COMMENTARY : Life, Sports Should Both Go On in the Face of War

People weep and laugh, go to the theater and the movies, watch foolish television sitcoms, and make love in war and peace. They play football and they watch football. It’s all part of life and has been through history.

It’s a footnote to history and evidence of the human mentality that the Japanese professional baseball leagues didn’t suspend play during World War II until 1945.

It may be trivial to be worried about who wins the Super Bowl -- even should the New York Giants play -- while people are poised to die, to kill or be killed in the Middle East. But that’s part of life, and that’s not trivial: Life goes on. To permit Saddam Hussein to cancel the rites of peaceful life would be a defeat.

The word “home” is one of the most emotionally charged words in our language. Troops think of home, and the games are part of “home.” So the troops play touch football in the sand, and concrete was poured so baskets could be raised.

If canceling the NFL playoffs or the NBA season would make a whit of difference in how the scenario plays out in the desert, if it could cause peace to break out, then throw them out. War is a horrible thing. Close down Broadway and the movies, show only news on TV, pledge sexual abstinence as in “Lysistrata.” But it wouldn’t help.

Until and unless one of the president’s men advises not to play, the games go on. If on Super Sunday the announcement is made that actual combat has begun, then postpone the games. Maybe consider canceling them; football and basketball officials will have to look within themselves. If Washington asks, surely the arenas will be dark.

Over any extended period, the diversion helps more. The Brits kept going to the theater, ever mindful of the bomb shelters, through the dark of the Battle of Britain and the buzzbombs.

On Jan. 15, 1942, barely a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt sent “the Green Letter” to baseball commissioner Landis, saying, “I honestly think it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.”

It’s more than people can bear to be grim 24 hours a day. Men in combat, families under the threat of war, need relief. In my own 643 days in the Army, I produced propaganda leaflets intended for enemy eyes: Why you should surrender or at least go home. In one massive training exercise against an enemy named Trigonia, with distinctly Eastern European characteristics, the 1st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Battalion produced a newspaper to be read by Trigonians. The back page was devoted to the progress of the European soccer leagues. We had to give enemy soldiers reason to pick up the leaflets other than for use as toilet paper.

Even the NFL doesn’t have the power to force people to watch the games; if people feel so involved with the conflict, they won’t watch.

In the desert, we know Armed Forces Radio and Television will be bringing Sunday’s conference championship games and the Super Bowl into tents in base camps as they did last week. Troops will be watching.

Armed Forces Radio carried ballgames to Americans in arms during World War II. Bob Hope was there, too. Japanese baseball officials replaced the roman letters with Japanese characters on uniform shirts. Terms for balls, strikes and outs took on Japanese equivalents. But the people wanted their games. American military commanders thought it a value to have some big-leaguers playing games for the troops at Great Lakes or Ulithi Atoll in the Pacific. Players were drafted into the service. At this time there is no draft in the United States.

It looks self-serving for the NFL to have placed American flag decals on the helmets of players and for the NBA to do the same on the backboards. But when baseball put flags on the uniforms for the playoffs and World Series, a GI in the desert wrote to Sports Illustrated that it meant a lot to him. “It’s not how or why we feel, it’s the impact we have on people who are more important,” NBA Commissioner David Stern offered Tuesday. Being knowledged is a value.

Stern and NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue have agonized on the subject. At 6 o’clock Tuesday night Stern had a business meeting in his office and through it, half the eyes and sometimes more were on the TV bringing CNN to the office.

Comparison to the NFL playing on the Sunday before John Kennedy’s funeral is not valid. Halting play, which the American Football League did, was an issue of respect after one cataclysmic event. Pete Rozelle, on the 25th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, said if he had to do it again, he’d cancel the weekend. NFL vice president Joe Browne recalls that while Kennedy’s body lay in state, Rozelle sought advice from presidential press secretary Pierre Salinger, an old college friend. On Saturday Salinger phoned and recommended that the games go on because life goes on. And Rozelle made his decision.

In retrospect, those games could have waited until after the funeral.

At this time the issue of terrorism is very real. Tagliabue and Stern will say only they are considering all the issues. Of course, their security people are in contact with the FBI. This is a vulnerable society. Metal detectors are not welcome at stadiums and arenas. We should not be in the business of rounding up aliens as we did with Japanese in 1942.

That would be wrong. Going ahead with life is not.