Of basketballs and running shoes

Years ago, a certain co-worker could make the eyes bug out of my head by suggesting that cycling is not a sport.

“Lance Armstrong is not an athlete,” he would say.  I could never resist taking the bait. 

Red-faced I’d bluster forth with what it took to climb the Alps on a bicycle.  He’d counter with some off-handed comment about agility and touchdowns and three point shots.  I’d parry with what it took to descend a switch-backed mountain road at 60 mph.  “Oh,” I’d throw in for good measure, “if you fail to make that turn at 60 mph, you probably die! So it takes courage too.”

He would laugh and walk off and say something like, “Ok, JC tell that to Michael Jordan.  Now HE’s an athlete.”

He could laugh because he won.  He got a rise out of me, which is all he wanted.

I’m not sure why it was so easy.  It was obvious what he was up to, but I couldn’t hold back.

It’s probably the fact that runners, cyclists and other endurance “athletes” have never gotten their due.  The lack of respect just simmers beneath the surface, and it doesn’t take much to bring it to a boil.

With this in mind I came across a passage in the book that’s currently finding a home on my nightstand: Again to Carthage, by John L. Parker Jr.  It’s the recently released sequel to the classic, (if you’re an endurance athlete) Once a Runner from two decades past. 

Both books follow runner Quenton Cassidy, as he faces his internal demons, the challenge from other competitors and the course.  Halfway through Again to Carthage he is soul searching, reflecting and philosophizing about why we are all even on this planet, when talk turns – just for a few paragraphs – to whether “ball” sports or “endurance” sports (“the chase”) are the true essence of sport itself.  It got my attention.

“…In order for any ball sport to work, all the participants – and the spectators too for that matter – have to jointly agree for the duration of the contest that some silly inflated goat bladder is the most important object in the universe,” says Cassidy’s friend Roland.

He continues, “… A game is a physical form of fiction.  The instant the game is over the magical object is suddenly just a goat bladder again.”

Then he draws his analogy to a tidy conclusion: “Chase on the other hand is a much more elemental concept. … Everyone understands the idea of escaping from something that wants to eat you!”

That’s priceless.  You just can’t think of that stuff the moment someone is baiting you.

The Olympics are coming, along with all the track and field and cycling—and someone is gonna try to get my goat with comparisons to basketball.

They won’t get it, but they’re will hear an earful about the goat’s bladder.