On Tuesday, my roommate had an extra ticket to the Blue Jackets exhibition game. NHL preseason games have never exactly thrilled me and the Nashville Predators aren’t exactly a drawing card. But I hadn’t been inside Nationwide Arena since it was built, so I went.
As we approached Nationwide everything seemed normal, until we arrived at the gate.
What came next will be a familiar scene across the country for a time to come. More security personnel, no tote bags inside the facility and every woman’s purse was checked. All for fear of terrorist devices.
All 100,000 in the Rose Bowl on Saturday will be thinking about New York and Washington.
All week I have heard that sports are just games. That they are meaningless in the grand scheme of events.
Not so.
The events and people that live between the white lines have had an affect on American culture throughout the century. Sport has become an essential part of America, economically and emotionally.
After the initial shock of watching the most vital part of the New York skyline fall to the ground, I noticed on the same CNN ticker that was updating the tragedies of Sept. 11, there was also news of major league baseball cancellations.
Tell me that Jesse Owens, a Buckeye as we all are, running track and field in 1936 was just an event. He dominated the whole field in the Berlin Olympics before Hitler and his Nazi thugs. Tell me that Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson were just signing a baseball contract. Tell me football isn’t life in Massillon, Ohio, where a football is placed with a newborn son. Tell me John Rocker’s rock-head comments didn’t stir up emotions in every corner of the States. Tell me 15,000 people showed up for the Show You Care Telethon while 100,000 would have been at the ‘Shoe for an Ohio State-San Diego St. game.
During World War II bomb drills were run at the Polo Grounds in New York City, now in the 21st century Shea Stadium will run its own set of security measures. Measures not a against a country such as Japan or Germany, but against an invisible foe who may live in your neighborhood and be planning on attending a college football game this weekend.
The cancellations of last weeks’ games were the right move, no doubt. But as Franklin Roosevelt requested major league baseball to play on in the 1940s to elevate some pain from war effort, sports must come up again 60 years later.
As Americans attempt to return to normalcy, sports will be there right along with the other steps in the healing process.
I will likely not attend another seemingly meaningless NHL exhibition game for a while. But I will never forget what I saw there. I saw sport once again reflect American society. It is truly more than games.
Travis Sawchik is a senior in journalism and Lantern sports writer who gives props to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his words after the terrorist attack. He can be reached at [email protected] for comment and praise.
