Replacement-Level Humanity

"They should get rid of him, he's crap."

Words to this effect have come out of the mouth of, and I don't think I reach when I presume to say, every sports fan in the history of everything ever.

Snap judgments are made as to the current, future and in some instances past worth of a player to his team, his club, his country, the greater society. These judgments, along with a confident assertion that the replacement-level player would perform better with ease usually follow a poor performance, or perhaps even an admirable performance with an untimely end. As is the case of the tenth wicket to fall with mere overs remaining in a days' play, or the footballer who gets red-carded on the grandest of stages at the most inopportune moment. And we judge them. We label them for their failures, and as research has shown, because we recall more rapidly the poor performances than the heroic ones we often label them for life. Sometimes it requires technology such as YouTube to resuscitate the career of the terminally maligned.

Insulated by anonymity, distance and the probability of notice by those we discuss, we mercilessly tear them down. Almost nobody spares a thought for the player. Sometimes you hear a protestation as to the welfare of the family in the event that a player is released or traded, only to be drowned down with cries of "bloo bloo bloo, he made his millions." or "they knew what they were getting into when they became/married an athlete" - these are among the more common responses. Athletes are people too, and we forget that all too easily as society and the media reveres them unto godlike status. We push them up a steep cliff in part because we're anticipating the schadenfraudistic joy of seeing them topple over. Still and all, nobody thinks of the athlete. 

Cricket was given reason to pause when Jonathan Trott went home with a depression-related disorder. The pause was momentary, just long enough to be suitably contemplative before our attention-deficit-disorderly society was distracted by a passing butterfly that oddly resembled Mitchell Johnson bowling on a flat Adelaide deck.

Ice Hockey was given reason to pause when a combination of depression and concussions took the lives of Rick Rypien, Derek Boogaard and Wade Belak all within scarcely a four-month period of time in 2011. But as the fantastic 24/7 Penguins/Capitals: Road to the Winter Classic closed: "(Ice) Hockey doesn't hold still to give you a better look. But you wouldn't want it to anyway." and so they didn't. As Cricket would take from its lead, Ice Hockey went about its business.

I don't mean to place the blame for depression and suicides among professional athletes solely at the feet of twitter-trolls or water-cooler gossip. But I think it's important not just to note, but to truly understand what the effect that this type of thing can have on an athlete. They can try and convince everyone that "Truly, I don't care what's written about me" but on some level, every athlete simply has to know that what they've spent their life's effort on is good, true, noble and valuable to his or her fellow Man.

Humans, on a sociological level, crave that feedback, desire that acknowledgement. Even the most sociopathic of bushfire-starters on some sick level desire the negative attention their actions garner on the news media. Conversely, when you're thinking on a normal level, you want to know that the people you play for, be it your family, your friends, your team, your fans, all of the above know and acknowledge that you're doing your best for them. When this is something you have done since a young age...when it is all they have done since a young age it becomes a part of your identity. So when you are adjudged to be "no good" at this anymore, especially after a solitary or glaring bad performance, then you begin to question your identity. This can trigger an existential crisis of sorts in some athletes that starts them into the spiralling pit that is despair, the most dangerous of human emotions, and one that depression finds an easy foothold in when assailing an individual. Some may scoff at this step in logic, but as (Ice) Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender Jacques Plante once said about his position: "How would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a red light goes on above your head and 18,000 people boo you?"

I really feel like we need to take a step back when we make these judgments. Because it's not just something we do to professional sports anymore. It's starting to invade amateur sports. These judgments are now rendered on people who don't have their millions to console themselves with, as if that was any consolation. People who didn't realize what they're getting themselves into among social sports. People who identify so strongly with their team, the friends they make and the culture they experience that they find themselves singularly unable to comprehend how this attitude could be applied to social sports to forcibly remove people from situations they love. This is tragic, especially when amateur sport often acts as a gyroscope that stabilizes the stressful factors of their life

So i'm not going to do this anymore, at the social level. And I hope that one day i'll find the strength of character within me to be able to do it for professional athletes too. I, for one, couldn't live with myself if i'm the person who makes a judgment on someone's talent level that forces them from their club. It's just a game, it's singularly disgusting to look to replace a player because i've deemed them responsible for a playoff loss or whatever.

Nobly, i'll do this because I believe it to be the Right Thing to do. Although if i'm honest with myself and you all, i'll also do this because I can't bare the thought of being responsible for making a decision that causes someone else to take their life because depression has resulted from being forced out of a social sport. I can't handle that.