This Is Not a Life and Death Game

Sport as war? War as sport? If the events of Sept. 11 caused sports media and fans to rethink the first concept, the events of Oct. 7 reminded us that newfound perspective can evaporate as quickly as the head on a ballpark beer.

Those cheers heard at Lowe’s Motor Speedway Sunday were not for the leaders of the UAW-GM Quality 500--they were for the video images of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, flashed across the stadium scoreboard, while race cars jostled for position on the track below.

At a CART race in Houston, when a naval officer stopped a prerace ceremony to announce, “The president has launched Operation Enduring Freedom,” the crowd roared its approval.

When the Georgia Dome public address announcer interrupted the first quarter of the Falcons-Bears NFL game to relay the news of the attack, the fans in the stands applauded and began to chant, “U-S-A! U-S-A!”--the same way they would root for a Falcon goal-line stand.

We know sport isn’t war because, no matter how many cliches coaches and sportscasters have fed us over the years, we know there always is a tomorrow after the game is done and that the losers get to walk away and drive home for dinner with their families.

But war as entertainment, with cruise missiles cheered, with stadium video boards providing updates on the action from Kabul, with Fox trotting out its “AMERICA STRIKES BACK” logo as if it were touting the day’s big game in the NFC Central?

On a day when the television industry canceled its Super Bowl--the 53rd Emmy Awards--American sports muddled along as a confused concoction of misguided emotion, mistaken identity and a nagging sense of what-are-we-supposed-to-do-with-ourselves-now?

Soccer fans got the message right away. Sunday’s important match between the United States and Jamaica, with a possible American World Cup berth at stake, was bumped by ABC so that network could provide news coverage from Afghanistan. Similarly, NBC interrupted its broadcast of the UAW-GM Quality 500 to report on the attack, with the race telecast being moved to TNT.

Soccer fans were given only the promise of a possible tape-delay on ESPN, which, like ABC, is owned by the Walt Disney Co. ESPN couldn’t take the soccer game live because it was already committed to the CART race in Houston, and ESPN2 was occupied with the Astros-Cardinals NL Central championship decider.

(ESPN eventually came through with a few soccer highlights on its afternoon SportsCenter show. For those who missed it: The United States defeated Jamaica, 2-1, on a late penalty kick by Joe-Max Moore and qualified for its fourth consecutive World Cup after missing all of them between 1950 and 1990. Meanwhile, live on ESPN2, the Cardinals qualified for the National League playoffs for the first time since 2000.)

Pro football, being pro football, didn’t budge. Fox and CBS continued with their regular schedules of NFL games, although locally, DirecTV subscribers noticed that the Eagles-Cardinals kickoff was delayed nine minutes so that fans at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium could watch President Bush’s address to the nation on the video board.

After that, it was pretty much sports business as usual on the networks. In the afternoon, Fox and CBS stayed with football, ESPN switched to golf coverage and ESPN2 moved to PacBell Park for Barry Bonds’ final appearance of the 2001 season, assuming he was rested enough to spend nine more innings standing in the outfield.

Bonds decided to grace the viewing audience with his presence, which meant one more home run over the right-field wall--rendering the huge new “71” banner hanging inside the Giants’ stadium obsolete by two and prompting analyst Joe Morgan to edit in a “73” with the Telestrator.

ESPN2 also replayed snippets of Bonds’ punch-drunk post-71st home run ceremony, originally held during the early minutes of Saturday morning, after Friday’s Dodger-Giant game dragged past midnight.

In an absurdly over-the-top season, with unbreakable records (Mark McGwire’s 70 home runs, the Yankees’ 114 wins) falling right and left, this was the capper: Willie Mays stepping up to the podium and transforming into the Say Hey Crank before our eyes.

Mays ordered a cold and tired crowd cheering for him at 1 a.m. to “shut up now.” He chastised Bonds’ father Bobby for not attending this historic game.

He groused about Bonds’ free-agent-to-be status in front of Giant owner Peter Magowan.

He also served up this heartwarming anecdote about Bonds, Mays’ godson, from way back when:

“As a kid, five years old, I remember saying to him, ‘Boy, get out of my locker. Stop chewing my gum and go out on that field.”’

It was an ESPN classic, sports television as it is supposed to be: a few moments of amusement, some unexpected insight into a baseball legend, a bit of Late Night at the Improv loopiness.

It’s not life and death. Never was, never will be.

After Sept. 11, that ought to go without saying.

But after Oct. 7, it might bear repeating.