Literature and sport as ritual and fantasy

Papers on Language and Literature, Fall 2001 by Meyers, Ronald J

The underdog finds his vengeance in words, and the vanquished renders the triumph of language over loss. As Elizabeth Bishop writes in "One Art," "it's evident / the art of losing's not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster" (17-19).

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) suggested, in his Thoughts, that faith was a wager about the existence of god and the immortality of the soul that you denied at your own risk. Bettina L. Knapp, in Gambling, Game, and Psyche, explains Pascal's fragment (no. 233): "If God does not exist and one wagers that he does exist, nothing is lost. One dies and that is all. If, on the other hand, God does exist, and one does not bet in God's favor, that person will be cut off from him for eternity" (35).

Einstein stubbornly denied that God played dice with the universe though modern physics might support that premise, and primitive cultures invariably recognized the role of the deity as a player. Sport itself is the playground of modern physics-- functioning within the dimensionality of space and time and celebrating the dynamics of speed, mass, energy, and ineluctable gravity. Games that rely on pure chance, like Lotteries, Dicing, and Black Jack, draw us no less than games where skill, intelligence, or brute force determine the outcome. Gaming is out of control, as the state and federal governments in the United States seek to staunch its spread. People drive for miles and line up for more than six hours to purchase a ticket for a Powerball Drawing with a prize of $200,000,000.

Again Professor Knapp quotes Pascal that "gambling" itself is the "diversion," not necessarily driven solely by the outcome; hence the appeal of gambling to self-destructive individuals, including many great writers like Poe and Dostoevsky who were driven by the illusory victory. Whether writers, athletes, dancers, or artists, we all play our hands like the famed Mississippi gamblers, and our language-particularly in the far west-celebrates this fascination in the common colloquialism, "Let's deal!" "You bet!" Who can doubt that the scales of justice suggest a presence of fate in the outcome, as posited by Huizinga? All sports and games offer a combination of skill, strategy, and chance, though the complete fascination and objective remains the primary goal of winning, according to Coach Vince Lombardi's widely acclaimed dictum that winning is the "only thing!"

Assessing risk is one of the most prevalent factors of our existence. We balance the challenge along with the certainty of success in momentous as well as in everyday decisions-when we test the speed limit on the interstate highway, when we choose an exotic menu at a restaurant, and when we travel. Our interests, hobbies, even our love choices and professions all express the element of risk-taking-and thus business leaders, actors, musicians, dancers, artists, athletes, military commanders as well as criminals and saints may be considered greater risktakers. There are few decisions in our lives that do not weigh the factors of risk, safety, and success.