PERFECTOIN

                A “perfect game” in bowling is when someone throws strikes in all 12 frames for a score of 300, a feat that’s rare but far from impossible in a sport that rewards consistency of stroke. A “perfect game” in baseball is rarer--when a pitcher doesn't permit a base runner in nine innings-- but it could be a misnomer because his teammate might have botched scoring opportunities and, of course, the other team probably screwed up all over the place.

                   The purpose of the above isn’t just to bandy words but to take note of what I consider a troubling aspect of many sports in this day and age. It’s a quest for officiating perfection that besides being unobtainable is warping our games. The saw about the perfect being the enemy of the good rarely has been more pertinent. Ditto the one about watching what you wish for because you might get it.

                The villain is technology or, rather, its increasing role on our fields of play. Television’s eye in the sky, and it’s instant-replay capacity, has gone from being an interesting accessory of sports’ viewing to the supreme arbiter, sometimes changing whole outcomes as well as their individual parts. In the pursuit of “just getting things right” it’s sometimes turning things sideways for the performers on the field and the folks at home.  

                Nothing illustrated that better than last Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.  As Dizzy Dean used to say, “you seen it on your screen,” Maximum Security’s victory on the track being overturned after 22 minutes of microscopic video analysis by the Churchill Downs stewards, the race’s overseers.  Max’s sin was to wander out a bit in the homestretch and, momentarily, impede the progress of the horses just to his right rear. Then they all righted themselves and he pulled away to win, to the pleasure of the bettors who’d made him a 4-to-1 second favorite.

                It was a foul, all right, but it was questionable whether it deserved the punishment of his being relegated to the rear of the 20-horse field, the first such outcome in the race’s 145-year history. I was one of those who had to tear up a winning ticket, so this may sound like sour grapes, but the ruling left me and, I’m sure, others shaking our heads. Allowances might have been made because the Derby always is a rough race, contested as it is by young horses (three-year-olds are the equivalent of human teens) in a too-crowded field (other classic America races have an entry limit of 14) on a rain-soaked track that made footing uncertain. I’m sure that an analysis of the entire race would have uncovered numerous instances of equine contact as bad or worse than the one that DQed poor Max.

                The outcome was bad for racing on a number of grounds. The declared winner, the longshot runnerup Country House, ever will have an asterisk marking his victory, and no sport wants those. Further, after the race, and maybe out of pique,  the human connections of Max and Country House said their animals wouldn’t be moving on to the Preakness, the second leg in the Triple Crown for three-year-olds, killing the possibility of a Triple Crown winner and depriving racing of one of its few (and much-needed) focuses of public attention.

 Worst, it’ll be awhile before race goers can savor their betting victories without casting a nervous eye toward the tote board to see if the scientists in the video room will undo the result. The thrill of victory is the main reason we racing fans are out there, and anything that dilutes that is a wound for a sport that’s already bleeding heavily.

Professional football isn’t in the popularity soup racing is, but it seems to be riding the technology train in the same direction. That became clear after last season when the NFL, in its never-ending quest for officiating perfection, added pass interference to the list of plays and situations eligible for official instant-replay review. The addition was made after a PI no-call that might have changed the result of a playoff game between the Saints and Rams. The losing Saints raised a stink that could be deodorized only by the change, the league’s owners decreed.

The NFL pioneered video review in 1986 but by 1991 better judgement prevailed and it was repealed.  That stirred up the “just get it right” hounds, who succeeded in returning it in 1999. From there is has mushroomed. Now its games are continually punctuated by Talmudic discussions of things like the meaning of the in-the-grasp rule, or whether a pass receiver put a second tippy-toe in bounds after he caught a pass. Adding pass interference promises to make such interruptions exponentially worse; no other rule is more poorly defined or stirs more controversy.

Baseball came late to electronics, in 2008. Predictably, it has allowed it to metastasize, so that head-phone-wearing umpires have become as much a part of the game as Cracker Jacks. The most-obvious next step will be to do away with human home-plate umpires and electrify balls-and-strikes-calling completely. The technology for this already exists, as does the cry to employ it. Base umpires will be the next to go; it’s only logical.  Goodbye blue, hello Artoo-Deetoo.

If you’ve read this blog (or my WSJ columns) you know I’ve opposed TV-replay review from the start, on the simple grounds that sports are played by humans and should be judged by them. Being human means making mistakes, and sports are too trivial to be exempted from that condition.

  If you don’t buy that, try the argument that sports are our main physical expressions of art and that replacing any part of them by artificial means is a sin.  I have no illusions about reversing the electronic tide, but let’s not let it win without complaint. Your grandchildren will thank you if they can pull themselves away from their smart phones long enough.

               

               

                    

I'VE GOT THE HORSE(S) RIGHT HERE

                One of horse racing’s truths is that, year in and year out, favorites win about one-third of the time. That’s also the case in the Kentucky Derby, where the people’s choice has prevailed 16 times in the last 50 years. Thus, it sets folks’ teeth on edge that favorites have won the last six editions of the nation’s annual Big Race, and has fostered the view that retribution must be near. That’s emerged as the dominant theme of the 144^th Derby, which goes off Saturday at Churchill Downs.

                There are a couple of problems with that view. One is that, because the fields are completely different every time, no Derby has anything to do with the next. The second is that this Derby won’t have a real favorite, the putative one—Omaha Beach—having been scratched on Wednesday after having been made the morning-line choice at odds of 4-to-1.

                That leaves three colts-- IMPROBABLE, GAME WINNER and ROADSTER—all clustered at about 5-to-1, with a bunch of others not far behind. The odds will change some by race time, and there will be a favorite-in-name, but only in that. That makes for what bettors calls a good betting race, with good payouts in prospect no matter who wins. But it also makes for confusion at the ticket window.

                My plan (if you can call it that) is to approach the race as I would a meal in a Chinese restaurant, picking horses from various odds columns and mixing them in exacta combinations. From column A—the favorites’ line—I’ll go with IMPROBABLE, a tough customer who lost to Omaha Beach by a scant length in the Arkansas Derby. Game Winner was the two-year-old champ but has faded a bit at three. Roadster is a late runner and that kind of horse needs lots of luck to win. By the way, all three of the top group are trained by Bob Baffert, the era’s best big-race trainer, so none can claim an edge on that score.

                One horse I really like from column B—8-to-1 to 10-to-1—is MAXIMUM EFFORT, 8-to-1. He’s unbeaten in four, one-sided races, won the Florida Derby, is one of just two colts in the field to have hit 100 on the Beyer speed scale (Improbable is the other), and likes to run up front, where the traffic is lightest. The knock against him is that he’s had it too easy to date, but that could be testimony to his ability. Another of my choices, also at 8-to-1, is TACITUS, a winner of two Derby preps. He’s shown he can take a licking and keep on ticking, something that’s often necessary in the rough, 20-horse Derby field.

                My fourth horse is from the longer-shot group. He’s VEKOMA, 15-to-1 in the morning line. He won the Blue Grass stakes prep in a field of 14 and might have won another –the Fountain of Youth—if he didn’t have to be checked in the homestretch. He likes to run near the lead, a good thing, and will be ridden by J.J. Castellano, also good.

I reserve the right to change my mind on Derby Day, and maybe add another horse or two to my boxes, but the horses numbered 5-6-7-8 certainly will be in my boxes. Wish me luck, and the same to you.

CLOUT

                What’s the most-potent lobby in Washington? There are many contenders for the honor.

                The NRA is on the list for sure, leading a minority that continually trumps the will of the majority. Ditto for AARP, which looks out for us oldsters. The AMA tends ably to doctors, the ABA to lawyers. Among corporate players, the one that represents “Big Pharma” stands out, spending millions to heap rewards in the billions.

                But from the standpoint of “W’s” and “L’s”—really the best way to measure such things—no group does better than the NCAA. The outfit that oversees big-time college sports has an enviable record in our nation’s capital as well as in those of the 50 states, keeping it and its constituent institutions largely clear of government intrusion. That most of its actions take place under the radar of public scrutiny is testimony to its effectiveness; in the world of sub-rosa advocacy, no news is the best news. And astonishingly, it operates on a reported annual lobbying budget of about $400,000. That’s less than some industries spend on a single night of Washington revelry.

 The NCAA can do this because it commands the sort of allegiance other advocacy groups can only envy. Just about every member of Congress (95% by published estimates) holds a college degree and, presumably, retains some affection for good old Alma Mammy. Even if their college memories were sour our senators and representatives are well advised to treat kindly the sports interests of the schools for which their constituents root. Any Nebraska legislator who doesn’t profess to live and die with the Cornhuskers won’t have his job for long.

How this works in practice was recently described by Donna Shalala. She’s been on both sides of the relationship as a congresswoman (from Florida) and a former president of the University of Miami and chancellor of the University of Wisconsin. When a school has a legislative interest touching sports “the university president picks up the phone and talks to his state’s senators,” she said in an interview. The politics of college athletics “isn’t red or blue, it’s about conferences,” she added.

The subject of the NCAA’s political influence is appropriate now because some in Congress are growing restive about the economics of college sports. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, just put out a report called “Madness, Inc.: How everyone is getting rich off college sports except the athletes.” He promises to have more to say on the subject with an eye toward trying to legislate compensation beyond the minimal for student jocks. (Followers of this space know I disagree with that position, but that requires discussion.) Representative Mark Walker, a Republican from North Carolina, has gone farther by introducing in the House a bill he calls the “Student-Athlete Equity Act,” which would allow college athletes to “profit from the commercial use of their names and likenesses” by such as advertisers and video-game makers. By calling it a “free market” issue he hopes to line up support from his fellow Republicans.

That’s all well and good, but if the past is any guide it’s doubtful that the Walker bill, or any similar one, will get much traction.  The NCAA sees to it that things it doesn’t like don’t get a committee hearing, much less floor action. That was the fate of a bill last year that would have formalized the way colleges report and treat playing-field concussions. Innocuous as it was, the measure wound up in some committee-chairman’s drawer.

Just as important, the NCAA’s clout doesn’t end on the capital steps. Lawyers and judges also love their schools’ teams and can be counted upon to either support or shield them as the situation requires. No better example of this is the trial now in progress in New York that followed an FBI investigation of two years ago that threatened to reveal an extensive black market in college-basketball recruiting involving many if not most big-time U’s. Instead, it has turned into a hiccup with scant impact.

Initial charges in the probe fingered sports agents and would-be agents, a couple of low-level executives of the shoe company Adidas and a half dozen assistant hoops coaches in a scheme to use shoe-company money bribe recruits to sign up at Adidas-connected schools and, later, utilize the agents’ services. More would follow, prosecutors hinted, but not much has. One head coach connected to probe—Rick Pitino of Louisville—lost his job, but that seemed to stem mostly from his long and smelly history of previous depredations. That left only the hapless assistants to hold the bag, the way they do in just about all internally investigated NCAA probes.

 No top-level Adidas executives were hauled into court and nothing came out involving Nike, another big shoe company neck deep in promoting its wares through college sports. Indeed, Nike came off as the victim in Federal criminal actions against the mouthy lawyer Michael Avenatti, charged with using bribery tales to shake down the company.

The current New York trial concerns the sentencing of sports-agent Christian Dawkins and Merl Code Jr., an Adidas consultant, who have pleaded guilty to various charges. Lawyers for the two wanted to call as witnesses the head coaches Sean Miller of Arizona and Will Wade of Louisiana State, both of whom figured prominently in wire-taped phone calls that seemed to further the bribery scheme, but prosecutors moved to do without their testimony and the judge agreed. Miller and Wade have denied any wrongdoing, but putting them on the stand, under oath, almost certainly would have proved edifying.

No such luck, however. Move along folks, nothing to see here, those running the trial said.  The show must go on.