Tag: Sports

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The Billie Jean King Hoax

First of all, why did anyone ever think it would seriously prove anything if a 30-year-old woman, ranked second in the world, beat a washed-up out-of-shape 55-year-old man at tennis?  Even Billie Jean King knew the equation and understood it’s limits.

Secondly, did Billie Jean King really beat Riggs, or did Riggs throw the match?  Was the match, as sports journalist Don Van Natta Jr. implies, fixed?  (Von Natta Jr. probably doesn’t have a “smoking gun”; he takes what he does know, however, and builds a pretty strong case.)

I never did think much of King’s victory.  Riggs, at 55, had recently decisively and humiliatingly crushed the number 1 ranked woman in the world, Margaret Court.  This happened just a few months before the King match.  In the time leading up to his match with Court, Riggs practiced up to 12 hours day, lost weight, worked on his fitness, exercised, and trained.  In the months leading up to the King match, he gained weight, stopped practicing (he didn’t even do a proper warm up in the days leading up to the match), drank, partied, and generally did everything he could to ensure that his 55-year-old body would not be in any condition to beat any serious competitor in a full-length match.  During the match itself, Riggs made many unforced errors and double-faulted on critical serve after serve, a performance that was so uncharacteristic that the broadcast team, which included Howard Cosell, thought there might be something wrong with him.

If his intent had been to up the odds, by crushing Margaret Court, and then betting against himself against King, he could not have been more perfect.  He made it look like it was simply personal carelessness and sloppiness: not a plot.

If King’s victory had been emblematic of a shift in perception of women’s abilities and competence, why were there no sequels?  Why didn’t we ever see Navratilova or Evert or Hingus take on any of the leading male players?  Think about it– if the King vs. Riggs match really meant anything, would we not almost certainly seen more matches of top women players against men?  Yet we did not see any.

The answer is obvious: because, like Court, they would have been humiliated.  They would have been destroyed.

In the movie, “The Battle of the Sexes”, great care is taken to imply that Margaret Court lost to Riggs because she was nervous.  She choked.  The same woman who won 24 of 47 Grand Slam tournaments.  She suddenly couldn’t take the spotlight?  But there is a reason why “The Battle of the Sexes” wants you to think that: because King had to be shown to win because she was a superior tennis player (to a 55-year-old man, no escaping that).  Nobody believes that King was very much superior to Margaret Court in 1973.  So if it wasn’t confidence, what could it be?  Could it be, as many have long suspected, that Riggs threw the match?  The film doesn’t want to let you think that.

So the narrative has been promulgated that King proved something when she beat this washed-up, out-of-shape, clown.  If I were a woman, I would be embarrassed that anyone ever tried to claim that this match proved anything about women’s capabilities.

[whohit]The King-Riggs Hoax[/whohit]

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Luck

A gentleman on Reddit– and everywhere else– posted that the New England Patriots, down 21-3 at one point, came back and won, proving that you should never give up, no matter how unlikely your success seems.

Kind of illogical really.  Everyone’s excited precisely because this kind of turnaround is incredibly rare.  It doesn’t actually “prove” you should never give up.  In the normal sense of “proof”, it only proves that there will be anomalies and there is always a dim hope that you will be one of them.  Would you want to make life decisions based on these odds?  I will quit my current job because there is a .4% chance I will get a better one?  I will break up with this lovely girl because there is 1.3% chance I can find a better one, who will also love me?  I will vote for this politician because he will prevent a terrorist attack in my home town, even though there was only ever a .002% chance of that occurring?

Don’t ignore the fact that there is a harm in obsessively following a course of action that has a only a microscopic chance of success.  The most obvious harm is the waste of time spent by someone who has virtually no chance of success.  Think of the hours and hours spent by marginal talents on trying to compete with far more talented athletes for a position on the varsity team.  Imagine all of that time spent enhancing other skills that were far more likely to provide real rewards, like learning a trade, or taking courses, or even reading worthwhile literature, or volunteering at a homeless shelter or a food bank, or at church or school, or your neighborhood.  But there is also the harm of repetitively absorbing failure and subservience and inferiority.  It is not for no reason that we sometimes tell people to stop subjecting themselves to inevitable failure and learn to accept things the way they are.

There is another aspect to this: without the thousands and millions of wannabes, there would be no competitors, no infrastructure, no pool of adversaries that allow the top talents to eventually cash in on a mind boggling scale.  Go to the Little League games, the skating and gymnastics competitions, the track and field events: before anyone gets to the big public crowd, most of your audience consists of parents or friends or relatives or classmates of your competitors.  Without them, you would have been nothing.  Without them, no coaches or infrastructure, or training equipment, or fields or gyms or rinks.  And without all those weaker competitors, there would be no competition.  Yet there are almost no real rewards for those weaker competitors.

Unless they learn to accept the con job offered by the sports establishment: keep trying.  Never give up.  Work hard, and some day you too can win.  It isn’t true.  Without the gifts, you will never win.

You get to be used.

 

[whohit]Luck and the New England Patriots[/whohit]

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Ortiz’s Fantastical Year

It’s a shame, but I just don’t believe in David Ortiz’s 2016 stats.

He has 24 home runs, batting .326, with a .665 slugging percentage, half-way through the season.   He is 40 years old, 6′ 3″, 230 pounds.

Do you really think it’s possible?  Here:

Williams had one of the best final seasons in MLB history. He hit .316 with a .451 on-base percentage and .645 slugging percentage, with 72 RBIs to go along with those 29 home runs.

What magical thing is he doing that nobody in the history of baseball, or athletics,– except Barry Bonds, who cheated, of course– has ever done? Have a near career-best year at the age of 40, when almost everyone declines steadily from 28 on? The real shame of it is that if he really is as amazing as his numbers appear to be, people like me will never have the opportunity to really appreciate it. It would be awesome to behold, if we could really believe in it.

It’s the same with the Olympics: in those really, really annoying CBC radio ads, the announcer goes crazy– “a new!! world!!!  record!!! in the 200 meters!!!” Who cares? We know exactly why there have been so many new world records in the last few decades.  Why are you all excited?  Are you stupid or what?

Ortiz’s defensiveness in full flower.

It is striking to me how often, in his statements on the issue, he angrily insists not that he would never cheat, but that he has never been caught. They test me all the time and I have never been caught. Why would you think I cheat when I have never been caught? Surely you don’t think I could get away with it nowadays? And that one time I was caught, it was an accident.

There is not a trace of sadness, which I would expect, from an honest athlete who realizes that he can never entirely escape suspicion about his greatest accomplishments because other players have been caught– indisputably– cheating.  This is the paradox of modern sports.  Have a mediocre performance and you’re mediocre.  Have an extraordinary performance and you must have cheated.  Give a really, really amazing performance, and obviously, you cheated.

He also takes on those who accuse him of showboating and egotism– which is, essentially, what people mean by the criticism of batters who admire their home runs–  by arguing that he’s having fun, he used to be poor, now he’s rich, so what’s wrong with having fun– which has nothing to do with the issue.  I don’t care how many people do it– even if they are on my home team– I find it repellent when players admire their own home runs.  It’s like laughing at your own joke, or watching yourself in the mirror at a party to see how good you look, or arranging for yourself to receive honors and tributes as a politician, or making your predecessor a saint.  You’re not that great.  Really, you’re not.  It’s unfortunate that we live in a culture that can’t help but wet themselves over every little athletic achievement, but that doesn’t change the fact that, really, you’re not all that great.

There are handful of players who are great and have great performances.  Their achievements are diminished when assholes like you start strutting around the base paths as if you are godlike.

Ortiz’s stats for his 40th year are really, really amazing.  And they are unbelievable.   And I am the saddest about the fact that if they were real, I have missed out on the pleasure of watching a truly extraordinary performance.

[whohit]Ortiz’s Magical Year[/whohit]

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Mike Piazza Pie: Sports Economics

Mike Piazza now makes $91 million for playing baseball, for seven years. How on earth can they do it? Only 30 years ago, the entire New York Yankees baseball club was valued at only $12,000,000.

Well, it’s a free country. If a baseball owner wants to pay an athlete $17 million a year to play a game, why shouldn’t he?

They can pay Mike Piazza $91 million because fans continue to flock to the stadiums and plop themselves in front of their television sets to watch Mike Piazza play baseball. From that money, the New York Mets pays its players. And like every other business, they pay all their other expenses, like administrative staff, office space, scouts, managers, and rent or mortgage for the stadium… and taxes.

Well, wait a minute.

Yes, yes, the Blue Jays pay $11 million dollars a year in taxes on the Skydome. But who built the Skydome? You did. With your tax money. We paid $321 million to build the Skydome and then we rented it to the Jays for considerably less than it costs to operate it.

That is why the Skydome Corporation is now bankrupt.

This year, Hartford, Conn. is donating $350 million to the New England Patriots. And Maryland is donating $220 million to the Baltimore Ravens NFL team, and kicked in an extra $80 just to make owner Art Modell happy.

At least the Blue Jays paid their taxes last year. And so did the Expos. But the Cardinals and the White Sox, and the Red Sox, and the Reds, and the Dodgers, and the Rockies, and the Mets, and all the other teams? Not a penny.

How can that be? This is a multi-million dollar business! These owners are filthy rich. They pay their players absurdly extravagant sums of money to do what most of us would gladly do for nothing. And they don’t pay taxes?!

No, they don’t. They don’t pay taxes, because foolish citizens and even more foolish politicians have decided to use tax payer money to subsidize professional sports teams.

You see, Mike Piazza doesn’t care who he plays for. You do. You are a fan. You want your team to win. You are loyal to your team even if they lose. Loyalty is a good quality.  But baseball players have the loyalty of rats. If the New York Mets didn’t offer to pay Mike Piazza more money, he was going to go play for someone else!

But the New York Mets didn’t have enough money for Mike Piazza. How would the owners of the Mets make a profit if they had to pay Mike Piazza more money?

Well, they can cut other expenses, like those horrific stadium costs. But if the team cuts those costs from its budget, who is going to pay for it? Why the city, of course! But where does the city get its money? From property taxes. And where do property taxes come from?

Right– you. You with your $45,000 a year. You are going to give tax money to the New York Mets (if you are citizen of New York) so that they can give Mike Piazza an additional $4 million per year.

But the tax payer would think that is a dumb idea. So instead of the city giving a check to the Mets, it gives them a deduction on their taxes. And then it chips in for a stadium. And then it provides police and traffic services for free.

This is all no secret, by the way, though you would think it would be almost unimaginable that voters would be so stupid as to approve these arrangements. Sports Illustrated has been ranting about this devious little scam for years. A few smart politicians and journalists have caught on as well. And the voters in Minnesota caught on, and recently turned down a proposal to make a gift of a $100 million stadium to the billionaire owner of the Twins, who then threatened to move the Twins to some town with more idiots in it.

It is one of the biggest scandals in modern history: taxpayers subsidizing multi-million dollar contracts for spoiled athletes! And you just know that some of these same owners and athletes and sports journalists and politicians who approve of these arrangements would be among the first to complain bitterly about their hard-earned tax dollars going to a single mother on welfare. Freeloader! Parasite! Give us back your $500 a month and go find a job! Maybe you can park Mike Piazza’s spare Rolls Royce for him, if you’re good.

The problem is that too many cities give in to owner blackmail: build me a stadium or I move to a different city. And the city fathers weep and wail– “Alas, we cannot be without our sports team!” and issue a bond or debenture and build a stadium and forgive them their annual property taxes. Cities without sports teams plead with the Expos or the Twins: move here and we will give you millions of dollars. Millions of YOUR dollars.

And you voters stand for this??? You re-elect these guys? Are you insane?

The Baltimore Orioles, thank you, paid for their own stadium. Hurray for Baltimore! But they still don’t pay any taxes. [According to the Toronto Star of Nov. 29, 1998, the taxpayers paid $254 million for Baltimore’s stadium. When I find out who’s telling the truth, I’ll update this.]

Now, you will hear many supporters of these professional sport teams argue that the teams generate a great deal of revenue, including tax revenue, and attract jobs, and therefore, more than “pay for themselves”. Right. You can apply this argument to absolutely any business you like: banks, car makers, theatre companies, insurance companies, computer makers, anybody. They all generate revenue and taxes. Big deal. Pay your taxes and shut up.

And the issue has been studied: the economic benefits are grossly exaggerated, especially, as I say, compared to other possible investments.

The only solution is for all the cities to get together and agree that none of them will subsidize major league professional sports in any shape or form whatsoever. No subsidized stadiums. No tax concessions. No free police guards. Not even a parade (a long civic advertisement for the team). Tell the major leagues to conduct their businesses like everyone else: you balance out your income vs. your expenditures, and if you can’t afford to pay Mike Piazza $91 million, you offer him less.

Even better, the federal governments in both Canada and the U.S. should outlaw civic funding of sports stadiums.