If you’re sorry to see summer go, fall has one pretty good consolation prize: peak sports season. Baseball’s sprinting toward the World Series, football is underway, and basketball and hockey are on deck. Just try finding an autumn day without something worth watching.
Give me a game in the background and a score to check every few minutes, and I’m a happy man. Ask me why I really love sports, though, and the answer has as much to do with the people around the game as it does with what’s happening on the field.
Sports have a way of working themselves into our lives by bringing together people who might otherwise have little in common and teaching lessons that are hard to replicate anywhere else. The experiences stay with us long after we’ve forgotten the score.
Fall brings more chances than any other season to experience all of it.
Places to Belong
Professional sports increasingly recognize that what happens on the field or track is only part of what draws people there. Stadiums, ballparks, and tracks are being designed as places to spend a day—to eat, wander, and share an experience with the people around you.
That matters more now that we have fewer chances to gather with strangers. Most of life runs on our own schedule these days, watched and talked about through screens. Then you walk into a ballpark with 40,000 people, and for a few hours, everyone’s paying attention to the same thing.
I felt that recently at Citi Field, sitting down with Marysol Castro for this week’s episode of Celebrate Your Story. Marysol is the Mets’ public address announcer, and she sees her job as creating an experience for everyone who walks through the gates, win or lose. As she put it:
“It’s my job to set the tone and to make the guests that come here feel like it was worth the price of admission. The game is one thing. What we do is make your experience pleasurable.”
I saw the same thinking at the new Belmont Park, which I recently toured ahead of its Sept. 18 reopening. Our company has a fascinating history with the track, and what struck me was how much thought went into the new space—a place where families can spend time together and get close enough to see and interact with the horses and jockeys.
Every Field Counts
The experience of gathering is only a slice of what sports give us. The other part is what happens in the competition itself—the lessons that stick with us long after the final score, on any field and at any level.
You learn to follow the rules, play fair, respect your opponent, make decisions under pressure, and deal with winning and losing. Nobody needs 40,000 people in the stands to learn that. A Little League diamond or a local golf course can teach it just as well.
I saw that recently while watching my grandson Liam during his club’s junior golf championship. He started playing last year, and I had more fun following him that afternoon than I’ve had on a golf course in a long time. I could see some of those lessons beginning to take hold.
He lost on the 16th hole after making a few strategic mistakes, and we had a good conversation about it that night. He learned to live with the results and figure out what to do differently next time.
That’s an education you can carry with you—lessons in resilience and respect, and a clearer sense of the kind of competitor you want to be. And every so often, the game gives a grandfather a pretty good afternoon, too.
