Only Relevant If We're Good At It

There's an interesting human phenomena which we learn early in our youth as "sour grapes". This is usually introduced in the Aesop fable, "The Fox and the Grapes":

A famished fox saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine. She resorted to all her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them. At last she turned away, hiding her disappointment and saying: 'The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought.

In an nutshell, it is the marginalizing of anything that we personally find unobtainable. The fox couldn't get the grapes, so the grapes are deemed sour. We do so all the time when we marginalize or show disdain for anything and everything that we have an inability to do, get or achieve. It often originates from our own pride which refuses to applaud the very real talents and accomplishments of others which we cannot match. It is our own arrogance which fails to accept and appreciate that there we are not the best at, well, pretty much anything and everything. It is a pride which says, "If I cannot be the best, then it's not a worthy talent after all."

This happens on a national scale, as well. Take sports, for example. One commentator lamented on the future of women's tennis in a post-Serena and Venus Williams world. The article wasn't jingoistic, but it clearly alluded to the health of American tennis and how that highly correlated with the health of the sport overall. That theory isn't necessarily wrong on the surface. It would be ignoring economic reality to state that having strong American players in any sport doesn't reap rewards in terms of American interest and investment. Many argue, with data, that investment in women's golf has lagged without American winners. They argue that Americans won't really get behind a sport where they don't win - perhaps we're a nation of front-runners.

What concerns me is how far people will take this. An old commentary from Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette inexplicably took that point of view defending an ill-fated attempt to force English proficiency a requirement to play on the LPGA tour. The argument? It's good for American interest in the game, which is good for the game. So let me get this straight, we want to destroy the sanctity of the game by creating false criteria in order to save it by positioning more Americans to win. Ridiculous.

What's next, banning Kenyans from the Boston Marathon to ramp up more American interest? Why don't make passing an American pop culture quiz a requisite for eligibility for the FIFA World Cup? Do you think Ronaldo, Messi or Kaka could correctly identify the cast members from Glee?

By the way, soccer (football to the rest of the world) is doing just fine without without our undue influence or money. I'm a proud American, and what captures the American spirit the best is preparing and competing to win, fair in square. Otherwise, I'd rather us lose.