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)
