The boos and the chants

Though I have not been a sports fan for years now, despite a childhood in which cricket and hockey played big roles, I have often lamented about the loss of sportsmanship.  I even wrote a column more than ten years ago on this, using the "fouls to give" calculation in basketball as the context.  I wrote there:

I wonder, then, if involvement in athletics might end up doing more harm than good. What will children learn if their coach teaches them to grab the player in order to prevent an opponent from scoring? Is the lesson to focus on winning at any cost, fully understanding that they have “fouls to give”?
...
It is no stretch to argue that this notion of “fouls to give” is becoming common in society.

To win at all costs, stretching the rules as much as possible, and fouling to the extent possible, has become the prevailing attitude, especially since 2015 when tRump as the candidate showed up on our radars.

I often tell anybody who wants to listen to me that tRump has created a huge problem: If we want to play by the rules, when he on the other hand couldn't care about the rules, then chances are that we should expect to lose a lot before even his fans too start worrying about the rules.

I do want us to play by the rules.  I really, really do.

But then I think about Michelle Obama telling us that when they go low, we should aim high ... and tRump and his toadies ended up kicking us in our groins.  They went low. Way low. Because they don't care about the rules.  The rules that say, for instance, that you don't try to recruit foreign governments in order to attack political opponents.

The constant disregard for the rules is why, well, I don't want us to play by the rules until he and his toadies are defeated at the polls.  Which is why I loved every video that came across my news feeds of sports fans booing him.  First it was at the baseball championship game.

On what he might have expected to be his best day as commander-in-chief (he revealed the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hours earlier), he was hidden away in an executive suite. The Lerner family that owns the Nats did not want him sitting with them. And the one time he flashed up on the big screen the jeering of the crowd was thunderous. A chant of “Lock him up!” rippled round the stadium long after Mr Trump’s image was replaced by footage of smiling servicemen. “Veterans for impeachment” read a banner behind home plate.

I loved the booing.  Bring them on, louder and louder!

And then it was at what should have been his friendliest crowds. Instead of adoration, he was booed there too.

And then came the reality check.

That does not sound right.

It sounds bad. It is awful. A nightmare.

I suppose when it comes down to it, I am a wimp. A wuss.  I want to only play by the rules.  I don't want boos or "lock him up" chants.

I want that old-fashioned cricket back.