We’ve Lost Our Imagination
November 2, 2022 at 10:37 p.m.
We’ve Lost Our Imagination
By Roger Grossman-
I wrote it and spaced out on sending it…and I am sorry.
I was watching the World Series, and for some reason I started to think back to the days of my youth.
If you know me at all, you know that I am a romantic at heart. I want desperately to see the good in things and in people. I remember the good things of yesteryear fondly and wish often that some of things were still “a thing” today.
Part of why that’s important to me is because I grew up in a time where a kid’s imagination was their greatest asset. It was a friend on a day where it was raining and you couldn’t get together with your friends. It’s where a kid would invent and reinvent and re-reinvent everything you had into anything you wanted. Like standing in two cardboard boxes and pretending to be a hockey goalie or diving over furniture like Walter Payton into the end zone.
It makes me ask this question: “Have kids today lost their imagination?”
I mean, I remember the moments of the World Series of my childhood. I remember Reggie Jackson’s three home runs against the Dodgers. I remember watching The Big Red Machine earn that nickname. I remember Jack Buck telling Cardinal fans to “go crazy” when Ozzie Smith won a playoff game with a rare home run, and Kirk Gibson limping to home plate to do the “impossible”.
I remember those things so vividly because I watched them as they happened.
Those events are secured in the memory bank of my mind, and they cannot be removed, nor would I ever want them to be.
Do kids today have that?
We, back then, were in a unique place in time. Sporting events on radio forced us to use our minds to envision what the announcers were telling us were happening. Those announcers would describe how hard it was raining, how beautiful the ivy-covered walls were and how hard the player hit the ball, and we used our imaginations to turn those words into images.
Technology then advanced to allow us to see things with our own eyes more often, and opened our minds to not only what was, but what could be.
In 2022, technology has evolved to the point that kids don’t have to use their imaginations anymore. If they want to pretend to be an NBA player or fight in an infantry unit or steal cars and drive them off at break-neck speeds, they can fire up some sort of video game and become that. If they want to swim with sharks or play tennis at a major tournament venue, they can put on a virtual reality headset and do that.
What’s the problem with that?
On the surface, nothing at all.
But underneath that surface is the concern that should be shared by all—that the thirst to use our imagination is now quenchable.
If I am right, and we have extinguished the fire that warms our young people’s creativity, then we have truly crossed over a line of demarcation that goes way beyond sports.
It means we are raising a generation of kids whose creativity is being stifled and their growth stunted like weeds choke out flowers or vegetables in an unattended garden.
How completely unfortunate.
Will any kid remember Bryce Harper’s homer in the bottom of the 8th of game 5 of the NLCS that put the Phillies into the World Series?
Will it be just another moment that I remember well, and kids look at me cross-eyed when I bring it up?
Call me an old man ranting like an old man, but I feel bad for kids that way. I feel bad that they are cheated of something that I experienced that made me a better sports fan and certainly a better broadcaster.
“Why is that” you ask.
If I had grown up in today’s technologically saturated culture, I would not been ready to call Zach Smith’s game-winning home run against Plymouth with two outs in the bottom of the 7th all those years ago. I wouldn’t have been ready to call Taylor Cone’s game-ending touchdown catch and run against NorthWood. I wouldn’t have known what to say when Michelle DeGeeter grabbed that loose ball in overtime to secure the semi-state win in 2004.
I was ready for those events because I had lived them out over and over and over again in my backyard, my driveway and my bedroom growing up.
Will my kids and kids their age ever know what that feels like?
I am afraid of the answer.
I wrote it and spaced out on sending it…and I am sorry.
I was watching the World Series, and for some reason I started to think back to the days of my youth.
If you know me at all, you know that I am a romantic at heart. I want desperately to see the good in things and in people. I remember the good things of yesteryear fondly and wish often that some of things were still “a thing” today.
Part of why that’s important to me is because I grew up in a time where a kid’s imagination was their greatest asset. It was a friend on a day where it was raining and you couldn’t get together with your friends. It’s where a kid would invent and reinvent and re-reinvent everything you had into anything you wanted. Like standing in two cardboard boxes and pretending to be a hockey goalie or diving over furniture like Walter Payton into the end zone.
It makes me ask this question: “Have kids today lost their imagination?”
I mean, I remember the moments of the World Series of my childhood. I remember Reggie Jackson’s three home runs against the Dodgers. I remember watching The Big Red Machine earn that nickname. I remember Jack Buck telling Cardinal fans to “go crazy” when Ozzie Smith won a playoff game with a rare home run, and Kirk Gibson limping to home plate to do the “impossible”.
I remember those things so vividly because I watched them as they happened.
Those events are secured in the memory bank of my mind, and they cannot be removed, nor would I ever want them to be.
Do kids today have that?
We, back then, were in a unique place in time. Sporting events on radio forced us to use our minds to envision what the announcers were telling us were happening. Those announcers would describe how hard it was raining, how beautiful the ivy-covered walls were and how hard the player hit the ball, and we used our imaginations to turn those words into images.
Technology then advanced to allow us to see things with our own eyes more often, and opened our minds to not only what was, but what could be.
In 2022, technology has evolved to the point that kids don’t have to use their imaginations anymore. If they want to pretend to be an NBA player or fight in an infantry unit or steal cars and drive them off at break-neck speeds, they can fire up some sort of video game and become that. If they want to swim with sharks or play tennis at a major tournament venue, they can put on a virtual reality headset and do that.
What’s the problem with that?
On the surface, nothing at all.
But underneath that surface is the concern that should be shared by all—that the thirst to use our imagination is now quenchable.
If I am right, and we have extinguished the fire that warms our young people’s creativity, then we have truly crossed over a line of demarcation that goes way beyond sports.
It means we are raising a generation of kids whose creativity is being stifled and their growth stunted like weeds choke out flowers or vegetables in an unattended garden.
How completely unfortunate.
Will any kid remember Bryce Harper’s homer in the bottom of the 8th of game 5 of the NLCS that put the Phillies into the World Series?
Will it be just another moment that I remember well, and kids look at me cross-eyed when I bring it up?
Call me an old man ranting like an old man, but I feel bad for kids that way. I feel bad that they are cheated of something that I experienced that made me a better sports fan and certainly a better broadcaster.
“Why is that” you ask.
If I had grown up in today’s technologically saturated culture, I would not been ready to call Zach Smith’s game-winning home run against Plymouth with two outs in the bottom of the 7th all those years ago. I wouldn’t have been ready to call Taylor Cone’s game-ending touchdown catch and run against NorthWood. I wouldn’t have known what to say when Michelle DeGeeter grabbed that loose ball in overtime to secure the semi-state win in 2004.
I was ready for those events because I had lived them out over and over and over again in my backyard, my driveway and my bedroom growing up.
Will my kids and kids their age ever know what that feels like?
I am afraid of the answer.
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