Sports in America

by James A. Michener

  Each summer representatives of the two papers would circulate through Cheyenne, advising this customer and that that he had been invited to ride the Treagle. Women, as was only proper in a western town, were not invited, although important women in the state were conveyed by large buses to the game. The Treagle was a man’s affair, with a saloon car and free pretzels and memories of the old west. To be invited aboard was one of the best things that could happen to a citizen of Cheyenne.

  Of course, certain citizens were invited whether they advertised in the two newspapers or not. Vibrant Teno Roncalio, the Democratic Congressman invariably elected from a predominantly Republican state, was always aboard, campaigning like mad. Since Wyoming was entitled to only one Congressman, Roncalio had to work like crazy through the entire state, and it was said that he knew more people in Wyoming than God. Senators Clifford Hansen and Gale McGee were usually aboard, as were the governor and the justices of the state supreme court. Jim Byrd, the black man who served as sheriff of Cheyenne, was sure to be aboard, as was the president of the Union Pacific, the outfit that put the train together. President William Carlson, of the university, was there praying under his breath for a victory, since football in Wyoming was almost more important than politics.

  And each year out-of-state notables were invited, people like Curt Gowdy, who had started his career in Wyoming; Charley Halleck, Republican leader of the House for so many years; and Ted Kennedy, the Democratic luminary. Aboard the Treagle you could hobnob with everyone of importance in Wyoming, and with many of the leaders of the nation.

  So when the advertising salesman informed Marvin Bates, a newcomer from New Jersey, that he was almost eligible for an invitation this year, he lost no time in upping his budget another $300; the papers ran his ad in a conspicuous space, so that he recovered the cost of the advertising in one big August sale.

  Treagle Saturday was a glorious day that year, with a September snow on the hills and bright sun making the plains resplendent. Marvin boarded the train at eight and was no sooner aboard than he was greeted by Judge John Pickett, leading jurist of the state, who had come to Wyoming in 1941 to pitch for the Cheyenne Lobos. He had won so many games for them that leaders of the town asked him to stay, assuring him a bright future. ‘Hello, Marvin. Isn’t this your first trip aboard the Treagle?’ the judge asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘We’ll expect to see you from now on,’ the judge said.

  And it was that way all day. Men who had bought their shoes from Marvin Bates now accepted him as a leading merchant. They talked to him about today’s game, and the prospects for this year’s team, and of 1968, that glorious year when Wyoming went to New Orleans to play Louisiana State in the Sugar Bowl. Half the population had flown south to participate, and he began to sense the great pride these men had in their state, the overwhelming importance of football to them.

  They spoke especially of the bad years, some time back, when a group of black football players wanted to wear armbands, or something like that, when they played Brigham Young, the Mormon school, because that religion downgraded blacks. There was a frightful stink. The coach had to fire all the blacks, threatening to disrupt the state until the governor intervened to back the football coach.

  ‘We don’t want no niggers telling us how to play football,’ one of the men said, but to Marvin’s surprise another replied, ‘The blacks were right. They were bein’ used as cannon fodder, and they had every right to protest.’ The argument got nowhere, but one man sort of summed it up: ‘Well, I can tell you this. Wyoming football is goin’ nowhere till we do get a few good blacks like O. J. Simpson and Duane Thomas.’

  Marvin Bates’ life was refashioned by that day. He enjoyed the game so much, and the fraternity of men he had only vaguely known before, that he began to study football. His speech became peppered with sentences like, ‘Defense is the name of the game,’ and ‘They sure came to play,’ and ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going,’ and ‘A quitter never wins and a winner never quits,’ and ‘Way to hit, baby! Way to hit!’

  He began to watch every football game on television and learned to distinguish between a down-and-out and a post pattern. For some reason, perhaps because he was not overly big himself, he became preoccupied with the cornerbacks, those indomitable men who ran backwards, slapping down passes and occasionally intercepting an errant pass to score an unexpected touchdown. But the cornerback he liked the best was Dick Anderson, the University of Colorado star who now performed for the world’s champion Miami Dolphins. What a man he was! And what a game he had against Pittsburgh that Monday night when he scored two touchdowns on interceptions within the first few minutes. ‘He came to play!’ Marvin told his customers. ‘That baby really came to play.’

  And then came an unexpected development. Three of his customers had tickets to a Sunday game played in Denver between the professional Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs. One couldn’t go and asked Marvin if he’d like the ticket, and Marvin said, ‘Sure, I’ll buy it from you,’ and the man said, ‘No. It’s yours. I enjoyed talking with you on the Treagle. You know your football.’

  So Marvin and the other two men drove down to Denver, and for the first time, in real life, Marvin saw a professional game, and the magnificence of it quite staggered him. This was nothing like Wyoming versus Brigham Young. This was the classiest exhibition of super athletes he had ever witnessed, and from that moment on he was a Bronco fan.

  Whenever he got the chance to see a Bronco game, he would arrange his weekend so that he could rise about six on Sunday morning, eat a skimpy breakfast, and leave Cheyenne at about seven. The ninety-six-mile drive down a straight superhighway would take about two hours; he could have done it faster, but the Colorado Highway Patrol kept two small planes with radar flying up and down the highway, spotting speeders and sending radio messages down to ground crews in fast automobiles.

  In Denver he would head for Mile High Stadium to preempt a good parking space, then go to a lively restaurant for a real western breakfast of sourdough pancakes, sausage, two eggs, a wedge of cherry pie and two glasses of milk. It was while preparing himself thus for one of the games that he met two other men from Cheyenne. They recognized him from having been aboard the Treagle, and the three struck up a conversation which led to their getting tickets for all the Bronco home games and sharing one car.

  Marvin became known in Cheyenne as ‘The Bronco fan, and when he managed to acquire an autographed photo of Floyd Little breaking a tackle on one of his touchdown runs, he posted it in his window.

  Then, for a second time, his life altered radically. When the Broncos played a crucial game against the Oakland Raiders in California, he organized an excursion of sixteen Cheyenne businessmen, who flew to Denver to board a charter aircraft carrying the team’s supporters to Oakland. His picture was in both the Cheyenne papers, and next year when the Treagle ran out to Laramie for the University of Wyoming game, he was a featured passenger. Numerous men stopped him to ask if they could join his club—it wasn’t really a formal club—on the next flight to an away game, and he took down their names and said he’d see what he could do with the Bronco management.

  The sad part of Marvin’s conversion to professional football was that he lost interest in the college game. ‘They don’t really hit in college,’ he explained to his customers. ‘And yet, as a loyal son of Wyoming, I feel I ought to support the team.’ He bought season tickets to the games at Laramie, because it was good business to do so, and he made his annual pilgrimage on the Treagle, but his heart was in Denver.

  ‘Down there, they really come to play,’ he said. ‘And that’s the name of the game. Desire is fire. If you don’t hit ’em, you can’t git ’em. Because when the going gets tough the tough get going.’

  And when the Cheyenne newspapers made up a list of Wyoming’s leading sportsmen, there was Curt Gowdy the broadcaster, and Lloyd Eaton the coach who had fired the black players, and Marvin Bates, the ardent Bronco supporter.
He had never thrown a football in his life, nor shot a basket, nor rifled a throw from third to first, but under prevailing standards it was only natural for him to be ranked as a leading sportsman.

  It galls me to classify sedentary spectators as sportsmen, but they are entitled to the designation. Marvin Bates certainly found more than mere enjoyment in football; it was the most comprehensive experience of his life, conferring both sanction and meaning.

  His avid support of the Broncos had no positive effect on his health, nor any negative. One might suppose that his long drives to and from the games were debilitating, but a two-hundred-mile jaunt in Colorado is less demanding than a thirty-mile traffic fight in Massachusetts. And as with all similar sporting experiences, getting out into the open air and sunlight on a crisp day had its benefits.

  Three of the examples I have cited—Herman Fly and baseball, the gamblers and horse racing, Marvin Bates and football—involved spectators, not participants. The contrasts which exist between these two categories will recur throughout this book, but it would be tedious to belabor each occurrence. Here are the summary considerations.

  Every world culture that we know has provided some kind of spectator sports, and the tradition must have been productive or we would not have so many remnants of Greek and Roman coliseums. When I worked in large cities and found it easier to watch than to play, I discovered positive benefits. Watching as a member of a large, excited group was spiritually exhilarating. It was much better to be part of a crowd, sharing its enthusiasm, than to sit alone listening to the radio. When my team won I felt psychologically enlarged. The cost of this diversion was so reasonable that I always considered it a bargain. And the money I spent on tickets helped gifted young athletes to earn a congenial living.

  The disadvantages of mere spectatorship are numerous and compelling. The health of the inactive watcher, whether in a stadium or before a television, suffers. He tends to accumulate tensions which are not discharged. While sitting and watching he contributes nothing to the common good, and does not do those constructive things he might otherwise have done. Passiveness in sports encourages passiveness in social life and in politics. The mere spectator never shares in the positive rewards of performance and competition. Watching tennis at age fifty is infinitely less productive than playing it. The mere spectator fails to develop whatever innate talents he has and cheats himself of sports’ true joys.

  *A fictitious place, as explained in Chapter VII.

  THREE

  Sports and Health

  I have never seen a statement of philosophy issued by the physical education department of any school, college or university which failed to state that the promotion of good health was a major goal of its program, but I have observed many such programs in operation in which little regard was paid to the health of the general student body or even of the major participants. In sports there is almost as many empty philosophizing about health as there is about character-building.

  I have said earlier that the cultivation of good health habits was my primary concern in evaluating any sports program, but I have never been confident enough of my own judgment to base my philosophy only upon my own observations or preferences. I have sought professional guidance for my thinking and expert support for my conclusions, and no document has influenced me more than the description of effective exercise enunciated by Thomas D. Wood back in 1924 in a summary he made for the National Education Association in conjunction with the American Medical Association:

  BENEFITS RESULTING FROM EXERCISE

  1. Circulation is increased throughout the entire body or through the part exercised. This circulatory activity increases carriage of food to the tissues, removal of wastes, distribution of the endocrine secretions, and equalization of the water and heat content of the body.

  2. Big-muscle activity increases the demand for oxygen, and thus causes an increased respiratory activity, with the resulting increase in the rate of oxygenation of the blood, increased rate of elimination of the carbon dioxide, and increased oxygen supply to the tissues. This increased respiratory activity is the result of the demands made by the exercise; and deep breathing without the bodily exercise will not have the same results. During increased activity the respiratory apparatus naturally responds by frequent and deep respirations.

  3. Exercise stimulates the excretory system and increases the elimination of waste through kidneys, lungs, intestines and skins.

  4. Digestion is improved and assimilation is accelerated by exercise. Digestion is not only a chemical but a muscular process. If the musculature of the alimentary canal is flaccid, digestion is retarded and impeded. Peristaltic movements are more vigorous when the muscle tone of the alimentary canal is good. Exercise is essential in keeping the muscles in good condition. The constipation resulting from sedentary life is in large part due to inadequate muscular activity.

  5. Big-muscle activity stimulates growth, and for the growing child is absolutely essential.

  6. The heart is strengthened by the exercise of the skeletal muscles of the body. The best-known way in which some types of weak heart can be made strong is by gradual and increasing amount of physical work of the skeletal muscles. Exercise for the person with a weak heart should be arranged by skilled specialists; it should not be prescribed by any untrained person.

  7. The muscles of the body are directly developed by physical activity. This is of great importance for health as regards the muscles of the trunk; the abdominal muscles must be in good condition for the maintenance of the upright posture which is necessary for the best position and functioning of the abdominal and pelvic organs.

  8. Rational exercise results in increased neural activity, and in neuromuscular control, which develops skill, accuracy, endurrance, agility and strength.

  Wood, Thomas D. Health Education, National Education Association.

  Out of these principles should flow a nationally sponsored program conducive to the well-being and health of all citizens. This program would be twofold. To satisfy the public’s hunger for sports entertainment, schools and colleges would choose a few exceptional athletes from among the student body and would field the most proficient teams possible. They would play rivals from other institutions, records would be kept, and champions crowned. Boys and girls who were far above average would move in orderly fashion from grammar school (or junior high school, if that nomenclature is used) to high school, and from high school to college, and from college to professional teams. There would be cheerleading opportunities and a band would be maintained. This branch of the program would be under the direction of the school’s athletic department and would focus on developing skills and engaging in contests. This half of the program is operating rather well.

  The second half would be less conspicuous but more important. It would provide exercise and playing experience for the vast majority of students who have no special athletic skills but who need the beneficial results of exercise just as much as the athletes do. Bach student would also receive instruction in health practices, in diet, in the formulation of long-range health programs and in general hygiene. Special emphasis would be placed on those sports which could be used throughout a lifetime. This branch of the program would be under the direction of the school’s physical education department and would focus on the future life of the individual. This half is poorly administered in most schools.

  In an average high school of two thousand students, it is now easy for eighteen hundred to graduate without ever having contemplated the health problems they will be living with for the next half-century, and there is little chance that they will become familiar with exercise programs that would enable them to live longer and operate more effectively.

  And even the fortunate two hundred with enough athletic ability to attract the attention of coaches leave school with little comprehension of how to maintain their personal health. Emphasis is almost solely upon competition and the perfecting of skills that will be rarely used after graduation. Partic
ipation is in those complicated team sports which provide minimal long-range health benefits. We conduct this segment of our public education as if lifelong concerns were an arcane secret about which nothing is known.

  And while these fortunate two hundred are being under-educated insofar as health is concerned, the less fortunate eighteen hundred receive a really deficient health education. A winning team becomes a substitute for a general system of health education, and in the long run everyone suffers.

  I see little practical hope that our educational system can be converted into an agency for the improvement of national health. Our school administrations, our athletic departments and even our physical education teachers are so indoctrinated with the concept of fielding semi-professional teams as the goal of education that attention to the health of the student body is impossible. The educators are not to blame; it is our society that demands a team first, health second. And it seems apparent that society will continue to make the same demand throughout the foreseeable future.

  The critical question is this: Has our preoccupation with competitive games rather than with health produced American young people who are deficient in physical conditioning when compared with students in other nations?

  In the spring of 1954 many Americans, including President Eisenhower, were shocked when Professor Hans Kraus of New York University published a paper in the Research Quarterly (Volume 25) entitled ‘Minimum Muscular Fitness Tests in School Children.’ Dr. Kraus, who became the energetic spokesman for the study, appeared in one forum after another to publicize his findings.

  A battery of six simple tests of muscular fitness had been administered to 678 Austrian children between the ages of six and sixteen, 1,036 Italian, 1,156 Swiss and 4,264 American. Only 8 percent of the Italian children failed the test, with the other foreign countries reporting comparable scores, but 57.9 percent of the Americans failed. Of the Italian children, 8.5 percent failed one of the six tests; 80 percent of the American children failed at least one. Dr. Kraus said: