Roland Toy considered himself a good liberal — until a kids basketball game in 1993 turned him conservative:
There were two fourth-grade classes in my son’s elementary school, and each fielded an eight-player team in an after-school sports league. Both teams were good. My son’s team went undefeated during the regular season. His best friend — we’ll call him Jay — played on the other team, which lost just one game. Eventually, in the post-season playoffs, the two teams were scheduled to face each other for the first time all season in the championship game.
A few days before the game, Jay’s father called me. He and the other parents of his son’s team were “very, very concerned.” Even alarmed. Apparently, as the championship game neared, the boys were doing a lot trash-talking at each other. Surely we could all agree that the real reason for the competition was to teach the boys cooperation and sportsmanship. Playing the game would mean one of the teams would lose, which would lead the winning team to “bragging rights in the schoolyard.” And that would not be healthy. It would undermine the real lessons to be learned about self-esteem and mutual respect.
He dwelled on these points for a while, finally landing heavily on the notion that this was a wonderful opportunity for us, as parents, to “frame the situation as a teaching moment.” Eventually, he got to the money point: He and the other parents of Jay’s team wanted to cancel the championship game. After all, we could all agree that both teams were already winners, right?
Initially, I was nonplussed. But I heard myself saying something like, “You’re way over-complicating this. The purpose of playing the game is to win it. And by the way, the winning team has earned bragging rights.”
As it happened, the two teams fell out along socioeconomic lines. Most of the parents from the other team were professors at the nearby state university, with a couple of doctors as well. Their coach was a well-published sociologist; Jay’s father taught psychology. Our coach was a private detective with a scar on his face, a reminder of a knife fight he had had in Mexico. One of our team’s parents was a real estate broker, another a chef; one sold insurance, one was a building inspector.
Fast forward two nights to a meeting at my house. Our living room was large enough to accommodate all 32 parents, 16 from each team. The coach of Jay’s team presented the same pitch I had heard from Jay’s father about our obligation as parents to frame the situation into a teaching moment that emphasized sportsmanship. One of our parents responded that sportsmanship is only possible if there’s a sport to begin with. One of theirs said something about helping the children to build healthy self-esteem. One of ours responded that being perceived as too chicken to play the game wasn’t likely to build a whole lot of self-esteem in anybody. One of theirs raised the issue of trophies, suggesting that if the game were played, then every player should receive the same trophy. One of ours said sure, trophies for all, as long as they were marked champion and runner-up and given to the right kids.
My favorite comment came from the real estate broker. He said that for him, after listening to all of the arguments pro and con, failing to play the game just seemed unnatural.
(Hat tip to David Foster.)