What did sport begin? The sport is, in essence, play, the claim might be made
that the sports is much older than humankind, for, as we all have observed,
beasts play. Dogs and cats wrestle and play ball games. Fishes and birds dance.
The apes have simple,pleasurable games. Frolicking infants, school children playing tag, and adult arm wrestler are demonstrating strong, transgenerational and transspecies bonds with the universe of animals, past, present and future. Young animals, particularly, tumble, chase, run, wrestle, mock, imitate, and laugh (or so it seems) to the point of delighted exhaustion. Their play, and ours, appears to server no other purpose than to give pleasure to the players, and apparently, to remove us temporarily from the anguish of life in earnest.
Some philosophers have claimed that the sports is the most noble part of our
basic nature. In their generous conception, play harmlessly and experimently gives us to put the creative forces, fantasy, imagination to action. Play is release from
the tedious battles againest scarcity and decline which is the incessant, and
inevitable, tragedies of life. This is a grand conception that excites and provokes.
The holders of this view claim that the orgins of our highest accomplishments
-liturgy, literature, and law-can be traced to a play impulse which, paradoxically,
we see most purely enjoyed by young beasts and children. Our sports, in this rather
happy, nonfatalistic view of human nature, are more splendid creation of nondatable
transspecies play impulse.