Sports fandom has always been curious to me. Why do we become so emotionally invested in athletes and teams with whom we have no personal relationship? Whose accomplishments are not our own?
Jerry Seinfeld, a long-time Mets fan who shared this weekend’s World Series heartbreak in New York, satirically put things in perspective: in professional team sports, we’re essentially rooting for laundry.
Athletes, of course, are so much more. As any student or pro athlete will attest, perfecting a sport and ascending through levels of competition requires extreme dedication. In turn, we are inspired by the commitment, purpose, and the pride athletes take in their crafts. They often come to represent the ideal of what we can be: focused, prepared, encouraged, dedicated and persistent people.
It is natural, I think, for us to attach to that image, especially when athletes don the colors of our city or country and promise to represent us on a scale beyond sport. In this way, sports offer a lens through which we personify our ideals in a very public way.
By that same token, disappointment and defeat in sports also elicit strong reactions. A loss for the home team is not just a loss for its athletes; it is a “loss” for all who hoped the team and its community, imbued with goals, ideals, and hopes beyond just the field of play, would prevail.
Sometimes, the loss is far more significant than a game. On October 30, Philadelphia-area golfer Chris Fuga died while fighting his second bout with leukemia. Chris (pictured above) was well-known in the Philadelphia golf world, competing in the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Tournament, a U.S. Open Local Qualifier, and winning tournaments at Overbrook Golf Club, Phoenixville Country Club, and other courses throughout the Philadelphia area.
Chris was only 24. On Thursday, I will attend his funeral; he is the younger brother of a friend. I only met him once, but I will go there still knowing the impact he made on his family and community. It was especially felt through the game of golf, where Chris was free to pursue the best version of himself (and he did so quite successfully). His athletic accomplishments make his loss all the more poignant.
The emotional pain of loss is appreciated throughout sports, too. As I watched the long faces on baseball fans during the World Series, though, I couldn’t help but place their own feelings of loss in perspective. In comparison to losing a young life, sports scores are entirely trivial. At the same time, I understood. We mourn, I think, not because one’s time on the field or golf course is over (after all, everyone stops playing at some point), as much as we mourn for what could have been. We share an understanding that any form of potential cut short is tragic. In that way, the struggles of athletic competition offer a framework for the trials of life.
Losing Chris at such a young age is heartbreak enough. But I do believe Chris’ commitment and success in the game of golf says something more about him, knowing how dedicated he was to the pursuit of excellence in developing his God-given talents. In sports and in life, he is accordingly remembered as a fighter.
“His competitive edge definitely contributed to the way he was able to fight for so long,” said Jim Goodhart, who coached Chris on the Pottstown Spartans City/County 19U baseball team when he was a teenager. “He was the type of guy who never wanted to come out, never gave up.”
In a special way, athletes represent the best of us. And, at their best, athletes are powerful models of excellence and possibility. From everything I’ve learned about Chris, he was an embodiment of that spirit. I strongly suspect he’d encourage everyone – athlete or not – to live, with full effort and intention, the best lives we can.