Read Here and Now: Letters (2008-2011) for Free Online

sub-issue in the very large conversation about sports in general) and why we, supposedly grown men, would choose to fritter away an entire Sunday afternoon following the essentially meaningless activities of young athletes on distant ball fields. A so-called guilty pleasure, but one that often leaves us feeling hollowed out and disgusted with ourselves after the game is over.
    Taking the broadest view possible, it strikes me that the subject of sports can be divided into two major categories: the active and the passive. On the one hand, the experience of participating in sports oneself. On the other hand, the experience of watching others play. Since we seem to have begun with a discussion of the latter, I will do my best to confine myself to that part of the question for now.
    The ethical component you refer to is especially vital to the very young. You worship your gods and want to emulate them; every contest is a matter of life and death. At my advanced age, however, these attachments have weakened considerably, and I tend to find myself watching games from a much farther remove, looking for “aesthetic pleasures” rather than seeking to validate my own existence through the actions of others. Not to belabor the point, let’s drop the old man’s perspective for now. Let’s go back to the beginning and try to remember what happened to us in the distant past.
    Your use of the word “heroic” is fitting and no doubt crucial for understanding the nature of the obsession, which inevitably begins at the dawn of conscious life. But what does it mean to talk about the heroic in connection to early childhood? With young boys, I think, it largely has to do with an idea of the masculine, of sexual identification, of preparing oneself to become a man . . . and not a woman.
    Having raised two children—a boy and a girl—I was deeply fascinated (and often highly amused) to watch their sexual identities emerge at around the age of three. In both cases, it began through excess, through intensely exaggerated simulations of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. With the boy, it was all about Superman, the Incredible Hulk, and incorporating imaginary beings who were endowed with magical, all-crushing strength. With the girl (who at two asked if and when she would begin to grow a penis), it manifested itself in party shoes, miniature high heels, tutus, plastic tiaras, and a preoccupation with ballerinas and fairy princesses. Classic stuff, of course, but because it takes a while for boys and girls to understand that they are boys and girls, their first steps toward sexual identification are necessarily extreme, marked by a fixation on the symbols and outer trappings of their sex. Once the issue is settled (around age five?), the girl who previously insisted on wearing dresses at all times could happily put on a pair of pants without fear of turning into a boy.
    As an American child in the early 1950s, I began my simulations of masculine life as a cowboy. Again, it was all about the outer trappings—the boots, the hat, the six-shooters snug in their holsters. Because no self-respecting cowboy could possibly go by the name of Paul, whenever I was decked out in my Wild West costume I insisted that my mother call me John —and refused to answer her whenever she forgot. (You were never an American cowboy by any chance, were you, John?)
    But then—at what moment I can no longer remember, though surely when I was somewhere between four and five—a new passion took hold of me, a new set of symbols, a new realm in which to assert my masculinity. Football (in its American incarnation). I had never played a game, I barely understood the rules, but somewhere, somehow (through photos in newspapers? through games broadcast on TV?), I got it into my head that football players were the true heroes of modern civilization. Once again, it was all about the outer trappings. I didn’t want to play football so much as to dress