Signs: Baseball
Why do you hate; why do you love baseball? What do you feel about it?
Can Elite Sports be Competitive?
Chelsea, Barcelona, Arsenal, and Manchester United.
It’s down to four teams in the European Champions League, and, as with the NCAA Basketball tournament, and despite early Cinderella stories, in the end, it’s always the perennially strong teams and leagues at the top.
In the case of Europe, consider: the tournament has been going on since 1956.
That’s 53 final games, contested by 106 teams. But of those 106 slots, 62 were taken by the same ten teams, over and over again. Furthermore, when broken down by country, 74 of the 106 slots (70%) have been filled by representatives of just four national leagues: Italy, Spain, England and Germany. This year of course, the semis are contested by Spanish and English teams.
So despite a fairly open enrollment (every national league in Europe, plus a few others may send at least one team), it’s always the same guys who win: the teams with money, the teams with tradition, the teams whose leagues have built a reservoir of coefficient points.
Competitive leagues generate spectator interest, and the appearance of a cartel will lead to less spectator interest. But maybe the cartel is broad enough to trim that problem.
A few years ago, UEFA head Michel Platini began trying to reform the system to make it a little more open, and has repeatedly run into opposition from the elite teams, who were on the verge of separating from their national leagues to form a lucrative continental league, the G-14.
So the same teams win over and over again. It that even a problem in need of a solution?
My team, by the way, is FC Basel, the big fish in the small pond that is Switzerland. And to my credit, I began supporting them in the mid eighties, when they were division two in that small pond.
Signs: Globalized Basketball
What is it about basketball that has made it the second-biggest sport in the world? Is it the association with American pop (read: black) culture? Is it its embrace by Communist governments?
Where have you seen basketball’s reach?
This is from rural Poland, courtesy of sxc.hu member mzacha.
What's Wrong With Steroids?
Along with most people who enjoy a good game of baseball, I was angry with Alex Rodriguez for doping up his performances in recent years. But I was more relieved—that what we all guessed was finally out in the open.
Since then I’ve thought more broadly about steroids than ever before. My first exposure was with the World Record-shattering 100 meter dash of Canadian Ben Johnson at the 1988 Olympics in Korea.
Then there’s the Tour de France, which I’ve always followed, and which has seen so many doping scandals they’ve almost stopped being scandalous.
I stopped liking major league baseball several years ago because of all the money in the game, but still thrill to hear the summertime clink of bats at the municipal fields a few blocks from my house.
Anyway, while I hate doping, I’m now at the point of asking why. Why is doping wrong? Here are a few reasons, and why I don’t think they’re as solid as I’ve always thought …
- Steroids are unfair. Which is to say, steroids make athletic competition unequal. That’s true. But the line between cheating and great preparation is really foggy. I mean, one high school football team has a full-time coach, another doesn’t. Is that equal? No. Is it cheating?
- Steroids are dangerous. That’s true. But so are sports themselves. Especially at the high performance level.
- Steroids are a bad role model for kids. That’s true. But indignant community leaders forget: pro athletes have a long track record of being bad role models. From reckless living, to gambling, it’s been a dreary run for professional sports.
- Steroids destroy the mythology of sports. This is probably the most damning criticism. An important element of sports is escapism, and we’d like to imagine sports to be a singular place, stripped of all the inequalities, the nastiness, the lies of the world—a holy place, in the original sense: set apart. Doping shatters that notion. It’s a great shame, but insufficient (in my reckoning) for banning steroids.
- Steroids elevate winning above excellence. True, but this again is a fantastic notion: when was winning really not the supreme reason for top-echelon sports? I’m not talking about what we say with our mouths—what we say we believe—I’m talking about how we live our lives—what we actually believe.
That being said, I don’t believe these points myself, especially the first one. I love exercise, and sports can be great for the soul because a healthy body can be great for the soul. Steroids are repugnant to me, but I regret to say: I expect nothing less from pro athletes, and I don’t know the answer.
Any suggestions?
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