Why We Play

In our country, true teams rarely exist...
social barriers and personal ambitions
have reduced athletes to dissolute cliques,
or individuals thrown together for mutual
profit. Yet, these rugby players, with their
muddied, cracked bodies are are struggling to
hold onto a sense of humanity that we in
American have lost and are unlikely to
regain. The game may be only to move a
ball forward on a dirt field, but the task can
be accomplished with an unshackled joy,
and its memory will be a permanent delight.
The men who play on that rugby field are
more alive than too many of us will ever be.

The Changing Room
1895