On the Glory of Sport
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There's a certain elegance to sport. It demonstrates physical artistry under the most trying somatic challenges: difficult plays like diving outfield catches and throws from third base, throwing to the right while charging to the left, sustaining great pain and moving through it while hardly missing a step, rising to the pressure of competition. This artistry appeals to the eye, and also to our moral sensibilities. We rejoice at harmony, the synchrony of men who actually like and esteem one another moving independently and yet coordinated as if they were a machine when our minds know they are each making decisions separately, yet acting in unison.

Bad sportsmanship destroys all of this, and that's the reason we despise it so. True heroism is so very rare. We constantly witness public figures we'd love to esteem as idols of our desire for perfection who fall under the pressures of winning as the ultimate goal. When we witness truly strong, seemingly perfect physical specimens working for the common good without thought of self, when any one of them could attempt to stand out and gain recognition above the crowd, we feel the fulfillment of striving for mutual benefit at what feels like the highest level. We experience a kind of redemption in the crescendo to self-negating teamwork where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Royals achieved the wondrous not just for their athletic calibre; even more important, they have given us the gift of again believing that goodness might prevail where selfishness could be such a seduction. God bless them for restoring our faith in the possibility of not just physical, but symbolic moral perfection as well.