Standard of Living

So you have this athlete.

He’s born with a gift: he can hit baseballs really, really well, and he can run and jump and catch. And when he gets to be about 18, he is descended upon by agents, lawyers, scouts, recruiters, and everyone imaginable– who might want one of the golden eggs.

And he signs a contract and buys his mother a Buick and takes his friends out to party does some drugs and hires a couple of body guards. And the babes flow like ripened orchids spraying down a verdant valley…

Who knows why he chose Lisa. He saw her at a Lakers’ game. They met. They did who knows what. Somehow she, alone of all the babes, persuaded him to make a commitment, though anyone who knows anything about professional athletes and money and waste can hardly conceive of the phrase in such a context. But that’s what they say, made a commitment.

They marry. Where does she come from? Nowhere, really. She’s not an athlete. She’s not rich. She’s not the daughter of the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation. She is Lisa Strawberry and that’s enough, thank you.

And we know about Darryl. In one of the Simpsons’ most prescient episodes, Mr. Burns hires bunch of professional ball players to be ringers on the plant team so he can beat a hated rival. As “Darryl Strawberry” stands in the outfield, the crowd, as they did in real life, mockingly chants “Dar—-ryl, Dar—ryl”. Bart joins in. Lisa says, Bart, it’s not nice to make fun of a ball-player and Bart replies that professional athletes are used to it, it’s no big deal. And then a close-up of Darryl Strawberry’s face as a big, fat tear drops from his eye.

From the news:

To back up her petition of $50,000 per month in spousal support, which was granted, Lisa filed papers with the Superior Court of California saying that she had been spending $20,000 a month for clothes, $5,000 a month for shoes and an average of $7,000 for each purchase of jewelry, “which I have been free to indulge myself in as desired.”

“How am I the culprit?” she asks at breakfast. “They wanted to know what was my standard of living. And that’s what it was.”

Well, if she doesn’t get it, we know where it’s going to go instead. Strawberry was arrested last year for trying to buy drugs and propositioning an undercover police officer. Is Lisa’s $20,000 a month on clothes different, really? He’s addicted to cocaine, she’s addicted to clothes. He’s a fool and she’s an idiot. They deserve each other.

The judge should order them to remain married for as long as they both are fools.

The Beijing Olympics

Let me make clear, first of all, that I really don’t want Toronto to win it’s bid for the 2008 Olympics. I think the Olympics are a massive boondoggle, a gigantic monument to bureaucratic privilege, corruption, and pomposity.

They tell us that the homeless in Toronto will benefit from the new housing provided for the Olympics. If you can stop laughing long enough to read further… the Olympics will benefit those with vested property interests and corporate flags to fly, and their cronies in the legislature whose reward is to shake hands with celebrities and gratuitously shove their ugly mugs in front of tv cameras and make mind-numbingly boring speeches in front of privileged audiences. It will benefit union organizers who can hold the Olympics hostage to work delays, and contractors who can charge excessive amounts for minor alterations. It will benefit the cops who get to demand extravagant new funding of helicopters and anti-terrorist programs and equipment and who, afterwards, will never, ever downsize because the cops never ever announce that crime has gone down and therefore, less of them are needed.

So perhaps it is appropriate, after all, that the Olympics go to China. Beijing, we are told, wants them very badly. China wants to show the world that it is a modern, efficient, and important country. To ensure that the world gets the right impression, they are sure to lock up all the dissidents long before a single shot-putter lifts a single steel ball.

The logic of the Olympic Organizing Committee is that China should be invited to engage itself with the rest of the world. It should be given an opportunity to experience first hand the delights and rewards of crass consumerism. It should share in the spoils of commercial exploitation and greed.

All those aging intolerant dictatorial communist officials will immediately perceive the error of their ways and invite MacDonald’s to open several franchises.

The West salivates at the thought of a billion microwave-less consumers. The U.S. especially thinks the Chinese can be convinced of the virtues of television and cell-phones, designer running shoes and Mickey Mouse ears. Democracy can come later.

Historically, the Chinese have only invited Western companies in so they can absorb a new technology and then adapt the production methods for their own uses. They have never yet, allowed Western companies to set up their own branch plants and go into some serious production and sales. I frankly don’t know how likely it is that they will “see the light” on this issue. I don’t know why many Western politicians and corporate leaders think things have changed.

I don’t know why we should think it would be a good thing for China to just let big, Western corporations into the country to operate as freely as they do here.

But the idea of Beijing hosting the Olympics while continuing to torture, imprison, and murder political dissidents is offensive in the extreme. The real message, if they are given the 2008 Olympics, is that we in the West are cold-hearted pragmatists who only pretend to care about human rights and justice. They will absorb the lesson that when it comes to cold, hard, cash, freedom and democracy must take a back seat.

And one more key point. You will shortly hear a lot of blather about how the Olympics are not about politics– they are about international cooperation and the spirit of human achievement and athletics and grace and international harmony.

You will hear that phrase often: “not about politics”.

It is utter crap.

The Olympics are the worlds biggest stage, the biggest spectacle, the most prestigious sporting event in the known universe. The powers that be, as part of the deal, get to preside over the festivities. They get to put on huge displays. They get to make speeches. They get to meet celebrities. They get to be on TV. They get to tie in the splendiferous event with local events, at which they do have complete control. In other words, the Olympics are utterly political. They promote the status quo. They add to the prestige and– most importantly– legitimacy– of the regime in power. They promote consumer products and the values they embody. They promote competitiveness and hierarchical social values.

So don’t give me this crap about “not about politics”. It is not about the “wrong” politics, which is, democracy and human rights.

And maybe that is how it should be. Have you ever read about athlete’s lives? How they are utterly subject to the totalitarian whims and caprices of the authorities within the national Olympic bodies? After all, we send about three functionaries to the Olympics for every athlete we send. That’s where your money goes. That’s where Coke’s and Sony’s and Nikon’s and Kodak’s money goes.

 

Lottery Athletes

There are about thirty million young boys in the United States who would like to become professional basketball, baseball, or football players. Their heroes are Michael Jordan, Ken Griffey Jr., O. J. Simpson.

Well, scratch Simpson.

For middle and upper class children, it is a dream that can only be sustained with continuous development and tangible, immediate rewards. Most of these kids will sensibly give up the dream before they get to college. They know that their odds are not really very good. They know that the amount of work and dedication required is astronomical, when weighed in proportion to the chances of success, of becoming a professional athlete.

For those other children… they will try to be the best player on their team. If they attain that goal, they will try to be the best in their league. If, through some miracle, they reach that plateau, the best in the city. The best in the region. The best in the state.   Maybe even the best in the country.

The thing is that even if you are the best in the region, and even if you are drafted #1 by a professional sports team, your odds of making it are still not all that great. For reasons that no one seems very clear about, the percentage of high draft choices who actually become stars is not very great. You would be surprised. Look at a list of the top five draft choices for Major League Baseball for each of the last ten years. Recognize any names? A few, yes. But who are all these other guys, and what are they doing now? Selling cars? Installing aluminum siding? Dealing dope?

For many poor kids, a career as a professional athlete is their only possible escape from poverty and powerlessness. Professional sports. Or drugs.

If you believe television, the movies, radio, books, magazines, and pretty well every other tin-voiced conduit of illusions in our society, the way you make to the major leagues, the big time, the Olympics, the “show”, is through very, very hard work and determination. The coaches tell you this: they want their players to work hard at practices. The players tell you this: they want you to think that they earn millions of dollars not just because they are talented but also because they are virtuous. The Owners of the teams tell you this: they want you to believe that paying a high school dropout $20 million a year is a good “investment”. The media tells you this: because it is what you want to believe.

Is this one of the great deceptions of our time?

How many athletes, do you suppose, start out with merely average talent, and then improve to the level of play required to become a professional?

Not many. Consider that the best player in an averaged size town– the best of all the kids his age in that town– is not likely to make it. Not likely at all. How does the best kid in Peoria stack up against the best kid in Brooklyn? He doesn’t have a chance, unless he is truly remarkable.

Yet we continue to pedal this illusion that it is hard work and determination that makes the difference between great athletes and merely good athletes. But we don’t even believe it ourselves. Every high school coach has a well-stocked bench of average kids under the illusion that they will get playing time if they “stick it out”. They won’t. Only the most talented will play, at least in the games that matter. The coach knows this even as he spews his nonsense about “hard work and determination”.

The situation is analogous to the world of business. Successful entrepreneurs want you to believe that they got rich through hard work and determination, and through taking “risks” with their capital. But if you investigate further, you will find that most of these successful entrepreneurs had money to begin with. And that is the simplest and truest rule of success in our society: to those with much, more shall be given.

Cherry Pie in the Face

Hockey Night in Canada should fire Don Cherry.  The man is a complete fraud.

Don Cherry is a former NHL coach.  I emphasize the word “former”.  After short tours with the Boston Bruins and Colorado Flames, nobody wanted him anymore.  He was offered a post on Hockey Night in Canada.  He’s been there ever since, telling everyone else how to run their hockey teams.

His one virtue is he speaks his mind without thinking– if you can call that a virtue.  It is entertainment, but I wouldn’t call it a virtue.  For some reason (well, the reason is obvious– it wins viewers), Don Cherry is allowed to speak his mind on HNIC when nobody else is.  Remember Dave Hodge was fired for flipping a pencil when HNIC declined to switch to the last few minutes of an important game in Montreal instead of going to advertising.

Cherry lambastes coaches, referees, and players– especially European or Russian players–during the intermissions of hockey games.  You get the impression that if only Don Cherry were in charge of the Leafs or the Flyers or the Canadiens, the Stanley Cup would be a sure thing.

But wait a minute!  Don Cherry is in charge.  Don Cherry owns an Ontario Junior “A” hockey team called the Mississauga Ice Dogs.  Wow.  This team must be doing really great, right?

The Mississauga Ice Dogs are currently on pace to set a record all right.  It has about 8 wins.  It is about to set a record for the fewest points ever for a Junior “A” franchise.   The Ice Dogs have one of the top positions in next year’s OHL Junior “A” draft sown up.  But the most talented eligible players don’t want to play for Don Cherry’s team.

One of the biggest problems with the team is that many of the employees are members of Don Cherry’s family.  Another problem is that Don Cherry hires a coach, puts him in charge of the team’s performance, and then second-guesses all of his decisions.

And, of course, Cherry doesn’t want any Russian or European players on his team.

The result of these policies is that the Ice Dogs are the worst team in junior hockey.  Cherry should admit he doesn’t know anything about hockey.  He just mouths off at every opportunity.

It’s time for Hockey Night in Canada to bring in an expert analyst instead.

Sports Psychopathology

Let me make a few things clear before going into this particular rant.

1. I like the U.S. women’s soccer team. They play hard, they have fun, and they play like a team.

2. They deserved to win the gold medal. They took on the world’s best and beat them fair and square.

3. The nauseating hype provided by the U.S. media, which worships everything rich, or sexy, or successful, is not their fault. They cooperated, but they aren’t responsible for flogging it all to death.

There. That’s out of the way. Rah rah for women’s soccer. I hope they start a professional league and I hope they draw lots of fans, and I hope the tax-payers take all the money they currently siphon into professional baseball and football and basketball and hockey and give it to welfare mothers instead.

Why did the U.S. win? Why do they always seem to win? Is the “American way of life”? Is it clean living and virtue? (Judging from some of the more colorful activities of this same women’s soccer team– posing semi-nude for a picture for David Letterman– I guess not.) Is it capitalism? Or is it just that the Americans have a terrific level of determination?

Well, think about some of the training “techniques” the U.S. team used. The entire team went out to a building on the Georgia Tech campus and took turns racing up the concrete steps while their team-mates hollered out the theme from “Rocky”. They also climbed to the top of a cliff in Portland, Oregon. Half of them put on blindfolds while the other team members led them around a narrow ledge.

These activities were devised by a sports psychologist Colleen Hacker. In fact, Hacker is the “team psychologist”. Some of the players credit her strategies with their success.

Sounds logical, right? I think most people read that and think, yes, those strategies probably helped them win.

Why?

Just because they did these exercises and then they won does not prove that there is a causal relationship between the two. In fact, most teams at high levels of competition have team psychologists… and most of them lose.

The U.S. women’s soccer team won because they were more skilled and more determined than the opposition. The truth is that “sports psychology” plays a very role in any competition anywhere.

I’m not a very good competitor myself, I guess. These exercises sound pretty stupid to me. What’s the point? What’s the big deal? These exercises can only make sense to a person who believes that winning is everything. And if you believe that winning is everything, you must believe that life is all about hierarchies, and whoever gets on top is best or happiest or richest or sexiest or whatever. I can’t picture one of these sports psychologists spending a lot of time helping poor people or spending time at an old age home, or teaching kindergarten, or doing any of the millions of things that make life good for people.

But this is the age of Nike, and the media openly proclaim their contempt for the idea that winning might not be the most important thing in life. Implicitly, of course, the exact thing they proclaim is that consuming is the most important thing in life. Your hero may be a lean and mean and physically beautiful 20-year-old athlete, but you are 30 pounds overweight and sitting on your couch drinking beer and eating chips and then rushing down to the mall to buy some Nike sneakers because Michael Jordan says losers like you suck, big time.

The real purpose of sports psychology is the same as the real purpose of management consulting: to convince you that you can be just as successful as anyone else if you follow certain prescribed practices and strategies. The truth is that successful people are successful because they were born with certain skills or blessings or blind luck, and you will never be as successful as they are no matter how hard you try…. but you can sure spend a lot of money trying.

Run. Run to the mall. Buy, buy, buy. When you get to the top of those steps leading into the Dunkin’ Donuts, raise your hands in the air and scream, “gonna fly now…..”.

2022-04-11 Addendum

[I neglected to point out one important germane fact: the officiating to this point always favored the Americans.  I’m not saying they actually gave them the games– no, no– that would be too obvious.  But it was also obvious that close-calls in close games always went the Americans’ way.  It’s not hard to believe : the institutions that controlled international soccer matches understood perfectly where the money was: big American corporations who were not about to put out if the Americans were not in the finals.]

“Into Thin Air”: on Climbing Your Ego

For a while, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the only two persons to have set foot on the top of the world’s tallest peak. They did it on June 2, 1953, just before coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The news electrified the world in a way we can hardly imagine today. The North Pole had been found, and the South Pole, and almost every other remote location in the world had been explored and conquered and claimed. British climbers had been trying to ascend Everest for at least 25 years before Hillary and Norgay, using bottled oxygen, finally succeeded.

Since then, there have been more than 615 successful ascents of Mount Everest– and 142 deaths. In 1996 alone, there were 30 expeditions, all up there during the same two-week period in May, the only safe– if you could call it that– time to climb Everest, between the winter snows and the spring typhoons.

So it’s not a very exclusive club any more. Nor is this club confined to extraordinary athletes: in 1985, climber David Breashears escorted a wealthy but fit 55-year-old Texan to the top, proving, so it seemed, that almost any reasonably healthy person could do it. Everest lost some of its lustre and soon serious mountain climbers were going after more exotic records, like “first person to climb the highest mountain on all seven continents” and “first person to climb a mountain on a bicycle” and “first person to actually camp on the summit”, and so on.

Every year now, dozens of climbers make the attempt, and a good number of them make it. It’s become big business, for the guides, for the Sherpas (12 or more required for each expedition), for the climbers (witness the glut of books and films), and for the governments of Nepal and Tibet, the two nations bordering on Everest. These governments charge up to $70,000 for permits for each expedition. Legitimate expenses? Right.  Because the government has to cover some costs involved in these expeditions.  Do they?  So how come volunteers from around the world have to clean up the cast-off oxygen bottles and torn tents? Cash grab? Probably.

Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate the resolve, discipline, courage, and determination required to plant your foot on the highest spot on the planet. One out of five never come back.

It’s not as if you can just take a bus to the base of the mountain and then give it your best shot. The journey to “Base Camp” itself (at 17,500 feet, the starting point for all expeditions to the top) requires a flight to Katmandu, a ride in a battered, aging Soviet helicopter to the town of Lukla, 9,200 feet up, and then a long trek, usually about 3 or 4 days, through mountainous passes and wobbly foot-bridges over winding rivers. There are no Holiday Inns on this journey: you stay overnight in rambling, leaky stone lodges. You may pick up a dangerous parasite if you are not careful about what you eat and drink. And if you do get the runs, you’ll have to relieve yourself in an outhouse– if they’re not overflowing.

All of the supplies necessary for a summit attempt– food, water, oxygen bottles, medical equipment, and radios, and so on, must be laboriously hauled up narrow, winding mountain paths by yaks.

There is only about 1/2 as much oxygen in the air at base camp as there is at sea level. Above 25,000 feet, there is only 1/3 as much. Climbers must slowly acclimatize themselves to the thin air, a process than can take up to eight weeks, of grueling excursions up and down the lower ranges of the mountain.

The ascent begins with a harrowing trip through the Khumbu Icefall, a unstable white maze of fractured glacier and towering seracs that has taken more lives than any other part of the mountain, including the summit. In some places, climbers must walk across three or more rickety aluminum ladders strapped together over a crevasse hundreds of feet deep. The glacier itself moves 3 to 4 feet every day, and is covered with a thin layer of snow and ice that can conceal treacherous gaps.

After a few trial runs, you camp above the glacier in temperatures that can descend to -20 C. Then climbers ascend the Lhotse Face, a sheer icy wall of 3000 feet, and camp about halfway to the top of it, at 24,000 feet.

When someone says “mountain climber” to us, we tend to picture a blonde yodeling alpinist ascending a steep rock face with ropes and pick axe. Most of Everest, however, including the Lhotse Face, is more like a very steep walk. Most climbers attach themselves to ropes strung along the face for safety, but they basically walk up a very steep, hard, icy incline of about 30 degrees. It is the incredible cold, the wind, the snow and ice, and that thin oxygen that makes it so fearsome.

The tents are nestled into little ledges carved out of the ice by the Sherpas. The Sherpas don’t carve out ledges for themselves, though: they prefer to go on up to the South Col at the top of the Lhotse Face and camp where it’s safer.

The film version of “Into Thin Air” (a dramatization– not a documentary) shows Chen Yu-Nan, a Taiwanese climber, coming out of his tent on the Lhotse face clad only in his boot liners. He slips and falls down a hundred feet or so and then drops into a crevasse. In the film, he died then and there, but in real life, he died a few days later, while trying to make his way back to base camp. The Taiwanese team proceeded without him.

Above 20,000 feet, the adventurers travel very slowly, resting every few steps. Many climbers develop a hacking cough, dizziness, and insomnia. If you ascend too fast, you can develop altitude sickness– your body fails to produce enough red blood cells to keep your brain fed. This can also lead to High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE) or High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE). Blood vessels in the brain, starved for oxygen, swell up, causing disorientation, loss of motor functions, and even coma. Climbers lose weight quickly, making them more vulnerable to the cold.

As if that isn’t enough to deal with, the sun and snow combine to create unbearable heat and light during the day, giving climbers splitting headaches and dehydration. Once the sun has gone down, the temperature can drop to 20 or 30 below zero or worse. If you were to spend the night near the summit itself, you might encounter a wind-chill of well below -50. Few of the climbers who have been stranded near the top overnight in a blizzard live to tell the tale or make the talk show circuit.

Keep in mind that, even in this day and age of phenomenal technological breakthroughs, Everest remains one of the most remote places on earth. Helicopters cannot ascend higher than 20,000 feet (the air is too thin to provide thrust to the rotors), so there is no rescue possible for climbers trapped near the summit in a raging blizzard, other than the assistance of your depleted and exhausted fellow climbers.

Much of the current fascination with Everest can be traced to the media coverage of the disaster in 1996, when 12 climbers died over a three-day period. Writer Jon Krakauer was on one of those expeditions and wrote a searing, compelling book on it called “Into Thin Air”. This unusually honest and self-examining account of the many lapses in judgment that led to the disaster unleashed a storm of controversy that continues to simmer today.

Krakauer claims that some of the guides behaved irresponsibly, rushing ahead of their clients to the summit and then descending before their clients were safe. One of the key Sherpas wore himself out carrying 80 pounds of useless communications gear for writer Sandy Pittman so she could send “live” dispatches from the summit. Lines were not strung over the difficult Hillary Step until climbers had been waiting in the freezing cold for 90 minutes– a delay that may have cost several lives. It is clear that all of these problems were aggravated by the fact that there were 39 people trying to summit on the same morning. Bottlenecks formed. Climbers in difficulty were lost in the crowd. Guides lost track of who was where.

When a storm struck late in the day, two of the expedition leaders, Rob Hall from New Zeeland, and Scott Fisher from the U.S., were trapped on the mountain, along with several exhausted clients. Doug Hansen, a client with the Hall group and a postal worker from Washington State, disappeared and was never found. Andy Harris, a guide with Rob Hall’s group, probably slipped over one of the sheer cliff’s that surround the peak while trying to assist Hall. A group of climbers barely made it back to the South Col, the location of their advanced base camp, but couldn’t locate the tents in the howling wind and snow. They huddled in the cold growing weaker and weaker until ace climber Anatoli Boukreev (who had descended early, ahead of his charges) found them. Beck Weathers and Yasuko Namba (the oldest woman to ever summit Everest) were left for dead. The others were almost carried back to the camp.

The next day, to the utter astonishment of Krakauer and the others, Beck Weathers walked into camp under his own power. He was put into a tent and made as comfortable as possible, but it was expected that he would not last the night. The next day, he was found lying in the open– his tent had collapsed and torn away in the night and his sleeping bag was half off. He had been shouting for help for hours but nobody had been able to hear him. He ultimately lost his hand and nose to frostbite.

Ed Viesturs and David Breashears, who were waiting at the base camp to make their own summit bid, helped rescue Weathers, an action that became a bit of a sub-plot of the IMAX film. Viesturs and Breashears did a good thing, but the film plays coy with the facts. You are left with the impression that Beck Weathers got into trouble and Viesturs and Breashears heroically rescued him, and that was that. The IMAX film glosses over the rest of the disaster, partly because real disasters don’t sell very well, are complicated to explain, and raise questions about the whole idea of celebrating a summit of Everest.

A few days after Weathers was helicoptered to Katmandu from base camp, Viesturs, Breashears, a Spanish woman named Aracelli Segarra, and Jamling Norgay, the son of Tenseng Norgay, the first Sherpa to summit Everest, made their own successful summit.

The Viesturs team made a film of the trip for IMAX. It’s a big disappointment. For one thing, Viesturs got ahead of the team and reached the summit without benefit of cameraman. So what was supposed to be the climax of the film ends up being a verbal footnote. And when Segarra and Norgay make the top with the camera-man, you are left with the absurd impression that they filmed themselves. They celebrate, embrace, look out over the world, while the narrator trills their accomplishment… and you wonder who the heck is filming this, and why haven’t they said anything about him? How did he get there? Wasn’t that remarkable? Why are you pretending he isn’t there?

* * *

Many people don’t think much of the idea of climbing Everest. Why risk your life for an achievement that is completely symbolic, and of no scientific or humanitarian value whatsoever? Why should we feel sorry for climbers who die on Everest, when it is plain that their goals are entirely ego-centric?

The Viesturs expedition tried to patch a gloss of scientific necessity to the risk they took, much the way Robert Ballard tried to make his efforts to find the Titanic look useful and valuable, and NASA tried to make manned space missions seem necessary. But it is clear that there are really only two reasons people climb Everest. Firstly, to gratify one’s ego: I climbed Everest. Wow. Secondly, (and less dubiously), for the sense of personal accomplishment.

I have some respect for those who climb for the sense of personal accomplishment. It is still a remarkable achievement, of endurance, determination, and mental stamina. As I read through Krakauer’s book, I found myself experiencing an odd sense of longing for that bleak, windswept, arctic landscape near the top of Everest.

But I found that sense diminished when I considered that there would probably be another two dozen climbers up there at the same time.

Krakauer’s book is a powerful antidote to any illusions you might have about mountain climbing. It is a very rare little gem: an honest, intelligent book about sports– for that is what mountain-climbing really is– competition. Who got there first? Who did it the fastest? Who did it the most? Krakauer’s book has soul.

Freddy Shero’s Legacy

The last time the Toronto Maple Leafs faced the Philadelphia Flyers in the playoffs, Roger Neilson was behind the Leafs’ bench and Fred Shero was behind the Flyers’ bench, and the series consisted mostly of a sequence of mad brawls followed by flurries of penalties and goals. The Flyers were known as the “Broad Street Bullies” for their style of hacking, hitting, and chopping their way to victory.

The Flyers won that series. This year, the Leafs won. The Leafs won a playoff series without ever scoring more than 2 goals in a single game. Ironically, this is the long-term result of the style of play popularized by those Shero Flyers years ago.

What Shero realized before anyone else did, was that the officiating in the NHL had reached a kind of regulatory quandary by the early 1970’s. The NHL was busy trying to sell hockey to expansion U.S. markets and it was widely believed that U.S. audiences were more attracted by fisticuffs and brawling than the slick play-making of teams like the Canadiens and Maple Leafs or Red Wings. So fighting was “good” for hockey. But even hockey has rules. If players like Ken Linseman of the Flyers got penalties for all the rule infractions he committed, the Flyers would lose every game.

Fights or no fights, sports fans hate losers, so the NHL had to find some way to allow the violence to continue, while giving dirty teams a chance to win.

Now, nobody that I know of ever actually came right out and said, “hey, let’s just call the same number of penalties on both teams no matter who actually breaks the rules”. They didn’t have to. You heard it from coaches and managers and sports analysts and Don Cherry. They used euphemistic phrases like, “let the boys play”, “the referee shouldn’t become part of the game”, “they play an aggressive style” (not a dirty style– “aggressive”). I’m sure that within the private offices of the NHL, more explicit instructions were issued.

The strategy was very simple. There are a thousand interactions in any particular game of hockey that could, with a stretch of the imagination, be called a penalty. So the referees would occasionally call a penalty when a thug like Dave “Hammer” Schultz tried to take somebody’s head off, but the next penalty would inevitably be called on the other team. Schultz could hook, hack, chop, grab, elbow, and punch a dozen players and get one penalty. A few minutes later, Borje Salming would lean on a player in front of the net and get called for interference. Even-steven. If a referee ever dared to call three penalties in a row on the same team, coaches, players, and managers screamed bloody murder– the referee had broken one of the unspoken rules of the game: he had actually penalized the team that committed the most infractions!

The end result was that teams like Philadelphia, and, later, New Jersey, could commit hundreds of fouls and still win, because no matter how many fouls Philadelphia committed, the other team would get just about as many penalties. Philadelphia rode this strategy to a Stanley Cup. New Jersey learned to simply mug players in the neutral zone less conspicuously than the Flyers, but it worked just as well and they won several Stanley Cups.

Well, even the NHL has some shame. After a few years of pronounced media coverage of the “Broad Street Bullies”, the NHL decided to make a relatively modest attempt to eliminate fighting. They started handing out serious penalties for actual fisticuffs, especially in the playoffs when fighting seems more… “unseemly”. But it did not eliminate the officiating style that permitted teams to get away with thousands of little infractions. Teams like New Jersey refined the schtick, with holding, interference, and obstruction, refined to a high art. Because it didn’t look as dirty as a Ken Linseman cross-check or a Bobby Clarke slash, the officials tended to let it go. New Jersey was able to win a Stanley Cup with its “neutral zone trap”. The drawbacks, however, were obvious: scoring decreased and many hockey games became nothing more than a long boring sequence of impeded skaters and incomplete passes.

The lack of scoring alarmed the NHL. Next to fighting, fans want to see scoring. They tried various strategies, adding space behind the net, trying to call more “obstruction” penalties, and so on. But ingrained habits are hard to change. The referees keep drifting back to their old style of indifference and equity, just like the umpires in baseball keep calling the same ridiculously low strike zone.

If you look at the over-time stats for the past year in the NHL, the numbers are truly embarrassing. Only a small percentage of the games ended with a victor. And everybody knows that a tie “is like kissing your sister”.

And thus we have the 1999 Toronto-Philadelphia series. During the regular season, Toronto scored more goals than any other team in the NHL. Philadelphia was in the middle of the pack, but it was clear that their strategy depended upon the ability of their huge defensemen to impede, obstruct, and interfere with their faster opponents.

It is a bit of the miracle that the Leafs won, and the way they did it is telling: they simply did to the Flyers what the Flyers intended to do to them. The Leafs only scored about six goals altogether. Well, all right: they scored about 10. They held the lead, all told, for about ten minutes over six games. Unfortunately for Philadelphia, those few minutes were always at the end of the game.

The winning difference was Curtis Joseph, who seems to be able to make the big stop when it is most needed, and the Leaf forwards, almost all of whom can shoot, who were able to get a goal when it really counted: in the last minute, or in overtime.

The biggest irony was the series deciding goal– on a power play with three minutes left. Toronto had been called for five penalties in a row in the second and third periods, and Philadelphia had been unable to cash in. If anyone had a right to complain, it was Toronto: the referees (two of them now) broke the unspoken agreement– they called real infractions, even if all of them went against the same team. When they finally did call a Flyers’ penalty, it looked like something they might have let go in the Dave Schultz era.

The Flyers complained bitterly about it afterwards. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. They lost the series because of their pathetic inability to score during five consecutive man advantages, including 3 in a span of 7 minutes, not because of the one Leaf goal at the end.

Blue Jays 1999

Look out Yankees!
The Ripken Curse Continues
Ask Not for Whom the Belle Tolls.

The best division in baseball right now is the American League East, and the best team in the American League East is the New York Yankees. In fact, a lot of baseball writers have already wrapped up the championship and handed it to the pinstripers.

Not so fast. Will the Yankees repeat?

Well, they look pretty solid. But the Yankees last year didn’t really have a single player who was as good as Sosa, McGuire, Griffey, or Roger Clemens. (This year, they have Roger Clemens.) So why did they win so many games? Almost every player in their line-up had a great year. Paul O’Neill, David Wells, Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez…. That’s what happened to Minnesota in ’91, and the Blue Jays in ’93. They had a bunch of players that simply had a great year at the same time.

The Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 on talent. That was different. They had the best players and these players played the way they were expected to. They deserved to win. But in 1993, the Blue Jays—a completely different team (minus Gruber, Key, Henke, Winfield, Morris; plus Molitor, Henderson, Sprague, Fernandez)—won because a lot of their players had career years. Philadelphia was in the World Series that year for largely the same reason. Atlanta lost to Philadelphia in the playoffs because the best talent does not always win.

The bottom line: you win in baseball when you have enough talented players having good years to beat the other team’s talented players having good or so-so years. Without the raw talent on the bench, all the grit and determination in the world is not going to take you anywhere.

Injuries are not as critical as reporters would have you believe. The difference between the best first baseman in the league (Mark McGuire) and an average first baseman is not the difference between 70 homeruns and no homeruns. It’s the difference between 70 homeruns and 40 homeruns. Over an entire season, that is ¼ homerun a game. How many games are decided by one or less runs? How many of those games would have ended differently had Mark McGuire been at first base instead of John Olerud? Not as many as you might think. That’s why St. Louis didn’t even make the playoffs. Mark McGuire alone isn’t going to get you there. I’m not saying he isn’t effective– I’m just saying that he can’t do it alone.

I’m not sure the Yankees are going to be as fortunate this year as they were last year. The Yankees have three or four great players this year: Clemens, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, and Ramiro Mendoza. Then they have a string of superior players, including Tino Martinez, Paul O’Neil, Livan Hernandez, and Chuck Knoblauch. Well, yeah, the truth is, that’s a pretty impressive line-up. Cone and Hernandez can pitch, but Cone is 34 now and not as strong as he used to be. Pettite can pitch, but is he healthy? Jorge Posado is young and strong—how good will he be in September?

Well it’s early. They’ve picked up where they left off. They will play pretty well at times this season. But I’m not sure that, over the stretch of 162 games, this line-up is quite as durable as many people think it is. Most people never noticed it, but the Yankees were not the best team in baseball, or even in the American League, over the last two months of the 98 season: the Blue Jays were. And the Blue Jays whipped the Yankees in September.

I don’t expect Boston to continue their string of early success. After all, they are Boston. After Martinez, the pitching is pretty thin, and with the injury to Noamar Garciaparra and the absence of Mo Vaughn, they’re going to finish no better than third. More likely they’ll finish fourth. [this was written before Boston lost 4 straight].

Baltimore chose to spend big bucks on free agents, but, as usual, spent the money on players who were well-known for having had great years in the past. The trick is to spend that kind of money on players who are about to have great years, like Chris Carpenter, or Vladimir Guerrero. Baltimore will finish fourth.

This is why Montreal often does much better than expected: their scouts and coaches are good at identifying players who are going to command big salaries because they play well. That is why Baltimore is so BAD. Their coaches and scouts are really good at identifying players who have already had their best years, and, therefore, are in decline. In fact, they have an icon of a role-model right there on 3rd base: Cal Ripken, the most vastly over-rated player in the league.

Can you believe that the Dodgers signed 34-year-old Kevin Brown for 7 years for $85 million? Is this some kind of joke? Brown won’t be around for five years, let alone seven. Let’s say Brown, like almost every other pitcher in the history of the game, begins to lose his effectiveness in three years. What are you going to do? How are the Dodgers going to be able to pay replacement talent when they’re on the hook for $10 million a year for a pitcher who can’t play?

The Blue Jays have the pitching and offence to threaten even the Yankees, provided that one or two players like Jose Cruz and Alex Gonzalez have breakthrough years. I think it was a mistake to let Canseco go and then bring in Geronimo Berroa. I thought Canseco had reached a new stage in his career where he might avoid stupid injuries and provide a productive bat from the DH spot. I don’t like Canseco’s strikeout ratio but he will probably hit another 40 homeruns this year, and that is enormous offense, and who needs Geronimo Berroa? Still, the Blue Jays have Delgado, Greene, and Stewart, and Fletcher is a solid catcher. Tony Fernandez proved last September that he is still one of the best clutch hitters in the game, and Alex Gonzalez may be one of the two or three best defensive shortstops in the league. When your fifth starter leads the league in ERA and you have to put a guy who had a no-hitter going into the 9th inning last fall (Roy Halladay) into the bullpen, you’ve got a chance to scare a few people.

When the Yankees play Minnesota, you have about $80 million in talent playing about $8 million. There is no way that baseball is going to remain competitive with this kind of system, unless we get more owners like Marge Schott and Peter D’Angelos. But most owners are smarter than they used to be. George Steinbrenner used to squander all his money on players like Joe Girardi and Jesse Barfield. Lately, he squanders his money on players like Chuck Knoblauch and Bernie Williams instead. Why should the fans in Minnesota continue to pay $30-$50 to come out and watch their team get pummeled by athletes that make ten times as much as their players do? What chance do they have?

A word about Cal Ripken. I said many years ago that Baltimore will never win a championship as long as Cal Ripken is on that team. It was not so much that he was a bad player (though he was vastly over-rated) as it was that the entire culture of the Baltimore Orioles baseball club, with fawning owner Peter D’Angelos, centred on THE STREAK rather than THE WORLD SERIES. The focus of the team was Ripken’s achievements, not Baltimore’s. So what does Baltimore do in the off-season? They sign Albert Belle and Will Clark! They let Roberto Alomar, one of the two or three most valuable all-round players in the game, slip away to Cleveland (which is 8-1 or something as we speak).

I also find Ripken rather phony anyway. He goes around acting modest and self-effacing, while he sucks up to all the media attention like a leech. How much do you want to bet that when he retires he’s going to get one of these grand tours of all the major league cities? For classy exits, see Wayne Gretzky. “Hello? Sunday’s my last game. Nice seeing you.”

If the Blue Jays are in contention come August, look for them to trade a prospect or two for a DH or, possibly, a closer. I’m not convinced by Person yet. I liked Escobar there more. Look for Atlanta to try to talk Montreal out of Urbina. They’d be stupid not to try.

Texas Team Names

There is a hockey league in the Southern United States, with franchises in Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, that the NHL could take a few tips from. It’s those colorless names: Canadiens? Maple Leafs? Jets? Boring. Why don’t they spend a few of the big bucks on some Dallas newspapers, where they might come across team names with character?

The Canadiens? Picture a svelte, French man with a middling hair cut, a moustache, and a Visa card. But Odessa Jackalopes? Hey, are we talking the Hanson brothers or what?

Odessa Jackalopes
New Mexico Scorpions
Macon Whoopees
Amarillo Rattlers
Austin Ice Bats
Central Texas Stampede
El Paso Buzzards
Fort Worth Brahmas
Lake Charles Ice Pirates
Monroe Moccasins
San Angelo Outlaws
Shreveport Mudbugs
Waco Wizards

Michael Jordan’s Pittance

Wow. Michael Jordan is going to donate $5 million dollars to aid teachers. He wants the money to “focus on giving kids an opportunity to excel and to achieve their dreams”. The program is called “Jordan Fundamentals”. Teachers can receive up to $2,500 in grants.

Can you believe the class and generosity of this guy! What a personal sacrifice! He saw a need, and just reached into his pocket and wrote a check!

Ooo. Wait! It looks the money will come from the proceeds of the “Nike Sporting goods Jordan brand”. Huh? The richest Athlete in the world doesn’t have a check book?

In other words, this is a marketing ploy. We are going to see ads asking you to contribute to the Michael Jordan Nike Jordan Fundamentals Program to help children excel and achieve their dreams. Yeah. And one of their dreams might be to become so rich and greedy and self-centred that you can have your accountants and lawyers create phony charities to raise money on behalf of your good name without having to sacrifice a penny of your own real wealth. You can drive around in your limo with your bodyguards and jewelry and pretend that all those suckers who pay $150 a ticket to watch you play basketball are investing their money in virtue and goodness.

Jason Kamros, a math teacher in Washington D.C., says “Yipeee!” You see Kamros had been spending up to $1,000 of his own money to use photography to help teach math to this grade sixers. He’s going to apply for some of Jordan’s “largesse”.

That $1,000 probably represents about 1/20th of Kamros’ annual take-home salary. Jordan’s $5 million potentially represents about 1/20th of his annual income, except for the fact that Jordan isn’t actually going to contribute a penny of his personal income. He’s going to contribute his name, which cost him nothing, last I heard. YOU are going to contribute the $5 million dollars by buying Nike Shoes. And your purchase of Nike-Jordan Shoes helps keep children in Indonesia employed in sweat shops at 15 cents an hour. And how much you wanna bet that Nike isn’t getting a cut as well?

It is one thing to demand a monumental pile of money to play basketball and then pretend not to be greedy. It is one thing to pretend to be generous and self-sacrificing when you are not. But surely it crosses all boundaries of decency to take money from your fans, give it to a charity, and then call the media’s attention to your “generosity”.

If I were Jason Kamros, I’d tell Jordan where to stuff it.