I recently watched a sports program on television in which a commentator was discussing a basketball coach who pounds on his players—kicks them, calls them dirty names. And the reporter said, "Well, I'm not sure I would want to be treated like that. I would want to be treated like a human being. But who can argue with this kind of treatment when the coach's won/lost record is so good."

Across America, kids are sitting in front of their T.V. sets taking that in. And too many of the sports books they read reinforce that same ethic: Winning is the only thing. When things are tough, try harder. Success is up to you.

Sports is, or should be, just one of the things people do—an integral part of life, but only one aspect of it. Sports is a good experience. It's fun. It ought to be inexpensive and accessible to everybody. Kids should go out and play, test and extend their bodies, feel good about what they can achieve on their own or with a team. And children's books about sports should encourage that approach.

Instead, adults try to make sports into a metaphor—a preparation for life. We endow sports with mystical qualities that don't exist and raise unreal expectations about what it can do. At the same time, by making sports into a metaphor, we devalue it for itself. It's no wonder that the kids who read sports books are confused by them. The things that happen to people in the books bear very little relation to their own experiences and anxieties in real life. So the kids read them and wonder, "What's wrong with me?"

What the books don't say is that in our society, sports is a negative experience for most boys and almost all girls. Soon after they start school, at an age when they have no other standards on which to judge themselves, we force children to judge each other on their bodies, which is the thing that everyone's most scared about. They're required to define themselves on the basis of competitive physical ability. (pp. 43-4)

I'd like to see sports books for children that would take away some of the pressures they feel and defuse the sense of competition and rejection. To do this, I think the books must acknowledge children's real fears about sports.

The first, perhaps ultimate, fear is of being ridiculed—the fear that everyone's going to laugh at you because you're not good. (pp. 44-5)

A second fear is the fear of getting hurt….

A third fear that kids have about sports is of disappointing their parents. (p. 45)

Finally, there's the basic, overall fear of not measuring up in sports—of not being man enough, or woman enough. This may be the most meaningless definition of being a worthy person in our society.

I don't think we have to make any rules for sports books for children beyond asking that they present some sense of truth about the role of sports in our lives. But most books perpetuate the old myths. Even in the new, trendy sports stories, where problems like pregnancy, dope, and so on are admitted, the basic point that comes across to the reader is that if you're willing to take orders, if you're determined to succeed, everything else will work itself out. Blacks and whites will get together, the coach will be understanding, poor kids will get rich, and the team will win the championship. Kids who read these books wonder why such things don't seem to happen in real life, to them or to people they know. Most of them, no matter how hard they push themselves, will never make the team, and of those who do, many will discover that the coach is a tyrant who exploits his players and that the brotherhood of sports they've read so much about doesn't exist. (pp. 45-6)

The myth that sports is a way out of the slums has been exploded. But as long as there's a Rocky image, as long as the books lionize one or two real kids like Sugar Ray Leonard who've made it, we're saying to all the others, "It's your fault for staying poor. It's not society's fault. You didn't try hard enough. You didn't listen to coach. You didn't play hurt."…

Sports biographies for children, which perpetuate all these myths, are really the junk food of publishing. They're all too easy to produce. You get scissors and a paste pot, raid the newspapers for false biographies of the hero of the moment—and sports writers never were trustworthy in terms of biographical material—and make a book…. But the kids who get hooked on them aren't going to be able to move on to books in which every other adjective isn't "immortal" or "fabulous" and every sentence doesn't end with an exclamation mark. Or in which every hero's success isn't simply a matter of hard work and determination. (p. 46)

Trying to reform sports books for children is discouraging, but you've got to start somewhere. That's what we do as writers. If we can reach one kid, affect some program somewhere, wake up one teacher, it's probably worthwhile. We should be trying to write books that acknowledge kids' fears about sports and say that other people, even heroes, share them. Books in which nice guys do finish last and it doesn't matter. In which making the team doesn't end all the problems and the team doesn't win all the games. Books that integrate sports into the rest of life. If we write more truthfully about sports, perhaps we can encourage kids to relax and have fun with each other—to challenge themselves for the pleasure of it, without self-doubt and without fear. (p. 47)