Price, Joseph L., editor. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University
Press, 2001. 240 + ix pp. $29.95 US. ISBN 0-86554-694-0.
[1] For some, the topic of religion and sport simply refers to expressions
of faith on the field of play (i.e., a touchdown prayer, religious
mascots, etc.). The authors in Joseph L. Price's edited volume From
Season to Season: Sports as American Religion cast religion in
connection to athletics as a more complex enterprise. The religious
and cultural perspectives of Mircea Eliade and Catherine Albanese
inform much of this discussion. Also receiving due consideration are
noteworthy scholars of religion and sport such as Johan Huizinga,
Michael Novak, and Robert J. Higgs. Overall, Price's effort is both
a helpful resource and a provocative rethinking of the relationship
between two of America's most important institutions. Scholars of
religion and sport, as well as those interested in the broader topic
of popular religion, will find this volume valuable.
[2] The first of the book's four main sections surveys the intersection
of sports and religion. Price begins with a brief American history
of the topic. Countering Allen Guttmann's thesis (in From Ritual
to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports [Columbia University Press,
1978]) that modern sport lacks its religious origin, Price concludes
that "institutionalized sports at the beginning of the twenty-first
century have once again begun to exert the force of faith for fans
and players" (36). Next, Lonnie Kliever maintains that "play"
is an inherently transcendent quality of sports that professionalism
does not foster. The ideal athlete, therefore, is the amateur who
truly plays his or her sport "for the joy and fun of it"
(47). Finally, Price discusses mythical time and the sports calendar;
with each regeneration of an athletic season comes "the possible
newness of life, of teams, of players, and of fans" (56).
[3] The three essays in part two address baseball. First, Price
explores the implicitly religious quality of baseball by comparing
it to other notable cultural myths. The Greek "omphalos myth"
and the pitcher's mound, for example, both focus on a sacred and elevated
mythical center (66-8). Second, Paul C. Johnson attempts to explain
the fetishlike cultural mania surrounding Mark McGwire's seventieth
homerun ball in 1998. According to Johnson, the ball, amid President
Clinton's sexual scandal, became a symbol of America's mythically
pure past. Third, Peter Williams writes about three "martyrs"
of baseball: Roberto Clemente, Lou Gehrig, and Christy Mathewson.
These men were heroes, Williams proposes, because as regular people,
they were moral exemplars who "reached the idealized state and
Edenic state that is our own fondest wish" (101).
[4] Football is the subject of three articles in part three. Bonnie
Miller McLemore focuses on the game's many mythical elements. Football's
liminality, she says, provides momentary "encounters with the
sacred" for fans wishing to transcend their human limitations
(132). Next, Price outlines how the spectacle of the Super Bowl resembles
that of a major religious gathering. Finishing the section, James
A. Mathisen uses the idea of folk religion to explain why the 1987
N.F.L. players' strike lacked popular support. The "anonymous
and average" replacement players, with their unadulterated love
of the game, embodied the most cherished values held by the members
of football's folk religion (157). The regular players, who argued
over money, symbolized a corrupting threat to this faith.
[5] Part four presents two brief essays on basketball. Lois Daly
posits that Bob Knight's hard-line coaching methodology resembles
that of a Benedictine abbot. Perfection, whether spiritual or athletic,
is the supreme goal of both the abbot and Knight. Next, Price discusses
similarities between college basketball's Final Four tournament and
the Christian notion of final judgment. Both ventures require dedication,
sacrifice, and grace in order to actualize the ultimate telos.
[6] In an unexpected - yet perhaps fitting - combination, part five
looks at hockey and professional wrestling. Tom Faulkner applies Thomas
Luckmann's model of "invisible religion" to Canadian hockey.
For Faulkner, Luckmann's model works as both "a useful heuristic
device in the general study of religion" and "a helpful
tool for reflection upon the experience of Canadian hockey fans and
players" (186). On professional wrestling, Charles S. Adams explores
how this popular form of entertainment ritually reenacts the concerns
and values of American popular culture.
[7] Taken as a whole, this volume begins to demonstrate how athletics
in America is, as Price writes, "a form of popular religion"
(229). To advance this claim, the authors draw comparisons between
the structural features of sports and religion. The essays rightfully
point to transcendence as a common theme. In sports, mythical time,
heroes, rituals, and myths all create an environment wherein individuals
transcend daily life and experience the otherworldly. Missing from
the articles, however, is ethnographic data to show how the actual
fans and players construct this experience. Without such evidence,
the sports-illiterate reader may see the fan/athlete as a victim of
"group think," rather than a spiritual pilgrim searching
for meaning in the stadiums of America. Even for the sports-literate
reader, an excavation of various voices would draw a tangible link
between sports and religion. Also missing is variety. The essays only
look at America's marquee spectator sports, and with an emphasis on
the spectator, athletes in general receive little attention. Like
the religions of America, the sports of America are diverse and complicated.
Consider endurance athletes (runners, bikers, and triathletes) who
compete in a sport where oxygen deprivation is the norm, and spectators
are rare. How would their experiences contradict, ally with, or differ
from the ideas discussed by Price and others? Indeed, while the articles
are informative and entertaining, they only begin to unearth the complex
relationship between sports and American religion. This volume confirms,
therefore, that future scholarship in this area will need to explore
new territory, and ask new questions.
Arthur J. Remillard
Florida State University
(arthurremillard@yahoo.com)
