Sports Are Healthy!

SINCE I GOT the kind of push back I knew I'd get when I again declared myself not a sports fan,   I thought I'd share this account of the good, clean, fun athletic competition is:

The teenager, identified in local media as Ryan Satterthwaite, died in hospital on Monday after playing a game of "run it straight" in Palmerston North.

The game has two players, one with a ball and the other the tackler, who tries to knock the other player down.

"Run it straight" has recently become popular as a viral online trend and has long been played in Australia and New Zealand.

"We would urge anyone thinking about taking part in a game or event like this to consider the significant safety and injury risks," Manawatū police spokesperson Ross Grantham said in a statement on Tuesday.

"While this was an impromptu game among friends, not a planned event, this tragic outcome does highlight the inherent safety concerns with such an activity."

I suppose it would have been OK if it had been one of the many deaths that have come about through organized games with coaches and rules and paying viewers and owners making money.   And if you think that that has nothing to do with this:

Mr Grantham added it was not a police matter, but officers will "continue to undertake enquiries on behalf of the coroner".

The match sees two players running head first towards each other over a 65-foot field without any protective equipment or kit.

It's even been endorsed by some professional rugby players, with England rugby player George Burgess, 33, winning £9,500 after competing in an Australian tournament, according to The Mirror.

Ryan was rushed to hospital by friends after the match on Sunday and died the following day.

One tournament, the Runit Championship League, described the game as the "fiercest, new collision sport".

Professor Patria Hume, an expert in sports science and injury prevention, said the sport is "a step backwards"

"This is a reckless and dangerous spectacle," she told the NZ Herald.

"The science is clear – repeated head impacts increase risk of long-term brain damage."

Run It Straight's founder, Christian Lesa, said community support remains strong despite backlash and said the game should only be played under strict and regulated conditions.

Again, I ask, so it's OK when someone dies or is maimed or suffers permanent brain damage so long as it's organized and,  I'm sure, someone is making money off of it. 

The nauseating, phony and ginned-up sentimentality and quasi-religious sanctity concerning "sports" has led the world into pretending it isn't what it is, sometimes ritualized, sometimes very actual violence as entertainment.   I merely said no one has ever been able to explain to me why I was supposed to care who won or who lost a game,  something that extends to everything from checkers to the phoniest, most sentimentalized and sanctified of shake-down con jobs, the Olympics and America's real religion, the NFL, but there are actually larger problems with sports.    

When I asked the guy who most consistently trolls me to explain to me why I should care, he listed with no explanation the long ago Brooklyn Dodgers,  The Mets (he's a NYC guy, I suspect those who live in other sports markets couldn't care less about the ghost of a team moved to Los Angeles a lifetime ago or the Mets) and mentioned a couple of famous players who,  I had to point out, where human beings, not sports.   A good part of why I don't like sports is because I do care about the lives and health and happiness of human beings and animals - don't get me started on sports that involve the abuse, harm and death of animals.   Such are also covered by "sports."  Bear and badger baiting were popular sports - bloody Queen Bess was a big fan -  as are dog and cock fighting.   

I am still awaiting some brighter sports fan to explain to me why I should care about it.   Though, that's a lie, I stopped waiting for that explanation about the time I was 12.  I do resent the near universal demand that I pretend to care about it and the idea that something is wrong with someone who doesn't like sports or find them interesting.   If someone told me they weren't interested in some part of the arts I care about,  I wouldn't figure they were morally depraved,  I'd have figured we liked different things.   The difference is that few to no artists produce artistic work that they want half of those who hear or see or participate in it to be unhappy.   That's built into sports.   In many of them along with a body count and lists of those maimed and injured, and corruption for profit, like, you know wars?   Some fun, huh?   I think there is something wrong with those who can watch People and animals getting killed or injured in some entirely unproductive and useless would-be entertainment with pleasure and no reflection on the morality of what they're getting pleasure from.