REVELLING IN THE THYMOS

Perhaps the highest compliment a sports fan can pay to an athlete is when you call a Hall of Fame player “underappreciated.” Baseball fans who are a bit older than I am swear that such a label applies to Stan “The Man” Musial. Given that he had seven batting titles, three rings, three MVP awards, 475 home runs, and that I, who loves baseball, wasn’t even sure how to the spell the guy’s name, I’d have to agree with them. Another underappreciated Hall of Famer is the old Patriots/Raiders cornerback, Mike Haynes. Haynes was as close as I’ve seen to the perfect role player in a team sport. People never talk about him today because all he did, game after game, was completely blanket whichever wide receiver he covered. Consequently, quarterbacks never threw in his direction, so he and his opposing receiver simply became invisible. Who wants to hype invisible players? Where are the ratings in that?

Another undeniably underappreciated “superstar” athlete is the “other” Babe -- Babe Didrikson. She was far and away the most accomplished woman in athletics, having reached the pinnacle at multiple sports, yet she’s rarely discussed as one of the best handful of athletes in the 20^th century. I don’t get it. She dominated her gender, and her gender consists of more than half of the humanoids in the Galaxy, but she barely cracks ESPN’s top 10 – beaten by nine men, including multiple baseball players. Why then isn’t she up there in the pantheon with her male Babe analogue?

Then there’s Secretariat, an athlete that gets even less respect than the female Babe. But Secretariat was the best not only of his gender but his species, and no athlete has dominated a sport more than he. If you don’t believe me, check out the 1973 Belmont -- he looked like a rabbit running against a bunch of turtles. Secretariat’s problem, of course, is that he’s a horse, and the only horse we truly respect is Mr. Ed. We human beings think so highly of ourselves, in fact, that we’ve shaped our one and only god in our image. So how can we possibly give a horse his due when competing for the title of best athlete? “It” never had a shot.

Today, sports fans, we have another opportunity to witness underappreciated greatness. And get this – this guy is so amazing, that he’s considered the greatest talent in the history of his sport (like Secretariat) but remains underappreciated. His name is Eldrick Tiger Woods.

What? You don’t believe Tiger’s underappreciated? Think again. This guy is a golfer. Many people won’t even allow his game to be called a sport. Others are more gracious, but they refuse to admit that anyone in their right mind should watch that sport on TV. I can’t tell you how many people have rolled their eyes when I say that I watch it even though I don’t play it.

There is, of course, a group of people who fully appreciate Tiger – they’re called real golf fans. They all recognize Tiger’s excellence. Even some of my ultra-conservative friends who for years have sworn that there would never be another Jack Nicklaus are beginning to concede that the 30-year-old, self-proclaimed “Cablanasian” with the feline moniker appears to be even better than his ursine predecessor.

But how many of us are real golf fans? Excluding well-heeled, white Republicans, how many of us have consistently taken golf seriously as a spectator sport?

Pas moi. Yeah, I watched it a bit as a kid when Arnie, Jack and Lee Trevino played. But I hardly watched religiously -- not even close. And by the time I went off to college in 1977, I was about to embark on nearly two decades of golf-less life. The sport’s sole role for me was to supply humorous names: Kermit Zarley, Bert Yancey, Fuzzy Zoeller, Hubert “Huby” Green, Duffy Waldorf, Fred Funk, Gibby Gilbert. … Truly, those names seemed to be the “sport’s” only saving grace.

Then, one day, I learned about the existence of Mr. Woods. I was told that there was this kid who played golf for my alma mater and was both pigmented and precocious. I might have thought “pigmented” for a golfer meant that his family hailed from Spain or Northern Italy. But no – this dude actually had an African-American father and a Thai mother, and neither of them was wealthy. Those facts alone would have made me wish him well, but they might not have sufficed for me to take time out from my busy day to watch people walk around a country club. Candidly, it was the connection that I had with Tiger as a fellow Stanford Cardinal that persuaded me to sit my fanny down and watch him and his buddies play golf. The endless commercials about Viagra and investment funds were merely a fringe benefit.

Once I took the time to witness the phenomenon that is Tiger Woods, I was hooked. I saw him dominate the Masters while barely old enough to drink. A few years later, I watched him hold all four major tournament trophies at the same time, a feat that had never been accomplished. And I saw him consistently stay ahead of Jack Nicklaus’s pace for winning major tournaments. He’s now up to 12, 2/3rds of the way to Nicklaus’s record. Not bad for a guy who is only just now beginning to enter the period of his life -- his 30s -- that traditionally is a golfer’s prime.

Nearly as importantly, I saw Tiger attain those milestones while comporting himself with dignity and class. He always seemed to know when to flash a smile, when to sound humble, and when to pat himself on the back. And he clearly was very devoted to his parents. For us Jewish guys, you earn a lot of points from that.

So, despite not being a true golf fan and despite my refusal to take up the game myself, I understand the argument that watching Tiger Woods compete is compelling television. But many of my friends remain holdouts. I’ve heard different excuses. Some friends tell me they’d rather watch paint dry. One makes a Woods-specific argument: he’s a right-wing Oreo cookie who once refused to attend an event held in Jackie Robinson’s honor. In each case, these statements were made by rabid sports fans. They still fail to recognize what I take as a near given: Tiger is providing the most amazing spectacles in sports today.

I won’t say this phenomenon is unprecedented. In fact, I’ve seen it once before: when Michael Jordan was ripping up the NBA in the early to mid 90s. Fortunately for sports fans everywhere, MJ played a sport that was universally respected, and as a result he was appreciated by fans of all stripes. But Tiger, being a golfer, doesn’t have that privilege, so his fan club is less ubiquitous -- such a pity for those who have yet to jump on the bandwagon.

Jordan, like Tiger, seemed able to win events merely by showing up. It’s not that their competitors always fell apart – Vijay Singh came up big at the recent Deutsche Bank tournament -- it’s just that, as MJ did before him, Tiger is now consistently playing at the level where he can summon whatever intensity, concentration, and skill are needed to post the winning score, no matter what that score might be. In a sport where greatness is exemplified by winning one golf tournament every five or six tries, Tiger has now won five tournaments in a row, and not for the first time.

Jordan and Woods also share the ability to excel at a sport without having it corrode their impeccable public image. It’s true that after Jordan had set all his records, the media tried to create a scandal from the fact that Air liked to gamble. Imagine that – a great gamesman who makes more money in a week than the rest of us make in a decade was “outed” because he enjoys spending a small fraction of that fortune on casino games. Mon Dieu! Thankfully, the public didn’t care, and why should they? Jordan has every right to walk down the street and throw out $200 million to random passersby. He made the money. And he’d still have hundreds of million of dollars left to do things that rich people are supposed to do with their money: like buy yachts, mansions, and – if it’s their preference -- mistresses.

That leads me to the other common critique of Jordan and Woods. Some naysayers decry that they’re not public-spirited enough. Even though Tiger has spent millions of dollars on programs for helping youth, he is challenged because he’s not as outspoken on public policy issues as, say, Susan Sarandon or Alec Baldwin.

Once again, I just have to laugh at the critique. Just as Air had every right to lose money at poker, Tiger has every right to avoid lecturing the nation on the Iraq War and to spend his spare time at Maples Pavilion celebrating the Cardinal beat the Arizona Wildcats at hoops. Let me spell this out: Tiger is an athlete, an entertainer and a corporate pitch man. He’s never claimed to be an intellectual, a political figure or a spiritual leader. Personally, I’d prefer it if he could turn into the next Gandhi or Martin Buber. But am I going to criticize him if he chooses to speak only with his swing and with his smile? Not this sports fan.

I feel quite sure that none other than Plato would agree with me in letting MJ be MJ and Tiger be Tiger and reveling in their accomplishments, rather than bemoaning their limitations. Plato divided the human soul into three faculties – the reasoning faculty, the spirited faculty (or “thymos”) and the appetitive faculty. Most of us, he says, are dominated by the third, and become laborers. Some of us are dominated by the faculty of reason, Plato said, and are suited to become philosopher kings. To be sure, Plato placed his beloved philosophers at the pinnacle of human existence, but he didn’t deny the need for, and beauty of, those who are dominated by their thymos. They become the great warriors – prideful people with a thirst for glory, an inner strength, and a passion to defeat obstacles. They deserve to be celebrated almost as much as the great sages. Without them, our society would surely be overrun by weakness, lethargy and, ultimately, foreign enemies.

No, I’m not prepared to advocate that Tiger Woods should be compared to the legendary soldiers of by-gone eras. His accomplishments hardly match their courage. But I am saying that this is a man whose superior thymos is on display whenever he competes. And that alone makes him worthy of being watched. For Tiger, as for Jordan, it’s the thymos that makes the crucial difference to his art – that’s why he doesn’t just win repeatedly, but wins at will. Athletes like that come around very, very rarely. If you’re capable of enjoying any sport, you surely owe yourself the treat of watching them play at whatever sport the Fates have assigned for them. The sport, you see, isn’t relevant. What’s relevant is the thymos.

I sometimes wish we could learn more about great feats of thymos on the part of modern day soldiers – real soldiers. But such isn’t the case. Our military successes are generally attributed to superior technological prowess, whereas the only soldiers whose successes we hear about today are terrorists, and I’m hardly recommending that we revel in their accomplishments.

For those who wish to appreciate the thymos, we’re left with our gladiators on the playing field. They allow us to witness the thymos with our eyes and vicariously experience the glory they attain after a fight well fought.

Maybe in a decade or two, another athlete will come around with Tiger’s competitive spirit who excels at a sport that is universally loved – like basketball, or soccer or baseball. But that’s not the situation. Today, our great competitor happens to wage war on a battlefield consisting of trees, grass, sand, ponds, and holes in the ground. So be it. It’s not exactly my ideal choice of venues, but I don’t get to choose how athletic genius is manifested. My job as a sports fan – I mean a fan of the thymos -- is simply to keep my eyes open for genius, and then sit back, grab a beer, and enjoy the spectacle.