Love and sports forever linked through history

Love and sports are two sides of the same coin, if you really
think about it. As a sports columnist, I write about the latter by
occupation. As a Latino, the former runs in my seductive tango
moves by nature.

This goes a long way in explaining the steroid controversy. In
essence, fans like believing that there’s something genuine
behind the sports they cherish.

We admire the athletes who play with a “love” or
“passion” for the game. When I’m playing street
basketball, I imagine singer/songwriter/actress Lindsey Lohan in
the stands singing a rebellious youth anthem just for me and then
I’m not just playing to win a game: I play for Lindsey and
me.

Sports, in turn, have contributed a bevy of metaphors and
innuendos for talking about love and the acts included therein.

Love and sports have become so intertwined in our culture that
it would be hard to imagine a society with one and not the
other.

Yet this was not always so.

Inspired by “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human
Societies” and the recent “Collapse: How Societies
Choose to Fail or Succeed” (by UCLA Professor Jared Diamond),
indulge me as I theorize on the origins of and eventual historical
convergence between love and sports.

Using the most up-to-date archeological evidence, we (as in me)
speculate that the birth of modern sports began sometime around
4000 B.C. with the invention of the push-up by nomadic
hunter-gatherers who wanted to stay fit but due to the constant
migration of the wooly mammoth, could not commit to full-time
fitness memberships. Soon enough, disparities between those who
could do many push-ups and those who could do less became apparent,
and with disparity came competition and with competition came
distinction.

Early push-up champions received all sorts of goodies like
shells and obsidian and a special-issue Adidas spear to separate
them from their slower, weaker fellows.

In time it became an evolutionary advantage as those with the
special-issue spear had an easier time attracting mates and
propagating than their non-special-issue-spear-having
contemporaries.

The development of sports plateaus for a couple millennia until
circa 1780 B.C., when the great Babylonian king Hamurrabi codified
the proper modus operandi for scorekeeping in his lesser-known yet
influential Code of Hamurrabi-ball, a mix between modern soccer and
pogs (First rule of Hamurrabi-ball: Don’t talk about
Hamurrabi-ball. Second rule of Hamurrabi-ball: DON’T talk
about Hamurrabi-ball). Now with a proper score, societies could
easily discern between “winners” and
“losers” and thus pick the losers last in kickball.

Concurrently, the development of stable food production, in
addition to allowing for the growth of large societies and cities,
also supported the growth of a new class of worthless human beings
with no discernible benefit to society ““ the sports
analyst.

With that, the basics for our modern sports society were in
place.

The history of love is hazier in comparison. “Land Before
Time” gives the earliest prehistorical (prewriting) evidence
of love, as in Little Foot’s mother’s self-sacrificing
love for Little Foot.

In historical times, Hamurrabi also provided the first written
account of love in his popular advice column, “Dear
Hu’rrabi,” where midwestern Fertile Crescent concubines
could write in to him about feeling neglected by their husbands.
Some speculate that Hamurrabi himself did not actually write the
column but the evidence on such remains inconclusive at best.

Like the history of sports, the story of love seemed to have
reached a plateau until 1999 A.D. when Ricky Martin and Enrique
Iglesias led the most significant revolution since the Industrial
Revolution, the Latin Pop Revolution. The Latin Pop Revolution
begat Jennifer Lopez which begat the J. Lo signature series of
velour jump suits and droopy, hip-hop hats. These sociopolitical
developments introduced the butt and egregious butt shaking to
white, Middle America, which until then had not had any. As a
result, soccer became sort of popular with Americans.

From that moment on, love and sports became inseparable. We
don’t just watch a sport. Our passions are engaged as
well.

For example, before every single Olympic event we have to watch
a biography on the athletes, as if that emaciated girl from a
former Soviet Bloc state isn’t just landing a jump; when she
lands, it’s a triumph of the human spirit.

Let the pros have their steroids. We’ll inject ourselves
with love.

Hector’s favorite spectator sport is (metaphorical)
bird watching although he’s ridiculously good at pogs. E-mail
[email protected].