WE’RE NUMBER ONE
Or are we?
By Opa
Competition is our way of life. Grantland Rice once wrote, “It matters nor if you win or lose, what matters is how you play the game.” Someone else has offered a more cynical version of this famous quote: “It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose.” How true! We are obsessed with winning. Victory in anything proves our worth and superiority. Losing is failure; if not exactly shameful, it is certainly sad or tragic. Winning is not just the main thing, it is the only thing. Finishing second is better than finishing third, but who cares? Donald Trump, famous for attacking his foes, has a favorite worst possible insult: “Loser!”
Competition in sports is good. Winning is the result of talent, dedication, discipline, strategy, and lots of very hard work. Team sports require cooperation and loyalty to the other players. Sharing is necessary. Personal growth is the result even if victory is elusive. Still, there is a dark side. “Agony of defeat” is more than a sportscaster phrase. If you play the sport, you risk failure. Failure hurts. Feelings of loss of personal value or of usefulness can happen. Learning to overcome loss is an important benefit to competition.
But does winning the championship game really mean you are the best? Not necessarily. Luck is involved. So is weather and maybe health of the individual players that day. A victory means you won that game, no more, no less. And why is it important to believe you are the best? Games are called games for a reason; they are fun to play and fun to watch. Is more than that really important? Yes, of course! Vast amounts of money are often involved. We’ll talk about that some other time.
Not everybody can be a winner, especially if they are not a player or a coach. But everybody can share in the glory. The fans can and do adopt teams and athletes as their own. Local teams have local fans, state teams have statewide fans, and pro teams have national fans. Where you live has a lot to do with who you love and follow. If my team wins I am part of it. Enthusiastically. The word ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’.
The spirit of competition pervades other aspects of life too. Political contests are especially ferocious. For candidates, the race is often more important than the prize. Each victory is immediately followed by a campaign for re-election or as a steppingstone to a higher office. A U. S. senator once described his beginning in politics: he desperately wanted to be president of his 4th grade class. While waiting in the hall for the results from his classmates, he prayed to God, “Please let me win this and I’ll never ask for anything else.” He did win, and immediately, by his own admission, started planning for the 5th grade presidency.
Losing can be heartbreaking, but not always. On a personal note, I once ran for a position on my children’s school board, and was soundly defeated. My first thought was, “Rats! I lost.” My second thought was, “Hey, now I don’t have to be on the school board.”
Competition is fierce in the arts too. In 1958 Van Cliburn, an American classical pianist, won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He became an instant celebrity all over the United States. His fans went wild. He was our hero. Was this because everyone loved Tchaikovsky piano concertos so much? No, of course not; he simply beat the Russians with their own music in their own country. He was our cold war warrior.
Competition is personal. My candidate was elected. My team won. They (and therefore I) must be better than those losers. There is even physical evidence: the trophy, the championship ring, the gold medal. And the statistics. Baseball, for example is a statistician’s dreamland. Every team has zillions of statistics and every player has more zillions of personal statistics. Combined, the numbers can describe how and why every loss or victory happened. And you certainly can’t argue with numbers.
TV knows more than sports and politics. Networks have discovered that competitive shows are relatively cheap to produce, and are enormously popular. Do you watch Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, American Idol, The Price Is Right, or Judge Judy? Or any of a dozen competitive cooking shows? If your answer is no, none, you are very unusual or perhaps not quite truthful. I like Jeopardy. All of these shows even compete with each other for coveted Emmys.
Competition extends far beyond athletics and politics to almost every type of human behavior. Nobel prizes honor achievements in medicine, literature, physics, chemistry, economics, and peace. Pulitzers are awarded in numerous categories of journalism and arts and letters. Nathan’s Hotdog Eating Contest celebrates gluttony. Academy awards go to not only films and actors, but for every conceivable activity associated with creating movies: sound, special effects, writing, editing, and dozens of others. Every type of creativity gets a win. Competition honors talent, makes money and feeds egos. It’s a winning combination.
Curiously, our language uses winning and losing as terms to describe our lives even without competition. A prisoner wins his freedom. An old man loses his hearing. A dieter lost 20 pounds. That pretty girl has such a winning smile. I hope you enjoyed this little essay, or did you lose interest?