Moses championed participatory sports over elite spectator sports as a young man

Evidence

Moses not only enjoyed swimming himself; he was convinced that the sport should receive more emphasis at Yale because, as a classmate put it, “he regarded [it] as something in which every undergraduate could take pleasure, as contrasted with the gladiatorial sports like football and baseball.” He had the same feeling about other minor sports, such as tennis, track, golf, gymnastics, fencing, shooting and wrestling, all of which had, like swimming, been only recently incorporated into the intercollegiate athletic scene. His enthusiasm about them reached such a peak, in fact, that his friends jokingly began to call him “the minor sport.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 180

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows the later Moses who would build public swimming pools for all New Yorkers — participatory recreation over elite privilege.