Moments of joy.Like almost every honest muckraker muckraker Any of a group of U.S. writers identified with pre-World War I reform and exposé literature. The term, first used derisively, originated in an allusion Theodore Roosevelt made in 1906 to a passage in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress about a man with a muckrake we know, every time we write a few negative things about sport, we wind up feeling guilty. Were we honest? Were we trying to be "sensational?" Did we really know what we were talking about? And we start trying to make amends: Find something nice to say about our beloved ... sport. It happens all the time, but rarely as classically as it did last year. Remember our reference to a book titled, A Brief History of American Sport by Elliott J. Gorn & Warren Goldstein Rabbi Warren Goldstein (b. cir. 1973) is the chief rabbi of South Africa. Born in Pretoria, he currently lives in Johannesburg. He is the first chief rabbi of South Africa that was born in South Africa and the youngest ever to be appointed to that post, at age 32. in our November 2004 issue? It's a mildly weird book; excellently researched and written, and quite dull. The authors do a fine job of digging up every piece of negative sport history and brutalizing it. We stuck with it for 250 pages, and then quit when we reached the prologue (251-54) ... and so missed the sensitive ending on page 254. It was the perfect ending to our thesis on feeling guilty after knocking a sport and then feeling compelled to make amends. Allow us to cover the final passage in the book: EPILOGUE Having said all of this (the negative in sport), we are still, as fans, left with moments of joy from our own personal past. For each of us, intertwined with intimate memories of family and community are images shared with millions of others: of Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali, pasha of Egypt Muhammad Ali, 1769?–1849, pasha of Egypt after 1805. He was a common soldier who rose to leadership by his military skill and political acumen. regaining his title, of Sandy Koufax Dr. J, Erving, Julius Winfield Erving scoring baskets no human being should make. No doubt other moments have been as vivid to other individuals. What they all have in common is the feeling of transcendence; the sense of limitless possibility that sports can give us. Arousing deep longings for beauty, for awe, for shared community. Such moments give us glimpses of a better world and nourish hopes for much that is noble in humankind. |
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