The first thing Damar Hamlin is reported to have said when he came to at the hospital is “Who won the game?” By George, there’s a Buffalo Bill. What a riposte to the leftists who are trying to use this freak accident in their war on football. The left is just loath to acknowledge football as one of the great sports that has helped hone the character of millions of Americans and instead tries to cast the game as an irredeemable relic of barbarism.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid called the NFL a “modern-day gladiator spectacle.” The host of “The View,” Joy Behar, was quick in trying to palm off on her viewers the idea that these leftists are champions of players. “Forty-five percent of Americans,” she said, “think that tackle football is appropriate. Heterosexual men voted the most support for kids doing football, and conservatives were more likely to support youth tackle football.”

Someone ought to throw a penalty flag on this kind of talk. The New York Times just ran out a piece headlined, “Grappling With, But Not Yet Turning Away From, Football’s Violent Pull.” The headline is hard to decipher (we have someone working on it). The story reports: “After Damar Hamlin’s collapse during an NFL game, fans, coaches and players processed what it meant to love a sport that carries the risk of bodily harm for its participants.”

Then again, too, it’s impossible to name a contact sport that doesn’t carry the risk of commotio cordis, which is believed to have triggered Mr. Hamlin’s incident. During the 1998 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Chris Pronger of the St. Louis Blues took a puck to the chest, stopping his heart. He returned to the ice for the next game after a specialist told him it was “literally a one-off,” and odds of a repeat were “probably greater than you winning the lottery.’”

“Prayers,” Mr. Pronger tweeted, “that Damar Hamlin can have the same outcome that I was fortunate to have.” Both have fared better than those like Thomas Adams, 16, whose 2010 baseball death the New York Daily News called “a freak accident,” a term that those making hay off Mr. Hamlin’s trauma avoid, just as they ignore strides football has made increase safety compared to, say, the 1905 college season, when 18 died on the gridiron.

“This was happening every year,” John J. Miller told our Dean Karayanis when they discussed his book, “The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football,” and there arose a movement that tried to ban football. Roosevelt, an advocate of “the strenuous life,” set out to reform it instead. His efforts led to the creation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, balancing risk to life and limb with the physical and moral benefits of sports.

We don’t necessarily expect the news that Mr. Hamlin was showing tentative signs of recovery will lead the left to relent in their campaign against football. The Associated Press reported today that he was again breathing and walking on his own — and conveying the spoken message “Love you, boys,” to his teammates via a video link, all of which are signals of progress in what could be a long process of rehabilitation and treatment. 

Yet who are talking heads to deny fans the joy or to deny athletes the opportunity to achieve the immortality of hoisting the Lombardi Trophy or engraving their name in the Stanley Cup? Although Mr. Hamlin’s heart stopped for a time, it remains that of a fierce competitor, refuting those who would use his misfortune to end the sport, and throw away all the good things that spring from the thrill of victory and sometimes, even the agony of defeat.