The Pooch Punter

Two weeks ago, I remembered why I’m in love with sports.

I wrote a column that explored the marriage between religion and American athletics. In it, I tried to convey that while I truly do believe that athletes like Kurt Warner and Josh Hamilton can and should say whatever they want (the Constitution holds as much weight for me as the Bible does for some Christians and Jews), I felt that their constant proselytizing is oftentimes inappropriate and irresponsible — that conversations of faith “should exist between families and clergy members who know a whole lot more about religion than these athletes do.”

As soon as the column hit the Internet, I was flooded with e-mails that we’re in agreement and disagreement. As I sat at my desk scrambling to answer them all, I started wondering, “How could a sports column touch on something that so many different kinds of people could get fired up about?”

I realized that all these people felt the need to throw in their two cents for the same reason I am head-over-heels, “you complete me” in love with sports: because sports are the pulse of American culture. They tell you everything from the state of the economy to the attitudes of the people. They expose the country’s strengths, mentalities and insecurities. They are the Freudian conscious to the country’s unconscious. Like an awesome Chekhov story, sports seem like a shallow, simple game on the surface, but upon closer inspection, they tell you everything.

And the constant proselytizing on display in the sports world tells me just how common it is in this country. And people’s different reactions to this practice demonstrate a serious divide between those who are tired of devoutly religious America encroaching on their everyday lives (the positive e-mails) and those who are happy to see the devoutly religious population’s growing influence on our culture (the critical e-mails).

All the critics hammered home one point that they felt I was completely overlooking: “Belief is personal.” They felt that these athletes should say whatever they want and if I don’t share their beliefs, I can choose to ignore them. One e-mail explained it by saying that if Josh Hamilton starts using his postgame interview as a platform to recruit fans to accept Jesus Christ, “you are free to hit the mute button.”

The thing is, I wholeheartedly agree that belief should be personal, and in fact, my very complaint was that it so often isn’t. Every individual has the incredible, beautiful and sacred right to believe whatever he or she wants. And it’s extremely important for people to understand that they have the power to hit the proverbial “mute button” when they hear something they don’t agree with (it’s people’s inability to do so that has led to the rampant political correctness that plagues this country, but that could be another column entirely) My point is that religion, especially in American culture, has made it impossible to simply “hit the mute button.” My point is that, in my measly 19-and-a-half years of experience, it feels like I haven’t truly had that choice.

I’ve spent my entire conscious life under a president whose closest adviser on foreign policy was a man/spirit who apparently sits in the heavens and punishes homosexuals. In 2000 and again in 2004, this country, with the help of the proselytizing Kurt Warners and Josh Hamiltons, voted this clearly incompetent but — as literally millions of Americans admitted was the reason they voted for him both times — devoutly religious man into office. Now, my buddies and I are going to be paying off the greatest deficit in American history until I reach my parents’ age, and I can’t travel the world without a negative stigma attached to the fact that I’m American.

In seventh grade, I stood in the middle of Third Avenue crying into my dad’s belly as we watched the Twin Towers fall in the name of another — yet obviously perverse form of — monotheistic religion. My friends admit that even now, if they hear a loud noise in Manhattan, they think we’re under attack again.

I could go on about having a sister and niece who live in a country where the right to an abortion is constantly under attack. I could talk about the day I learned about what stem cell research could have done for my deceased grandparents. I could tell the story about consoling my best friend when his dad, a big-shot doctor back home, was found on a radical Scientologist group’s “hit list.” I could tell countless stories from my short life that show that belief is, without a doubt, not “personal.” At least, not the way all the e-mails I got claim it to be.

This column — like the last — isn’t meant to be an attack on religion. Despite all the problems radical faith has caused in the world during my life, I still have a deep appreciation for all the good that is done in the name of religion. Josh Hamilton’s use of faith in his valiant battle against drug addiction is, in itself, a great example of the way religious devotion can empower an individual. But I grew up with the expectation that I was the one who would get to decide the role religion played in my life: from things as casual as watching a football game on Sunday to something as serious as deciding how to treat a loved one’s cancer. And I criticized Kurt Warner and Josh Hamilton’s constant evangelizing because it felt like just another sign that in America, this expectation is an unrealistic one — that I have been naïve this whole time. I never thought this was something I’d realize while watching a silly football game, but I guess therein lies the reason why sports are so special to me in the first place.

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