The things which find their way onto my Facebook page can be interesting if sometimes trivial.
Did you that croquet was an Olympic sport? It's true. It was only once, and that was in the 1900 Paris games. All of the participants were French. And the kicker?
The event sold one ticket.
I have a feeling croquet will not find its way into any future Games. I bet they don't let Jarts in either.
The first I do in the morning when I wake up is reach over to the night stand, unplug the phone from its charger, and complete the challenge. Often it's just a matter of minutes, but at times I have to play for a good half hour to make the goal. On those days where it takes longer I feel relieved rather than excited that I was successful. One day last week it took over an hour to do the daily challenge. I swear I was sweating when I finished, despite sitting at the kitchen table and not putting out any real effort.
I don't make money at this. I don't earn credits towards purchases. I don't have the almost infinitesimal glory of beating my friends, as none of them play. But it's darn near reached the point of a mania: I've got to make the daily challenge in Temple Run no matter what.
Which leads me to ask: am I playing the game, or is the game playing me?
I think most athletes, professional but especially college, should ask themselves that too.
With the exception of American Football, which is by its own tacit admission too brutal for such tests of endurance, we find long seasons which are supposed to be so important leading into a relative handful of games which actually determine champions. They're just something silly about that, if not downright ridiculous. Play all these games, and if you win a lot of them, well, you have to play just a few more to prove you're really that good. It's simply dumb, the more I think about it.
Make teams do it to show how they perform under pressure? All right, there's something to that. Maybe. But maybe also all it does is allow overall weaker teams to shorten their benches and appear stronger by what is little more than slight of hand. But that hardly strikes me as fair to the better overall teams. And if sports are supposed to be about the best man/woman/team winning, I think playoffs may in fact lead to situations less than ideal for such outcomes. Were the New York Giants really the better team than the New England Patriots the year the Pats went into the Super Bowl 17-0? Nope. Yet they were the NFL Champs.
I realize that without the allure of playoffs many teams and their fans might quit on the seasons without the promise of something more. And I get that, so far as it goes. But I also get that if you can't survive the trial you shouldn't earn a mulligan for it either. Further, a good team ought to be put on the field first if it wants support. It's really no different a concept than expecting a business to put out a good product or service before it merits patronage.
As we all know, it really just comes down to the money. Extended playoffs mean more cash for the games and the industries which surround them. I'll admit up front that there's nothing wrong with that per se. But I also think that an honest assessment of the situation should conclude that it is less than ideal for the integrity of our sports and games as sports and games. It teaches, whether it means to or not, that excitement is more important than the best team winning. Excitement on its own isn't wrong either of course. Yet I just can't help but feel that excitement when it comes more naturally is deeper and more thrilling than when it is manufactured by groups and persons who don't care about my allegiance so much as they do my money. That more than anything else is when I feel jobbed. I think sports fans in general should feel the same way.
To be sure, I'll watch some of the upcoming baseball games as the next few weeks pass. I admit as well that I will watch more ardently if and as the Detroit Tigers are involved. But my attention will only be half present as I do. Sparky Anderson said it best: the best team in baseball in a given year is the team with the best regular season record, not the World Series winner. He's spot on with that assessment, and I wish more sports fans would think so too.
Yet more than that. I was with good friends who appreciate baseball (and are good friends otherwise), and met a new friend along the way (his rum luck). We jived each other, and we talked baseball even though there were no balks. That last part is an in-joke which I do not choose to explain at this time by the way. But it was the kind of day which, at the very high risk of hyperbole I must admit, made me appreciate life.
Baseball does that. I won't say that other sports cannot do that, but I do believe that other games are hard pressed to the task. Baseball is not so fast that it can't be followed, not so complicated that it can't be readily understood, not so brutal that you risk life altering injuries playing it. It is the game of summer. And summer is of course the high point of the year.
On this day, I needed that tonic. Explain it as you might: dame fortune, good luck, the planets aligned; Providence. But I needed today. And I was not failed.
Let's start by helping the pitchers, shall we? How about calling the whole strike zone for starters (okay, and relievers too)? Why must they get only half to two-thirds of what the rule book says is a strike? It's no wonder that pitch counts are getting so high: if a hurler doesn't groove a pitch he doesn't get a strike. If the human umpires can't figure out what Fox Trac (or whatever they call their strike zone guide) clearly sees as a ball or a strike, then replace them with technology. It's no different than using instant replay really.
While we're talking about pitchers, let's make them bat again. It's only right. Everyone else has to play the whole game, and commentators regularly and rightly opine that, once a ball is pitched, the pitcher becomes an infielder. Make them bat too. Yes, the lament will be that who wants to see pitchers bat? I don't care. Baseball is a game where everyone else plays two ways. Pitchers should too. I hold the same for what is something of the converse: designated hitters don't play the whole game either. Get rid of them.
Throw the sabermetricians out of the ballpark too. Quite frankly, we knew who the great, average, and mediocre players were before Bill James came around, and with a lot less pointless analysis. I admire his love of and commitment to the game, but all he's really dealing in is minutiae. Which means trivia. Use the basic rubrics by which baseball has judged players for a century. They almost always point to the same conclusions as the number crunchers do.
And please stop changing pitchers so often. I've reached the point where I think each team should be limited to four pitchers per nine inning game, barring injury. Take the limit off in extra frames as well. If we help the pitchers with a true strike zone, they'll throw fewer pitches and not be so tired anyway, and can go longer. Get rid of that situational left hander too. He's another sabermetric invention we could do without.
Baseball is a great game. The best ever, by any honest and rational consideration. But like all human constructs it could be improved. Consider these ideas a start.
The above is an exact quote from one Joe Cosgriff, who was not much of a sports fan. Oh, he'd watch something occasionally, and was even known, every now and then, to ask how the Tigers had done. So we're not saying that he had no interest in sports and games. But we do wonder whether he, perhaps, had the right idea about them.
It is in this light that we note with a certain interest the upcoming reality show Friday Night Tykes. It appears to get into the real world of youth sports, with that distinct in your face attitude which football does so well. Screaming parents and coaches trying to impart manhood unto young men, doing so at the top of their lungs. Yep, it sure looks like it has sports in the right light.
So let's ask Joe's question: what does it matter if an outfielder or wide receiver drops a ball? What really can we take from a successful dunk or pretty goal or even an uphill 35 foot put with a significant left-right slope?
It could make millions of dollars to some people; okay, we get that. But that's only, we will say it, about the money. There's nothing wrong with that per se either. But the athletes who do not bag the extra cash still have friends and family, don't they, as well as more than the capacity to care for themselves and those who depend on them, right? So it hardly really matters, in any rational sense, what the outcome of the game might be.
Yes, yes, sports and games can be good recreation. Yet even that value seems a very minor one these days, especially when so many athletes aren't playing for recreation, are they? They're playing to show that they're better than the other guy. They're competing. It strikes us that such goes beyond recreation, so much so that any point about relaxation is out the window.
But sports teach us things, don't they? Things like discipline and doing your job and living up to the expectations of people who rely on you. They teach teamwork; they teach sportsmanship and respect for others.
Respect for others. That's are difficult point to take seriously when you're in a naturally adversarial position. Indeed, arguably, such can't teach respect but rather the other side of respect: the idea that I'm better than you. Such competitiveness cannot truly teach anything useful as it can only encourage jealousy and arrogance. Beyond that, so much of the discipline which comes from playing games can be learned without the games, and much more easily and directly. Get to school or work on time; get your job done; be there for people when they need you. If these and a great many other virtues aren't learned day in and day out as you live your life, it seems highly unlikely that the mere practice and play for a game will do it. At best, they are only part of the learning process, and a quite obviously unnecessary one at that seeing as they're a small part of most lives. Even the lives of most athletes.
We're not saying that sports and games are wrong. But we are saying that they're become too much a part of our society considering their relative worth. At the end of the day, no matter how you doll it up, a game is just a game. Nothing more.
We will have good sportsmanship only when someone drops a damn ball everyone simply shrugs and says, oh well. Until then, we will not have learned anything about the real value of any given game.
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