Coffee with Crawford | On the Fourth, a quiet thanks for sports — and what we still share | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – On Fourth of July weekend, we celebrate what unites us — or at least, we try to. That gets harder every year. Politics? Polarized. Religion? Divided. Even our communities feel more splintered than shared.

But there’s one place where Americans still gather — on bleachers and barstools, couches and curbsides — to cheer for something bigger than themselves.

Sports.

We may not agree on who should be president, but we’ll shout in harmony for a walk-off home run. We may disagree on policy, but we still rise — together — when someone buries a buzzer-beater.

Sports have had a role since the beginning. A French observer noted that in 1779, Gen. George Washington spent hours tossing a ball with aides at an Army camp in Fishkill, New York. Other accounts have him playing a game called “wicket,” or “stick ball,” with his troops. I like that image — the exalted Washington, dusty and laughing, not above the game but in it with his men. (Thanks to the research of John Thorn.)

That’s the gift sports give us. For a little while, we’re in it together — and the things that divide us tend to fade if we’re cheering for the same thing. In those moments, fandom supersedes our choice of cable news network or political podcast.

Even Abigail Adams saw the power of the games we play. She once wrote to her husband that too many officers were “loitering about playing foot-ball and nine pins” when they ought to have been defending forts. (Thanks to historian Jane Hampton Cook.)

It’s proof – since the beginning, we’ve always had time for the ballgames.

You could argue that sports are our most honest national pastime. Baseball may be “America’s game,” but the real tradition is gathering with people you know — and don’t — to scream at a field. That’s not just about fun. It’s about belonging.

There are towns in this country that had a ball field before they had a courthouse or post office. The game gave people a shared identity. When immigrants arrived, they found a way into American culture through the games they played — and some they brought with them. Sports were a place where differences didn’t disappear — but they mattered less.

Wednesday night, I saw something remarkable in St. Louis. In the heart of the Midwest, the U.S. men’s national team faced Guatemala in the Concacaf Gold Cup. But the crowd was mostly Guatemalan. And some of the better Guatemalan players were born and raised in the U.S., by parents from that country.

That’s rare anywhere in the world. And maybe, it’s becoming rarer even here.

There are fewer front porches these days, fewer places where we’re forced to share space with folks who don’t think like us. But at a game, we do. We stand for the anthem. We sit shoulder-to-shoulder. We high-five strangers.

That may sound corny. It is. But the Fourth of July is a little corny. Fireworks, flags, cookouts, hot dogs — it’s not subtle. It’s loud and messy and sentimental.

So are sports.

We fight about nearly everything. But sports still give us a way to cheer together — or mourn together. Or just feel something, together.

Even in the worst of times — the days after 9/11, the pandemic shutdowns — the silence of empty stadiums told us something was wrong. The return of games felt like the return of us.

So this weekend, enjoy the cookouts. Enjoy the return of Joey Chestnut. But before it's over, remember what it means.

This country was built on disagreement. And it’s held together by freedom and our desire for it, yes, but also by shared joy.

At a time when so little feels shared, I find myself grateful that sports still are.

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