My last post on the Olympics can be read here.
Today I'd like to talk about the distinction to be made between what I consider REAL sports, those events that are simply games, and others which can be considered pastimes. I will then ask the relevant questions (beginning with "How the fuck did this become an international competition?", or "Are you gay/crazy/in need of a good beating to consider this worthy of a competition and this sort of expenditure of taxpayer funds?").
I'm not completely certain, but I think I once heard something along similar lines from George Carlin, so I apologize in advance if I only manage to repeat things George said.
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Some Thoughts on the Olympics…
I was forced to watch the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics last night.
Tess was all excited by the thought of the spectacle, and got into one of those passive-aggressive moods of hers, in which failure to comply with her wishes – in this case, that we “enjoy” something that I find about as interesting as dry toast, and about as exciting as a case of toenail fungus – as “a couple”.
This is, after all, she tells me, what “couples do”.
She gets into these moods, with this sort of strange ideal surrounding it, every so often, and rather than have to deal with the complete bullshit (the expression of which ranges from the emanation of a simple “attitude” all the way up to “full Menstrual Fury”), it’s easier to give in, keep my mouth shut, and make her happy, just to spare myself the additional pain of all the “if you loved me, you’d make an effort…” nonsense.
Women…can’t live with ‘em, and you can’t kill ‘em…
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The Wide World of Sports, Part II...
From the Gridiron, we jump to the Ice, and start talking about a real sport: hockey. I say 'real sport' because, well, let's look at all the others; baseball is pretty much 2-3 hours of watching two guys play catch with a lot of inactivity in between. It's a sport that celebrates the .300 hitter, which means it really celebrates the guy who's failed 70% of the time. Anyone who remarks, like many did a decade ago about the Clutch-and-Grab era of hockey, that they'd rather watch a one-hit shutout -- i.e. a game with no action -- than a 1-0 hockey game --with lots of checking, and perhaps a fight or two -- needs psychological help.
Golf? I believe it was Mark Twain who said that "Golf is a pleasant afternoon's walk, interrupted". Any 'sport' that you play in business casual, requires a servant to lug your gear about and involves a motorized cart, is hardly a competition. If there was a goalie to keep the ball out of the little hole, you might have an argument about whether it's a sport. Quite frankly, if your game doesn't involve defense, and is mostly played by overweight white guys, and ends with a snort and a steak in the Clubhouse, it's not a sport; it's more like an expensive hobby.
Basketball? Does anyone actually play basketball anymore, or has it has it simply degenerated into an exhibition where guys take a 10-yard run up to a basket before they make a 6' leap to 'slam dunk'? Back when I played basketball you needed an outside jumper, needed to know how to play defense, we didn't take time outs every five seconds, and a wrist-slap or an elbow to the chest wasn't a 'flagrant foul' that put you on the DL for three months; it was 'just the price you paid' for going to the basket.
NASCAR. What great thrills: watching 40 guys make left turns at ridiculously high speed, praying for an accident to break up the monotony and get your juices flowing. Really, if you need a million-dollar-fuel-injected machine to compete, it's not really a sport, is it? Football? Five minutes of nothing leading up to six seconds of action over the span of three hours, and in the end, it's usually the least-involved guy on the field -- the fucking kicker -- who decides it all. Soccer, a game I've actually excelled at, is polo without the horses and where the idea at the professional level seems to be to play for a tie. MMA is not a sport: that's human cockfighting, and if I want to see that there's half-a-dozen Irish Pubs within walking distance. No Pay-Per-View fees, either.
No, hockey is the only real sport, so far as I'm concerned.
Which is why I get so pissed off when people who know nothing about the game start pontificating about some of the more rugged aspects of the game, like Zdeno Chara's hit on Max Pacioretty, the fights between the Boston Bruins and Dallas Stars, or the Brawl at the Nassau Coliseum this past February. Much like football (that is when the players are actually involved in a play, and not standing around between plays or otherwise making fools of themselves with all the sack and touchdown dances) is a contact sport; it involves actual physical contact, often violent physical contact, between players.
People who don't understand the nature of hockey 'violence' simply don't understand the nature of the game, but they somehow feel qualified to pontificate about it's more brutal aspects. For those of you who don't understand hockey, and the reasons why there are fights, and occasionally, a horrendous accident in which someone is hurt, here's your list of reasons why it all happens:
1. Take 12 full-grown men, and put them in a fishbowl.
2. Arm them with deadly weapons, i.e. a stick, and a set of razor-sharp skates.
3. Make them play on ice.
4. Encourage them to reach speeds of 25-30 MPH, and run into each other, or smash each other against the boards and glass (it actually hurts MORE to get hit in open ice than it does along the boards; the boards and glass in most rinks actually give some under stress, and act like a spring).
5. Make them chase an object (The Puck) which is made of solid, vulcanized rubber, which has been frozen solid and can be propelled at speeds exceeding 100 MPH, and who's shape makes it's flight characteristics wholly unpredictable.
Tempers are bound to flare in that sort of situation. If you don't give players the opportunity to vent their frustrations (i.e. fight), they will soon start doing stupid, and dangerous, things: like cutting each other with their skates, clubbing each other with their sticks, or throwing elbows at each other's heads. Fighting in hockey is a safety valve; giving players the opportunity to pummel each other prevents some of the more unattractive aspects of human nature from rising to the surface. In all actuality, there are very few injuries that come about as a result of a hockey fight, primarily because it is difficult to get enough leverage on ice skates to throw a knockout punch.
There is also an etiquette to a hockey fight; you never just attack someone. You issue a challenge, and the etiquette requires that your would-be opponent oblige you. If he doesn't, there's usually someone else who will pick up the gauntlet, and thus, the overall violence is kept at a manageable level. It's not unusual to see two players punch each other silly, and then pat one another on the backside afterwards, or a fight to breakup when both combatants tire themselves out and agree to separate. Generally, fights between players aren't personal matters: they are usually a reaction to something which has occurred on the ice, and that once someone has been given the opportunity to vent their frustrations, the whole thing is pretty much over. There is, however, a big difference between a system of violence with rules and a context, and another system in which the players cross a line and enter the realm of the Truly Stupid.
By the way, the Golden Age of Hockey -- generally considered to be the 1940's to the 1980's -- saw far more gratuitous violence that you see in the modern NHL. It was not uncommon in the days when the league did ban fighting, to see players get carved up with sticks, or have their limbs skated over. One of the greatest players in the history of the sport has a dubious honor named after him; a player is said to have scored a 'Gordie Howe Hat Trick' if during the course of a game he has tallied a goal, an assist -- and a fight. But, I digress...
The Realm of the Truly Stupid nowadays involves players going after each other's heads. There's a variety of reasons why this happens. The first set of reasons are cultural: in the Old Days a player was taught to protect himself on the ice at all times, because you never could tell where a hit might come from (there was far more hitting 20-30 years ago then than there is now). In the modern game, there are two referees, more rules about what you can/can't do with a stick, what constitutes a legal/illegal check, and a mindset that puts a premium on Power Plays, so that the players often depend upon the officials and the sometimes-esoteric nuances of the rulebook to defend them rather than relying on their wits; they've abrogated their responsibility to protect themselves.
The second cultural flaw in modern hockey is the idea of The Pest. This type of player is also known as 'The Lunchbucket Guy', 'The Sandpaper', 'The Antagonizer', 'The Energy Guy' (not to be confused with The Goon or Enforcer, who's job is to protect his teammates) and his is a specialized skill within the confines of hockey. His job to go out onto the ice and be a total jerk. This role has been immortalized by both the hockey media and by a generation of coaches who spend more time studying Sports Psychology than they do hockey. The idea is take advantage of the fact that in the normal course of the game raw emotion is sometimes provoked. The Sandpaper Guy is supposed to go out and deliberately provoke those raw, emotional, responses from other players, and thus, take a punch or a slash and draw penalties against an opponent. It's a specialized skill; you need to be part bully, part psychologist, part asshole.
As a tactic, it's brilliant. However, when a kid has come up through the hockey ranks convinced that the only way he can 'make it' in the NHL is to be a borderline-dirty player, it becomes a hard habit to break. He's trained and encouraged to start trouble, and depending upon his level of maturity he may not know when to stop. And when you can't draw that flash of emotion with a simple slash across the ankles, or a push, because the other players have become more disciplined and taught not to take penalties, you have to take greater, and more drastic action, to justify your existence. The borderline-dirty play now becomes your bread and butter.
There's also a Code of Machismo in the game, much like the Samurai Code, which states that any injury that doesn't result in a jagged bone sticking out of a bloody hole in a limb, or having a vital organ knocked out of your body, is something you should just 'skate off'. Failure to live up to this code lessens a player's reputation for toughness amongst his peers, and one school of thought says that players who succumb 'too easily' to injuries make themselves targets. Hockey players routinely play with broken bones, stitches in their face, snapped-off-at-the-base teeth, black eyes, broken noses or dislocated joints quickly snapped back into place by crack medical and training staffs; they're simply stitched up, shot full of Novocaine, and sent back out on the ice. In fact, they often beg to be returned to play as quickly as possible by the medical staff. Part of this Machismo Code states that short of being knocked unconscious, you should make every effort to play with a severe head injury so as to not be labeled a pansy.
Then there are the circumstances of the modern game to consider when it comes to injury and head trauma; it's faster than it's ever been before, the players are bigger than ever before (there are, to my knowledge, approximately 20 players that I can name off the top of my head who are over 6' 4", and/or weigh in excess of 230 pounds), and when you take into consideration some of the changes in the last two decades (detachable nets, equipment improvements, removal of the red line, the stupid trapezoid, seamless glass, the inability to slow down a forechecker, the two-ref system, the instigator penalty, and the return of the Little Man to the game) what's amazing is not that every so often there's a fight, or someone gets run into a partition, but that someone doesn't get killed more often.
The problems with the Chara/Pacioretty hit break down like this:
1. Pacioretty took a bad path to the puck. Instead of using the other 80' of the ice that he could have to skate around Chara, he tried to squeeze himself between Chara and the boards. He did this because he's been trained to know that even if he doesn't get to the puck, he's more than likely to draw a penalty on Chara for obstructing his progress. Twenty years ago, Paciroetty would have taken a different route to the puck, but nowadays the players are looking for penalties (Sabermetrics has invaded hockey! Arrrgh!). If you don't know anything about hockey, learn that much, at least; sometimes, the quickest way to the puck is also the quickest way to get your head smashed in.
2. Chara is 6' 9" -- without skates -- and about 260 pounds. Pacioretty is 6' 2" and is listed at 203 pounds. If Chara puts his arms up to take or to deliver a hit, he's pretty much going to hit everyone on the ice in the head. Pacioretty has compounded his original mistake (different route to the puck)by trying to out-muscle a player 7 inches taller and 57 pounds heavier. That's like trying to stop a runaway tractor trailer with a Jack Russel Terrier...only less funny.
3. Neither player appears to be aware of their position on the ice. The area around the benches is perhaps the most dangerous spot on the entire ice surface, other than being directly in front of the goals. Nothing good ever happens there; players collide with one another during line changes, players get hit and propelled into the benches, players get hit and have the bench gates suddenly open on them as they're falling, sometimes a player gets run into an open bench gate with hip or head, and now in this case, Pacioretty gets himself run into the partition that separates the two benches and provides a spot for a color commentator and some photographers to get a better look at the action. If you took that little booth out, it doesn't do much good, because you still have to keep the teams physically separated when not on the ice, and there would still be a partition there.
The real issue the NHL has to deal with is not a bunch of guys fighting, or someone getting hurt as the result of the natural flow of the game; it's the douchebag who goes around hitting people from behind, or taking a liberty with another player in a vulnerable position because 'it's his job' to 'stir things up'.
Players like (each has video linked) Sean Avery, Matt Cooke, Trevor Gillies have serious issues with the concepts of respect and boundaries. They do what they do because it's what they get paid to do, and because that's how they got to into the league and how they stay there, and they give no thought to how this affects everyone they come into contact with. In the case of Avery, the league actually -- in a backhanded way which I think is almost unconscious -- protects them. Mario Lemieux (owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins) can complain all he wants about the thuggery in the Modern Game, but I don't recall him being so critical when Jay Caufield (and others) was there to fight his battles, and he has one of the worst offenders (Cooke) on his payroll. His real issue is that his multi-million-dollar Golden Boy (Sidney Crosby) isn't on the ice because of an accidental hits, and because the Islanders beat the snot out of his team (which has a roster of fighters of it's own that is quite formidable) one night in February.
This issue isn't going to be resolved by a public outcry over 'gratuitous violence'; it's going to be corrected when the Matt Cookes, Trevor Gilles' and Sean Averys of the world lose their jobs. What they do is NOT hockey. The public which cries about this level of violence is the same public which mostly knows nothing about hockey, made NASCAR and MMA two of the fastest-growing 'sports', and which routinely looks the other way when yet another NFL player is hauled off on domestic violence or murder charges. Even the causal hockey fan loves a good fight or a hard bodycheck, and so long as everything is legal, the combatants are willing, and the fisticuffs are a result of the natural flow of the game, it's all to the better.
What you need to do is not condemn the sport, only the assholes who don't play it properly. Hockey players will sort this out themselves, and it will, unfortunately, require that certain guys get beatings on the ice. That's the purpose of a hockey fight, after all: to let so-and-so know he can't get away with what he's just tried to get away with. Once a guy takes enough knuckles to the head, he starts to get the message and the stupidity stops. If the league wasn't so worried about it's image, it would take out the stupid Instigator Rule and not have the officials rush to break up skirmishes, and let the players police themselves; whenever the league tries to clamp down on fighting, we get more of this sort of thing.
And that 'image' they were trying to clean up by clamping down on fighting gets tarnished because we've taken the violence to a whole 'nuther level. And morons who know nothing tsk-tsk and tut-tut, start their preaching... and then go and watch WWE when no one is looking.
Golf? I believe it was Mark Twain who said that "Golf is a pleasant afternoon's walk, interrupted". Any 'sport' that you play in business casual, requires a servant to lug your gear about and involves a motorized cart, is hardly a competition. If there was a goalie to keep the ball out of the little hole, you might have an argument about whether it's a sport. Quite frankly, if your game doesn't involve defense, and is mostly played by overweight white guys, and ends with a snort and a steak in the Clubhouse, it's not a sport; it's more like an expensive hobby.
Basketball? Does anyone actually play basketball anymore, or has it has it simply degenerated into an exhibition where guys take a 10-yard run up to a basket before they make a 6' leap to 'slam dunk'? Back when I played basketball you needed an outside jumper, needed to know how to play defense, we didn't take time outs every five seconds, and a wrist-slap or an elbow to the chest wasn't a 'flagrant foul' that put you on the DL for three months; it was 'just the price you paid' for going to the basket.
NASCAR. What great thrills: watching 40 guys make left turns at ridiculously high speed, praying for an accident to break up the monotony and get your juices flowing. Really, if you need a million-dollar-fuel-injected machine to compete, it's not really a sport, is it? Football? Five minutes of nothing leading up to six seconds of action over the span of three hours, and in the end, it's usually the least-involved guy on the field -- the fucking kicker -- who decides it all. Soccer, a game I've actually excelled at, is polo without the horses and where the idea at the professional level seems to be to play for a tie. MMA is not a sport: that's human cockfighting, and if I want to see that there's half-a-dozen Irish Pubs within walking distance. No Pay-Per-View fees, either.
No, hockey is the only real sport, so far as I'm concerned.
Which is why I get so pissed off when people who know nothing about the game start pontificating about some of the more rugged aspects of the game, like Zdeno Chara's hit on Max Pacioretty, the fights between the Boston Bruins and Dallas Stars, or the Brawl at the Nassau Coliseum this past February. Much like football (that is when the players are actually involved in a play, and not standing around between plays or otherwise making fools of themselves with all the sack and touchdown dances) is a contact sport; it involves actual physical contact, often violent physical contact, between players.
People who don't understand the nature of hockey 'violence' simply don't understand the nature of the game, but they somehow feel qualified to pontificate about it's more brutal aspects. For those of you who don't understand hockey, and the reasons why there are fights, and occasionally, a horrendous accident in which someone is hurt, here's your list of reasons why it all happens:
1. Take 12 full-grown men, and put them in a fishbowl.
2. Arm them with deadly weapons, i.e. a stick, and a set of razor-sharp skates.
3. Make them play on ice.
4. Encourage them to reach speeds of 25-30 MPH, and run into each other, or smash each other against the boards and glass (it actually hurts MORE to get hit in open ice than it does along the boards; the boards and glass in most rinks actually give some under stress, and act like a spring).
5. Make them chase an object (The Puck) which is made of solid, vulcanized rubber, which has been frozen solid and can be propelled at speeds exceeding 100 MPH, and who's shape makes it's flight characteristics wholly unpredictable.
Tempers are bound to flare in that sort of situation. If you don't give players the opportunity to vent their frustrations (i.e. fight), they will soon start doing stupid, and dangerous, things: like cutting each other with their skates, clubbing each other with their sticks, or throwing elbows at each other's heads. Fighting in hockey is a safety valve; giving players the opportunity to pummel each other prevents some of the more unattractive aspects of human nature from rising to the surface. In all actuality, there are very few injuries that come about as a result of a hockey fight, primarily because it is difficult to get enough leverage on ice skates to throw a knockout punch.
There is also an etiquette to a hockey fight; you never just attack someone. You issue a challenge, and the etiquette requires that your would-be opponent oblige you. If he doesn't, there's usually someone else who will pick up the gauntlet, and thus, the overall violence is kept at a manageable level. It's not unusual to see two players punch each other silly, and then pat one another on the backside afterwards, or a fight to breakup when both combatants tire themselves out and agree to separate. Generally, fights between players aren't personal matters: they are usually a reaction to something which has occurred on the ice, and that once someone has been given the opportunity to vent their frustrations, the whole thing is pretty much over. There is, however, a big difference between a system of violence with rules and a context, and another system in which the players cross a line and enter the realm of the Truly Stupid.
By the way, the Golden Age of Hockey -- generally considered to be the 1940's to the 1980's -- saw far more gratuitous violence that you see in the modern NHL. It was not uncommon in the days when the league did ban fighting, to see players get carved up with sticks, or have their limbs skated over. One of the greatest players in the history of the sport has a dubious honor named after him; a player is said to have scored a 'Gordie Howe Hat Trick' if during the course of a game he has tallied a goal, an assist -- and a fight. But, I digress...
The Realm of the Truly Stupid nowadays involves players going after each other's heads. There's a variety of reasons why this happens. The first set of reasons are cultural: in the Old Days a player was taught to protect himself on the ice at all times, because you never could tell where a hit might come from (there was far more hitting 20-30 years ago then than there is now). In the modern game, there are two referees, more rules about what you can/can't do with a stick, what constitutes a legal/illegal check, and a mindset that puts a premium on Power Plays, so that the players often depend upon the officials and the sometimes-esoteric nuances of the rulebook to defend them rather than relying on their wits; they've abrogated their responsibility to protect themselves.
The second cultural flaw in modern hockey is the idea of The Pest. This type of player is also known as 'The Lunchbucket Guy', 'The Sandpaper', 'The Antagonizer', 'The Energy Guy' (not to be confused with The Goon or Enforcer, who's job is to protect his teammates) and his is a specialized skill within the confines of hockey. His job to go out onto the ice and be a total jerk. This role has been immortalized by both the hockey media and by a generation of coaches who spend more time studying Sports Psychology than they do hockey. The idea is take advantage of the fact that in the normal course of the game raw emotion is sometimes provoked. The Sandpaper Guy is supposed to go out and deliberately provoke those raw, emotional, responses from other players, and thus, take a punch or a slash and draw penalties against an opponent. It's a specialized skill; you need to be part bully, part psychologist, part asshole.
As a tactic, it's brilliant. However, when a kid has come up through the hockey ranks convinced that the only way he can 'make it' in the NHL is to be a borderline-dirty player, it becomes a hard habit to break. He's trained and encouraged to start trouble, and depending upon his level of maturity he may not know when to stop. And when you can't draw that flash of emotion with a simple slash across the ankles, or a push, because the other players have become more disciplined and taught not to take penalties, you have to take greater, and more drastic action, to justify your existence. The borderline-dirty play now becomes your bread and butter.
There's also a Code of Machismo in the game, much like the Samurai Code, which states that any injury that doesn't result in a jagged bone sticking out of a bloody hole in a limb, or having a vital organ knocked out of your body, is something you should just 'skate off'. Failure to live up to this code lessens a player's reputation for toughness amongst his peers, and one school of thought says that players who succumb 'too easily' to injuries make themselves targets. Hockey players routinely play with broken bones, stitches in their face, snapped-off-at-the-base teeth, black eyes, broken noses or dislocated joints quickly snapped back into place by crack medical and training staffs; they're simply stitched up, shot full of Novocaine, and sent back out on the ice. In fact, they often beg to be returned to play as quickly as possible by the medical staff. Part of this Machismo Code states that short of being knocked unconscious, you should make every effort to play with a severe head injury so as to not be labeled a pansy.
Then there are the circumstances of the modern game to consider when it comes to injury and head trauma; it's faster than it's ever been before, the players are bigger than ever before (there are, to my knowledge, approximately 20 players that I can name off the top of my head who are over 6' 4", and/or weigh in excess of 230 pounds), and when you take into consideration some of the changes in the last two decades (detachable nets, equipment improvements, removal of the red line, the stupid trapezoid, seamless glass, the inability to slow down a forechecker, the two-ref system, the instigator penalty, and the return of the Little Man to the game) what's amazing is not that every so often there's a fight, or someone gets run into a partition, but that someone doesn't get killed more often.
The problems with the Chara/Pacioretty hit break down like this:
1. Pacioretty took a bad path to the puck. Instead of using the other 80' of the ice that he could have to skate around Chara, he tried to squeeze himself between Chara and the boards. He did this because he's been trained to know that even if he doesn't get to the puck, he's more than likely to draw a penalty on Chara for obstructing his progress. Twenty years ago, Paciroetty would have taken a different route to the puck, but nowadays the players are looking for penalties (Sabermetrics has invaded hockey! Arrrgh!). If you don't know anything about hockey, learn that much, at least; sometimes, the quickest way to the puck is also the quickest way to get your head smashed in.
2. Chara is 6' 9" -- without skates -- and about 260 pounds. Pacioretty is 6' 2" and is listed at 203 pounds. If Chara puts his arms up to take or to deliver a hit, he's pretty much going to hit everyone on the ice in the head. Pacioretty has compounded his original mistake (different route to the puck)by trying to out-muscle a player 7 inches taller and 57 pounds heavier. That's like trying to stop a runaway tractor trailer with a Jack Russel Terrier...only less funny.
3. Neither player appears to be aware of their position on the ice. The area around the benches is perhaps the most dangerous spot on the entire ice surface, other than being directly in front of the goals. Nothing good ever happens there; players collide with one another during line changes, players get hit and propelled into the benches, players get hit and have the bench gates suddenly open on them as they're falling, sometimes a player gets run into an open bench gate with hip or head, and now in this case, Pacioretty gets himself run into the partition that separates the two benches and provides a spot for a color commentator and some photographers to get a better look at the action. If you took that little booth out, it doesn't do much good, because you still have to keep the teams physically separated when not on the ice, and there would still be a partition there.
The real issue the NHL has to deal with is not a bunch of guys fighting, or someone getting hurt as the result of the natural flow of the game; it's the douchebag who goes around hitting people from behind, or taking a liberty with another player in a vulnerable position because 'it's his job' to 'stir things up'.
Players like (each has video linked) Sean Avery, Matt Cooke, Trevor Gillies have serious issues with the concepts of respect and boundaries. They do what they do because it's what they get paid to do, and because that's how they got to into the league and how they stay there, and they give no thought to how this affects everyone they come into contact with. In the case of Avery, the league actually -- in a backhanded way which I think is almost unconscious -- protects them. Mario Lemieux (owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins) can complain all he wants about the thuggery in the Modern Game, but I don't recall him being so critical when Jay Caufield (and others) was there to fight his battles, and he has one of the worst offenders (Cooke) on his payroll. His real issue is that his multi-million-dollar Golden Boy (Sidney Crosby) isn't on the ice because of an accidental hits, and because the Islanders beat the snot out of his team (which has a roster of fighters of it's own that is quite formidable) one night in February.
This issue isn't going to be resolved by a public outcry over 'gratuitous violence'; it's going to be corrected when the Matt Cookes, Trevor Gilles' and Sean Averys of the world lose their jobs. What they do is NOT hockey. The public which cries about this level of violence is the same public which mostly knows nothing about hockey, made NASCAR and MMA two of the fastest-growing 'sports', and which routinely looks the other way when yet another NFL player is hauled off on domestic violence or murder charges. Even the causal hockey fan loves a good fight or a hard bodycheck, and so long as everything is legal, the combatants are willing, and the fisticuffs are a result of the natural flow of the game, it's all to the better.
What you need to do is not condemn the sport, only the assholes who don't play it properly. Hockey players will sort this out themselves, and it will, unfortunately, require that certain guys get beatings on the ice. That's the purpose of a hockey fight, after all: to let so-and-so know he can't get away with what he's just tried to get away with. Once a guy takes enough knuckles to the head, he starts to get the message and the stupidity stops. If the league wasn't so worried about it's image, it would take out the stupid Instigator Rule and not have the officials rush to break up skirmishes, and let the players police themselves; whenever the league tries to clamp down on fighting, we get more of this sort of thing.
And that 'image' they were trying to clean up by clamping down on fighting gets tarnished because we've taken the violence to a whole 'nuther level. And morons who know nothing tsk-tsk and tut-tut, start their preaching... and then go and watch WWE when no one is looking.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
The Wide World Of Sports, Part I...
Time to take a little break from the world of politics and government stupidity to turn to the greatest national passion of all: sports.
Currently in the United States, the National Football League is having a labor dispute (you can't call it a 'strike' because a) the season hasn't started yet, b) the Player's Union dissolved itself as a tactical ploy, and c) it's not like these guys work -- they get paid to play a game that most men would play for free). At stake, as I understand the whole kerfuffle, are three major issues:
1. The NFL generates about $10 billion dollars in revenue every year. The Players want a bigger slice of the pie, while The Owners of small-market teams complain that they cannot 'compete' in efforts to get the best players because the NFL revenue sharing plan is not fair, and let's face it: the only way you could get most players to sign up for a stint in Cincinnati, Jacksonville or Oakland is to offer a sufficiently-large bribe. It's not as if those cities offer all the amenities or quality-of-life of a New York, Dallas, or Chicago. If those teams cannot attract the top talent, or build high-tech stick-up booths disguised as arenas where you can get a $7.00. hotdog and $10.00 beer to go with your $15.00 parking spot, and $150.00 ticket, they simply will not survive as franchises, despite the raging popularity of the sport.
All of that, if you ask me, is an example of a very poor businessman, and if there's anything we've learned from our recent economic troubles it should be that businesses run by complete boobs should be allowed to fail. I have no sympathy for the Owners in this dispute.
2. The Player's opportunity for an extended career in the NFL is rather limited. It's a violent sport, and one horrendous injury can end your playing days (and thus, opportunity to earn millions of bucks to play a game rather than do something useful for a living). The more money that is available to Players, the higher their average salary, and the better their bottom lines become when (not if) they're finally crippled, or brain damaged for life. The Players want a bigger slice of that $10 billion bucks, too. Then again, the average salary of an NFL player in 2009-2010 was $1.9 million per. That's, on average, 43 times the median national income (about $44,000 a year).
I have no sympathy for the players, either. If you can't live on $1,900,000 bucks a year, can't invest or save any of it properly, then you too, deserve to go bankrupt.
So, like most things in life, this is a simple fight over money. The recent rioting by Public Union employees in Wisconsin was about money. The battles over Continuing Resolutions and Budgets in Washington, D.C. is about (wasting) money. The world revolves around money, and despite the protests of Democrat or Republican, Teacher and State Legislator, or Jerry Jones and Peyton Manning, the NFL fight is about money, too.
Unless you're star fumbler...errr...running back, Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings. Then the fight is about more than money. The whole money idea is a smokescreen which obscures the real issue at the heart of the NFL's labor problems: Slavery.
Because according to Peterson, playing in the NFL is like being a slave.
Now, mind you, Adrian Peterson is slated to make $10 million bucks next year. He makes several million more each year endorsing all sorts of products, lending his name and image to the companies that make sporting apparel, beer, and a whole lot more.
Peterson also received a free college education while playing football at Oklahoma, and to be honest, I'm fairly certain that several other universities were falling all over themselves to offer Peterson exactly the same thing. He had his choice of which college or university got the privilege to short-change a deserving student in order to acquire a football player to raise the University's image, and generate millions in television and merchandising revenue. The question as to whether or not Peterson actually made the best of that educational opportunity is probably answered by his analogy vis-a-vis professional football and slavery.
If anything, Peterson has probably engaged in a little bit of hyperbole (with serious racial undertones) in some misguided attempt to play at public relations -- the players are mainly African-American, the Owners are, to a man, Caucasian -- in an attempt to shame the Owners publicly into giving the Players what they want. It's a terribly bad analogy for the following reasons:
1. Adrian Peterson chose to pursue the career he has right now. He has probably pursued the dream of being a professional football player since boyhood, and everything he's done in his life probably had that possibility as part of it's rationale. Most people who have endured slavery, modern-day or no, usually had no choice whatsoever in the matter.
The same goes for both sides in this dispute; there is no law that say you have the right to play football for a living,just as there is no law that states you have the right to own a football team, let alone a profitable one. This is an argument between two sets of uniquely-privileged people fighting over who deserves an even-greater level of privileges. Paid for by another group, naturally. Both sides do what they do of their own free will, and can walk away from it anytime they wish if the situation is not to their liking.
2. Adrian Peterson has become a wealthy man because of the combination of his talents and the popularity of the sport and league. I just wonder what the real slaves of 200 years ago could have accomplished if they had been a) paid, b) paid out of all proportion to the actual value they brought to any transaction, c) had the option of Free Agency (selling their labor to the highest bidder), d) access to a career path that offered them a choice between an array of institutions of higher learning, and then access to a skewed labor pool which produces nothing of intrinsic worth, but still gets to share a $10 billion pie....for playing a game for 6 just months out of every year.
I would rather like to think that Fredrick Douglas, Dred Scott and Harriet Tubman would probably have done a whole lot better in life if they could only have just run quickly, made $10 million bucks a year, and lived in a culture that celebrated their talents (while overlooking their shortcomings) without regards to their race. Adrian Peterson has no more experience of real slavery than I do.
3) Adrian Peterson has the option to stop playing football any time he wants to do so. I cannot help but notice that while he denounces his $10 million-dollar-a-year indentured servitude, he isn't quite disgusted enough to actually quit. There's nothing worse than a rich man that tells you that he despises the whole sordid routine by which he becomes fabulously wealthy, but then doesn't give the money back. It's like the CEO who made $500 million for driving his company into the ground, and ruining his shareholders, saying that while he takes responsibility for the losses and they make him sad, it's not his fault that 'The Marketplace' sees fit to compensate him so richly for such lackluster performance.
Adrian Peterson could retire tomorrow. He could walk away from the gridiron and The Marketplace which disgusts him so much, but you know he won't. The disputes over money don't affect him so much -- after all, he's got $10 mil coming, and probably another $20 mil by the end of his contract -- as much as it affects the players who don't have his level of skill, i.e. the Average NFL player, who by comparison, only made that paltry $1.9 million last year.
If Peterson did walk away then he would have to work for a living, and when you've been groomed from an early age to be nothing but a professional athlete the idea of going to an office every day, or digging ditches, must be the worst of all possible nightmares. People like Peterson aren't supposed to work, you know, they're only supposed to play, and receive a ton of cash, the public adulation, and a sort of contrived immortality that somehow will require him to wear a horrendous yellow blazer one day.
Besides, you didn't think Adrian Peterson took that free 'education' they were offering at Oklahoma to learn something useful, do you? Adrian Peterson doesn't quit because Adrian Peterson is probably not prepared to do anything else with his life. and probably learned nothing at Oklahoma except that he's mystically entitled to shoot his mouth off about the 'unfairness' of his gilded-entered-of-his-own-free-will bondage, while people who sweep floors, build skyscrapers, put out fires, and drive the trucks are losing their livelihoods. The NCAA can talk itself blue in it's collective face about 'scholar-athletes'. but let's face it; the whole thing is a sham. If Adrian Peterson didn't have speed, power and athletic skills, his career options would probably have ranged somewhere between Car Wash Attendant, a job that required him to ask every customer if they wanted to Super-size their order, or involved an Orange Jumpsuit. The only thing he apparently learned in school was that being a star running back excused you from all the realities, considerations, and consequences of normal life, I guess.
People who don't really work for a living, pretend that working out and their playtime is somehow labor, or who have the good fortune to do what they love and get paid a shitload of money for it, have absolutely no reason to toss around the word 'slavery'. They certainly don't need a UNION. If anything, Adrian Peterson -- and a great many others -- should be on his knees praying to the spirits of the ancestors who suffered ACTUAL SLAVERY so that he could live in a world where he gets paid -- very well -- to drop footballs in playoff games.
Currently in the United States, the National Football League is having a labor dispute (you can't call it a 'strike' because a) the season hasn't started yet, b) the Player's Union dissolved itself as a tactical ploy, and c) it's not like these guys work -- they get paid to play a game that most men would play for free). At stake, as I understand the whole kerfuffle, are three major issues:
1. The NFL generates about $10 billion dollars in revenue every year. The Players want a bigger slice of the pie, while The Owners of small-market teams complain that they cannot 'compete' in efforts to get the best players because the NFL revenue sharing plan is not fair, and let's face it: the only way you could get most players to sign up for a stint in Cincinnati, Jacksonville or Oakland is to offer a sufficiently-large bribe. It's not as if those cities offer all the amenities or quality-of-life of a New York, Dallas, or Chicago. If those teams cannot attract the top talent, or build high-tech stick-up booths disguised as arenas where you can get a $7.00. hotdog and $10.00 beer to go with your $15.00 parking spot, and $150.00 ticket, they simply will not survive as franchises, despite the raging popularity of the sport.
All of that, if you ask me, is an example of a very poor businessman, and if there's anything we've learned from our recent economic troubles it should be that businesses run by complete boobs should be allowed to fail. I have no sympathy for the Owners in this dispute.
2. The Player's opportunity for an extended career in the NFL is rather limited. It's a violent sport, and one horrendous injury can end your playing days (and thus, opportunity to earn millions of bucks to play a game rather than do something useful for a living). The more money that is available to Players, the higher their average salary, and the better their bottom lines become when (not if) they're finally crippled, or brain damaged for life. The Players want a bigger slice of that $10 billion bucks, too. Then again, the average salary of an NFL player in 2009-2010 was $1.9 million per. That's, on average, 43 times the median national income (about $44,000 a year).
I have no sympathy for the players, either. If you can't live on $1,900,000 bucks a year, can't invest or save any of it properly, then you too, deserve to go bankrupt.
So, like most things in life, this is a simple fight over money. The recent rioting by Public Union employees in Wisconsin was about money. The battles over Continuing Resolutions and Budgets in Washington, D.C. is about (wasting) money. The world revolves around money, and despite the protests of Democrat or Republican, Teacher and State Legislator, or Jerry Jones and Peyton Manning, the NFL fight is about money, too.
Unless you're star fumbler...errr...running back, Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings. Then the fight is about more than money. The whole money idea is a smokescreen which obscures the real issue at the heart of the NFL's labor problems: Slavery.
Because according to Peterson, playing in the NFL is like being a slave.
Now, mind you, Adrian Peterson is slated to make $10 million bucks next year. He makes several million more each year endorsing all sorts of products, lending his name and image to the companies that make sporting apparel, beer, and a whole lot more.
Peterson also received a free college education while playing football at Oklahoma, and to be honest, I'm fairly certain that several other universities were falling all over themselves to offer Peterson exactly the same thing. He had his choice of which college or university got the privilege to short-change a deserving student in order to acquire a football player to raise the University's image, and generate millions in television and merchandising revenue. The question as to whether or not Peterson actually made the best of that educational opportunity is probably answered by his analogy vis-a-vis professional football and slavery.
If anything, Peterson has probably engaged in a little bit of hyperbole (with serious racial undertones) in some misguided attempt to play at public relations -- the players are mainly African-American, the Owners are, to a man, Caucasian -- in an attempt to shame the Owners publicly into giving the Players what they want. It's a terribly bad analogy for the following reasons:
1. Adrian Peterson chose to pursue the career he has right now. He has probably pursued the dream of being a professional football player since boyhood, and everything he's done in his life probably had that possibility as part of it's rationale. Most people who have endured slavery, modern-day or no, usually had no choice whatsoever in the matter.
The same goes for both sides in this dispute; there is no law that say you have the right to play football for a living,just as there is no law that states you have the right to own a football team, let alone a profitable one. This is an argument between two sets of uniquely-privileged people fighting over who deserves an even-greater level of privileges. Paid for by another group, naturally. Both sides do what they do of their own free will, and can walk away from it anytime they wish if the situation is not to their liking.
2. Adrian Peterson has become a wealthy man because of the combination of his talents and the popularity of the sport and league. I just wonder what the real slaves of 200 years ago could have accomplished if they had been a) paid, b) paid out of all proportion to the actual value they brought to any transaction, c) had the option of Free Agency (selling their labor to the highest bidder), d) access to a career path that offered them a choice between an array of institutions of higher learning, and then access to a skewed labor pool which produces nothing of intrinsic worth, but still gets to share a $10 billion pie....for playing a game for 6 just months out of every year.
I would rather like to think that Fredrick Douglas, Dred Scott and Harriet Tubman would probably have done a whole lot better in life if they could only have just run quickly, made $10 million bucks a year, and lived in a culture that celebrated their talents (while overlooking their shortcomings) without regards to their race. Adrian Peterson has no more experience of real slavery than I do.
3) Adrian Peterson has the option to stop playing football any time he wants to do so. I cannot help but notice that while he denounces his $10 million-dollar-a-year indentured servitude, he isn't quite disgusted enough to actually quit. There's nothing worse than a rich man that tells you that he despises the whole sordid routine by which he becomes fabulously wealthy, but then doesn't give the money back. It's like the CEO who made $500 million for driving his company into the ground, and ruining his shareholders, saying that while he takes responsibility for the losses and they make him sad, it's not his fault that 'The Marketplace' sees fit to compensate him so richly for such lackluster performance.
Adrian Peterson could retire tomorrow. He could walk away from the gridiron and The Marketplace which disgusts him so much, but you know he won't. The disputes over money don't affect him so much -- after all, he's got $10 mil coming, and probably another $20 mil by the end of his contract -- as much as it affects the players who don't have his level of skill, i.e. the Average NFL player, who by comparison, only made that paltry $1.9 million last year.
If Peterson did walk away then he would have to work for a living, and when you've been groomed from an early age to be nothing but a professional athlete the idea of going to an office every day, or digging ditches, must be the worst of all possible nightmares. People like Peterson aren't supposed to work, you know, they're only supposed to play, and receive a ton of cash, the public adulation, and a sort of contrived immortality that somehow will require him to wear a horrendous yellow blazer one day.
Besides, you didn't think Adrian Peterson took that free 'education' they were offering at Oklahoma to learn something useful, do you? Adrian Peterson doesn't quit because Adrian Peterson is probably not prepared to do anything else with his life. and probably learned nothing at Oklahoma except that he's mystically entitled to shoot his mouth off about the 'unfairness' of his gilded-entered-of-his-own-free-will bondage, while people who sweep floors, build skyscrapers, put out fires, and drive the trucks are losing their livelihoods. The NCAA can talk itself blue in it's collective face about 'scholar-athletes'. but let's face it; the whole thing is a sham. If Adrian Peterson didn't have speed, power and athletic skills, his career options would probably have ranged somewhere between Car Wash Attendant, a job that required him to ask every customer if they wanted to Super-size their order, or involved an Orange Jumpsuit. The only thing he apparently learned in school was that being a star running back excused you from all the realities, considerations, and consequences of normal life, I guess.
People who don't really work for a living, pretend that working out and their playtime is somehow labor, or who have the good fortune to do what they love and get paid a shitload of money for it, have absolutely no reason to toss around the word 'slavery'. They certainly don't need a UNION. If anything, Adrian Peterson -- and a great many others -- should be on his knees praying to the spirits of the ancestors who suffered ACTUAL SLAVERY so that he could live in a world where he gets paid -- very well -- to drop footballs in playoff games.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Why Was it That Unions Were Supposed to be a Good Thing, Again?
New York State spends ten times the national average on Public Sector pensions than any other state in America, and the Union 'Workers' themselves contribute less than half the National Average to them.
Even more shocking than this figure is that the New York Times actually reported it.
Go figure.
By the way, since I'm on about the unions again today, Dear NFL Player's Association:
The Average Salary of an NFL player in 2009 (according to various sources) was about $1.8 million dollars per year. If you are a millionaire, you don't need a union -- you need a financial planner.
You get paid to play a game that most men play for free in their spare time. You get free medical care from your teams, fame, endorsement deals, and your choice of hot chicks (gold diggers, yes, but who says you have to get emotionally attached?). And you only 'work' half the year (various training camps and the NFL season).
Yes, I know; those contracts aren't guaranteed, but then again, that's the reality that the majority of people in this country face; employment is very often "at will", and the only difference between us working slobs and you is that a good number of you get a portion of that long-term contract money up front. It doesn't hurt as much when you've signed a four-year $10 million contract with a $500,000 signing bonus, and $3 million up front, and then get cut. I'd give a testicle for a contract like that.
So would most people in America. You have some nerve threatening a strike.
As for the NFL owners: it's a $10 billion dollar NFL pie, surely you can figure out a way to divide it well enough to keep everyone happy. Then again, you're the people who charge season ticket-buyers a 'license' fee for the right to buy tickets -- before raping them for said tickets.
Both sides in this manufactured dispute make me sick.
Even more shocking than this figure is that the New York Times actually reported it.
Go figure.
By the way, since I'm on about the unions again today, Dear NFL Player's Association:
The Average Salary of an NFL player in 2009 (according to various sources) was about $1.8 million dollars per year. If you are a millionaire, you don't need a union -- you need a financial planner.
You get paid to play a game that most men play for free in their spare time. You get free medical care from your teams, fame, endorsement deals, and your choice of hot chicks (gold diggers, yes, but who says you have to get emotionally attached?). And you only 'work' half the year (various training camps and the NFL season).
Yes, I know; those contracts aren't guaranteed, but then again, that's the reality that the majority of people in this country face; employment is very often "at will", and the only difference between us working slobs and you is that a good number of you get a portion of that long-term contract money up front. It doesn't hurt as much when you've signed a four-year $10 million contract with a $500,000 signing bonus, and $3 million up front, and then get cut. I'd give a testicle for a contract like that.
So would most people in America. You have some nerve threatening a strike.
As for the NFL owners: it's a $10 billion dollar NFL pie, surely you can figure out a way to divide it well enough to keep everyone happy. Then again, you're the people who charge season ticket-buyers a 'license' fee for the right to buy tickets -- before raping them for said tickets.
Both sides in this manufactured dispute make me sick.
Friday, July 09, 2010
On King James...
So, LeBron James has decided to play in Miami, forsaking Cleveland (perhaps the most loyal of all sports fans, considering their city hasn't won anything since the Magna Carta was signed) for the sunnier climes of Florida.
A few remarks:
1. I hate basketball. With a passion. What's even worse than basketball is the American version of the game which is less about sport and more about contrived soap-opera drama. If it wasn't "Can Kobe win without Shaq?" storylines, it's all about "Where will LeBron Go Now?", and it's all frankly sickening.
Give LeBron credit where it is due; he does something that I cannot, at a level that is most extraordinary. I can appreciate the athleticism, skill and artistry of what he does, but can you really justify LeBron James being a potential billionaire for basically tossing a ball through a hoop that he can reach without his feet breaking contact with the floor?
2. To me, sports must involve three things: physicality, defense and competition. Of all the major sports played in America (sans "women's" sports) , basketball is perhaps the second-least physical (baseball is hardly physical at all -- the majority of the action revolves around two men playing catch, and the other seven standing around waiting for something to happen). Yes, sometimes you catch an elbow under the rim, or take a charge in the chest, but it's not like football or hockey where one of the objectives is to actually flatten an opponent in order to gain an advantage.
This si why, contrary to the protests of fat, rich, gay White Men everywhere, Golf and Tennis are not sports, and Tiger Woods is not an "athlete"; he's just a guy who's good at putting a ball in a distant hole without anyone trying to take his head off, or throw him curveballs.
By definition, any game in which it is possible to routinely score 100 points is bereft of defense. You can't bump anyone, you can't hand-check, you can't even put your butt in someone's mid-section and block him out anymore (like you could, and were expected to, in the Old Days). Nowadays, the game of basketball is all about dunking, with players allowed a 20-foot running start on their leaps (whatever happened to traveling calls?). This is not exciting, to me, and it gets rather repetitious. If there's little or no physical contact, like someone allowed -- and waiting -- to take your head off when you make your run to the hoop, then there's no defense.
3. This whole "Where will the Big Three Play" drama (James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade) is a example of collusion between players to hold, basically, an entire league hostage to their desire to play together at extremely high salaries. These three guys basically got together and formulated a plan to build their own "Dream Team", and they have the talent to ensure that it happened. I can just imagine what would have been the reaction of the NBA Player's Association if Management (i.e. the Owners) had gotten together to collude in ensuring that players weren't signed by certain teams, conspired to hold salaries low, or had made arrangements to "spread the talent out" by Gentlemen's Agreement. You can bet the players would scream bloody murder.
Yet, James, Bosh and Wade have done just that, and openly. There were meetings between them, all eagerly covered by a sport's press that has nothing better to do until football season starts. There wasn't even a hint that what these three guys were/are doing is in the best interests of the game, the fans, and the league.
The excuse that Free Agency and their talent level gives them the right to do this is fatuous; had these guys been, say, construction workers or computer programmers, than workers acting collectively or individually to ensure they got the best deal for as many of their colleagues as possbile is a good thing.
But Professional Sports is not the same as the conventional labor market. These guys are employees, and beneficiaries, of a Federally-protected Monopoly. NBA basketball is a racket, in much the same way as the NFL, MLB and the NHL are; there is only one Big-Time professional basketball league in the United States, and this be it.
4. I'm getting sick and tired of hearing NBA players say that everything they do is "about the Ring", and "bringing a Championship to X", because at the rates at which these guys are being compensated, it's probably all bullshit. I could live quite happily, thank you, if I made $16 million a year (guaranteed) to run around in my shorts chasing a ball in a game without defense without having achieved a Championship season, or even entry into The Hall of Fame. The truth is that the majority of NBA players will never see their name engraved on a trophy, or enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but they will have been paid a shitload of money to do something that millions of men would give a testicle to do for free just once. If I had a big, fat bank account, I could console myself quite easily if I never got a Ring, or that call from the HOF.
And somehow, there's always someone willing to take these guys seriously when they spout that sort of nonsense, and it happens every day. Right now, there's a utility player for the Kansas City Royals talking about being in a World Series. Right now, there's a St. Louis Rams 5th-round draft pick talking about a shrine in Canton with his name on it. At this moment, I can promise you that one of the dimmer bulbs on the Florida Panthers is predicting a Stanley Cup in South Florida.
It usually doesn't happen, but somehow they are obligated to say it (to keep the fans interested and hopeful, I guess), and you can usually tell they don't buy a single word they've uttered on either subject.
LeBron James is probably a billionaire already, considering endorsements, and he's never won a damned thing. Not only that, but he's just manipulated The System without the force of actual credentials/achievements (i.e. playoff success) at all, in a way that no one outside of professional sports will ever be able to do. Do you really think LeBron James cares about a Championship when he has a billion in the bank?
Somehow, we take these guys seriously when they spout this kind of garbage.
The NBA is going to rue the day it let the inmates run the Asylum. Baseball already has $200 million players so that the average fan a cannot afford regular visits to the ballpark, and very soon, the same will happen in Miami; we're talking $86 million for Bosh, $99 million for James, and I don't know (nor can bothered to find out) what Wade is going to get. In Miami. Do you really think Miamians can afford to the soon-to-be-ridiculously-priced tickets the Heat will need to sell to keep these three guys in green?
So, I say congratulations to LeBron James for at least being able, as a probable-billionaire, to stick up the other real-billionaires. But otherwise, this really all just a large, stinking pile of manufactured bullshit which makes us reg'lar, thinking folks sick to death of professional athletes and their phony posturing, manufactured drama, and lip service to us, the Paying Customer.
A few remarks:
1. I hate basketball. With a passion. What's even worse than basketball is the American version of the game which is less about sport and more about contrived soap-opera drama. If it wasn't "Can Kobe win without Shaq?" storylines, it's all about "Where will LeBron Go Now?", and it's all frankly sickening.
Give LeBron credit where it is due; he does something that I cannot, at a level that is most extraordinary. I can appreciate the athleticism, skill and artistry of what he does, but can you really justify LeBron James being a potential billionaire for basically tossing a ball through a hoop that he can reach without his feet breaking contact with the floor?
2. To me, sports must involve three things: physicality, defense and competition. Of all the major sports played in America (sans "women's" sports) , basketball is perhaps the second-least physical (baseball is hardly physical at all -- the majority of the action revolves around two men playing catch, and the other seven standing around waiting for something to happen). Yes, sometimes you catch an elbow under the rim, or take a charge in the chest, but it's not like football or hockey where one of the objectives is to actually flatten an opponent in order to gain an advantage.
This si why, contrary to the protests of fat, rich, gay White Men everywhere, Golf and Tennis are not sports, and Tiger Woods is not an "athlete"; he's just a guy who's good at putting a ball in a distant hole without anyone trying to take his head off, or throw him curveballs.
By definition, any game in which it is possible to routinely score 100 points is bereft of defense. You can't bump anyone, you can't hand-check, you can't even put your butt in someone's mid-section and block him out anymore (like you could, and were expected to, in the Old Days). Nowadays, the game of basketball is all about dunking, with players allowed a 20-foot running start on their leaps (whatever happened to traveling calls?). This is not exciting, to me, and it gets rather repetitious. If there's little or no physical contact, like someone allowed -- and waiting -- to take your head off when you make your run to the hoop, then there's no defense.
3. This whole "Where will the Big Three Play" drama (James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade) is a example of collusion between players to hold, basically, an entire league hostage to their desire to play together at extremely high salaries. These three guys basically got together and formulated a plan to build their own "Dream Team", and they have the talent to ensure that it happened. I can just imagine what would have been the reaction of the NBA Player's Association if Management (i.e. the Owners) had gotten together to collude in ensuring that players weren't signed by certain teams, conspired to hold salaries low, or had made arrangements to "spread the talent out" by Gentlemen's Agreement. You can bet the players would scream bloody murder.
Yet, James, Bosh and Wade have done just that, and openly. There were meetings between them, all eagerly covered by a sport's press that has nothing better to do until football season starts. There wasn't even a hint that what these three guys were/are doing is in the best interests of the game, the fans, and the league.
The excuse that Free Agency and their talent level gives them the right to do this is fatuous; had these guys been, say, construction workers or computer programmers, than workers acting collectively or individually to ensure they got the best deal for as many of their colleagues as possbile is a good thing.
But Professional Sports is not the same as the conventional labor market. These guys are employees, and beneficiaries, of a Federally-protected Monopoly. NBA basketball is a racket, in much the same way as the NFL, MLB and the NHL are; there is only one Big-Time professional basketball league in the United States, and this be it.
4. I'm getting sick and tired of hearing NBA players say that everything they do is "about the Ring", and "bringing a Championship to X", because at the rates at which these guys are being compensated, it's probably all bullshit. I could live quite happily, thank you, if I made $16 million a year (guaranteed) to run around in my shorts chasing a ball in a game without defense without having achieved a Championship season, or even entry into The Hall of Fame. The truth is that the majority of NBA players will never see their name engraved on a trophy, or enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but they will have been paid a shitload of money to do something that millions of men would give a testicle to do for free just once. If I had a big, fat bank account, I could console myself quite easily if I never got a Ring, or that call from the HOF.
And somehow, there's always someone willing to take these guys seriously when they spout that sort of nonsense, and it happens every day. Right now, there's a utility player for the Kansas City Royals talking about being in a World Series. Right now, there's a St. Louis Rams 5th-round draft pick talking about a shrine in Canton with his name on it. At this moment, I can promise you that one of the dimmer bulbs on the Florida Panthers is predicting a Stanley Cup in South Florida.
It usually doesn't happen, but somehow they are obligated to say it (to keep the fans interested and hopeful, I guess), and you can usually tell they don't buy a single word they've uttered on either subject.
LeBron James is probably a billionaire already, considering endorsements, and he's never won a damned thing. Not only that, but he's just manipulated The System without the force of actual credentials/achievements (i.e. playoff success) at all, in a way that no one outside of professional sports will ever be able to do. Do you really think LeBron James cares about a Championship when he has a billion in the bank?
Somehow, we take these guys seriously when they spout this kind of garbage.
The NBA is going to rue the day it let the inmates run the Asylum. Baseball already has $200 million players so that the average fan a cannot afford regular visits to the ballpark, and very soon, the same will happen in Miami; we're talking $86 million for Bosh, $99 million for James, and I don't know (nor can bothered to find out) what Wade is going to get. In Miami. Do you really think Miamians can afford to the soon-to-be-ridiculously-priced tickets the Heat will need to sell to keep these three guys in green?
So, I say congratulations to LeBron James for at least being able, as a probable-billionaire, to stick up the other real-billionaires. But otherwise, this really all just a large, stinking pile of manufactured bullshit which makes us reg'lar, thinking folks sick to death of professional athletes and their phony posturing, manufactured drama, and lip service to us, the Paying Customer.
Monday, January 11, 2010
About Those Steroids...
RE: Mark McGwire's "confession" that he did, indeed, take steroids (like nobody knew?).
First of all, it comes off as extremely self-serving, given that he's finally talking as a necessary precursor to his taking a job with the St.Louis Cardinals, his old team, and the first people he'll have to reconcile are the fans in his home stadium. The same fans who cheered him on in 1998 when he was breaking the single-season home run record, and the same fans who had every reason to believe that what they were watching was truly talent, and not a chemically-enhanced moron with a bat.
Secondly, if McGwire gets away with this -- and by "gets away" I mean gets to keep his job in baseball, and, God forbid!, eventually finds his way into the Hall of Fame -- then I shall have to pray for the soul of Pete Rose. Rose simply gambled, and the implied problem with that was that he had the ability to affect the outcome of games so as to make good on those bets. McGwire, thanks to a better Life Through Chemistry, had the ability to affect games simply for his own selfish ends, i.e. the Record and the Hall of Fame...not to mention millions in contract negotiations.
Tell me how one (Rose's offense) is worse than the other's (McGwire's offense) and then explain to me why Pete Rose is persona non grata and McGwire gets the chance to "rehabilitate his image"? Is it because Rose stonewalled for many years? Well, didn't McGwire do the same thing, and even do it in front of Congress, under oath? Is it because Rose's actions struck at the very integrity of the game? I can't think of anything that undermines the integrity of the game more than a player who has knowingly taken drugs deliberately designed to increase his strength. If Mark McGwire were a racehorse, somebody would be going to jail. We cared about doped up racehorses then, but not human beings...
Mark McGwire is a liar and a cheater. He has cheated baseball. He has cheated the fans who paid good money for tickets in the mistaken belief that the competition was on the up and up. He has desecrated another man's (Roger Maris') accomplishment. I not only hope McGwire fails in his new capacity as hitting coach (and seriously, what sort of hitting coach can you be when your experience is limited to "shoot up, bulk up and swing hard"?), and I hope the only way he ever sees Cooperstown is from the Interstate.
Mark McGwire is one of the reasons why I no longer watch baseball, and haven't for years. The other reason is the sanctimonious "owners" who knew full-well that the sport was being cheated by McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens and others, and who then acted shocked...shocked...that the sport was crooked. They made billions --- and then had the nerve to tut-tut and click their tongues when the public outrage became widespread. What a bunch of phonies! A pox upon both their houses.
First of all, it comes off as extremely self-serving, given that he's finally talking as a necessary precursor to his taking a job with the St.Louis Cardinals, his old team, and the first people he'll have to reconcile are the fans in his home stadium. The same fans who cheered him on in 1998 when he was breaking the single-season home run record, and the same fans who had every reason to believe that what they were watching was truly talent, and not a chemically-enhanced moron with a bat.
Secondly, if McGwire gets away with this -- and by "gets away" I mean gets to keep his job in baseball, and, God forbid!, eventually finds his way into the Hall of Fame -- then I shall have to pray for the soul of Pete Rose. Rose simply gambled, and the implied problem with that was that he had the ability to affect the outcome of games so as to make good on those bets. McGwire, thanks to a better Life Through Chemistry, had the ability to affect games simply for his own selfish ends, i.e. the Record and the Hall of Fame...not to mention millions in contract negotiations.
Tell me how one (Rose's offense) is worse than the other's (McGwire's offense) and then explain to me why Pete Rose is persona non grata and McGwire gets the chance to "rehabilitate his image"? Is it because Rose stonewalled for many years? Well, didn't McGwire do the same thing, and even do it in front of Congress, under oath? Is it because Rose's actions struck at the very integrity of the game? I can't think of anything that undermines the integrity of the game more than a player who has knowingly taken drugs deliberately designed to increase his strength. If Mark McGwire were a racehorse, somebody would be going to jail. We cared about doped up racehorses then, but not human beings...
Mark McGwire is a liar and a cheater. He has cheated baseball. He has cheated the fans who paid good money for tickets in the mistaken belief that the competition was on the up and up. He has desecrated another man's (Roger Maris') accomplishment. I not only hope McGwire fails in his new capacity as hitting coach (and seriously, what sort of hitting coach can you be when your experience is limited to "shoot up, bulk up and swing hard"?), and I hope the only way he ever sees Cooperstown is from the Interstate.
Mark McGwire is one of the reasons why I no longer watch baseball, and haven't for years. The other reason is the sanctimonious "owners" who knew full-well that the sport was being cheated by McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens and others, and who then acted shocked...shocked...that the sport was crooked. They made billions --- and then had the nerve to tut-tut and click their tongues when the public outrage became widespread. What a bunch of phonies! A pox upon both their houses.
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