The Fields of Glory

Do sports really build character?

I recently had the pleasure of attending an amateur concert presented by a group of school boys. Among the songs they sung was “Fields of Glory,” most famously sung by the Irish group, The High Kings. The song is about team sports, and the chorus reads: 

On the fields, the fields of glory

On the fields where boys become men

On the fields, the fields of glory

May the best team win, win in the end

It’s a rousing song, but even as the boys sang their hearts out, I couldn’t help being skeptical. Do boys really become men on the football field? What about organized sports could possibly make boys into men? Certainly, they get exercise and build muscle, but there’s a lot more to manhood than having big shoulders. Isn’t true manhood achieved by taking initiative and engaging with reality? 

Where does initiative come into it, when parents drive boys to practices where professional coaches tell them exactly what to do and how to do it, and other adults decide when and where and with whom they will play, and what exactly they will wear while doing it? And what could be further from the unpredictability of reality than the manicured sports fields, the transparent and strictly enforced rules, and the whole managed experience of school sports? 

In 1897 a Jesuit named Francis Finn published a book called That Football Game, in which among other things, he evangelizes for football, saying that it “may be a help both to study and to devotion.” The Tom Playfair series also spends a lot of time with the characters on the baseball diamond. While he doubtless included a lot of these details to hold the interest of the baseball and football playing boys that he taught, it is clear from all his books that he considers sports not only a wholesome recreation, but also a character-building activity that leads boys to manliness, and in his books—I have read nearly all of them—it seems quite believable. 

But until recently, I never understood just how different the sports he eulogizes are from the activities that bear that name today. 

In Claude Lightfoot, the twelve-year-old title character plays on a baseball team with other students at his school, but there is almost no adult involvement whatsoever. The fourteen-year-old team captain appears to be in sole charge of the team, deciding not only the team roster, how they will practice, but also who they will play against. He organizes a match against another group of similar-aged boys from the other side of Milwaukee, a match that is attended by a crowd of other boys, but not a parent in sight. 

In That Football Game, the boys are a bit older, perhaps sixteen, and they do receive some coaching from their teacher—on the first day. After that, 

“To-morrow, boys,” announced Mr. Keenan… “I shall put you directly under charge of your captain, Claude Lightfoot. He and I shall have a talk together now, and arrange upon what is best to be done. Those who wish to play on our eleven must obey him in what regards football on and off the field.” 

And for the rest of the book, the boys manage their own training. 

Father Finn’s twelve to seventeen-year-old boy characters also occasionally organize amateur boxing matches, run paper routes, travel by train, and go hunting, boating, swimming and fishing in lakes, all without direct adult supervision. His girl characters walk to school and around their cities alone or with other kids. Occasionally both boys and girls encounter various dangers, but this is never presented as being the fault of their parents’ negligence in not constantly surveilling the children. In fact, parents who hover over their children are generally presented as stunting their growth.

If school sports today involved making decisions, managing other people, and pushing for excellence for the sake of the team, then yes, the football field would be covered with glory, and boys would become men there. Besides having a lot more fun.

Today we see danger everywhere: in every stranger, in every cough, in the other kids at school…. Is there anything we don’t worry about? Too often it seems safest to keep the kids of all ages indoors at home, and placate them with screens—with all the parental controls turned on, to be sure. 

We can’t go back to a world in which twelve-year-olds walk across Milwaukee or take rifles out hunting alone and in which parents hardly expect to see their children between sunrise and sunset. If nothing else, our current legal structure won’t allow it. 

But can we at least try to move in that direction a little? 

Certainly, the world is dangerous. If we let our kids play outside, hang out with the neighbor kids, walk to school, there is a small chance something horrible will happen to them. Every single time I let my children play outside the fenced yard, walk to school without an adult, or cross the street to play with the neighbors, I feel this fear. 

But weighed against the absolute certainty that my children will be stunted in their physical, psychological, social, and spiritual health if I do not allow them any independence, the chance seems worth taking. Every single time.

(photo by pixabay)