The ultimate irony of it all: It is my understanding that, in the original rules or charter written by the NY Knickerbockers, it was expressly forbidden for players of the game of baseball to ever earn money from playing!
It is fascinating what happens when "art" or "past-time" become insanely profitable, then grotesquely profitably, and finally astronomically-insanely profitable, as seems to have happened to so many sports--and not just the "professional" ones; the slaves . . . erm . . I mean athletes who play for big college teams or the "amateurs" who compete in the olympics make a helluva lot of money for someone in the short-term and possibly even for themselves in the long-term).
I can recall an incident that was one of my last viewings of sports. It might have been ten years ago, though perhaps only 6. It was the summer olympics, and I was watching the women's swimming. I cannot for the life of me remember the event and only have a fuzzy recollection that the athlete in question was an Australian mid-distance swimmer.
She managed to win, which either put her into position to win the Gold or else she won it right there. The scores of camera men and editors and all the technical staff involved in turning this "amateur" event, which presumably is primarily intended to be a prime display of good sportsmanship and athletic prowess, were on their game that day. In the split-seconds after the race ended the footage was perfectly on time to show the reaction of the athletes, who had all reached the end of their lap within less than one second of one another, and who were all gazing up in the same general direction at the display that would tell them who had won (given their times were so close they had to be measured with radar gun or something in order to split it down to the hundredths of a second).
The winner was in the middle of the frame and you could just make out the top two-thirds of the face of one of the "losers" in the foreground and the full face (though less in focus) of several "losers" in the background.
The display of sickening unsportsmanlike disposition, if not behavior that followed in the next few miliseconds after all of the athletes realized the outcome of the race left me cold, hollow and nauseous.
All of the losers looked absolutely crushed, as if they were the victims of severe PTSD. The winner? did she look happy, elated, joyous, ebullient? I wouldn't call it that. Combative, domineering, vicious, arrogant, that would be more my description of the expression on her face and the quality of the thrashing and splashing she engaged in.
Seems to me that bad sportsmanship is so deeply ingrained in the world today, we don't even know what good sportsmanship looks like anymore?
Apologies if a bit OT, but your post made me think of all that.
ADDIT: I don't think this is the race I am talking about. And actually Phelps only shows a slight _glimmer_ of the nastiness and unsportsmanlike disposition to which I refer. But if you take that reaction Phelps has immediately, and leave out the more sociable and brotherly behavior he shows a few seconds later you have the nauseating ethos I'm talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KLy-NnTD2o