Sports Are Fun: The Only Good Reason for Boston to Host the Olympics
This very Web site recently demonstrated what’s wrong with the effort to have Boston be the site of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
A story about the bid for the Games was posted in the Business section.
The Boston Globe had a recent news story and a lead editorial on Boston as an Olympic host. If the word “sports’’ appeared by itself (and not next to the word “venues’’) in either one, I missed it. I know the word “fun’’ never appeared.
Being primarily composed of influential businesspeople, it’s understandable why the group behind the bid for the Games, Boston 2024 Partnership, thinks of the Olympics as a business proposition; understandable, but still a grievous mistake. It’s set the terms of the debate about what would be a huge regional civic enterprise on grounds where the Partnership cannot possibly win. It’s turned people who should be the strongest supporters of a Boston Olympics into vigorous opponents.
The most vocal naysayers to the notion of our city hosting the world’s largest sports event have been sports commentators, be they writers for this site, radio talk show hosts or print commentators. Talk about a marketing failure! In this not unjustly self-proclaimed great sports town, this is like watching pastry chefs line up to denounce sugar and butter.
But if the issue is the Olympics as some sort of urban renewal project, as it’s been discussed the past few months, then the critics have all the best of the argument. The Games are a terrible business proposition. What else could a proposition where the best case scenario is break-even be?
The organizers of the Boston bid should freely stipulate facts placed in evidence by Olympic history. Staging a Summer Games generates billions of dollars in costs and years of major and minor inconveniences for host city residents, just to put on a three week show. Trying to say “it’ll be different for us’’ only makes their goal an easier target for cynics.
No, to defend a Boston Olympics requires setting aside balance sheets and delving into matters of the heart. The Games are for the grasshopper in the human soul, not the ant. I stand with the grasshoppers. Happiness is as real as money. Realer.
Yeah, the Olympics are a show. They are, however, a show splendid beyond imagining, compared to which Woodstock was Community Auditions. Thousands of healthy young – and some not so young -people gather together to compete to be the best in the world at dozens of the demanding, silly, magnificent procedures we call sports. They compete for fame and fortune (harder to come by in archery), but most of all, they do so for joy, the ineffable and ferocious joy provided by competition.
But it’s the spectators, not the performers, who make the Olympics a mega-endeavor. Since the Greeks invented sports with the ancient Olympics, other people have derived pleasure from watching them. It’s not as intense as what the athletes feel, but it’s just as real, real enough so that otherwise rational folks will pony up big money to experience it. Diving into the mysteries of the athlete’s joy and the fan’s pleasure was my life’s work and I don’t think I wasted my time.
It was my infinite good fortune to report on four Olympics and that experience is why I believe Boston could make a splendid host city and ought to damn well try to do it. To start, we fulfill the first criteria for a successful Olympics, fun. Games should be held only in burgs outsiders enjoy visiting on vacation. The tour buses which arrive daily at my own suburb of Lexington prove we qualify. The Games attract folks from all the corners of the globe. Any community is improved by visitors having a good time. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to experience three weeks where Boston really WAS the Hub of the universe?
Another Olympic fact is that unlike other major sports events such as the Super Bowl and Final Four, the very size of the Games means that ordinary Bostonians would have the chance to attend them. Oh, the finals of the NBC glamor events like gymnastics and swimming are tough tickets. That leaves plenty of other sports where good seats will be available. Atlanta in 1996 was a far from perfect Olympics, but those Southerners made every event a sellout and had a whale of a time in the process. I refuse to believe Atlanta could ever be a better sports town than our town.
Last and best, in every Olympic city I experienced, even Atlanta, the Games seemed to make host city residents feel better about their town and themselves. In interactions with folks who had no connection to the Olympics, I met pleasant and cheerful people who were happier out of sheer proximity to the show. Let’s be blunt. Boston could use much more of that attitude towards daily life. We shouldn’t turn down a chance to get some.
Hosting an Olympics is a lot of work and trouble for no other purpose than to make other people happy. If there’s a better way to have fun than making others happy, I haven’t heard about it.
The Olympics are an unproductive way of spending lots of money, which is to say the Olympics are sports. Sports are inconsequential and frivolous. So what? The love hundreds of millions if not billions of people have for sports despite their essential uselessness is what counts. The grasshopper in the human soul is one of the glories of our species.
The real estate occupied by Fenway Park could be put to more socially useful purposes, too. There could be a hospital there, or businesses employing many more workers than do the Red Sox.
Would you want to live in a Boston minus Fenway? Me neither.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com