This letter is in response to Jim Tubridy’s column of April 16 regarding the quality of Chicago’s baseball teams.

Jim states that it “is rather distressing to see people care more about baseball than the more important issues in the world.”

This, Jim, is because sports-related issues are the most important issues in this society in the opinion of most of its members, primarily its male members.

This, Jim, is the result of people in Western society being taught from childhood that excelling in sports and allegiance to sports teams is of supreme importance.

This, Jim, is the result of children, primarily male children, being taught that a sense of competitiveness and a desire to vanquish an opponent, to conquer other human beings, is of great importance.

This, Jim, is the result of decades of overemphasis by a male-dominated society on “winning the game” while disregarding the condition of the human race as a whole.

This, Jim, is why people actually cheered the injury of Chicago Bears quarterback Mike Tomczack at the last sporting event I will ever attend.

This, Jim, is why you saw the people of this society adopting a flippant attitude toward the preposterous war in the Persian Gulf, treating the destruction of fellow human beings with the same nonchalant attitude that they have toward a defeated opponent in a football game.

And this, Jim, is why people responded to your contention that the Cubs are better than the White Sox more than anything else you have written this year.

I have been an avid sports fan since I was a child, but I have seriously begun to wonder why. What purpose do sports really serve? Are they “a great outlet” for the “tension of everyday life” that Jim speaks about in his column?

If this is the case, why did I see so many angry, frustrated and violent people lurking around after the last Blackhawks game?

Is it possible that sports are really a mere facade for mindless human brutality? Is it possible that sports are really a sublimation of the conquestorial desire to destroy one another?

Is it possible that the objective of a sporting event is conquest and that the values exposed by this type of endeavor is what gives rise to problems like rape, murder and thievery?

I have chosen to turn my back on sports and competitive endeavors in general and focus, instead, on the betterment of my soul through the study of art, music, literature, science and religion.

I hope the values I have engendered from this course of study will allow me to live a more enlightened, fulfilled and happy life, free from the constraints of competitiveness and its outcroppings: jealousy and brutality.

Fred Heuschel

Senior

English