Let the games go on

I'm part of the minority who always felt that Pete Rozelle was unfairly pilloried for going ahead with the NFL schedule two days after President Kennedy was assassinated. Rozelle had checked with his old friend from the University of San Francisco, Pierre Salinger, who was the President's press secretary, and Salinger encouraged Rozelle to let the games go on as a way of momentarily diverting the nation from its sadness. Yet even with this quasi-official endorsement, it was, for most people, too soon for fun and games, and going ahead with the schedule seemed insensitive and disrespectful.

Still, to me, it was a perfectly legitimate decision. The fact is, in this land of diversity we all celebrate and worship in different ways, and so, too, do we mourn in different ways. In so many cultures, the varied forms of dealing with death have developed not so much to honor the dead, but to help us, the ones left behind, cope with our loss. So we have our funeral gatherings -- we eat and drink, coming together to help each other as, in better days, we share the same fellowship for purposes of joy.

In times of widespread grief, such as now, a sporting event can provide the same kind of group catharsis. A game can serve a certain larger community as a wake does family and friends.

As Rozelle discovered, of course, there is no right answer as to when exactly we should resume our amusements. Whenever the baseball commissioner, Bud Selig, and his counterparts in other sports order the action to resume there will be some of us who will say it is too soon. And a number of those, surely, will be those asked to play and coach and officiate. That's understood.

But we also must be careful not to let our personal sorrow blot out a larger symbolism. When the Israeli Olympians were murdered at Munich in 1972, many Americans wanted the Games to be called off. But most Israelis -- foremost the bereaved families of the dead athletes -- were adamant in wanting the Olympics to go on. Shut them down, you grant the terrorists even more power over us. And that same reality prevails in the here and now.

Moreover, games do have special qualities that, in an odd way, commend them to us at times like this. Perhaps more important -- and especially in our heterogeneous society -- there are few interests or institutions that bind us so much as sport. Bart Giamatti, the late baseball commissioner, who was Selig's good friend, often and eloquently spoke about how crucial it was for a democratic society -- for all classes and types of people -- to come together, to mix and share in a common place. Baseball and other sports afford us that opportunity. And since, in most cases, we enjoy a common spirit in that we root, root, root for the home team, we are, even more, bound closer together.

So I hope, as soon as is logistically feasible, we open the stadiums back up for games. This does not mean we are callous or uncaring. We will still grieve. We will still be brokenhearted. We will still be respectful of those who have died and those who have lost people they love. To escape sadness for a moment, to catch our breathless disbelief, is a fair, small luxury. None of us should be ashamed to be briefly diverted.

Remember: There is no pure consistency. Sept. 11, 2001 in New York was the most glorious day that God could ever give us, a sky so blue, an air so clean. And yet, never anywhere did evil loom so large and ugly. We must make the best of what we have, and so if -- if -- some of us choose to find some respite from our pain by going out to a game, we should have the chance. And when we do assemble there, we will be able to see our neighbors, see our countrymen and women, see us together, and with that perhaps best be able to glimpse a happier time and a more glorious America that lies ahead, somewhere.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.