Love of the Game
by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)
Created:  Mar 25, 2004
Updated:  Apr 28, 2004
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/loveofthegame.txt

Preface
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This bit of prose is for grown-ups, regardless of age.  It may
sound angry.  It may contain bad words (tm).  If you can't deal
with that, please point your browser elsewhere.

Main
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The subject today is winning, or rather, winning as the primary or
only goal.  Perhaps we need to drag out Vince Lombardi's old saw
for a place to start.

"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

(http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/winningisnte.html)

I'm sure that less thoughtful words have been spoken sometime,
but I'm hard-pressed to think of any.

While these words were uttered years ago, they seem to have become
the fundamental axiom of nearly everyone today.  The means no longer
matter, only the ends and those ends are to win.  It's frightening,
but apparently no longer redundant, to state that when winning
is the only thing, nothing else matters: not honor, not people,
not life and certainly not The Game.

It's so easy for some, isn't it?

* If you are rich enough, you can hire everyone to play, but make the
rules so that, at the end of each game, you are declared the winner.
* If you are cold enough, you can hurt or maim or kill or threaten 
your rivals.  They probably don't want to win at all costs, so 
you can take your victory lap without fear.
* If you are honorless, you can lie, steal, cheat, cajole or bribe
the officials to make calls in your favor or to look the other way
when you knee your opponent in the groin.

If this is how you win, I hope it makes you happy.  Here is your
ribbon.  It reads "I win every time" or "{God, Allah, Bob} is on my
side" or "I have an enormous penis" depending on your point of view.
Enjoy it for all the good it may do you.

The Game is far more important.  To love The Game is to love not
the outcome, but the setting, the characters, the experience, the
*process.* A show of excellence is a something to be celebrated
regardless of who performs it.  It is the smell of the grass, the
crack of the bat, the swish of the net, the well-placed drop shot,
the well-argued rebuttal or the perfectly finessed hand that is love.

As if something so ephemeral as a win could compare.

Winning and Losing, of course, are part of The Game.  While
competition *sometimes* brings out the very best in people, one
cannot lose the framework in which it is set; if that occurs,
The Game degenerates into chaos complete with a catostrophic loss
of, for lack of a better word, morality.  Indeed, when you care
deeply about the integrity of the process (especially to your own
detriment), you realize that what is being preserved is something
much larger than yourself, something that connects you to those
who have come before and to those who will come after.

When a win has been reduced to a single forgotten number in a
dusty ledger, The Game will be as new and as relevant as ever.
A win or loss is today, but the Game is eternal.

Love of The Game is eternal love.