Athletes, whether in “individual” sports such as swimming or wrestling, etc., i.e.., sports in which each athlete competes on an individual basis with another athlete, or in “team” sports, i.e., sports in which the team must function together in play, cannot do their sports without competitors. They need those competitors in order to draw out their own better athletic performances. So, while they do compete, they are or should be friends, at least within the moment, if not friends even outside a given competition. Experience tells me that many athletes understand their competitors in precisely this manner.  

They complete, but they do not “do battle.” Permit me, therefore, to take exception to the caption for the picture of two wrestlers in the upper-left corner of section B, page 1, of your 4 Jan., 2024, issue. I trust that battle is not your word, nor would it be your word choice, though it would seem to be the word choice of a writer who does not comprehend what is going on in sports’ finest moments. As such, he demeans the sport, the athletes in that picture, and, by implication, all athletes.

In the finest sense of athletic competition, athletes do not fight. They play! The suggestion to the contrary becomes a subtle but all-too-real reason why our society has such difficulty in respecting those with opposite thoughts or functions from our own. Thus, in a subtle way, your caption writer’s attitude about sports makes our society just a bit less kindly or generous, person to person.  

Please counsel your writers about the subtle implications of their writing, hoping always for the higher and better sense of things. 

Karl E. Moyer

Lancaster, Penn.