Page 16, April 18, 1979 - North Shore News _

The Stanley Cup playoffs will be with us until: nearly the end of May and -— oh joy of joys. — we'll

be able to catch a game on the second: evening from now until then.

‘Not only that, we'll be able to fit in the game of the week in baseball, the National

‘Basketball Association playoffs, the occasional

North American Soccer -

League game, Wide World of Sports, Sportsworld, some

golf tournaments and, for — appreciate. vaudeville in tights, the -

those who

Just how many hours of TV viewing in the course of any given week all this will

‘ supply is something Ill leave to you to add up..P'm afraid to. That’s because TH be watching much of it, and if I were to suddenly discover just how much time ['m wasting, [Td immediately classify myself as some kind of nut.

HE HAS A PROBLEM

Suppose a person went to the movies every single night. If he didn’t have to, if he weren't in the film business, people would say of him that he had a most unfortunte and unhealthy compulsion; that maybe he should go see a psychiatrist and find out just what's wrong.

Yet, thanks to television, _ it’s possible to watch a sports event every single afternoon or evening of the week and twice and three times a day on the weekends. Many people do just this and no one thinks them strange.

Karl Marx had it all wrong. It’s not religion that’s

Eos

the opiate of the masses, it’s

spectator sport. If anyone .

has it in his mind to stage a | coup and .take ‘over the country, all he Has to do is time his strike with the opening kickoff of the Grey Cup game or the start'of the- seventh game of the Stanley Cup final.

Long before either game is over, Canada would be in new- hands and nobody would know about it, not

even the politicians in Ot- ~ ilar‘a-year industry {not to

tawa. For they, of course, wouldn't be within miles of : the captured Parliament Buildings. They'd all be home, glued to their TV sets. | Theforegoing is all. in aid of trying to explode the myth that spectator sports are “people’s harmless escape from all the woes and troubles of the real worid. The myth appears to be accepted. as fact almost everywhere. And without any questioning of its validity. THE GREAT HOPE

Even as normally a perspicacious person as political pundit James Reston, editor of the New York Times, recently wrote: “Sport in America plays a part in our national life that iS more important than even the social scientists believe.....For sports and games, in a funny way, are not only America's diversion and illusion, but its hope.”

GROUND SCHOOL

TRAINING FOR

\

AIRCRAFT PILOTS

set every “iffer-

That's rm “pretty “high Sounding: stuff, but I beg to Television and the ratings game shoot holes in this elegant. argument. Diversion and illusion? No. A passion and. an obsession? Yes.

If sparts are our - nope for the future, then we're in real trouble. Both at the amateur

and professional levels these - allegedly once pure and™

uplifting pastimes are rid- died with all the evils and corruptions. . of backstage politics.

‘Sport has become a sprawling, -multi-million-do-

. mention unions, |

‘they're involved, too), made ‘ all the worse by an overlay of

hypocrisy. The pretense of a -

love of fun and games is used to mask the basic: motivation: greed. ~— —

- In his book, The Jocks, Leonard Shecter writes: “There is no other business in this country . which operates so cynically to make enormous profits on) the one hand, ed a demanding to be favored.

a public service on the other.” |

He was wri about the States. Ribas inc lade can too. Sport is\ the onl business going for which the taxpayers shell out their - dollars to build the place of business, then lure the professional teams into it with sweetheart rental deals the club owners can hardly

" refuse.

If any other industry ) tried to swing a similar deal te locate its widget factory, or whatever, in a community, it would be branded — in the words of David Lewis — as a corporate welfare bum.

We heap big money and

‘because

"boys | games. Do we demean “ourselves in the process? For

not only do we overpay them because of their value in the marketplace, but we rush to

bestow honors and awards 7 upon them far out of any

; Sane proportion to the:

_ service they perform to

: society.

indeed, it may ‘be doubted if the modern system of cultivating athletes, namely by fierce competition Stimulated by heavy bribes, ‘does not moral injury by developing animal intensity of the will....and a hungry greed for more money earned without toil, of all the passions that renders the heart most callous. Nobody is quite so ‘hard’ as the professional sporting man, jquite so incapable of pity, remorse or self-restraint in the pursuit of gain.

Do you agree with that last paragraph? You do? That makes you terribly old fashioned, for this is not out of a recent issue of Sports ' Hlustrated, but appeared in 1870 in a British magazine. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

In our modern society we

inflict pesitive .

a century ago — of sports’ _champions' teing held up as examples to youth; while on the other.hand we regularly witness a playing surface morality that says anything is okay as long as you don’ tget caught. -

That's becausé most fans don’t enjoy games for the artistry or technique of the performers. They demand a winner above all else. They accept as gospel the words of - the late Maryland football coach Jim Tatum (yes; it was

che NOT Vince- Lombardi)

who said winning — isn’t everything, it's the only thing.

No diversion or illusion there. That's war. That’s obsession and passion, not, escape. Pipe it — in living color and with slow motion replays — into every living room in the nation, almost every afternoon or evening, before millions ~ of hyp- notized, distended eyeballs, and the obsession is com- plete.

Unhealthy? It has to be. But.don’t bother me with ~ further discussions no ; Don’t have the time. Have to :

- get through work early.

‘Haven't you heard? Leafs

This is the standard Ministry of Transport- approved ground school training course for the private flying license including.

instruction in airmanship, airframes, engines, flight navigation, theory, emergen¢y, radio and airtraffic control procedures, meteorology, acrodynamics and theory of flight.

Thursday, 7:30 to 10:00 p.m. starting April 26

12 sessions Fee: 335 Lynnmour Centre NC102 (Students will be informed of textbook requirements at first session: you should expect to spend approximately $15 for textbook materials for this course and up to $70 to complete the Might training course offered by a flying school.)

Phone Community Education 986-1911,

Local 321 for instructions on how to register.

adulation upon big men in _ have the irony — as no doubt

and Canadiens are on the short pants, playing little our forefathers had in theirs

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