Sports as Soul-Craft

For Marcus, each sport is a "parable of life" that depicts the existential challenges and dilemmas that ordinary people face as they attempt to fashion the "good life" of creative and productive work, guided by reason and ethics, and aesthetically pleasing. Sports are "moral fables," accesses to the landscape of diverse emotions with a rich vocabulary for personal and social narratives. Sports as amalgamations of visual art, theater, civic religion, and science, have become resources for many to shape personal and collective identities.