The scene was striking at the time, and it probably rubbed some of sports’ old-school adherents the wrong way.
It was during the 2020 World Series between the Dodgers and Tampa Bay, inside the COVID bubble in Arlington, Texas. Game 1, fifth inning: Mookie Betts walks in his third at-bat of the game, steals second on the third pitch to Corey Seager … and then beckons the opposing shortstop, Willy Adames, and gives him a hug.
It didn’t totally come out of nowhere. They’d been division opponents when Betts was with the Boston Red Sox, and Adames would later say, “Every time I get to second, he says hi to me, talks to me. He treats me like he knew me his whole life. That means a lot to me.”
It seemed strange at the time, but then a lot of things were strange during that year when most of us practiced social isolation. And it had to have been weird, and off-putting, for anyone who grew up under the code of treating your opponent like the enemy. Don’t talk to them, definitely don’t smile at them, and above all don’t let ’em know you care.
But times have changed. Fast-forward to a recent NBA playoff game this spring: The Golden State Warriors’ Jonathan Kuminga drives for the basket and gets hammered by Minnesota’s Naz Reid, and when the foul is called the two opponents are both laughing about it. And yes, the stakes are high, but you see more of these snippets of humanity during our games than ever before.
It’s called sportsmanship. It’s called civility. And in an environment in which real life has become toxic, and relationships between those of opposing viewpoints have turned bitter if they still exist at all, maybe sports has become the last bastion of getting along, a reminder that your opponent doesn’t have to and indeed shouldn’t be your enemy, because you may be wearing different uniforms but you have way more in common.
“Those are such great examples, and it’s why we’re concentrating on sports,” said Fred Ryan, director of the Reagan Foundation’s Center on Civility and Democracy, in a recent Zoom interview.
Ryan and his organization teamed up with the Rose Bowl Institute and its director, James Washington, for a seminar in early March called “Respectful Rivalries: Dialogue on Competition and Civility,” bringing together more than 100 representatives of professional, college and Olympic sports to discuss ways to promote sportsmanship and civility in the general society.
You think it was just talk? The gathering took place days before USC and UCLA played in basketball. Ryan is a USC graduate, and Washington was a stellar defensive back on some of Terry Donahue’s great UCLA football teams of the mid-’80s and later a two-time Super Bowl champion.
“He’s my buddy,” Ryan said with a laugh. “Every time we’re on a Zoom together … I’ll hold up my USC coffee cup and my USC little fan trophy and a few little things like that. And he’ll count, and then all of a sudden he’ll hold up his Rose Bowl championship ring, his Super Bowl ring, his other Super Bowl ring.”
At the Rose Bowl event, in fact, Ryan said he and Washington exchanged gifts: A UCLA Rose Bowl hat for Ryan, a “Beat UCLA” badge for Washington.
“He immediately put it on and wore it the rest of the evening,” Ryan said.
Washington quipped that he “had a kid go to UCLA and had a kid go to USC … Obviously I favor the kid that went to UCLA a little bit more.”
But he added that the work of the Reagan Institute and the Rose Bowl Institute, put together, is “using politics and sports to bring back and elevate sportsmanship across the world.” And the idea that opposites attract, that people from USC and UCLA can sit down together – or athletes from Army and Navy, who came together at a similar function before the football teams played each other last fall – does indeed send a message.
And maybe it starts with parents.
‘A challenge’
This is an ongoing topic of conversation every year during my annual conversation with the commissioner of the CIF Southern Section, currently Mike West and before him Rob Wigod. A certain subset of parents – often, but not limited to, the same ones who have their offspring transfer from school to school or hop from club team to club team in search of that elusive college scholarship – feel compelled to act out in the stands, whether it be directed at the coaches or officials.
During our conversation in August, the ongoing issue of retention of game officials came up, and West said, “If they stay for at least three years, data shows that we’ve got them, that they’ll remain. It’s getting them to that three-year point. That’s the problem.”
The main issue?
“Crowd behavior, coach behavior, and how our officials are treated once they come onto a facility, how well they’re welcomed just in general, how much ‘abuse’ they might take from people in the stands or by coaches,” he said.
And yes, he said, “most of it” involves fan behavior. Coaches, who represent their schools, are strongly encouraged to work with officials rather than harangue them. But parents “kind of get away with a lot,” West said, a type of behavior that begins in summertime play and extends to what West, and Wigod before him, call “education-based” athletics.
“Certain sports in particular, soccer, basketball, those are the ones where we really have that fan behavior, where they (fans) feel empowered to voice their opinions and not moderate themselves in an open forum,” West said. “That’s a challenge.”
West said high school administrators are encouraged to reach out to outspoken parents and fans early in a game in order to address situations before they escalate. And there is a passage in the Southern Section rulebook that states that if a fan is ejected by a game official, he or she can’t come back for one game. If there’s a second ejection, the penalty goes up to three to six games.
Massachusetts’ youth soccer association has instituted a pregame handshake line for the players before each game, and has also mandated a sportsmanship statement, read by a representative of the home team to all coaches, players and spectators. It reads, in part:
“All participants deserve the right to play in an environment free from hostile and distracting behavior. Please do your part to create a positive soccer experience for all. Poor sportsmanship will not be tolerated, and sanctions may be applied for violations of policy or codes of conduct.”
The policy came after complaints about spectator behavior and a resulting shortage of referees and trend of players dropping away from the sport. Sound familiar?
‘No respect’
It’s not just youth sports where spectator behavior is an issue. In a survey conducted earlier this year by the Reagan Foundation asking respondents which environments they considered “toxic” for civil dialogue, social media (67%) and the news media (41%) drew the most responses, but 26% cited sports events. The linkage between fan behavior and beer consumption wasn’t noted, but it’s there.
We’ve certainly seen examples recently, with fan heckling of Golden State’s Draymond Green during that recent Warriors-Timberwolves series, or hate comments, some racial, directed at the Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese following a hard foul committed by Indiana’s Caitlin Clark during a WNBA season opener last weekend. The foul wasn’t contentious per se – Reese, who initially took exception, later called it a “basketball play” – but the reaction was a reminder that fans can bring their biases with them.
Sure, emotions can run hot among players. But the influence of positive coaching models has been stressed at lower levels, and as athletes reach the professional level they realize that while the stakes are higher, in a sense they’re all in this together … and it’s not inconceivable that the player you’re trying to beat this year could be your teammate next year or the year after.
“When I played for the Dallas Cowboys, I couldn’t stand Washington, couldn’t stand Philadelphia,” said Washington, who played for the Rams and Cowboys before joining the team now known as the Commanders. “And when we went to D.C. (for a Reagan Foundation function), some of my best friends showed up who played on that (Washington Super Bowl) team. … People are changing teams and building relationships, and then they go on to the next team, but the friendships are always going to last way longer than the game.”
Ryan talked about how sports can potentially be a unifier in a time when so many other things are so divisive, especially in politics.
“Part of it is you play by the rules and you respect the game and you respect your opponent,” he said. “And even though you leave it all on the field and you play to win, you’re looking forward to next time.”
In contrast, Ryan noted that so much of our politics carries “no respect for the opponent. There’s no respect for the game. There’s no respect for the judges or the referees.”
So consider D.C., the ultimate political town, where Ryan noticed that when Alexander Ovechkin – a Russian, playing for the hometown Capitals – was about to break Wayne Gretzky’s NHL record for goals, this was the scene in the stands:
“You had people who probably could not be more farther apart politically. Some super MAGA conservatives, some super woke liberals, and they’re high-fiving and they are cheering for the team. And for at least for that moment in time, all these differences that divide them are put aside. So you have that on the field and then you have it in the stadium.”
Let’s hope fans notice the scenes at the end of games, especially in the NFL and NBA, with players mingling, gabbing – and showing respect, reminding us that they truly are all in this together.
Among the statements that came out of that March meeting at the Rose Bowl, with the participants speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, was this: “I believe my rival is my rival, not my enemy. … We need to draw a distinction between those two and govern the language, because the language influences what we think.”
And this:
“The definition of sportsmanship, as I’ve come to learn it, is trying to win on your opponent’s best day. You want them to be their best, but you want to be better. That’s what rivalries do: They make everybody perform at their best.”
Maybe the ultimate goal, then, is for spectators to be at their best, too, at every level.
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