Roger rosenblatt why we play the game

For my Expository Writing class we read a story about a man named Roger Ebert. Ebert was a famous movie critic in his day. His critique of a movie could make or break it. He was diagnosed with cancer which caused him to have his jaw to be removed. He went thought a lot of hardship but always kept a positive attitude. Even when he was at his worst he was happy and chose to look at the good things in his life, like his wife, family, and watching movies.

For my assignment we had to read the story…. Will Rogers Will Rogers was the youngest children out of eight. Rogers died in August 15, at age 55; he was an American cowboy, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, and motion picture actor.

He was one of the world 's best-known celebrities in the s and s. He also Known as "Oklahoma 's Favorite Son, The house that he was born in had built in and was identified….

Will Rogers Not many people remember Will Rogers, but in the 's he was the most well known man in America -- more popular than Shirley Temple. He was a simple cowpoke who entertained people with his rope tricks and sly political observations. He also wrote a widely-read newspaper column and appeared on the raido every week. I suppose he is a lot like Bill Cosby is today: beloved for his down-to-earth style of humor. But that "aww, shucks" attitude hid a brilliant mind.

Furthermore, Will…. Continue Reading. Read More. Popular Essays. They are more chaotic, more subject to wild moments. And yet, it should be noted that both are far more popular than baseball, which may suggest that Americans, having established the rules, are always straining to break them.

Football, like baseball, is a game of individual progress within borders. But unlike baseball, individual progress is gained inch by inch, down and dirty. Pain is involved. The individual fullback or halfback who carries the ball endures hit after hit as he moves forward, perhaps no more than a foot at a time. Often he is pushed back. Ten yards seems a short distance yet, as in a war, it often means victory or defeat. The ground game is operated by the infantry; the throwing game by the air force.

Or one may see the game in the air as the function of the "officers" of the team - those who throw and catch - as opposed to the dog-faced linesmen in the trenches, those literally on the line. These analogies to war are hardly a stretch. The spirit of the game, the terminology, the uniforms themselves, capped by protective masks and helmets, invoke military operations. Injuries casualties are not exceptions in this sport; they are part of the game. And yet football reflects our conflicting attitudes toward war.

Generally, Americans are extremely reluctant to get into a war, even when our leaders are not. We simply want to win and get out as soon as possible. By the war's end, we were number one, with second place nowhere in sight. But we only got in to crush gangsters and get it over with. Thus, football is war in its ideal state, war in a box. It lasts four periods. A fifth may be added because of a tie, and ended in "sudden death. Not only do the players resemble warriors; the fans go dark with fury.

American football fans may not be as lethal as European football soccer fans, yet every Sunday fans dress up like ancient Celtic warriors with painted faces and half-naked bodies in midwinter. Here is no sport for the upper classes. Football was only that in the Ivy League colleges of the s and s.

Now, the professional game belongs largely to the working class. It makes a statement for the American who works with his hands, who gains his yardage with great difficulty and at great cost. The game is not without its niceties; it took a sense of invention to come up with a ball whose shape enables it to be both kicked and thrown. But basically this is a game of grunts and bone breakage and battle plans huddles that can go wrong. It even has the lack of clarity of war.

A play occurs, but it is not official until the referee says so. Flags indicating penalties come late, a play may be nullified, called back, and all the excitement of apparent triumph can be deflated by an exterior judgment, from a different perspective.

Where football shows America essentially, though, is the role of the quarterback. My son Carl, a former sports writer for The Washington Post , pointed out to me that unlike any other sport, football depends almost wholly on the ability of a single individual. In other team sports, the absence of a star may be compensated for, but in football the quarterback is everything.

He is the American leader, the hero, the general, who cannot be replaced by teamwork. He speaks for individual initiative, and individual authority. And just as the president - the Chief Executive of the land - has more power than those in the other branches of government that are supposed to keep him in check, so the quarterback is the president of the game. Fans worship or deride him with the same emotional energy they give to U.

As for the quarterback himself, he has to be what the American individual must be to succeed - both imaginative and stable - and he must know when to be which. If the plays he orchestrates are too wild, too frequently improvised, he fails. If they are too predictable, he fails. All the nuances of American individualism fall on his shoulders and he both demonstrates and tests the system in which the individual entrepreneur counts for everything and too much.

The structure of basketball, the least well-made game of our three, depends almost entirely on the size of the players, therefore on the individual. Over the years, the dimensions of the court have changed because players were getting bigger and taller; lines were changed; rules about dunking the ball changed, and changed back for the same reason. Time periods are different for professionals and collegians, as is the time allowed in which a shot must be taken. Some other rules are different as well.

The game of basketball begins and ends with the individual and with human virtuosity. Thus, in a way, it is the most dramatically American sport in its emphasis on freedom.

Integration took far less time in basketball than in the other two major American sports because early on it became the inner city game, and very popular among African Americans. But the pleasure in watching a basketball game derives from the qualities of sport removed from questions of race. Here is a context where literal upward mobility is demonstrated in open competition. Black or white, the best players make the best passes, block the most shots, score the most points.

Simulating other American structures, both corporate and governmental, the game also demonstrates how delicate is the balance between individual and team play. Extraordinary players of the past such as Oscar Robertson, Walt Frazier, and Bill Russell showed that the essence of basketball was teamwork; victory required looking for the player in the best position for a shot, and getting the ball to him.

A winning team was a selfless team. In recent years, most professional teams have abandoned that idea in favor of the exceptional talents of an individual, who is sometimes a showboat. Yet it has been proved more often than not that if the individual leaves the rest of the team behind, everybody loses. I say you can tell something about a man's character from his throwing motion, and I appreciate all my dad did to make an honest man of me.

I throw well today, years later, but I'm still shy around a pop fly and wish it were hit to somebody else. The deep appeal of basketball in America lies in the fact that the poorest of kids can make it rich, and that there is a mystery in how he does it.

Neither baseball nor football creates the special, jazzed-up excitement of this game in which the human body can be made to do unearthly things, to defy gravity gracefully.

A trust in mystery is part of the foolishly beautiful side of the American dream, which actually believes that the impossible is possible. This belief goes to the heart of sports in America. It begins early in one's life with a game of catch, or tossing a football around, or kids shooting basketballs in a playground.

The first time a baseball is hit, the first time a football is thrown with a spiral, the first time a boy or a girl gains the strength to push the basketball high enough into the hoop - these are national rites of passage. In a way, they indicate how one becomes an American whether one was born here or not.

Of course, what is a grand illusion may also be spoiled. The business of sports may detract from its sense of play. The conflicts between rapacious owners and rapacious players may leave fans in the lurch. The fans themselves may behave so monstrously as to poison the game. Professionalism has so dominated organized sports in schools that children are jaded in their views of the games by the time they reach high school.

Like sports, America was conceived within a fantasy of human perfection. When that fantasy collides with the realities of human limitations, the disappointment can be embittering. Still, the fantasy remains - of sports and of nations. America only succeeds in the world, and with itself, when it approaches its own stated ambitions, when it yearns to achieve its purest form.

The same is true of its sports. Both enterprises center on an individual rising to the top and raising others up with him, toward a higher equality and a victory for everybody. This is why we play the games.

Roger Rosenblatt is a journalist, author, playwright, and professor. As an essayist for Time magazine, he has won numerous print journalism honors, including two George Polk Awards, as well as awards from the Overseas Press Club and the American Bar Association.