Mike Bianchi: Sports can help tragedy-stricken Orlando become City Beautiful again
You see, sports are so important because they are so unimportant.
In times of death and destruction, we still need fun and games.
Right now, the City Beautiful has become the City Tragedy and the Happiest Place on Earth seems like the saddest place on the planet. It’s going to take a while, but we will get through this. And sports will do their part – a small, but necessary part.
Look around, it’s already happening. Our two major sports franchises – the Orlando Magic and Orlando City – are currently discussing a joint fundraising effort and are using their enormous reach and resources to activate their millions of fans. Orlando City superstar Kaka has 20 million Twitter followers. Do you know what it means when he urges people to give blood?
“As sports organizations, we have the opportunity and the forum to help our community heal,” Magic CEO Alex Martins said. “We will use our podium to help raise funds for those who have been personally impacted. We have an incredible network of teams and leagues in this community and throughout our entire country who stand ready to use the power and forum of sports to help us rebound from this tragic situation.”
But it’s not just about the financial philanthropy. It’s about the therapeutic qualities of keeping your eyes on the bouncing ball and your mind off the discharging assault weapons.
I’m not nearly the writer of the late, great Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam, but I couldn’t disagree more with his stance on sports and tragedy.
“If, in the long run, you need sports to help you through a time of tragedy and to take your mind off a grimmer reality, then you are emotionally in so much trouble in not understanding what is real and what is fantasy that the prospects for your long-term emotional health are probably not very good,” Halberstam wrote.
Personally, I side with another late, great writer – former Sentinel columnist Jerry Greene, who recently passed away but used to get angry with hoity-toity writers like Halberstam for minimizing the role of sports.
Greene wrote in the aftermath of 32 people being slain in the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007, which was, until Sunday, the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history: “It’s been 10 days since the senseless deaths at Virginia Tech, yet another monstrous act that wounded our national psyche. And as always happens, sports came to the rescue. Certainly not only sports and certainly not a ‘return to normalcy’ overnight, but this country does not have a better tool for healing than sports. And while ‘normalcy’ actually may be a word without meaning anymore, we turn to sports for the assurance that our way of life goes on.”
Sports are so important because they are so unimportant.
In times of death and despair, we need distractions and diversions.