JOCK TALK

 

               Anyone in his or her ninth decade on this planet has regrets, and I am no exception. My main one journalistically is the time I spent in sports press conferences or locker rooms, taking down the words of coaches and players and, later, passing some along to my readers. Occasionally a quote would illuminate a subject, but the big majority of them were blather, verbal pablum designed to placate or mislead the multitudes. Artificial intelligence could have provided better content and, without doubt, soon will.

               The subject of sports blab is timely because the TV and radio folks have decided we want more of it. Interviews fill the airwaves and no place is microphone-proof, even the playing fields. Baseball in particular is enamored with that, allowing players to be mic’d and questioned while games are in progress and they are at work. I could live happily without that.

               Just as TV action replays have been teaching tools for athletes, so has the constant playing of interviews; jocks just out of school know just what to say, and when. The best examples of this can been seen in the telecasts of the NFL and NBA college-player drafts. After every early-round pick a microphone toter will thrust his tool in the face of the chosen player and ask for his reaction. Invariably, the kid will express delight with the team that chooses him, no matter how woebegone, and promise to “work hard” to make it better.

 Indeed, the subject of hard work is probably the most overworked in sports. Yes, big-time jocks put it a few daily hours in the weight room or on the running track, but most of their practice consists of things others do for fun, like shoot baskets or play catch. Moreover, no exercises would mean much unless the athlete is in the top .01% of the population in natural abilities. As a 5-foot-8, 135-pound high schooler of ordinary physique I could have bounced a basketball every spare moment between ages 5 and 18 and never sniffed a college hoops scholarship, much less an NBA spot.

In listening to jock talk it’s good to note the way athletes speak of their situations. Rather than employing the conventional “I” or the royal “we”, they prefer to use the word “you.” They rarely lack for ego, but “you” introduces the common touch, implying that anyone would do the same. Ian Happ, a Chicago Cubs outfielder, illustrated this a few weeks ago in describing his team’s late-season, win-or-die throes (they died). “You have no choice [but to win],” said he typically. “That’s what you’ve got to do.”

Flat-out statements of fact are avoided, however obvious they may seem, mitigating any blame that may attach to them. David Ross, the Cubs’ manager, described a starting pitcher’s very bad outing thusly: “He kind of lost command a little bit out there.” And hey, if it was just a small problem, it might be easily corrected.

Similarly, athletes often couch their own subpar efforts (over par in golf) in terms of “struggle”; for instance, a basketballer who has just missed his last dozen shots will confess to “struggling” from the floor. The reasoning here is clear: struggle is noble and can lead to better things, while failure not only is pathetic, it also may be terminal.

A common excuse for an athlete who is struggling is that outside factors may have “distracted” him from his tasks. This can be counted upon to elicit a sympathetic response, even when the distraction may be the TV commercials he’s shooting on game days or the battery charge he faces.

The sports world is so committed to euphemisms it uses them to describe praiseworthy performances. When a jock plays well his fellows and the sportscasters who ape them will say he “stepped up” or “came up big.” More-questionable praise for one who gave his all in a game is that he “sold out” for his team. Benedict Arnold’s descendants might take heart from that one.

   Setting goals is another subject that’s usually addressed circuitously. Asked how he’d like to perform an athlete will shy from the grandiose—“I want to play great and win!”—and focus on something more easily obtainable, like “I want to be consistent” or “I just want to stay within myself.” The retort to the latter—“Where else are you going to go?” always remains unsaid.

Ego concealment is rampant, never more so than when money is involved. A jock who jumps one team for a better deal with another will pooh-pooh the money angle, saying “All I want is a ring”—the bauble members of championship teams receive. Once the guy gets his ring he might complain it had too few diamonds, but that’s another matter. One good thing about the nine-figure contracts top players are getting these days is that we no longer have to hear their nonsense about “feeding their families.”

Journalists contribute to the blather glut by passing it along mindlessly. Print beat writers—who qualify as reporters—might plead that they are fulfilling their duty to objectivity by relaying what the combatants have to say, but TV commentators and print columnists, who are licensed to speak in their own voices, have no such excuse. Ditto bloggers, who answer to no one. As a TV watcher I turn on a mental mute when most jocks speak, and as a reader I skim past just about anything in quotes. We’d all be better off if journalists use their eyes (and brains) more and their ears less.

                

THE WICKED FLOURISH (continued)

 

               It’s baseball playoffs time again and the Houston Astros are in them. No surprise there—they’ve qualified for seven consecutive postseasons now. That’s the second-best such record extant, behind only that of the 11-straight Los Angeles Dodgers, a bigger-payroll team. And if they were asked, the Dodgers might opt to swap records with the ‘Stros, because the Houstons have won two World Series (in 2017 and ’22) during their streak, to the Dodgers’ one (in 2020).

               You might think that such excellence would be celebrated widely, but cheers are pretty much limited to in or around the East Texas metropolis. The Astros go about their business wearing a scarlet letter, albeit a “C” instead of Hester Prynne’s “A.” The “C” stands for cheater, which is what the team was for all of its championship 2017 season and a good-sized chunk of the next, before its misdeeds came to light.

               Short memory is a lamentable modern condition, but I’d wager that most folks—or, at least, most baseball fans-- recall what the Astros did.  That was to carry out the most egregious scam in the history of American team sports. Some Astros’ brains devised a computer program that doped out the signs of rival catchers and named it “Codebreaker.” It then set up video systems in their home and some other ballparks that would beam the stolen signs to their team’s dugout. From there the scheme went low-tech: the pitches were relayed to batters by bangs or lack therof on a dugout trash can, silence meaning a fastball and one or two bangs, variously, meaning a curve or changeup.

               Almost equally mind-blowing was Major League Baseball’s response to the wrongdoing. The Astros were allowed to keep their ill-gotten 2017 trophy and fined a few draft choices and a piddling $5 million, which is the cash maximum the game’s owners allow themselves to be penalized no matter what they do. Worse, a review ordered by Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote a report calling the program “player driven and executed” even though it named for blame only one player, Carlos Beltran, who at age 40 was in his last season anyway.   A coach, Alex Cora, was suspended, along with manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow.  For one (1) year each.

               Such leniency should have been expected; it’s well known in other contexts that firing or otherwise penalizing managers or execs is cheaper and easier than doing the same to players. Further, our team sports have a complicated relationship with rule-breaking; as the jocks put it “if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin’.”  Baseball outfielders can be counted upon to signal catches after they trap line drives, and all good football offensive linemen have a few artful holds in their bags of tricks. Sign stealing is a feature of both baseball and football, and it’s okay if done with the naked eye instead of electronically.  On another level, the taking of performance-enhancing drugs is treated as an individual offense, with no responsibility attached to the takers’ teams.

               The Astros’ sins were of a different order—obviously planned and carried out by a team’s leadership with the intent of securing a competitive advantage over a long period of time—and if that’s not condemned nothing is. But after their brief penance manager Hinch reemerged as manager of the Detroit Tigers, coach Cora popped up to manage the Boston Red Sox and player Beltran, hired and later quickly fired to manage the New York Mets, now is in that team’s front office.

               The only cheater still out of baseball is GM Luhnow, and one can deduce that’s mostly a function of his personal unpopularity. An engineer and management consultant by trade, he came into baseball in 2003 as a data analyst with the St. Louis Cardinals, having no baseball background and evincing open disdain for those who do. That image was magnified when he became the Astros’ GM in 2011, already carrying the nicknames “The Accountant” and “Harry Potter.” His claim to ignorance of the sign-stealing plot is ludicrous given the fact he was the only top Astros’ exec with the technical chops to put it together. Over the last few years he’s busied himself with soccer teams in Mexico and Spain, but he’s said he’s had feelers from several MLB clubs.  No one would be surprised to see him back in the Bigs soon.

               Baseball man or not, Luhnow’s path to building the ‘Stros was tried and true. The team tanked seasons 2011 through 2014, averaging just 58 wins (and 104 losses) a year but accumulating prospects and prime draft choices. Except for a stutter during the plague year of 2020 it hasn’t had a losing season since, meaning it knew what to do with the players it acquired.

               The team knows when to hold, as it has with the infielders Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman, lineup anchors who have been in Houston for 13 and eight years, respectively. Under Luhnow’s successors it has shown it can identify hitters, such as young-vet stars Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez. It’s had good success developing pitchers, and when in need it can pop for veteran help, as it did in August when it assumed more than $50 million in salary obligations to reacquire the Hall of Fame-bound pitching ace Justin Verlander, whom it had let go to free agency the year before.

               This year’s Astros lack the oomph of previous editions, having snuck into the playoffs via two last-games wins, but once in them there’s no telling how far they might go.  Virtue may not be rewarded in sports but talent always is, and there’s still no lack of that in Houston.