This week the Sentinel looks at unselfishness and team spirit in sports.

TRUE SPORTSMANSHIP

With the approach of another baseball season in the United States, many people are thinking again about the issues in the strike that brought the 1994 major-league season to a premature close. Sandy Vance, who pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1970 and 1971, told the Sentinel that he feels the opposing parties allowed their own interests to obscure the greater good and purpose of the sport as a whole.

Recalling his own experience as a player, Vance said: "The beauty of team sports is that they are a microcosm of life. They demand sound character if we are to experience the fruits they have to offer. Many professional, and amateur, athletes forget why they began playing the game in the first place—as an expression of joy; as a test of accuracy, strength, endurance, and intelligence under stress; and, more importantly, as a test of patience, perseverance, organization, loyalty to others, and honesty. Those athletes who have conducted their careers with the highest integrity, sportsmanship, and unselfishness have found true satisfaction, lasting friendships, and warm memories.

"Athletics is one of the purest expressions of performance under law that I know," Vance continued. "The entire basis of any sport is the ability of its players to operate under a given set of rules and principles. In proportion as these rules are upheld, the game thrives; if these rules are violated, it breaks down and loses meaning.

"But there are also higher laws of conduct on the field, which are enforceable only by the individual player and his own conscience," he said. "These have to do with respect for the opposing players, cooperation with your manager and teammates, and a deep love for the game.

"We learn our greatest lessons when we are asked to sacrifice personal gain or self-pride for the greater gain of the team. In that way we build closer friendships with our teammates and rejoice in shared victory rather than individual glory.

"As a Christian," said Sandy Vance, "I have found sports to be as much a test of my ability to follow Jesus' admonitions and precepts, as a test of my physical skills. In proportion as I am loyal to my highest standards of love for my creator, and for my fellows on and off the field, I feel the thrill of victory both inside and out."

SAYING NO

The call for unselfishness and team spirit is also part of the philosophy of one of the most established—and successful—coaches in American college football, John Gagliardi (pronounced guh-LAR-dee).

Forty-two of his fifty-three years of coaching football have been spent at Saint John's University, about seventy miles northwest of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The "Johnnies," as the school's players are called, have made it to the semifinals of the National Collegiate Association's Division III playoffs three of the last four years and were national champions in 1963, '65, and '76.

"Yet," said Coach Gagliardi in an interview with the Sentinel, "they're students first and foremost, who enjoy football. I've always found that the more talented they are, the nicer they are. We've never had a great athlete who was a jerk."

Gagliardi has established a winning record by adopting a long list of no's—no tackling, wind sprints, or lengthy calisthenics during practice, for instance; no training tables and no compulsory off-season weight lifting; no players cut; no one considered too small; no use of the words hit, kill, etc.; no big deals when they score ("They aren't surprised!"); no play-calling from the bench; no statistics posted; no superstitions; no practice on Sundays or Mondays.

His so-called rules are neither arbitrary nor unduly rigid, but they are clearly related to his own upbringing by a father who was "very religious, had great values, and led by example not force. He was not a tyrant," explained Gagliardi. "He expected us to obey his rules, and we did."

Players at Saint John's have thrived under Gagliardi's tutelage. He's happy to have them call him John rather than "coach," and everyone revels in the informality.

"I'm not in the rehab business," he insists with a smile. "We want people here who don't need a lot of rules. We want to get out of the way and let them do the job.

"The players don't whine, and neither do their parents. In my forty years here I've found that you can't improve on the Golden Rule."

SURVIVING FOOTBALL

One suspects that professional football player Tommy Vardell, of the Cleveland Browns, would have thrived on John Gagliardi's "philosophy of no's."

Vardell, a Christian Scientist, spoke candidly with Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times (November 9, 1994), who pointed out to readers that Vardell is the only player in the National Football League who has never had a family doctor.

Since childhood, Vardell has relied steadfastly on God for healing. "The more I saw His work in my life," he explained to the Times reporter, "the more I understood me. I realized that obeying His laws was not limiting, but freeing. And that living rightly is not self-righteous and isolating. Once I felt the peace and joy and power that was available to me, there was no way I could ever turn from it."

As a professional football player with obligations to owners and management, Tommy Vardell has had to work within the perspectives of trainers and team doctors, and, although the circumstances are not ideal for him, he is still allowed to refuse medication that the doctors don't consider absolutely necessary.

"I simply know there is nothing that arises that can't be resolved by appealing to God and His laws that govern us. From Day One," Vardell told the Los Angeles Times, "Christian Science has been my health-care system. ... It's not like I have this unbelievable faith that makes God's laws apply [only] to me. His love for us and His healthy government of us apply to everybody, whether they are aware of it or not."