The sporting life - how the attack on ice skater Nancy Kerrigan exemplifies what has happened to sportsmanship and the love of healthy competition - Editorial

WE OF COURSE offer no judgment on the guilt or innocence of Tonya Harding, but the assault on Nancy Kerrigan provokes some wider observations on modern sport. Football, rowing, tennis, and squash were upper-class in their origin and ethos, and although upper-class amateurs gradually lost their dominance, their manners remained as a standard. It was unthinkable that a player would give an umpire "the finger." Those manners, too, were chivalrous. In the finals at Forest Hills in 1940, Don McNeill defeated Bobby Riggs in five sets, even while throwing points when he thought Riggs had received a bad call.

Manners are the outward signature of morals. Good manners signified that the game itself was more important than "winning." No more. Even Ivy League players no longer say, "Nice shot." Tournament players maintain a sullen silence between games. College football players routinely foul each other. Soccer even has the "professional foul"--the shameless resort to rule-breaking if an opponent would otherwise score. A few sports figures, like Nancy Kerrigan, Michael Chang, and Joe Paterno, remind us of the older style--but this is rare.

Given the wealth that sporting success can bring, it would be utopian to mourn the death of the amateur spirit. But the spirit of the "professional foul" must surely mean the death of sport altogether. If winning is the sole criterion, why keep rule-breaking within the rules or even within the game? Why not kick over the chess board to avoid checkmate? Or break the legs of a rival player off the field?

We have no ready solution to offer--except a strict enforcement of both the rules and the manners of the game. Send off players who defy the umpire, curse opponents, or foul howsoever professionally. We become virtuous, says Aristotle, by doing virtuous things. Perhaps if we are forced to be sportsmanlike, we will become sportsmen by and by.