The Origin of Sports

　　When did sport begin? If sport is, in essence, play, the claim might

　　be made that sport is much older than humankind, for, as we all have

　　observed, the 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 wrestlers

　　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 serve 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 our playfulness is the most noble part

　　of our basic nature. In their generous conceptions, play harmlessly and

　　experimentally permits us to put our creative forces, fantasy, and

　　imagination into action. Play is release from the tedious battles against

　　scarcity and decline which are the incessant, and inevitable, tragedies of

　　life. This is a grand conception that excites and provokes. The holders of

　　this view claim that the origins 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 creations of the nondatable, transspecies play impulse.