One of the great things about sport is that it’s a narrative engine. You have a bunch of people striving ot achieve some physical goal, and as they do so a story emerges, complete with its highs and lows, setbacks and achievements, personal challenges, tests of character and calm, and unexpected reversals.
The Ultimate crowd I play with enthusiastically blog about their games, and I like that. They recognise the narrative going on in it. I don’t always read their game write-ups, but I always enjoy it when I do.
I have a before-breakfast theory that the cultural space previously occupied by folk tales has now been replaced by sport.
Last night I was on the sweet end of a good story – and it put a good feeling on my evening that has stretched through to today. Basketball, and after a turgid performance we were down 8 points with less than 2 minutes to go. And somehow we came out firing, Erin knocked down two three-pointers in a row and our defence held them scoreless so in the dying seconds Mike slid into the lane and found a lay-up to tie it up. It was a huge comeback that sent us to golden-goal overtime, where again our defence stood firm and again Mike found his way through to score (and get fouled on the play to boot). What a way to win!*
The story works best with the knowledge of what came before, of the character of the game and the mood of the players and even the backstory, but that final turnaround felt good because no-one expected it, especially not us.
What is most interesting to me, though, is that the story you take from something is different for everyone. Everyone ascribes importance to different elements of the narrative. Everyone sees different cause and effect links playing out. Everyone thinks different things matter. Witness the All Blacks loss to France last weekend – NZ, and the rugby world, are arguing about why it happened and what the story actually was.
I prefer to ascribe the All Black’s loss to the simple fact that this is sport, and in sport there is always uncertainty, there will always be the chance of the unexpected. The All Blacks were on the bitter end of that uncertainty this time. We have to expect it, and in fact cherish it. The uncertainty that sunk “a nation’s hopes” is necessary for us to like sport at all.
(My previous best ever comeback was as a high-schooler, where our basketball team made up a seven point deficit in two minutes. That was fun too.)
5 thoughts on “Sporting Stuff”
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I like the folk tales = sport analogy.
I’ve thought for a long time that gods, heroes, etc = celebrities, and myths/legends = OK magazine and E! channel.
My main difficulty with your analogy is that the core identies and structures of folk stories remain constant. I suppose this is true of sporting stories in as much as they are all based around the same funcationally-similar struggle motif… but there is not as strong, nor an explicit, continuity of the story-agent’s identities.
I’d say sports stories are less like folk tales than they are like “big fish” stories.
I suspect you might be falling victim to the common “My life’s just like a movie!” paradigm, where everyone walks around with their own soundtrack playing in their head and their own little story with its mini-climaxes, mini-triumphs and mini-tragedies. Kind of like how everyone is “OMG my best friend is so outrageous, s/he’d make a great character in a comedy!”
Yes sport can be a great ‘narrative engine’ if you know how to tell a story, but quite frankly so can constipation!
Btw, I agree with what James says about the modern gods and heroes, myths and legends, and I think it’s a depressing sign of the tawdry times.
For the record, the “sports stories = folk tales” thing was about national stories that get told and retold with some moral at their core: the Invincibles tour of the UK, the underarm delivery, etc.
I’d say our strongest “folk tales” are Parihaka, the nuclear ships ban/Ranbow Warrior bombing, and the 1981 anti-Springbok tour protests.