Life Before the Oprah-ization of Sports

Hey, did you hear Jason Collins is a homosexual? What, the president called? He's on Good Morning America? Let's all get in touch with our feelings:

Dozens of NBA players sent messages to Collins after the story was posted Monday, many doing so through social media. The support didn't stop there, with President Barack Obama also calling to offer his support.

"It's incredible. Just try to live an honest, genuine life, and the next thing you know you have the president calling you," Collins said. "He was incredibly supportive and he was proud of me, said this not only affected my life but others going forward." 

I'll skip the group hug and recall a time when professional athletes had the decency and sheer politeness not to foist their "issues" upon all of us:

When [Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame linebacker Jack] Lambert was two years old his parents were divorced. He'd spend weekends with his father. Most of the time they'd play ball. A few years ago Jim O'Brien of The Pittsburgh Press asked Lambert if his parents' divorce had affected him in any way.

"I'm sure it did," Lambert said, "but I don't think it's the business of readers of The Pittsburgh Press." 

It sure was better back then.

The Mark of an Irresponsible Adult

John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach who, according to star prodigy Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, could never coach in today's poisoned sporting atmosphere, says it best:

“Having worked with young people all my life, I can tell you for a fact that today’s kids are crying out for discipline,” Wooden said. “Unfortunately, they aren’t getting the discipline they need at home or from most of their teachers. Until we give them the proper standards to live by, we will continue to be a nation whose young people will be in and out of trouble.”

“Sometimes I wonder if most people even know what real discipline is,” he continued. “The purpose of discipline isn’t to punish but to correct. It’s not there to be used to antagonize an individual, but to help and improve him. It’s not yelling at someone, because that kind of approach never gets you anywhere. You can only get the response you want by acting fairly and rationally.”

Of course the Wooden way would never make it today. The current world of big-time college basketball emphasizes winning to the absolute exclusion of anything else and doesn't even bother with the pretense of educating young athletes anymore, as the best prospects frequently leave for the NBA after one or two years. Wooden's famous Pyramid of Success emphasized self-control as a key building block to winning in life, which was seen as the more important goal, as well as in sports, which were but a part of life.

That young college athletes do not learn any of these lessons today is literally printed on their very skins. Does a player covered in tattoos such as that look like somebody who has an appreciation of the valuable building blocks of poise and self-control?

But our college coaches have so abandoned their roles as molders of young men that we have the shameful and ridiculous spectacle of our current national championship-winning head man actually joining in on the irresponsibility:

Louisville head coach Rick Pitino vowed that if his Cardinals won the National Championship that he would get a tattoo commemorating the win.

Well, just over two weeks after Pitino’s team cut down the nets in Atlanta, the 60-year-old coach has some fresh ink to show for it.

In a picture posted online, Pitino showed off the tattoo, located on the upper left portion of his back, which has a big red L, 2013 and “NCAA Champions 35-5” on it.

It's refreshing that Pitino would go so far as to actually brand himself as what he is: a 60-year-old jackass who has abdicated his duty to impress on the young men in his charge the enduring lessons they need to learn to win in the game of life in order to pursue the far lesser goal of winning at passing games of sport.

One fears that the mark of character he leaves on his players will be just as permanent as the ink etching he has embossed on his pasty, wrinkled back.

The High Cost of Treating Jocks as Enlightened Beings

Bloody sock. But it was the Rhode Island taxpayer who got soaked.

Curt Schilling made tens of millions of dollars because he could throw a baseball harder and with more movement and accuracy than the vast majority of people. Along with those millions came an ego-stoking public adulation that could warp and distort the most stable person:

Schilling got the idea for 38 Studios while playing for the Arizona Diamondbacks in the early 2000s. By then he was well into his pitching career, and starting to wonder what he might do next. An aspiring businessman and budding philanthropist, Schilling thought of himself as a kind of -- well, let’s allow him to make the comparison: “I wanted to make a difference in the world and take one shot at getting Bill-Gates-rich.”

So our multi-millionaire athlete saw himself as a visionary who could do no wrong. He was a superstar. Not a baseball superstar. A superstar, period. The kind that is beyond any and all limitations. A 21st-century Renaissance man capable of deep thoughts such as this:

Schilling didn’t just want to develop a video game, let alone a sports-based one. He wanted to develop the most complex kind of video game possible -- a “massively multiplayer online role-playing game,” in which thousands of users interact inside an elaborately conceived and designed fantasy world. 

[. . .] 

Schilling had no idea how much time and money it took to build the software required for such a game. And he didn’t exactly help matters by weighing in with suggestions of his own. There was, for example, that instance when he mentioned in an e-mail that it might be cool to have mounted combat on flying pigs. The design team worked on nothing else for a week.

Really, who can argue with weaponized flying pigs? Now, of course Schilling is entitled to do whatever he wants with his money, no matter how far removed from reality his plans may be. But it is only due to our societal worship of the modern athlete that a taxpayer boondoggle such as this could occur:

Less than a year later, Schilling had persuaded the star- struck governor of Rhode Island, Don Carcieri, to issue $75 million in tax-free bonds for 38 Studios. That’s when “the Big Blowhard” -- as Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy once called Schilling -- officially transcended the familiar narrative of the ex-athlete as failed businessman. He wasn’t losing his own fortune on a bad investment, a failed car dealership or an ill-conceived restaurant franchise. He was fleecing taxpayers in order to realize his deluded dreams. 

$75 million in taxpayer money because our society thinks professional athletes are somehow better people than the rest of us simply because they can play a game. We often talk about the moral and societal costs of our disproportional attachment to pro sports. Here is one occasion where we can put an actual monetary price tag on our twisted infatuations.

Time Machine - 1981: Way to Start Your First Playoff Game in 12 Years

Agree with the poster here... one of the all-time great NFL playoff games. A Bills fan had a superb edited video of this game that sadly got pulled by youtube along with everything else on his account and it brought back to me how amazing a game this was. Both teams went all out, there were crazy momentum swings and real swashbuckling acts of heroism on both sides. Throw in a muddy Shea track and it all added up to what really was an epic. Extremely underrated to this day.

The Shea crowd was in a frenzy for the opening kickoff of the first Jets playoff game since the famous Super Bowl III victory. Anticipation boiling over, the ball is kicked, and...

(2:47 mark)

Welcome back to the playoffs, Jets fans!

Oh, man, this was playoff football as it was meant to be played. Grass, slop and a total lack of the overwhelming corporate porn we're all so used to seeing plastered all over the stadium and television screen today.

If you ever get a chance to see more of this game, do not miss the opportunity. It's a true forgotten gem.

From Paul Newman to Patrick Burke in 36 Years

The formerly ultra-macho (that was before the influx of Europeans) National Hockey League for whatever bizarre reason has decided to leap into the vanguard of the homosexual push into professional sports:

The National Hockey League announced a formal partnership Thursday with You Can Play, an advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring equality and respect for all athletes regardless of sexual orientation.

The agreement is the first of its kind in the four major North American male professional team sports, none of which have ever seen an active player come out as gay.

"I have no doubt that we will be first," Philadelphia Flyers scout Patrick Burke told USA TODAY Sports. "Our league is ready for this and our players are ready for this. The culture of the sport, when it comes to LGBT issues, is so far ahead of the other sports that I have no doubt that there will be openly gay athletes in the NHL in the near future."

Of course this bit of stylish PC inanity instantly reminds one of Reg Dunlop's legendary response to corporate sports weeniness in the classic comedy "Slap Shot":

(1:50 mark for zinger, though whole scene is recommended viewing)

Can you imagine him saying that in Gary Bettman's Beauty Parlor League today? He'd be suspended for 5 years, sentenced to sensitivity training for another 5 years and forced to work with homosexual organizations for the rest of his adult male life.

Is there the slightest doubt that Reg Dunlop's hockey world was a hell of a lot more fun than Gary's?

Nine Reasons to Continue to Ignore Baseball

As Opening Day marks another season of the game formerly known as America's Pastime, here (in no particular order) is a starting nine of our own: A lineup of reasons why baseball has been destroyed beyond repair over the past 30-odd years:

1. The Outsourcing of "America's Game"

I like what this fan and retired U.S. Marine had to say:

The Padres have made their presence known in Latin America with an elaborate $8 million baseball complex opening this spring in the Dominican Republic, an academy of baseball for foreign players - mostly Latin Americans. Their future is apparently hinged on Latin players.

[. . .]

There is a place for foreign players in America. But to recruit overseas so extensively that American youth are overlooked to the extent they are in the small towns and inner cities throughout the land is not a good idea nor is it a good business practice. Fans will eventually - many already do - resent the 'foreignization' of our game here at home. 

I remember grabbing my cap and glove and riding my bike to little league baseball practice as a kid, then riding back and watching the Game of the Week on NBC. I would watch Fred Lynn make circus catches in centerfield or George Brett leg out a triple to the gap and would be enthralled. There felt like a real connection between my local field and the major leagues. The outsourcing of the game has severed that connection, fatally, and is a huge reason why baseball has hemorrhaged young fans over the past three decades.


2. Steroids

Not much needs to be said here. This poison obviously comes in all colors. But one can especially understand why a young Dominican or Venezuelan can resort to PEDs as a way to escape poverty and make a new life for himself and his family. This quote from an early 1980s article on steroids made me immediately think of what we are doing with our Latino baseball players as soon as I read it:

Without adequate research conducted on subjects taking megadoses, it's impossible to clearly understand the potential steroids have for good or ill. One of the most extreme suggestions for cutting through the difficulties was put forth last fall in a speech by Arthur Jones, the founder, president and chief publicist of Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries Inc. At a strength-coaching conference at the University of Virginia, he announced the following grandiose plan:

"Next week I'm going south of the border to institute a 10-year study using thousands of subjects. Why south of the border? Because we can get the subjects at a price we can afford, and we can get subjects who are motivated, who will train. When you take starving subjects you can motivate them, believe me. We're going to take about 1,000 subjects and give them massive doses of steroids, and we're going to take another 1,000 and give 'em no steroids. You can't do that in this country. But you can do it down there. When they sign up for this program they'll be told in advance, 'Look, what we give you may be a drug, or it may not be. Even if it is, you won't know it. The drugs might be dangerous, and they might ruin your liver. Now if you don't want to sign up, there's the door, leave.' "

We've taken starving subjects and we've motivated them to abuse their bodies for our entertainment. No wonder it's many fans who are looking for the door.... and leaving.


3. Too Many Teams, Too Many Games

This is a problem in every sports league today yet it seems especially problematic for baseball, which at 162 games has the longest regular season by far. Having the Red Sox and Yankees play a ridiculous 18 games a season against each other does nothing to solve the problem. Fact is, teams with no real identity like Arizona, Colorado, Miami and Tampa Bay were added to an already packed slate, with the result being too many evenings of minblowingly dull games on the schedule. Contraction of teams and schedule would reinvigorate rivalries and make the daily form seem more meaningful.


4. No World Series Day Games

For those who are too young to remember, you are also too young to remember when baseball mattered. A nation would re-work its schedule around a weekday afternoon World Series game back in the day. While that may be impractical in our modern workaholic world, why there can't be weekend afternoon games is truly a black mark against the money-obsessed managers of the game today. Baseball was meant to be played on real grass in real elements, and the crisp fall air lighted by a dull autumnal sun always added to the gravitas of World Series baseball.


5. Cheap Home Runs

It may seem unbelievable but there was a time when a home run could actually kill a rally. When a team was behind by 4-5 runs and trying to stage a comeback and would get a couple of baserunners on, the idea was to keep the pressure on the pitcher, keep those bases occupied and keep moving station to station, wearing down the opponent like drops of water on a stone. A home run was seen to kill this pressure, as it emptied the bases while keeping the opponent still in the lead. This kind of baseball is completely extinct today. Now in our age of the cheap home run you can just hit keep hitting "long balls", even on breaking balls away that you pop to the opposite field, and hope to hit enough to get back in the game. Something very special has been lost in the process.


6. Uneven Financial Playing Field

Why teams aren't force to share all the revenue from their local cable sports television network deals is the biggest financial scandal in the game today. Cable TV is THE revenue stream of the modern sports age and the notion that teams in huge metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles and, yes, Dallas, can use huge sums of that revenue to outspend less-fortunate teams is a black mark on competitive fairness. New York will always make more TV revenue than Kansas City, but you won't have a product to put on that New York sports superstation without a Kansas City to play against you. Why is this not obvious? Greed blinds but even the National Football League understands the necessity of sharing television revenue. Baseball seemingly never will.


7. No Real Doubleheaders

Greed strikes again with the elimination of the real doubleheader. Now doubleheaders are almost never intentionally scheduled and those that do occur are separate gates-affairs in which fans would have to pay twice to attend. A weekend doubleheader on a lazy summer day was a great way to connect with fans but the money machine that is MLB today cares not for such bon mots to their supporters. They see you as sheep to be fleeced for all they can get.


8. Too Many Fans at Every Game

Which brings a similar complaint: Who are all these fans attending all these games? As recently as the late 1980s, you could go to the park for, say, a Tuesday night game against a team worth seeing, buy a cheap seat in the bleachers and stretch out and enjoy a relaxing evening at the park. Now, except for in struggling cities, the stadiums are always filled, with often the only seats that are empty being those corporate rip-off "field" seats that ring home plate. The charm of going to the park and saying "Give me the four best you got" are long gone. It's a mystery to me just as it's a mystery that the local Applebee's parking lot is always completely filled when I drive by. Why? I DON'T KNOW. It also reminds me of the old Yogi-ism: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."


9. Tony La Russa

The man who more than anyone has single-handedly destroyed the modern game. Retired now from the St. Louis Cardinals, his micromanaging, especially with pitchers, and his coldly technical approach to the game has given us the birth of the 4+ hour baseball game. Not 30 years ago a National League game would routinely end in two hours. AL games, which had the designated hitter, were considered long if they went past the 2:30 mark and approached 2:45. Three-hour games were rare and undesirable.

Then La Russa comes along with his situational matchups for EVERYTHING. This 1983 article on his Chicago White Sox staff shows how he robbed the starting pitcher of his manhood:

Two of the things that don't count for nearly as much as they used to are virginity and complete games. As La Russa says, "We don't pay off on complete games here." Of course, in most other places the banner of complete games must be kept waving. A CG remains a goal so that when pitchers fall short, as invariably they do, they will feel guilty and, as well, suffer one more black mark should they ever come to arbitration. Also, it is psychological. [Dick] Tidrow, who used to be a starter, explains: "It's hard to tell a starting pitcher: give me six good innings, and then I'll get you out, because then the starter's liable only to think in terms of six and he won't go but four."

After reducing the starter in stature, La Russa proceeded to re-make the bullpen into an exercise in tedium. Pulling the righty who's mowed down the first two batters because the lefty batter is coming in, despite the fact that he's only hitting .207 lifetime against the righty - doesn't matter, the charts say it's the right move - one change leading to another... and another.... and another. Extending the game, making a starting pitcher feel like he's accomplished something by going five, then using six pitchers to close out the last four innings, and, not the least, adding to the insufferably egotistical idea of the manager as the guy who wins games, as opposed to the players on the field.

The great Sparky Anderson was the ideal manager. What a marvelous quote for a skipper to make: "A baseball manager is a necessary evil." Sparky knew it took talent to win games. You get the talent and then you put it out there to do what it does best. Then guys like La Russa came along and said they were deciding games. Four-and-a-half hour games are the legacy this monumental destroyer of the simple game that is now gone has left for us all.

Thank you... no. I'll pass.

Again.

They All Don't Go Straight to the NBA

So now this young man is on his third school in less than four years. God only knows how Kentucky head coach / devotee of higher education John Calipari stole him from NC State in the first place and now he just tosses him in the trash like a consumed fast food wrapper:

[Point guard Ryan Harrow] transferred to Kentucky from North Carolina State in 2011 and was not eligible to play on last season's national championship squad.

Calipari indicated that Harrow, a Marietta, Ga. native, is transferring to Georgia State due to a health issue with his father. CBSSports.com reported that Harrow will request a waiver to play immediately with the Panthers due to his father's health.

Calipari's got another LOADED "class" - HA! As if any of them even know what that is - coming in next season and Harrow doesn't fit the scheme anymore so they throw the sick dad card out there and hope he doesn't have to sit out a year now that he's being run off the Kentucky team.

Remember the Ryan Harrows the next time you see a big-time college coach waxing eloquent on the joys of teaching young, impressionable kids. For there are hundreds of Harrows for every one superstar who reaches the professional mountaintop.