace once a week.
Teamwork. Effort.
All things shining, for four quarters, all things right.
They believe in the Panthers, in the magic of Mojo, in the pride of Permian. And for one beautiful instance in this life, what they believe in could never be corrupted.
The fighting can stop. The grinding can halt. Their game could finally begin.
All this, because the Friday Night Lights.
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How important are sports in our society?
How do we properly value the athletes who maintain this absurd, parallel environment where the better team wins?
What is all this, but a reflection of ourselves?
When does the reflection bend and mutate, when does it turn ugly, when do we want to smash the mirror into a million tiny pieces, enraged, for believing in something so utterly inconsequential?
When does the mirror represent our truest self?
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In Boston, what is Baseball?
When Dave Roberts stole second, when the impossible became formality in deference to fate?
What would they say? When Curt Schilling won Game Six with an ankle so horribly swollen that blood seeped through his uniform sock?
When Renteria hit a weak, bouncing ground ball back toward the mound?
When the sins could be forgiven?
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In New York, what’s a moment worth?
How could I possibly explain Game Four? Five?
When ecstasy, complete, uncontrollable happiness, could make me forget, just for one moment, why Baseball was being played in November?
A fraction of hope could be victory.
A win.
No matter the Series’ final, meaningless outcome.
What was baseball in New York than, to me?
It was wonderfully pointless, unburdened entertainment, a game free from the imaginary death of defeat.
A game could be salvation, for nine innings in the present, for eternity in remembrance.
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Sports are infinite, burgeoning with limitless potential, for equal parts success and failure, for equal supply in heroes and villains, for equal measure of good and evil.
What is sport?
All we are.
Amen.
– Matt Waters
2 replies on “Amen: The Meaning of Sports”
Once again… Wow. You have some kind of special ability Matt. Your stuff is incredible.
Thanks…. And for any sports fans out there, Friday Night Lights is just a fantastic book, all that sports are about, good or bad, right or wrong. The movie just really scratched the surface of the book.