Why sports matterÍs in times like these

Once again, we find our country plunged into a mire of discontent, resentment and rebellion. And once again, the world stops to ogle (and perhaps snicker) as we stumble in the mud of our own indifference to the suffering of our countrymen. Once yet again, we want to unseat those in power out of desperation, if only to give ourselves the sensation of hope, even if it just means a change that may not work, either.

Many in my profession always feel that such upheavals are not only disrupted, but unnecessary. As always, sports seem to take a backseat to politics, even if the political exercise somehow winds up with Filipinos shooting themselves in the foot.

Time was when it was the other way around.

In ancient times, wars were stopped for the duration of the Olympic Games, and all participating countries knew peace while the battles were fought on the playing fields. I’ve always found it funny that, during Olympic Games and holidays, we can turn the animosity on an off like a light switch.

More pointedly, Roman Caesars would regularly stage their "bread and circuses" campaigns whenever there was unrest due to extreme poverty. They would hand out bread to temporarily sate the hunger of the masses, and stage full-scale sea battles by flooding a coliseum, until the waters were red with blood. There was also the old standby of fights between gladiators, the progenitor of modern boxing.

When the Harlem Globetrotters started going around the world after World War II, even armed conflicts between nations were halted to give way to their brand of sports entertainment. Political differences were set aside, everyone had a good laugh for a game or two, and, as soon as the goodwill ambassadors of sports boarded their planes, hostilities resumed.

Today, the only time there is no fighting crime seems to be when Manny Pacquiao has a fight. Maybe we should fly in Erik Morales over the weekend so we can have some peace and quiet.

During the Great Depression, sports like boxing and basketball were a way to have constant work, and divert one’s mind from the grinding poverty that threatened to crush one’s spirit at the same time that it ravaged one’s stomach. And yet, this was the time of a great proliferation of world-class boxers, led by the amazing Pancho Villa. Boxing is the proven sport of hard times.

A few years later, basketball became the great equalizer, not to mention an unexpected melting pot. When we formed our national team for the first Olympic basketball competition in Berlin in 1936, an unexpected result was that the various social classes — represented by the opposite poles of lower-middle class runners blended with upscale baseball players — came together.

On a particularly stressful and depressing three-week boat ride to Paris, followed by week of rattling about in a train to Germany, they bonded. The result was the famous run of The Islanders, still talked about today.

What is the value of sports to a country that is starving? Perhaps it is difficult to think of games when your stomach is rumbling, and yet, when we look back at the appalling poverty that decimated many communist countries, these were also the times when their athletes rose to the greatest heights.

China, Cuba, the Soviet Union, they all produced world — and Olympic — record holders in the midst of their peoples’ greatest suffering. And the athletes became national heroes. Would that it were true in this little country of ours.

Does Philippine sports really feel what is going on today? I wonder.

Yesterday, the Sta. Lucia Realtors and Coca-Cola Tigers had a tune-up game for the coming PBA All-Filipino Conference. The World Wrestling Entertainment superstars are here to fulfill their promise to hold two nights of perfectly staged matches. International boxing referee (and police officer) Ver Abainza got on his scheduled flight for Japan to referee a World Boxing Association title fight.

As of late yesterday afternoon, all this weekend’s games of the Ateneo Basketball League (which features a staggering 151 teams of Ateneo alumni, almost two thousand players in all) will be played at seven different venues in Metro Manila.

Some of you may see it as callousness. But then again, what else can we do, but go on? What else is there for us, but to live, fight, struggle, stretch ourselves.

Tomorrow is another day. And as long as we live, that alone gives us hope, that we can surpass these overwhelming conditions.

There are four words that have the unique gift of making us sad when we are happy, and paradoxically, making us happy when we are sad, like today.

"This, too, shall pass."