Will They Have to Play Nice?

Fans have probably been yelling, “Kill the umpire” since the first time an ump yelled, “You’re out!” Boxers are trained to batter opponents into submission. The line of scrimmage in football is often compared to wartime trenches. Hockey goons exist only to do bodily harm.

Sports and violence have always been intertwined. Physical confrontations, bloodthirsty fans and inflammatory rhetoric are parts of the package.

Sportswriters routinely refer to events as battles, athletes as warriors and heroes and big victories as burying the opposition. A basketball shot from the top of the key is a deadly jumper, a knockout punch the result of explosive power.

None of that has been considered offensive or objectionable in a society in which athletic confrontation was viewed as a welcome substitute for aggressiveness unleashed in armed conflicts.

But did that change Tuesday? Terrorist attacks in New York and Washington have forced the United States to confront violence and death in the real world and the prospect of renewed armed conflict. In this environment, while the nature of sports certainly won’t change, will its tone have to be softened, at least temporarily, for a sensitive public?

“I honestly don’t think it [the terrorist attacks] will have a significant impact at all, for better or worse,” said Russell Gough, an ethics professor at Pepperdine specializing in sports. “We have to keep in mind that, on the fields and courts of play, sports is a very insular enterprise. I think most sports fans, even if not conscious of it, create a big disconnect between the very real world and sports. Sports are considered escapist entertainment.

“While I have no doubt that athletes who are interviewed and in the public eye will be very sensitive about saying anything which might offend moral sensibilities about the recent tragedies, I strongly suspect, when it comes to linemen squaring off against each other on the football field, or basketball players going elbow to elbow on the court, or boxers going glove to glove, it will be business as usual. If there is any change in that regard, it will be very short-lived.”

If any sport has to modify its methods in the immediate future, it would seem to be boxing, a sport that regards blood as a red badge of courage, uses name-calling, jingoism and expressions of hatred as promotional devices and boasts about one opponent destroying another.

Even the titles given fights by promoters trying to excite the public are now in very bad taste.

For example:

Felix Trinidad vs. Fernando Vargas: “Forces of Destruction.”

Prince Naseem Hamed vs. Marco Antonio Barrera: “Playing With Fire.”

Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Diego Corrales: “War.”

Who would use such labels now?

There is no better example of the new sensibility than the Trinidad-Bernard Hopkins bout for the undisputed middleweight championship, a fight that was to be held tonight in New York’s Madison Square Garden. It has been postponed indefinitely.

A week ago, Hopkins was fanning the flames of intolerance and stirring up passions, speaking without shame about defiling the flag of Puerto Rico, Trinidad’s native land, and questioning the very will of the Puerto Rican people, all in the name of selling tickets. Hopkins had so enraged Puerto Rican fans, who literally chased him out of a stadium in San Juan several weeks ago, that a heavy show of police force was planned for the fight to prevent a riot.

The fight, in an arena about 30 blocks from the demolished World Trade Center, was postponed, but even when rescheduled, it must be presented differently.

Hopkins knows that firsthand. The spot where he held a public workout Monday and planned to be training Tuesday, the Waterfront Boxing Gym, is three blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. The gym is still standing, but its windows have been broken and its surface covered with bits of debris, dust and soot.

“Felix Trinidad and I stand together against this kind of horror because all decent people stand together,” Hopkins said.

Lou DiBella, an advisor to Hopkins and other fighters, said there is a place for boxing in this frightening new world.

“Strangely enough,” DiBella said, “boxing has been a rallying point in times of national crisis, like when [Joe] Louis fought [Max] Schmeling in the 1930s. People will always fight. Unfortunately, that’s part of human nature. But if we could limit it to the ring where people are unarmed, we would be better off, wouldn’t we?”

Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, agrees that boxing will find its place when society returns to a more normal routine.

“It is still the most resilient of all sports,” he said. “No matter what happened, boxing has always come back, and people will go to see it. Certainly it is a violent sport, but we live in a violent time.”

“Fighters have to be fighters,” DiBella said. “If they start thinking they are not in a battle, they are going to be in trouble. Next week or whenever we get back to fighting, they have to be thinking about what their business is, about what they do for a living.”

And that’s the way it will be in all sports.

“When things happen like they did [Tuesday],” San Francisco 49er quarterback Jeff Garcia said, “you’re not ready to sit down and look at the New Orleans Saints’ defense [on film]. You’re much more worried about what’s going on around the country and focusing on that.”

But come next week, Barry Bonds will resume his chase of Mark McGwire’s home-run record and Garcia will go back to studying onrushing defenses.

“Sports culture is probably second only to religious culture in this country in terms of social scope and significance,” Gough said.

“We are very set in our ways in sports. Over the short term, Tuesday’s events will probably make some small measurable impact in sports, but given a little time, it will just be a blip on the sports screen.”

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Staff writer Sam Farmer contributed to this story.