Lincicome: Finding purpose and beauty in the games people play and a career spent watching them

In Pope news this week, we are assured that sports are good.

Despite being a White Sox fan, and a tennis player, Pope Leo XIV thinks sports are a blessing, and if anyone knows about blessings …

Having spent a large part of my life writing, rooting and wrangling with sports, I take Leo’s endorsement as a justification for a life well spent. Well, spent anyhow.

His view and mine are mostly the same, that taken all in all, sports are worthwhile, although I doubt he has ever been hit in the face with a pie over an opinion, or charged by a naked coach in a clubhouse, had his shoes sprayed on at a press box urinal, called the F-word by a punky quarterback, or, my all-time favorite, had a rat crawl up his pants leg on deadline.

And, I wonder, when he is hoping that sports will be a fraternity and not “an empty rivalry,” how much time he has spent in the Green Bay parking lot with an Illinois tag on his car.

In simpler times, the wide world of sports was defined as the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition.” Not exactly a papal encyclical, but to the point and never said better.

In the world today, out here beyond the Vatican tennis court, sports is money. College athletes are paid more in school than as a pro. The highest paid athlete is a soccer player, Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, raking $300 million annually.

A basketball player, LeBron James, makes $137 million, a baseball player, Shohei Ohtani, $127 million. Saudi Arabia tried to wash its image as a cruel and brutal nation by buying golfers. Golfers.

The sports world revolves around media rights, sponsorships, endorsements, salaries and, most alarmingly, gambling.

It is lately difficult to follow any sport without a wager, inning to inning, pitch to pitch, shot to shot. We are a long way from simple choices, of winning and losing, of trying and failing, of achieving and disappointing.

Franchise value defines public esteem. The five major sports franchises in Chicago are valued at more than $24 billion (the Pope’s Sox coming in at a paltry $2 billion), with the Bears on top, valued at more than $8 billion. And still the Bears can’t build their own stadium.

When idealizing sports, there is not enough room under the Pope’s hat for all of this clutter to fit.

Undeterred, Pope Leo offers a pregame prayer for any who need it, kneeling optional.

“May those who play, train or cheer discover in sports a universal language that brings cultures together and sows respect, solidity and personal growth.”

Amen to that, and I can testify to personal growth. When I began this I was a 42 Long and am now an XXL, shopping in sweatpants.

This is what I believe. Sports has value beyond entertainment, beyond escapism. The lessons of games enrich our lives.

We see in the rules of play the necessary order of existence. We witness the cooperation of individuals for the good of all. We understand fair play and civilized competition. We imitate the discipline required to achieve goals.

We must believe that the athletes who play games at the highest level have the highest regard for the foundation on which our allegiance is based.

Most athletes suffer the privileges of their talent with aristocratic insolence, accepting wealth and fame as payment for the genetic accident that allows them to throw or run or catch better than the rest of us.

Like the Pope, we participate in the fantasy that it all matters, that muscle skills and intricate strategies are important, and we reward those who do it best with our affection and our money.

We demand very little in return, except the assurance that the game gives us an honest count.

A man needs to be sure of three things in this life. That his wife is faithful, his minister is holy and his shortstop is clean.

It is not too much to ask.