Newspaper reporters don’t have heroes among the people they write about, or, at least, aren’t likely to admit it if they do. That would break the objectivity rule that governs most American news organizations, one that’s honored far more strictly than most believe.
Also, we newsies aren‘t worshipful types, a trait that sometimes gets us into trouble around the house.
However (my favorite word), in my travels in the world of sports I did encounter people I thought were worthy not only of praise but also of emulation. Mostly, these were not the big-time athletes who attained fame by capitalizing on inborn, genius-level physical attributes but never would admit as much, or the control freaks who directed their movements. I preferred sports folks who’d thought about their places in the Great Scheme of Things and concluded that the sun didn’t rise to see them get out of bed. Here are three of them, and you have to be a real fan to recognize their names.
-- The winningest college-football coach ever isn’t Joe Paterno, Bobbie Bowden or some other CEO of a football “program” at one or another Enormous State U. It’s JOHN GAGLIARDI, who, at age 84, still coaches the sport at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., where he’s been since 1953. His teams have won 478 games—77 more than Joe Pa’s-- and four national small-college championships. He’s done it by breaking just about every rule in the coaches’ handbook.
Gagliardi got his first coaching job—and framed his philosophy—as a 16-year-old high schooler in his native Trinidad, Colorado, where, in 1943, he was elected by his teammates to replace the coach who’d suddenly been drafted into the military. With teenage chutzpah he decided he’d run the show by jettisoning everything the previous coach did that he didn’t like. That included contact scrimmages, heavy calisthenics and long drills of any kind. His judgment was confirmed with a league title.
Gagliardi added to his “no” list when coaching became his adult occupation. He eschews compulsory running and weightlifting, informing players that it’s up to them to get in shape. He limits players’ film viewing to game-before successful plays that affix a positive image. He spurns the title of “coach,” preferring that his players call him “John” (“when one calls me ‘coach’ I want to call him ‘player,’” he says). His players, none of whom are on athletic scholarship (NCAA Division III doesn’t permit them), run through their plays 90 minutes a day four days a week in season, period. When appropriate, some of those minutes are spent in his “nice-day drill,” where they lay on their backs admiring the sunny sky.
He’s had offers to leave St. John’s, including one from the Minnesota Vikings, but turned them down. “I doubt if I’d find better kids elsewhere, so why move?” he reasons.
Why,indeed.
-- DOT RICHARDSON was an athletic genius, so good at softball that at age 10 she was playing on women’s teams. The shortstop was even better when she grew up, becoming the best softballer of her era and starring on two gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic teams. The photo of her rounding bases after hitting the home run that won the 1996 O Games final, arms raised and face alight, remains a glowing image of that fest.
When she wasn’t playing games, though, Dot was doing things that she came to believe were more important. She got through college (at UCLA) and medical school, eventually becoming an orthopedic surgeon. She became a full-time doc after her 2000 athletic retirement and now, in addition to a private practice, is medical director at the U.S. Triathlon Training Center in Florida and a member of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. In her spare time she gives motivational talks to adults and kids.
I spent the best part of a day with her in 2000, and sports talk occupied, maybe, an hour of it. She said she probably was lucky that she played a sport that offered few financial opportunities, because otherwise she might not have developed her other talents. “My parents raised me to believe that gifts should be shared, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have two,” she said. And who knows? she added-- maybe as time goes by she’d discover others.
--- DICK BAVETTA wasn’t much of a basketball player, but he loved the game so much that, in full adulthood, he quit a good-paying stockbrokers’ job to referee in the Eastern League, a circuit that was so tough he had to bring along his brother, a New York cop, for post-game protection. When Dick’s wife complained about his travel he decided he liked basketball better than her, and the pair split. This might not have been admirable, but it was honest.
For nine years he was rejected as an NBA ref, partly because of his scrawny physique. He finally made it in 1975, at age 36, when the base pay for new refs was $200 a game (it’s about $130,000 a year now, but vets make a lot more). His first 30 years in the league, he never missed a game while moving from the bottom of the efficiency chart to the top. He’s still at it at 71, staying in shape by running eight miles on his off days and in the summers, in addition to the four or five miles a contest he logs over the eight-month season. He takes a day off after each campaign “just so nobody can say I never take a vacation.”
Unlike many sports figures, Bavetta has a sense of fun. That was on display during the 2007 NBA All-Star Game weekend, when he and Charles Barkley, 25 years younger but many pounds heavier, engaged in a foot race on court, for a charity purse. Barkley won—he always has been quicker than he looked—and afterward kissed the top of Bavetta’s bald head. Bavetta stood still for that, too, enshrining himself forever in the Good Sport’s Hall of Fame.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
NO BOYS ALLOWED
As a nation we are into the new, always eager to declare the latest to be the greatest. The annual antidote to this error is the NBA playoffs, the current edition of which now is entering its final stage.
When the playoffs began some weeks ago many believed they would signal a changing of the guard in our basketball major league. The best record in the regular season was earned by the Chicago Bulls, led by their whirling dervish guard Derrick Rose, at age 22 the league’s youngest-ever MVP. In the West the up and comers were the Oklahoma City Thunder and their duo of precocious 22 year olds, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
The notion that a new age was aborning was underscored when the two best teams of the last decade—the L.A. Lakers and S.A. Spurs-- were shoved aside rudely in preliminary rounds.
But here we are at finals time and who’s still standing? The Dallas Mavericks, surely one of the oldest aggregates ever, and the Miami Heat, a younger but still solidly veteran crew. As I’ve been noting for years, the NBA victory stand is no place for young men. Another name for a “good, young” NBA team is “also ran.”
This state of affairs stems in large part from basketball’s status as our best-played sport. Those of us with memories of times long past can only marvel at the skills and athleticism of today’s players, which dwarf those of previous eras. High-school teams today would beat top college teams from my younger days, and the wonders the pros perform routinely surpass understanding.
Television has spurred basketball’s growth by turning every game into a clinic for young players, but I think that by scaling it down to screen size the medium also diminishes the sport. Only when viewed “live” from courtside can the size, speed and strength of NBA players be fully appreciated. I know that such seats are expensive (us press got ‘em free), but sitting in one once is worth a place on every sports fan’s bucket list.
If you play in the NBA you almost certainly have the combination of agility and spring the players call “hops”—at least initially-- but the game has evolved far past the point where that alone suffices for success. A range of skills must be cultivated, along with judgment, which translates roughly into the ability to know when to do what. They take time to acquire.
Michael Jordan, the best basketball player (and maybe the best athlete) ever, was in his seventh season in the league before he hoisted a championship trophy. The Heat’s LeBron James, the current best, already has played in eight without earning the privilege. Dirk Nowitzki, the Mav’s ace and one of the all-time most-versatile offensive big men, is a 13-season vet still vying for his first ring.
Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, All-Pros all, put in a total of 36 seasons before the basketball gods allowed them to combine to win in 2008 in Boston. Lakers’ great Kobe Bryant won his first championship in his fourth pro campaign, but he had help from guys like Shaquille O’Neal, Glen Rice, Ron Harper and A.C. Green, who’d been around the block a time or three.
It’s not just a team’s starters who require seasoning; when a coach peers down his bench late in a playoff game he’s not looking for dewy youth but for the grizzled likes of Robert Horry, who could sit on his butt for two hours, then step on court and immediately nail a three, grab an offensive rebound or plant a strategic elbow. Horry collected seven NBA rings with three different teams over a 16-year career, most of them in latter-day supporting roles.
It’s often asked around Chicago how new-hero Rose stacks up against old-hero Jordan at the same, early stage of Rose’s development. Pretty evenly, I’d say. Both came into the league with hops a mundo and the ability to see openings and angles to the hoop invisible to lesser basketball intellects. Jordan went on to improve his straight-on shooting ability, as has Rose, although so far to a lesser extent.
But six or seven years into his career Jordan developed the fade-away jump shot that rounded out his game by making him lethal from mid-range—the same shot, by the way, that has sustained Nowitzky and Bryant in productive hoops maturity. Young Derrick ought to give the shot a try while he’s sweating through his summer drills. Like many a good young baseball pitcher, he’ll soon be realizing that his fastball alone won’t get him and his mates where they want to go.
When the playoffs began some weeks ago many believed they would signal a changing of the guard in our basketball major league. The best record in the regular season was earned by the Chicago Bulls, led by their whirling dervish guard Derrick Rose, at age 22 the league’s youngest-ever MVP. In the West the up and comers were the Oklahoma City Thunder and their duo of precocious 22 year olds, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
The notion that a new age was aborning was underscored when the two best teams of the last decade—the L.A. Lakers and S.A. Spurs-- were shoved aside rudely in preliminary rounds.
But here we are at finals time and who’s still standing? The Dallas Mavericks, surely one of the oldest aggregates ever, and the Miami Heat, a younger but still solidly veteran crew. As I’ve been noting for years, the NBA victory stand is no place for young men. Another name for a “good, young” NBA team is “also ran.”
This state of affairs stems in large part from basketball’s status as our best-played sport. Those of us with memories of times long past can only marvel at the skills and athleticism of today’s players, which dwarf those of previous eras. High-school teams today would beat top college teams from my younger days, and the wonders the pros perform routinely surpass understanding.
Television has spurred basketball’s growth by turning every game into a clinic for young players, but I think that by scaling it down to screen size the medium also diminishes the sport. Only when viewed “live” from courtside can the size, speed and strength of NBA players be fully appreciated. I know that such seats are expensive (us press got ‘em free), but sitting in one once is worth a place on every sports fan’s bucket list.
If you play in the NBA you almost certainly have the combination of agility and spring the players call “hops”—at least initially-- but the game has evolved far past the point where that alone suffices for success. A range of skills must be cultivated, along with judgment, which translates roughly into the ability to know when to do what. They take time to acquire.
Michael Jordan, the best basketball player (and maybe the best athlete) ever, was in his seventh season in the league before he hoisted a championship trophy. The Heat’s LeBron James, the current best, already has played in eight without earning the privilege. Dirk Nowitzki, the Mav’s ace and one of the all-time most-versatile offensive big men, is a 13-season vet still vying for his first ring.
Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, All-Pros all, put in a total of 36 seasons before the basketball gods allowed them to combine to win in 2008 in Boston. Lakers’ great Kobe Bryant won his first championship in his fourth pro campaign, but he had help from guys like Shaquille O’Neal, Glen Rice, Ron Harper and A.C. Green, who’d been around the block a time or three.
It’s not just a team’s starters who require seasoning; when a coach peers down his bench late in a playoff game he’s not looking for dewy youth but for the grizzled likes of Robert Horry, who could sit on his butt for two hours, then step on court and immediately nail a three, grab an offensive rebound or plant a strategic elbow. Horry collected seven NBA rings with three different teams over a 16-year career, most of them in latter-day supporting roles.
It’s often asked around Chicago how new-hero Rose stacks up against old-hero Jordan at the same, early stage of Rose’s development. Pretty evenly, I’d say. Both came into the league with hops a mundo and the ability to see openings and angles to the hoop invisible to lesser basketball intellects. Jordan went on to improve his straight-on shooting ability, as has Rose, although so far to a lesser extent.
But six or seven years into his career Jordan developed the fade-away jump shot that rounded out his game by making him lethal from mid-range—the same shot, by the way, that has sustained Nowitzky and Bryant in productive hoops maturity. Young Derrick ought to give the shot a try while he’s sweating through his summer drills. Like many a good young baseball pitcher, he’ll soon be realizing that his fastball alone won’t get him and his mates where they want to go.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
THE SOUTHWEST SIDE
One of the nice things about living in the Phoenix area is that there are many real people—i.e., Chicagoans—here; so many, in fact, that the place would pretty much empty out if we all had to go back.
Just about anything you can get in Chicago, you also can get here. My favorite lunchtime treats, including Chicago-style hotdogs, Italian beef and gyros, are close at hand, often at places with “Chicago” in their names. Besides excellent brisket sandwiches, Goldman’s Deli at Hayden and Indian Bend in Scottsdale has Cubs, Sox, Bulls and Bears photos on its walls. I’m in one of them, watching a patented Michael Jordan slam dunk at a long-past NBA All-Star-Weekend contest.
Although the natives don’t like to hear it, we Chicagoans also feel right at home in Arizona when it comes to politics. Pocket-stuffing politicians are as much a part of the desert landscape as they are on the gray streets of the famously corrupt Windy City, and maybe more so.
There’s a difference in the latter regard, though, and an important one. Chicago pols look, talk and act like crooks, and don’t much care who knows it. In Arizona they come off as family-values, law-and-order pillars of the community; as my mother would have put it, “butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.” Still, when it comes to pillage, they can hold their own in any league.
Some of the scams pulled off here have been breathtaking even by Chicago standards. Topping the list is the so-called alternative-fuels caper of 2000. Jeff Groscost, then the blow-dried State House speaker from suburban Mesa, snuck through the legislature a bill to give rebates from state coffers of up to 40% of the price of new SUVs and pickup trucks to buyers who had propane or natural-gas systems installed in the vehicles, whether or not they ever used them. Then he spread the word among friends and neighbors, along with the name of a henchman whose company did such installations. Before the whistle was blown this crowd bilked the state treasury out of $200 million, a Haul of Fame haul. Best, even after it was revealed, nobody went to jail, proving that, in Arizona, if you make the law you aren’t breaking it.
Now fast-forward to the present past numerous similar episodes, including the current investigations of our beloved “World’s Toughest Sheriff” Joe Arpaio for, among other things, misappropriating $100 million in county funds. Maybe you’ve read about our Fiesta Bowl scandal, which didn’t approach the alternative-fuels mess in depth but certainly exceeded it in breadth.
The Fiesta Bowl was begun in 1971, partly as a way to make sure that our local U., Arizona State, had a New Year’s date; the Sun Devils played in its first three editions, and in four of the first five. From there it clambered to big-time status, eventually joining the long-established Rose, Orange and Sugar bowls as venues for the annual national championship game for our nation’s football-playing scholars. In the process it brought many tourist dollars to the Phoenix area.
But while the Fiesta Bowl was doing good it also was doing well for those in and around it. It turns out that the non-profit, tax-exempt bowl corporation was a goodie bag for those in the know, providing excessive salaries and expense accounts to its administrators and game tickets, junkets, backdoor campaign contributions and other nifty gifties to pal-pols. Among its internal beneficences were a four-day, $33,000 birthday bash at Pebble Beach Golf Club for its executive director, John Junker; $13,000 in wedding expenses for a Junker aide; and a $1,200 outing for visiting firemen at a local strip club.
The names of the politicians on the bowl’s freebies list included the president of the State Senate and the speaker of the House. They, and others, have been busy writing belated reimbursement checks and updating their financial-disclosure forms in an effort to wash off some of the resulting publicity stink. In that category is Jim Lane, the mayor of my home city of Scottsdale. The bowl hosted and catered a fund raiser for him while he was running for the office in 2008, and he only lately got around to paying for it. He didn’t pay sooner because he never got a bill, he’s explained.
The hits kept on coming even after the scandal’s first inklings broke in the Arizona Republic. The bowl paid $55,000 to Grant Woods, a former state attorney general, to conduct an internal audit of its operations. He swiftly produced a document that found no wrongdoing by anyone. When continuing reports of misdeeds finally forced a fuller investigation, it came out that Woods had paid $20,000 from his fee for assistance to a bowl lobbyist, who went on to “prep” the employees Woods interviewed. “Key people may have lied to me,” Woods sheepishly told The Republic.
Incidentally, that newspaper’s publisher, John Zidich, should have had a front-row seat for the shenanigans because he’d been a Fiesta Bowl director for six years before resigning last month.
Yes, the sun shines here every day, and the area sparkles with a day-before-yesterday newness foreign to cities Back East. But the winds carry the same odors we Chicago transplants are used to.
In a way, it’s comforting.
Just about anything you can get in Chicago, you also can get here. My favorite lunchtime treats, including Chicago-style hotdogs, Italian beef and gyros, are close at hand, often at places with “Chicago” in their names. Besides excellent brisket sandwiches, Goldman’s Deli at Hayden and Indian Bend in Scottsdale has Cubs, Sox, Bulls and Bears photos on its walls. I’m in one of them, watching a patented Michael Jordan slam dunk at a long-past NBA All-Star-Weekend contest.
Although the natives don’t like to hear it, we Chicagoans also feel right at home in Arizona when it comes to politics. Pocket-stuffing politicians are as much a part of the desert landscape as they are on the gray streets of the famously corrupt Windy City, and maybe more so.
There’s a difference in the latter regard, though, and an important one. Chicago pols look, talk and act like crooks, and don’t much care who knows it. In Arizona they come off as family-values, law-and-order pillars of the community; as my mother would have put it, “butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.” Still, when it comes to pillage, they can hold their own in any league.
Some of the scams pulled off here have been breathtaking even by Chicago standards. Topping the list is the so-called alternative-fuels caper of 2000. Jeff Groscost, then the blow-dried State House speaker from suburban Mesa, snuck through the legislature a bill to give rebates from state coffers of up to 40% of the price of new SUVs and pickup trucks to buyers who had propane or natural-gas systems installed in the vehicles, whether or not they ever used them. Then he spread the word among friends and neighbors, along with the name of a henchman whose company did such installations. Before the whistle was blown this crowd bilked the state treasury out of $200 million, a Haul of Fame haul. Best, even after it was revealed, nobody went to jail, proving that, in Arizona, if you make the law you aren’t breaking it.
Now fast-forward to the present past numerous similar episodes, including the current investigations of our beloved “World’s Toughest Sheriff” Joe Arpaio for, among other things, misappropriating $100 million in county funds. Maybe you’ve read about our Fiesta Bowl scandal, which didn’t approach the alternative-fuels mess in depth but certainly exceeded it in breadth.
The Fiesta Bowl was begun in 1971, partly as a way to make sure that our local U., Arizona State, had a New Year’s date; the Sun Devils played in its first three editions, and in four of the first five. From there it clambered to big-time status, eventually joining the long-established Rose, Orange and Sugar bowls as venues for the annual national championship game for our nation’s football-playing scholars. In the process it brought many tourist dollars to the Phoenix area.
But while the Fiesta Bowl was doing good it also was doing well for those in and around it. It turns out that the non-profit, tax-exempt bowl corporation was a goodie bag for those in the know, providing excessive salaries and expense accounts to its administrators and game tickets, junkets, backdoor campaign contributions and other nifty gifties to pal-pols. Among its internal beneficences were a four-day, $33,000 birthday bash at Pebble Beach Golf Club for its executive director, John Junker; $13,000 in wedding expenses for a Junker aide; and a $1,200 outing for visiting firemen at a local strip club.
The names of the politicians on the bowl’s freebies list included the president of the State Senate and the speaker of the House. They, and others, have been busy writing belated reimbursement checks and updating their financial-disclosure forms in an effort to wash off some of the resulting publicity stink. In that category is Jim Lane, the mayor of my home city of Scottsdale. The bowl hosted and catered a fund raiser for him while he was running for the office in 2008, and he only lately got around to paying for it. He didn’t pay sooner because he never got a bill, he’s explained.
The hits kept on coming even after the scandal’s first inklings broke in the Arizona Republic. The bowl paid $55,000 to Grant Woods, a former state attorney general, to conduct an internal audit of its operations. He swiftly produced a document that found no wrongdoing by anyone. When continuing reports of misdeeds finally forced a fuller investigation, it came out that Woods had paid $20,000 from his fee for assistance to a bowl lobbyist, who went on to “prep” the employees Woods interviewed. “Key people may have lied to me,” Woods sheepishly told The Republic.
Incidentally, that newspaper’s publisher, John Zidich, should have had a front-row seat for the shenanigans because he’d been a Fiesta Bowl director for six years before resigning last month.
Yes, the sun shines here every day, and the area sparkles with a day-before-yesterday newness foreign to cities Back East. But the winds carry the same odors we Chicago transplants are used to.
In a way, it’s comforting.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
EXACTLY
Usually, there’s good news and bad news about trying to pick a Kentucky Derby winner, and this year is no exception. It’s always difficult because the entrants are equine adolescents who are still growing and developing, none will have run the Derby distance of 1 ¼ miles, and the big field of 20 horses makes bumping and jostling inevitable, putting a premium on racing luck. The good news is that, in the absence of a strong favorite, the above factors conspire to ensure a good payout no matter who wins.
Betting on favorites isn’t much fun, so I’m planning to ignore the likely, lukewarm betting choices—Dialed In and Uncle Mo—in favor of a four-horse, $2 exacta box of mid-range picks, costing me $24. My selections will be Archarcharch, the Arkansas Derby winner whose morning-line odds are 10-1; Shackleford, who should be at or near the early lead at 12-1; Midnight Interlude (10-1), who won the Santa Anita Derby from a far-outside post after being momentarily knocked off stride in the home stretch; and late-running Nehro (6-1), who came up just short in a couple of 1 1/8-milers and should benefit from the added distance, despite a poor post position.
That’ll be a 1-14-15-19 ticket. In order of preference my picks are 1. Nehro, 2. Archarcharch, 3. Midnight Interlude and 4. Shackleford. The exacta should be worth more than $100 if any of the four finish 1-2.
I’ll also put a what-the-heck $5 win ticket on Pants on Fire, who won the tough Louisiana Derby. I like his odds of 20-1 and his rider, Rosie Napravnik, who’d be the first female jockey to win the race.
The best idea, of course, is to make your own choices, but even if you don’t, try to watch the race. It’s always a great show.
Betting on favorites isn’t much fun, so I’m planning to ignore the likely, lukewarm betting choices—Dialed In and Uncle Mo—in favor of a four-horse, $2 exacta box of mid-range picks, costing me $24. My selections will be Archarcharch, the Arkansas Derby winner whose morning-line odds are 10-1; Shackleford, who should be at or near the early lead at 12-1; Midnight Interlude (10-1), who won the Santa Anita Derby from a far-outside post after being momentarily knocked off stride in the home stretch; and late-running Nehro (6-1), who came up just short in a couple of 1 1/8-milers and should benefit from the added distance, despite a poor post position.
That’ll be a 1-14-15-19 ticket. In order of preference my picks are 1. Nehro, 2. Archarcharch, 3. Midnight Interlude and 4. Shackleford. The exacta should be worth more than $100 if any of the four finish 1-2.
I’ll also put a what-the-heck $5 win ticket on Pants on Fire, who won the tough Louisiana Derby. I like his odds of 20-1 and his rider, Rosie Napravnik, who’d be the first female jockey to win the race.
The best idea, of course, is to make your own choices, but even if you don’t, try to watch the race. It’s always a great show.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
CROWNED
Never is a long time, during which many unlikely things can happen, so the saying “never say never” probably is apt. Still, when applied to thoroughbred racing’s annual Triple Crown series, it’s hard to avoid using the “n” word.
No horse has won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont since Affirmed did it in 1978, and from the looks of things none is likely to do it in the cycle that begins with next Saturday’s Derby (May 7). That’s not so much a commentary on the immediate field as it is on the general state of my favorite participant sport (when you bet, you participate).
Few enterprises anywhere are as badly run as the erstwhile Sport of Kings, and its clinging to tradition in staging the Triple Crown races, its best yearly shot at attention in an ever-more-crowded sports’ calendar, is the best evidence. That’s because the timing and conditions of the TC’s components, established willy-nilly in years long past, run directly contrary to recent and current trends at the ovals. The fact that everyone in the sport knows this has made not a whit of difference.
To win a Triple Crown today a colt or filly (a colt officially becomes a horse and a filly a mare at age five) would have to overcome his or her own history in addition to strong competition and the vicissitudes of racing luck. Worse, given the fate of some of those who have vied seriously for the honor of late, owners and trainers risk the careers or even the lives of their most-valuable animals to even try it.
The Triple Crown never has been easy to win, which is one reason it’s one of sports’ most cherished prizes. Since 1930, when the writer Charles Hatton of The Daily Racing Form coined the name, it has been captured but 10 times, and that number jumps by just one if you go back to 1919, when Sir Barton won it unawares.
It starts the first Saturday in May with the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, which at 1 ¼ miles is the farthest by 1/8-mile any competitor will have run. Two weeks later comes the 1 3/16ths-miles Preakness Stakes at the old Pimlico Race Track in Baltimore. The final leg, staged three weeks after that, is the hardest—the Belmont Stakes in New York, which, at 1 ½ miles, covers a longer distance than all but a few American thoroughbreds ever run. Winning three grueling, highly contested races in a five-week span becomes all the harder when it’s noted that the three-year-olds that are eligible for the series are the equivalent of 16-year-old humans, well short of their mature strength and development.
In years long past, such a feat was at least thinkable. Race horses then, well, raced. Citation, the 1948 TC winner, came to Churchill Downs on Derby Day with 16 starts under his cinch. The great Secretariat, the 1972 champ, had 12 pre-Derby races and Affirmed 13. By contrast, most of the entrants in Saturday’s go will have stepped on a track in earnest only four or five times, all at distances shorter than that of any of the Triple Crown tests.
That’s mostly because the economic focus of the sport long since has changed from racing to breeding. Racing may be in permanent decline on these shores, but it thrives in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and bidding for elite equine prospects has gone global. That’s meant that just about any horse that scores big on the track is whisked off to the breeding shed, post haste. Consequently, thoroughbreds these days are bred for speed, not stamina, meaning not only that they can’t stand up to frequent racing but also that they’re more prone to catastrophic breakdowns.
American racing’s biggest story of recent years was a sad one—of the colt Barbaro, who decisively won the 2006 Derby but broke a leg trying to win the Preakness and later died of the injury. One recent winner of the Derby and Preakness-- Smarty Jones in 2004—never raced again after failing in the Belmont. Big Brown accomplished the same double in 2008 but dragged in last at the Belmont and raced only twice more before being retired. “Too much too soon” applied to them all.
There’s a simple way to make the Triple Crown viable again. That would be to put more space between its parts, keeping the Derby in its traditional first-Saturday-in-May slot but running the Preakness the first Saturday in June—four week later—and the Belmont on July 4, about four weeks after that. That would give the contestants time to catch their breaths and, maybe, heal from the small hurts that can turn into larger ones.
I’m not nearly the first to propose this, but racing being racing, what makes sense counts for little in the decision-making process. Tradition is one obstacle to progress, as is the politics that always surrounds the awarding of racing dates in states with more than one track (including Kentucky, Maryland and New York). The fact that the sport lacks a national governing body with clout is a third.
But overriding is the plain ineptitude that kept from happening a match race in 2009 or 2010 between Zenyatta and Rachael Alexander, two sensational fillies who singly put a rare spotlight on the sport in those years. Like an updated Triple Crown series and the attention a winner would bring, that could have been a lifeboat for an activity that’s drowning, but in racing the only sounds you hear are “glub, glub, glub.”
No horse has won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont since Affirmed did it in 1978, and from the looks of things none is likely to do it in the cycle that begins with next Saturday’s Derby (May 7). That’s not so much a commentary on the immediate field as it is on the general state of my favorite participant sport (when you bet, you participate).
Few enterprises anywhere are as badly run as the erstwhile Sport of Kings, and its clinging to tradition in staging the Triple Crown races, its best yearly shot at attention in an ever-more-crowded sports’ calendar, is the best evidence. That’s because the timing and conditions of the TC’s components, established willy-nilly in years long past, run directly contrary to recent and current trends at the ovals. The fact that everyone in the sport knows this has made not a whit of difference.
To win a Triple Crown today a colt or filly (a colt officially becomes a horse and a filly a mare at age five) would have to overcome his or her own history in addition to strong competition and the vicissitudes of racing luck. Worse, given the fate of some of those who have vied seriously for the honor of late, owners and trainers risk the careers or even the lives of their most-valuable animals to even try it.
The Triple Crown never has been easy to win, which is one reason it’s one of sports’ most cherished prizes. Since 1930, when the writer Charles Hatton of The Daily Racing Form coined the name, it has been captured but 10 times, and that number jumps by just one if you go back to 1919, when Sir Barton won it unawares.
It starts the first Saturday in May with the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, which at 1 ¼ miles is the farthest by 1/8-mile any competitor will have run. Two weeks later comes the 1 3/16ths-miles Preakness Stakes at the old Pimlico Race Track in Baltimore. The final leg, staged three weeks after that, is the hardest—the Belmont Stakes in New York, which, at 1 ½ miles, covers a longer distance than all but a few American thoroughbreds ever run. Winning three grueling, highly contested races in a five-week span becomes all the harder when it’s noted that the three-year-olds that are eligible for the series are the equivalent of 16-year-old humans, well short of their mature strength and development.
In years long past, such a feat was at least thinkable. Race horses then, well, raced. Citation, the 1948 TC winner, came to Churchill Downs on Derby Day with 16 starts under his cinch. The great Secretariat, the 1972 champ, had 12 pre-Derby races and Affirmed 13. By contrast, most of the entrants in Saturday’s go will have stepped on a track in earnest only four or five times, all at distances shorter than that of any of the Triple Crown tests.
That’s mostly because the economic focus of the sport long since has changed from racing to breeding. Racing may be in permanent decline on these shores, but it thrives in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and bidding for elite equine prospects has gone global. That’s meant that just about any horse that scores big on the track is whisked off to the breeding shed, post haste. Consequently, thoroughbreds these days are bred for speed, not stamina, meaning not only that they can’t stand up to frequent racing but also that they’re more prone to catastrophic breakdowns.
American racing’s biggest story of recent years was a sad one—of the colt Barbaro, who decisively won the 2006 Derby but broke a leg trying to win the Preakness and later died of the injury. One recent winner of the Derby and Preakness-- Smarty Jones in 2004—never raced again after failing in the Belmont. Big Brown accomplished the same double in 2008 but dragged in last at the Belmont and raced only twice more before being retired. “Too much too soon” applied to them all.
There’s a simple way to make the Triple Crown viable again. That would be to put more space between its parts, keeping the Derby in its traditional first-Saturday-in-May slot but running the Preakness the first Saturday in June—four week later—and the Belmont on July 4, about four weeks after that. That would give the contestants time to catch their breaths and, maybe, heal from the small hurts that can turn into larger ones.
I’m not nearly the first to propose this, but racing being racing, what makes sense counts for little in the decision-making process. Tradition is one obstacle to progress, as is the politics that always surrounds the awarding of racing dates in states with more than one track (including Kentucky, Maryland and New York). The fact that the sport lacks a national governing body with clout is a third.
But overriding is the plain ineptitude that kept from happening a match race in 2009 or 2010 between Zenyatta and Rachael Alexander, two sensational fillies who singly put a rare spotlight on the sport in those years. Like an updated Triple Crown series and the attention a winner would bring, that could have been a lifeboat for an activity that’s drowning, but in racing the only sounds you hear are “glub, glub, glub.”
Thursday, April 14, 2011
DUMB, DUMBER, DUMBEST
At times during my journalistic career I was told after misfiring in print that “you guys never get anything right.” I would answer that we reporters did make mistakes, but that our error percentage probably was no worse than that of the practitioners of other professions. It was just that we made our mistakes in public, where anyone with the four bits (it’s two bucks now) to buy my newspaper could see them, whereas others err pretty much in secret.
The same can be said for sports figures. It may seem that they do dumb things in extraordinary numbers, but it just may seem so because they’re public performers with no place to hide when they go awry.
During these past few weeks, though, sport’s dumbness quotient seems to have gone way up—so high that one suspects that something unusual is afoot. Maybe it’s the cold spring in many climes, or the radiation wafting across the ocean from that damaged nuclear plant in Japan, but the movie “Dumb and Dumber” appears to be replaying madly on our playing fields, sort of like “Groundhogs’ Day.”
There’s no difficulty in identifying one guy who has ranked high on the dumbness scale of late. He’s the one-time slugger Manny Ramirez, who last week announced that he was retiring from baseball rather than serve a 100-game suspension resulting from his testing positive for using a performance-enhancing drug. This was the second drug test Ramirez had failed, the first —of 50 games-- coming in 2009.
That first conviction came four years after baseball announced it finally was going to start testing in earnest for the substances that had warped its playing fields for the previous 15 years. Before 2005, taking steroids in baseball was a good percentage play for the talented, balancing a real but probably manageable long-term health risk against the sure riches a “big” season or two would bring. Afterward, with the risk of detection higher, the calculation was closer, even given the technological edge users always have over testers.
Steroids still exist in baseball but the guy who usually gets caught these days is the poor teenager from the Caribbean looking to impress the scouts rather than the established star. Big-star Manny could afford the best chemistry and guidance but, apparently, didn’t pop for it. With one strike against him he should have, but, I guess, that was “Manny being Manny.” It’s said that only dopes get caught doping. Now we’ll have to think of a name for someone who gets caught twice.
Vying with Manny are people who should have known better, the Federal prosecutors in the San Francisco case against another one-time slugger, Barry Bonds, for lying to a grand jury about his steroids use and obstructing justice in a previous case against the drug lab BALCO. The Feds’ case, in the works for years, was circumstantial but substantial, involving testimony from Bonds’ former teammates, business associates and, even, a mistress. These folks said they witnessed physical changes in the player that could only result from steroids use, or dealt in drugs with Bonds’ former personal trainer and boyhood pal, Greg Anderson. One witness, described as Bonds’ personal shopper, said she saw the trainer give Bonds a shot, directly countering the player’s claim that no one except physicians did that.
Then the prosecution put on the stand Dr. Arthur Ting, Bonds’ orthopedist. Steve Hoskins, Bonds’ ex-business manager, had testified he’d discussed the player’s steroid use with Ting many times, but Ting denied having had such conservations. And -- oh, yes—the good doctor volunteered that he’d prescribed “legal” steroids for Bonds that could have had caused the changes described.
What were those prosecutors thinking? A simple Google search of Ting would have revealed his run-ins with California medical overseers, one of which resulted in him serving a five-year probation for allowing others to write prescriptions in his name and keeping inadequate records for “dangerous” drugs he’d prescribed. It also would have informed them that two of Ting’s sons had quit the U. of Southern California football team amid allegations of steroid use.
Any watcher of “Law and Order” knows that no lawyer puts up a witness whose testimony he can’t predict. The government got a “guilty” verdict on their obstruction charge but the jury, probably confused by Ting’s statements, deadlocked on the lying counts, with some concluding that maybe Bonds really did believe that flaxseed oil accounted for the adult growth spurt that caused his head, feet, muscles and home-run numbers to swell. It’s possible, huh?
Exhibit C in this little exposition (it takes three examples to make a column) is my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs. I nominate them not because of their history of futility that impresses Tibetan monks, Australian aborigines and others with a longer time perspective than ours, but what they’ve done lately. They enter the current season with the game’s sixth-highest payroll but, by all indications, the 15th or 20th best team. They owe that discrepancy largely to their general manager, Jim Hendry, whose judgment consigned more than a third of their $125-million payroll (37% to be exact) to three players who’ll be of little or no use in the campaign ahead.
One is Alfonso Soriano, who’ll make $19 million this year. Hendry signed The Fonz to an eight-year, $136 million contract in 2007, and got only two decent seasons from him before he lapsed into mediocrity at the plate and ineptitude in the field. In 2008, the GM made a similar blunder by wooing Kosuke Fukudome from Japan with a four-year, $48 million deal. Fuku was mediocre from the outset and now is a fourth outfielder earning (as it were) $14.5 mil.
The worst, however, was yet to come: the 2009 deal that brought in Milton Bradley, an addled outfielder who was bad news both on the field and in the clubhouse. Bradley was peddled after the season to the Seattle Mariners for starting-pitcher Carlos Silva in a swap of bad contracts. Silva turned out to be a modest find, going 10-6 in wins and losses after an 8-0 start, and had been penciled into this year’s rotation, but was cut from the team after a few bad early outings in spring training. He’ll draw a $12,750,000 salary from the Cubs this year while playing elsewhere, if at all.
Hendry, et al, no doubt thought they could get along without Silva, but a week into the season two members of the Cubs’ five-man starting-pitching rotation were down with injuries, forcing the team to scrounge the minors and retirement lists for live-body throwers. Hey, the Cubs didn’t get where they are by being smart.
So who’s your pick for dumbest— Manny, the Feds or the Cubs? You can’t make a wrong choice.
The same can be said for sports figures. It may seem that they do dumb things in extraordinary numbers, but it just may seem so because they’re public performers with no place to hide when they go awry.
During these past few weeks, though, sport’s dumbness quotient seems to have gone way up—so high that one suspects that something unusual is afoot. Maybe it’s the cold spring in many climes, or the radiation wafting across the ocean from that damaged nuclear plant in Japan, but the movie “Dumb and Dumber” appears to be replaying madly on our playing fields, sort of like “Groundhogs’ Day.”
There’s no difficulty in identifying one guy who has ranked high on the dumbness scale of late. He’s the one-time slugger Manny Ramirez, who last week announced that he was retiring from baseball rather than serve a 100-game suspension resulting from his testing positive for using a performance-enhancing drug. This was the second drug test Ramirez had failed, the first —of 50 games-- coming in 2009.
That first conviction came four years after baseball announced it finally was going to start testing in earnest for the substances that had warped its playing fields for the previous 15 years. Before 2005, taking steroids in baseball was a good percentage play for the talented, balancing a real but probably manageable long-term health risk against the sure riches a “big” season or two would bring. Afterward, with the risk of detection higher, the calculation was closer, even given the technological edge users always have over testers.
Steroids still exist in baseball but the guy who usually gets caught these days is the poor teenager from the Caribbean looking to impress the scouts rather than the established star. Big-star Manny could afford the best chemistry and guidance but, apparently, didn’t pop for it. With one strike against him he should have, but, I guess, that was “Manny being Manny.” It’s said that only dopes get caught doping. Now we’ll have to think of a name for someone who gets caught twice.
Vying with Manny are people who should have known better, the Federal prosecutors in the San Francisco case against another one-time slugger, Barry Bonds, for lying to a grand jury about his steroids use and obstructing justice in a previous case against the drug lab BALCO. The Feds’ case, in the works for years, was circumstantial but substantial, involving testimony from Bonds’ former teammates, business associates and, even, a mistress. These folks said they witnessed physical changes in the player that could only result from steroids use, or dealt in drugs with Bonds’ former personal trainer and boyhood pal, Greg Anderson. One witness, described as Bonds’ personal shopper, said she saw the trainer give Bonds a shot, directly countering the player’s claim that no one except physicians did that.
Then the prosecution put on the stand Dr. Arthur Ting, Bonds’ orthopedist. Steve Hoskins, Bonds’ ex-business manager, had testified he’d discussed the player’s steroid use with Ting many times, but Ting denied having had such conservations. And -- oh, yes—the good doctor volunteered that he’d prescribed “legal” steroids for Bonds that could have had caused the changes described.
What were those prosecutors thinking? A simple Google search of Ting would have revealed his run-ins with California medical overseers, one of which resulted in him serving a five-year probation for allowing others to write prescriptions in his name and keeping inadequate records for “dangerous” drugs he’d prescribed. It also would have informed them that two of Ting’s sons had quit the U. of Southern California football team amid allegations of steroid use.
Any watcher of “Law and Order” knows that no lawyer puts up a witness whose testimony he can’t predict. The government got a “guilty” verdict on their obstruction charge but the jury, probably confused by Ting’s statements, deadlocked on the lying counts, with some concluding that maybe Bonds really did believe that flaxseed oil accounted for the adult growth spurt that caused his head, feet, muscles and home-run numbers to swell. It’s possible, huh?
Exhibit C in this little exposition (it takes three examples to make a column) is my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs. I nominate them not because of their history of futility that impresses Tibetan monks, Australian aborigines and others with a longer time perspective than ours, but what they’ve done lately. They enter the current season with the game’s sixth-highest payroll but, by all indications, the 15th or 20th best team. They owe that discrepancy largely to their general manager, Jim Hendry, whose judgment consigned more than a third of their $125-million payroll (37% to be exact) to three players who’ll be of little or no use in the campaign ahead.
One is Alfonso Soriano, who’ll make $19 million this year. Hendry signed The Fonz to an eight-year, $136 million contract in 2007, and got only two decent seasons from him before he lapsed into mediocrity at the plate and ineptitude in the field. In 2008, the GM made a similar blunder by wooing Kosuke Fukudome from Japan with a four-year, $48 million deal. Fuku was mediocre from the outset and now is a fourth outfielder earning (as it were) $14.5 mil.
The worst, however, was yet to come: the 2009 deal that brought in Milton Bradley, an addled outfielder who was bad news both on the field and in the clubhouse. Bradley was peddled after the season to the Seattle Mariners for starting-pitcher Carlos Silva in a swap of bad contracts. Silva turned out to be a modest find, going 10-6 in wins and losses after an 8-0 start, and had been penciled into this year’s rotation, but was cut from the team after a few bad early outings in spring training. He’ll draw a $12,750,000 salary from the Cubs this year while playing elsewhere, if at all.
Hendry, et al, no doubt thought they could get along without Silva, but a week into the season two members of the Cubs’ five-man starting-pitching rotation were down with injuries, forcing the team to scrounge the minors and retirement lists for live-body throwers. Hey, the Cubs didn’t get where they are by being smart.
So who’s your pick for dumbest— Manny, the Feds or the Cubs? You can’t make a wrong choice.
Friday, April 1, 2011
NOING
I don’t know about you but I can’t remember getting much out of school. I had a good-enough time, I guess, and escaped more or less unscathed, but can’t recall any teacher doing or saying much that struck a chord. That led to my belief that school mostly is a place where kids get together with other kids, from whom they learn. The continuing national hysteria over education goes down easier with that in mind.
However (you knew there’d be one), one line from my years at Roosevelt High on Chicago’s great Northwest Side has stayed with me. It was uttered by Captain Seabury, the school’s band director, whose military title, which everyone used, stemmed from his WWI service.
I was thoroughly unmusical but encountered the droll captain in a freshman study hall he monitored. Sometimes apropos and sometimes not, he’d ask us kids “Do you know what you know?”
Now as then, it’s an excellent question. Much of what rattles around in our brains is garbage, the residue of stereotypes, wishful thinking and downright misinformation. Along with the few actual facts we’ve managed to absorb, it’s all mixed together into the goo that makes us the lovable creatures we are.
The sub-world of sports, my usual focus of discourse, is not immune to conceptual distortion; in fact, a case can be made that its conventional wisdom contains more nonsense than that of most subjects. Now come Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim to make that case with the book “Scorecasting; the Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won” (Crown Books, New York, 278 pages).
Using statistics from many sources—not the least of which were the major sports leagues themselves-- boyhood chums Moskowitz, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago, and Wertheim, a writer for Sports Illustrated magazine, put to the test many things that sports fans and participants think they know for sure. They concluded that, often, they really don’t.
In a way I found the book satisfying, and in a way not. The satisfying stuff, naturally, came when the duo’s data confirmed examples of sports’ home truths that I’ve long suspected were wrong. For instance:
-- Batters always should “take” a 3-0 pitch. Not so, the authors concluded from voluminous data; umpires increase the strike zone enormously in such instances, so the “taking” batter probably just concedes a strike. (Conversely, the zone narrows on 0-2 pitches.)
--- A punt usually is the best fourth-down call. Nope; risk-reward analysis (you can read the book for details) usually dictates that it’s best to go for it on fourth down, even in a team’s own territory. I liked this chapter particularly because it cited approvingly the example of the Tennessee high school coach Kevin Kelley, whose teams never punt and have compiled an overwhelmingly winning record and won several state titles. The remarkable Kelley was the subject of my blog on Jan. 1, 2009. You can find it by scrolling down.
-- When a basketball player gets within a foul of fouling out in the final quarter, it’s a good idea to bench him so he’ll be available during a game’s final minutes. No again. The average NBA player with five fouls picks up a sixth just 21% of the time, and a “star” (defined as one who has been among the top 10 in any year’s Most Valuable Player voting) just 16%. Either way, taking him out deprives his team of his services for as long as he sits and lessens its chance of winning
--In football and basketball a good offense is nice but (as Michael Jordan always declared) defense wins championships. Actually, offense-- as determined by statistical rankings-- turns out to be an equally good a title predictor in both those sports.
--It’s smart for a coach to call a timeout to “ice” a shooter or kicker just before a key free-throw or field-goal attempt. Actually, “iced” and “uniced” competitors succeed at almost exactly the same rate.
But harder for me to swallow was the book’s showiest thesis: that the home-field advantage-- sports’ unquestioned central verity—is caused not by such things as home cooking, familiar routines and playing conditions, and the encouragement of friendly crowds, but by game-official bias. The last, the authors assert, accounts for almost everything that measurably favors home clubs.
Moscowitz and Wertheim have stats aplenty to back up that contention, including home-visitor differences in foul calls in basketball and football, ball-strike calls in baseball and the awarding of injury time in soccer. Moreover, they say their data shows that the more crucial the game situation, the more umps, refs, etc., help the home team.
It’s not that officials are instructed to be ‘homers” or that the phenomenon is part of any conscious intent, the authors say. It’s because of a psychological concept called “influence conformity.” This holds that in pressurized situations decision makers will lessen the pressure on themselves by siding with what feels like the majority view of any issue. In other words, in sports they get along by going along with the home crowd. It’s human nature, the authors aver.
Maybe so, but I have my doubts. It’s been my observation that a certain personality type— let’s call it a “screw you” guy or gal—tends to gravitate toward certain occupations. Policing is one, also news reporting. Sports officiating is a third. These are people who enjoy going against the grain, who’d just as soon say “f---, er, screw you,” as make nice. In the ninth inning of game seven of a World Series, with the home team down by a run, two outs, the bases loaded and a 3-2 count on the batter, my money would be on the ump calling a borderline pitch “Strike three!” instead of “Ball four!”.
I have no data, of course, just a gut feeling.
If you don’t agree, screw you.
However (you knew there’d be one), one line from my years at Roosevelt High on Chicago’s great Northwest Side has stayed with me. It was uttered by Captain Seabury, the school’s band director, whose military title, which everyone used, stemmed from his WWI service.
I was thoroughly unmusical but encountered the droll captain in a freshman study hall he monitored. Sometimes apropos and sometimes not, he’d ask us kids “Do you know what you know?”
Now as then, it’s an excellent question. Much of what rattles around in our brains is garbage, the residue of stereotypes, wishful thinking and downright misinformation. Along with the few actual facts we’ve managed to absorb, it’s all mixed together into the goo that makes us the lovable creatures we are.
The sub-world of sports, my usual focus of discourse, is not immune to conceptual distortion; in fact, a case can be made that its conventional wisdom contains more nonsense than that of most subjects. Now come Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim to make that case with the book “Scorecasting; the Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won” (Crown Books, New York, 278 pages).
Using statistics from many sources—not the least of which were the major sports leagues themselves-- boyhood chums Moskowitz, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago, and Wertheim, a writer for Sports Illustrated magazine, put to the test many things that sports fans and participants think they know for sure. They concluded that, often, they really don’t.
In a way I found the book satisfying, and in a way not. The satisfying stuff, naturally, came when the duo’s data confirmed examples of sports’ home truths that I’ve long suspected were wrong. For instance:
-- Batters always should “take” a 3-0 pitch. Not so, the authors concluded from voluminous data; umpires increase the strike zone enormously in such instances, so the “taking” batter probably just concedes a strike. (Conversely, the zone narrows on 0-2 pitches.)
--- A punt usually is the best fourth-down call. Nope; risk-reward analysis (you can read the book for details) usually dictates that it’s best to go for it on fourth down, even in a team’s own territory. I liked this chapter particularly because it cited approvingly the example of the Tennessee high school coach Kevin Kelley, whose teams never punt and have compiled an overwhelmingly winning record and won several state titles. The remarkable Kelley was the subject of my blog on Jan. 1, 2009. You can find it by scrolling down.
-- When a basketball player gets within a foul of fouling out in the final quarter, it’s a good idea to bench him so he’ll be available during a game’s final minutes. No again. The average NBA player with five fouls picks up a sixth just 21% of the time, and a “star” (defined as one who has been among the top 10 in any year’s Most Valuable Player voting) just 16%. Either way, taking him out deprives his team of his services for as long as he sits and lessens its chance of winning
--In football and basketball a good offense is nice but (as Michael Jordan always declared) defense wins championships. Actually, offense-- as determined by statistical rankings-- turns out to be an equally good a title predictor in both those sports.
--It’s smart for a coach to call a timeout to “ice” a shooter or kicker just before a key free-throw or field-goal attempt. Actually, “iced” and “uniced” competitors succeed at almost exactly the same rate.
But harder for me to swallow was the book’s showiest thesis: that the home-field advantage-- sports’ unquestioned central verity—is caused not by such things as home cooking, familiar routines and playing conditions, and the encouragement of friendly crowds, but by game-official bias. The last, the authors assert, accounts for almost everything that measurably favors home clubs.
Moscowitz and Wertheim have stats aplenty to back up that contention, including home-visitor differences in foul calls in basketball and football, ball-strike calls in baseball and the awarding of injury time in soccer. Moreover, they say their data shows that the more crucial the game situation, the more umps, refs, etc., help the home team.
It’s not that officials are instructed to be ‘homers” or that the phenomenon is part of any conscious intent, the authors say. It’s because of a psychological concept called “influence conformity.” This holds that in pressurized situations decision makers will lessen the pressure on themselves by siding with what feels like the majority view of any issue. In other words, in sports they get along by going along with the home crowd. It’s human nature, the authors aver.
Maybe so, but I have my doubts. It’s been my observation that a certain personality type— let’s call it a “screw you” guy or gal—tends to gravitate toward certain occupations. Policing is one, also news reporting. Sports officiating is a third. These are people who enjoy going against the grain, who’d just as soon say “f---, er, screw you,” as make nice. In the ninth inning of game seven of a World Series, with the home team down by a run, two outs, the bases loaded and a 3-2 count on the batter, my money would be on the ump calling a borderline pitch “Strike three!” instead of “Ball four!”.
I have no data, of course, just a gut feeling.
If you don’t agree, screw you.
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