First, I’D Like to Thank God: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Top Athletes and Faith

By simon desmarais-zalob

Do you ever wonder why athletes always seem to thank God, first and foremost, in post-game interviews? Or why they point to the heavens following a home run or a touchdown?

This book takes a look at the relationship between top athletes and religiosity (or spirituality) in a number of different ways. It aims to address the issues of when sport and religion began to merge, whether professional athletes are, in fact, more religious than the rest of the population, how a spiritual mindset might (or might not) benefit athletes, and why wearing the same underwear during a winning streak has anything to do with religious faith. These questions are confronted by looking at psychological and sociological studies, conducting original research, and examining exclusive interviews with professional athletes.

So what does a player like Jerry Stackhouse think of the culture of faith in the NBA? How does an agnostic athlete view the religiously themed celebrations in the NFL? Are top performers in other walks of life just as religious as top athletes? The results might surprise you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491724590

simon desmarais-zalob

simon desmarais-zalob was born in 1986 in San Francisco and raised in nearby Mill Valley. He received his bachelor of arts, majoring in psychology and political science, from McGill University in Montréal, and his master of social work from Fordham University in New York City. He is currently working as a high school counselor in the Bronx, where he lives by himself (happily). He spends his days loyally following the Giants, Warriors, and 49ers, and although he passionately celebrated the Giants’ 2010 and 2012 World Series victories, he does not spend his time pondering the greater meaning of it all. He is half-Canadian.

Book preview

First,

I’d Like to

THANK GOD

AN EXPLORATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOP ATHLETES AND FAITH

simon desmarais-zalob

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

FIRST, I’D LIKE TO THANK GOD

AN EXPLORATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOP ATHLETES AND SPIRITUALITY

Copyright © 2014 simon desmarais-zalob.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Author Photo by Eric Hooten

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-2458-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2460-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2459-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014902509

iUniverse rev. date: 02/24/2014

CONTENTS

Preface

Why Do Athletes Seem So Religious?

1    What’s God Got To Do With It?

Sometimes Spirituality Serves As A Good Sport Psychologist.

2    When Did God Become A Yankees Fan?

The Culture Of Sport Has Long Been Linked With Religion.

3    The Consequences Of Tebowing

How Three Underdog Athletes, Fueled By Their Spirituality, Ascended To Stardom.

4    The Depressed Pro Athlete

If You’re In A Slump—In Life Or In Sport—Maybe You Just Need To Believe In Something.

5    White Men Can Jump, Occasionally

Peoples Of African Descent Have Long Had A Legacy Of Spirituality, Which Might Help Explain Their Level Of Success In The Professional Ranks.

6    What’s Your Proof?

Research Conducted Thus Far Suggests That The More Successful And Serious The Athletes, The More Likely They Are To Be Spiritual.

7    Fans Watch And Players Pray

Most Top Athletes In Team Sports Tend To Be Very Vocal About Their Spiritual Views, Though Individual Athletes Are Not As Publicly Spiritual.

8    Is Athlete The Opposite Of Atheist?

Your Sports Career Is Not Necessarily Doomed If You’re A Nonbeliever.

9    Did Einstein Ever Thank God?

Many Successful People In Life Do Not Believe In A Higher Power, Though Faith Plays A Role For Some.

10    Can I Quote You On That?

Interviewed Athletes Reported An Overwhelming Level Of Religiosity, Regardless Of Their Particular Belief System.

11    Last Of All …

Faith Can Serve As A Potent Mental Tool To Help Athletes In Overcoming Challenges.

Acknowledgments

Sources

For Mom, Dad,

Jana, and Sasha

PREFACE

Why do athletes seem so religious?

E arly on in my senior season of high school baseball, in 2004, I played a game that I’d like to forget. Perhaps overly excited to start in the first game of the season, I dropped a routine fly ball. When I managed to catch the next routine fly ball (barely) to end the inning, I furiously fired the ball back toward the infield, nearly decapitating an innocent base runner jogging back to his dugout. Later, I compounded my earlier error by failing to check my coach’s sign for a bunt. These mistakes led to my benching, and I would not start another game that year until the last game of the season, the ceremonial senior game. Before the season began, I had been fully convinced that I could be not just a good ballplayer, but that I could someday play professionally. My hopes and dreams of becoming a superstar athlete died after that fateful first game of the s eason.

Many people in my position might give external reasons for their mistakes. For instance, they might attribute the dropped fly ball to swirling winds or a blinding sun, or they might think that perhaps the confusing nature of the coach’s signals from the third base box had led to the missed sign. I, on the other hand, gave myself no such benefit of the doubt. To me, these mistakes were confirmation of my failings as an athlete and as a human being. If I couldn’t ultimately play in the big leagues for my beloved Giants, I had failed my family, friends, self, and dog. Top athletes, coaches, and sport psychologists alike know that such a self-critical attitude strikes a death knell to any successful sports career.

Flash forward six years. After a long absence from baseball, I picked up the sport again in the summer of 2010 … and promptly led my league in hitting in my first season. Granted, the league in which I participated was a casual, B-level (with A, B, and C as ranks of competitiveness) league in Montreal, Quebec, Canada—not exactly a hotbed of baseball talent. Our team was named the Beers, after the team featured in the profound spoof-comedy BASEketball. Our pregame chant, also from BASEketball, went thusly: Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! (repeat). Despite this relatively informal atmosphere, we were competitive and did keep statistics. When a teammate told me that my name was atop the hitting leaderboard, my first thought was that there must have been a typo. My next response was to point out that, although we did not keep track of such stats, I’m pretty sure I also led the league in fielding errors … and that those errors probably negated any benefit to our team that my hits gave us.

Regardless, my sudden ability to hit the ball during competitive games was significant. I seemed to play the game armed with a different, and much more constructive, outlook than I had during my high school years. I played for the Beers absent the belief that my whole life was riding on every pitch. I ceased to believe that my self-worth was based on my ability to hit a small sphere of cowhide or that people wouldn’t like me if I couldn’t catch a freakin’ fly ball. What if I had had this attitude from the beginning? To take it further, how would my sporting career have been different if I had faith in a power higher than myself?

* * *

I should give a bit of background on my religious upbringing. I was raised in a household with an American, reform Jewish father and a French Canadian, Roman Catholic—though essentially atheist—mother. Because religion was relatively important to my father and his family, but not to my mother, my parents decided to raise me Jewish (with the added benefit of celebrating Christmas). However, aside from once-a-week Sunday school, Judaism was not at all a major part of my life. In addition, I was a blindly rebellious child who absolutely resented the fact that I had to go to any kind of school on the weekend. Why, I thought, should I agree to something that someone else told me I must do? Therefore, I came to loathe organized religion and everything it stood for … except, of course, for the presents I got in December.

And except for the money I would supposedly get for having a Bar Mitzvah. The Bar Mitzvah, I was told, would cause piles of money to flow my way, just for turning thirteen and reciting a few prayers. What a racket! I decided that I would exploit this moneymaking scheme—apparently disguised as a Jewish coming-of-age ritual—and then completely wash my hands of religion forever. I still remember that, in writing my Bar Mitzvah speech (that is, regurgitating my dad’s thoughtful sentiments), I had to placate the faithful Jews in the congregation by telling them how I planned to further my Jewish education by going through confirmation and taking a trip to Israel. I also remember simultaneously thinking about a popular stadium chant heard after a referee makes a bad call: Buuuuuuuuull-shiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

In actuality, I very much wanted to further my religious education—my agnostic education. So I proceeded to seek out as much literature as I could to help prove my point that religion was, for lack of a better term, a crock. I became firmly ensconced in the belief that not only was religion useless, but also was evil. Furthermore, I came to believe that different religions’ conflicting beliefs were the cause of any and all global conflict. I believed that the concept of God was a man-made invention created in order to deal with uncertainty and death, and that science could explain everything.

Today, I have backed off from my extremist atheist positions. I now associate religion mostly with positive qualities, including its ability to bring communities together, provide philanthropy, and encourage good morals, but for all intents and purposes, I remain an atheist.* Nevertheless, I am at times envious of those who have faith in a higher power. In times of despair, need, or loneliness, spiritual individuals seem to have a reliable source of comfort to turn to. I have the Giants.

One might wonder what business an atheist has in writing a book that deals with religion. The first impetus was the childhood memory of my brother imitating athletes in postgame interviews. As the reporter finished his question, indubitably something profound—such as, You were the first player to have ever gotten four hits, five runs, four RBIs, six steals, seventeen total bases, and fifteen high fives in a game played on a Friday with a full moon since 1925. How did you do it?—my brother would cut in, before the athlete got the chance to respond, with, Well, first of all, I’d like to thank the Lord. And it seemed like 90 percent of the time, the athlete echoed my brother’s exact words. As this line became more and more of a cliché, I started wondering, Why do I always hear athletes thanking God, while nobody else around me ever mentions anything about a higher power? Sometime in my early adulthood, I decided that I wanted to someday investigate this before all was said and done in my life. Fortunately (for this book), my investigation of the job market upon graduating from my master’s program in 2011 did not immediately hit pay dirt. So I thought, When else will I ever have the time to work on this project I’ve always aspired to do? So for about nine months, I split my time between job searching and working on this book, and then the next year and a half working for a paycheck and finishing up the book. I did my best to approach the topic from an unbiased perspective, so that I would not be swayed to confirm my original theory. I decided to begin by looking at studies that examined the correlation between athletes and spirituality or religiosity, but I also researched various related topics that arose in the midst of my work, such as religion in the black community, spirituality among successful nonathletes and among athletes outside North America, and what about those odd athletes who aren’t even religious?

In this book, I take a closer look at certain athletes of note and conduct interviews with athletes who were willing to voice their views. I also entertain the idea that spirituality serves as a performance enhancer of sorts, and see what the research has to say. And, finally, I look at superstition as it relates to religion.

For the purpose of clarification, I will define what I mean when I refer to religion and spirituality throughout this book. By religion, I mean a specific and fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects (Dictionary.com)—or, to put it another way, organized religion, such as Christianity or Buddhism. When I say spirituality, I am talking about any personal set of beliefs in a higher power, including the belief that something unscientific can explain otherwise inexplicable phenomena. Spirituality encompasses religion and can include, for instance, belief in only part of the doctrine of an organized religion, belief in a God independent of any religion, or, say, belief in the fact that the world is controlled by an army of paranoid vegetarian antelopes who reside deep within the earth’s core. The term spirituality encompasses a much wider swath of believers than does the term religion. However, the two terms, for the purposes of this book, will often be used interchangeably. The belief system in question is not pertinent to an athlete’s success—it is the level of devotion to that belief system that is of interest here.

In addition, a word on what distinguishes atheists from agnostics is in order. In general, atheists completely reject the notion of a supreme being, while agnostics maintain that we cannot know whether or not there is a supreme being. Since no one has ever proved the nonexistence of a supreme being, we can assume that most people are, in fact, agnostic. Although there will be instances where it will be necessary to discern between the two, the terms atheist and agnostic will mostly be used interchangeably, since adherents of both belief systems do not tend to think about, pray to, or give thanks to a particular higher power.

* * *

So how might my athletic career have been different had I subscribed to a belief system that wasn’t predicated on a baseball team? Maybe I would have told myself that my mistakes in that fateful game in high school were a test of my faith, and that the Lord would give me another opportunity. Perhaps I would have brushed off the negative feelings with the belief that everything happens for a reason, and that whatever the motive may have been for the good Lord to allow these things to