A brief news update in the politics of sports—

One of sports’ great anomalies is lack of uniformity in the application of antitrust legislation. Baseball is the only sport—and business for that matter—exempt from Congress’s blanket of trust-busting. Other sports do not enjoy such protection.

This time it’s college football that’s been caught on lawmakers’ radars. Senator Orin Hatch (R.-UT) is plotting a potential antitrust investigation into the NCAA’s Bowl Championship Series. He is planning hearings, too. Alleging that the current system “leaves nearly half of all teams…at a competitive disadvantage,” the investigation would look into strength of schedule disparities and other factors that go into the controversial computer ranking system.

Perhaps he’s grandstanding. More likely, he's for real--after all, every fan of college football hates the system and greatly prefers a playoff model. Or maybe he’s just still bitter about the fact that his states undefeated record wasn’t good enough for a spot in the ‘ship.

The Slide of Paul Revere

The Slide of Paul Revere

[Grantland Rice]

Listen, fanatics, and you shall hear
Of the midnight slide of Paul Revere;
How he scored from first on an outfield drive
By a dashing spring and a headlong dive—
‘Twas the greatest play pulled off that year.

Now the home of poets and potted beans,
Of Emersonian way and means
In baseball epic has oft been sung
Since the days of Criger and old Cy Young;
But not even fleet, deer-footed Bay
Could have pulled off any such fancy play
As the slide of P. Revere, which won
The famous battle of Lexington.

The Yanks and the British were booked that trip
In a scrap for the New World championship;
But the British landed a bit too late,
So the game didn’t open till half past eight,
And Paul Revere was dreaming away
When the umpire issued his call for play.

On, on they fought, ‘neath the Boston moon,
As the British figured, “Not yet, but soon;”
For the odds were against the Yanks that night,
With Paul Revere blocked away from the fight
And the grandstand gathering groaned in woe,
While a sad wail bubbled from Rooter’s Row.

But wait! Hist! Hearken! And likewise hark!
What means that galloping near the park?
What means that cry of a man dead sore?
“Am I too late? Say what’s the score?”
And echo answered both far and near,
As the rooters shouted: “There’s Paul Revere!”

O how sweetly that moon did shine
When P. Revere took the coaching line!
He woke up the grandstand from its trance
And made the bleachers get up and dance;
He joshed the British with robust shout
Until they booted the ball about.
He whooped and he clamored all over the lot,
Till the score was tied in a Gordian knot.

Now, in this part of the “Dope Recooked”
Are the facts which history overlooked—
How Paul Revere came to bat that night
And suddenly ended the long-drawn fight;
How he singled to center and then straightaway
Dashed on to second like Harry Bay;
Kept traveling, with the spped of a bird,
Till he whizzed like a meteor, rounding third.
“Hold back, you lobster!” but all in vain
The coaches shouted in tones of pain;
For Paul kept on with a swinging stride,
And he hit the ground when they hollered:
“Slide!”

Spectacular players may come and go
In the hurry of Time’s swift ebb and flow;
But never again will there be one
Like the first American “hit and run.”
And as long as the old game lasts you’ll hear
Of the midnight slide of P. Revere.

_________________________________________

We read this poem for my Politics and Law of Sports class. Written around the turn of the twenitieth century, Rice’s poem joined an array of other popular culture movements that looked to affix close bonds between baseball and American iconography. All such works were part of an effort to elevate baseball through patriotism which was a boon to establishing baseball as America’s national pastime.

What Is the Greatest Sound In Sports?

I debate this in my mind constantly. I know, I know, really geeky right? But seriously, let me know what you think. Here's my top 5:

1. The rattling of a golf ball in the hole after you've sunk a 20-footer.
2. The pop of a 90 MPH fastball as it smack the raw-hide of a catcher's glove.
3. The crunch that emanates from the collective crash between a middle-linebacker and a wide-receiver as he streaks across the middle.
4. The swoosh of a basketball as it falls through the mesh net. (Does a chain-link net sound better?)
5. The roar of 43 NASCAR stock cars as they start their engines at the beginning of a race.

Do you agree? Think I'm way off? Am I missing others? Let me know what sounds in sports are akin to the strings in Beethoven’s Fifth.

Electronic Arts' Market Strategies

So the economy is still hurting and companies across the board are looking for the best strategies possible to ensure stability and viability. To be sure, the sports industry has not dodged the economic bullet. But one company provides a lesson for how to navigate these testy times.

Electronic Arts, a titan in the sports videogame market, recently reported a third quarter net loss of $641 million, or $2 per share. This compares to a $33 million loss for the same quarter a year earlier. Citing poor holiday sales, the maker of Madden, FIFA Soccer and Tiger Woods Golf has released considerably more conservative forecast projections.

But despite these poor numbers, EA shares rose 6.1% in after-hours trading the other day. How could the share price rise in the face of such crummy numbers? For starters, the company has been transparent and forthright regarding their losses. So investors were not shocked by the poor numbers—they expected them.

So this accounts for why the stock did not tank upon the earnings’ release. But why then did the share value actually increase? It turns out that EA has been proactive and vocal about its plans to regroup and recharge. EA has made the decision to tighten its belt by focusing on their most successful products and extracting maximum value from their best brands. Thus the decision has been made to delay work on niche products such as “The Sims 3” and to transfer focus to their more popular games such as the Madden franchise. Furthermore, EA plans on cutting 1,100 jobs and closing twelve facilities.

So investors were calmed and even encouraged by EA’s comprehensive and robust war plan to get the company back to posting strong profits. Indeed, the gaming company forecasts per share earnings to fall between a five-cent loss and a 40 cent profit. When compared to this years earnings drop off of $3.29 for this fiscal year, that’s quite an improvement. EA’s plan to pare back on niche products and to focus on aggressive marketing for their best products position’s them nicely to weather the storm.

Baseball as a Civil Religion

The important distinction is that baseball is a civil religion and not a "religion". Thus it is not an ecumenical religion like Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Buddhism. In “Civil Religion in America,” Robert Bellah posits the idea that “most Americans share common religious characteristics expressed through civil religious beliefs, symbols, and rituals that provide a religious dimension to the entirety of American life.”[i] Civil religions have neither gods nor sacred texts but they do have institutions which aid and abet their effects. They possess religious overtones as they live deep in peoples’ souls and elicit a visceral emotional connection.

They present qualities that its follower’s value and create a spirited community.
In the same way that religions have institutions, so too does baseball. If institutionalized religion has cathedrals and synagogues, then baseball has stadiums. Walking through the tunnels of a stadium is like walking through the crypt of a church. Stepping out of a tunnel and facing the open field is then analogous to entering the sanctuary. Even baseball jargon is religious in tone and form. In the stands you here cries of “you gotta believe!” and strategies that require “sacrifice.” When the game is close fans are encouraged to have “faith” in such “life and death” scenarios. Larry Merchant, a sports analyst for HBO, once said that the World Series was treated by fans “as though it were a solemn high mass.”[ii]

The emotions felt by athletes and fans work to inspire religious feelings as well. When Robert Novak goes to watch his beloved Dodgers he notices several ways in which baseball creates and inspires a civil religion:

By the asceticism and dedication of preparation; by a sense of respect for the
mysteries of one’s own body and soul, and for powers not in one’s own
control; by a sense of awe for the place and time of competition; by a sense
of fate; by a felt sense of comradeship and destiny; by a sense of
participation in the rhythms and tide of nature itself.[iii]

All of these emotions and effects are present in baseball but could easily be found in religion. The companionship of crowds yields congregational sentiments. The sense of fate breeds respect for what will come and helps us cope with events when things go sour. The rituals of baseball—do not step on the foul line, take exactly two practice swings, lick your fingers before every pitch—are not unlike the rituals found in religion.

A famous sports saying goes “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” What follows from this is that in losing there is a sense or element of death. To lose is to die. But this is symbolic just as baptism and communion in church are symbolic. In each ritual the participant dies, symbolically, and then is reborn, symbolically. The same is true in baseball. A player loses a game or strikes out three time and dies, symbolically. But the next day he is born again with a chance at redemption. As long as the churchgoer or player cedes himself to the symbolism and does not just walk through the motions, the effects of the rituals can be impacting.

Some are cynical and find it aggrandizing to elevate sports to a semi-religious status. They are more humanistic and fail to see—or refuse to see—how a stadium could bear resemblance to a church. But then again, what religion does not have its skeptics, its nonbelievers? “Any religion worthy of the name thrives on irreverence, skepticism and anticlericalism. A religion without skeptics is like a bosom never noticed.”[iv] Indeed, Novak welcomes their challenges as their dispositions validate baseball’s religious nature.

Baseball is also religious in that its followers share common histories and pass shared experiences and memories down through generations. Robert Elias’ A Fit for a Fractured Society, quotes Stephen Riess who said “the national pastime…supplied some of the symbols, myths and legends society needed to bind its members together.”[v] Shared beliefs create communal bonds and also inspire reverence for the subject. A young child listening to his father’s experience seeing Jackie Robinson play or Barry Bonds slug home runs can have a very impressionable effect. That these memories can be passed down through generations shows the sport’s transcendentally religious nature. Sharing memories and stories ensures that the civil religion persists and stays vibrant.

Unlike much of the world, we lack the thousands of years of evolving society that has placed art, and music and opera at the summit of societal importance. We have musical talents but nothing on the order of Beethoven or Mozart. America has some great literature but most rankings put Shakespeare, Milton and others at the top. The reason is that Europe has had thousands of years of societal struggle—we have had just over 250. Alas, sports are our civilizing agents.[vi] They better us by bringing us together and they inform our hearts and souls through the values that they teach. Baseball is America’s universal art form and our civil religion.

It is very easy to gloss over sports. So ubiquitous in our society, they often fade into the background as scores scroll across the bottom of television screens. We are inundated with sports to the point that they may even seem to have a dulling effect. But to rest there would be a serious injustice. As the French author Jacques Barzun once wrote, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”[vii] What began as a simple game played on the Elysian Fields in New Jersey has blossomed into so much more.

[i] Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, 5.
[ii] Larry Merchant, quoted in Will, 24.
[iii] Novak, 18.
[iv] Novak, 23.
[v] Stephen Reis, quoted in Robert Elias, A Fit for a Fractured Society: Baseball and the American Dream,(Armonk, New York: Sharpe, M.e., Inc., 2001), 10.
[vi] Novak, 27.
[vii] Jacques Barzun, God's Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words, (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1954) 159.

Why We Have Come To Love Sport & Why That Is A Good Thing

...a continuation of the previous post...

But these lines of thinking fall short of reality and reveal a serious misperception. One refutation has its roots in historical change. The other lies in the nature of the human and American spirit. In terms of the first refutation, simply put, it is no longer 1836 nor is it 1890. We are a vastly different country now due to natural societal changes that have put Puritan and Victorian modes of living on the back burner. Though baseball has its nascent roots in the latter quarter of the nineteenth-century, the sport really did not flourish until the first quarter of the twentieth. By this time, America was more tolerant of sport and had even become an advocate for its benefits.[i] And though baseball is American, the influx of immigrants from Europe in the early 1900s made the country more Catholic and more Jewish and more diverse. These groups brought with them new notions of play that have given the concept various intellectual traditions. They themselves did not create an environment accepting of play—indeed it was a mixture with shifting American trends—but the two blended together and acted together to create a space for sport in the minds of many former unbelievers.

Ultimately, to discount play and sport is to deny a fundamental part of the human condition. After all, the fundamental essence of the human spirit is play. As Michael Novak so appropriately explains:

The basic reality of all human life is play, games, sport; these are the
realities from which the basic metaphors for all that is important in the rest
of life are drawn. Work, politics, and history are the illusionary,
misleading, false world. Being, beauty, truth, excellence, transcendence—these
words, grown in the soil of play, wither in the sand of work…Play belongs to the
Kingdom of Ends, work to the Kingdom of Means. Barbarians play in order to
work; the civilized work in order to play.[ii]

To be sure, work has its utility. The individual learns strong lessons and society reaps the benefits of the individual's work. But in some sense, work is a fabrication; a necessary function that works to impel society forward. The same goes for politics. But play and sport is different. It is hard to defend intellectually and even harder to put in words, but we know that play is in the "Kingdom of Ends" because in all of us burns the desire to play. If given the choice, most (it should be all) would choose play over work. Sport is not a distraction from work; work is a distraction from play.

In separating myth and reality, we find that work goes with the former and play with the latter. Work comes to us out of necessity. We must do work to provide food, to discover better health treatments, and to write laws that create peaceful society. Indeed, work is supported by the age old myth of that the fundamental purpose of humans is too improve the world. But is that all that we are about? Is our sole function to discover new medicines, invent new technology, create complex financial instruments, and improve our ability to build cities and all of its institutions? This is not to say that progress is a bad thing—to be sure, far from it. Of course it should be noted that we have made great strides in becoming more egalitarian as a society, and our work to make the world safer and more just are surely noble pursuits. But despite all of our work, the never-ending toils of life abide. Death persists, murder and crime continues, and the Earth maintains its orbit around the sun.

Thus play deserves greater attention and respect. We engage in too much of it for it to be overlooked and discredited. It necessitates our study because in sport and play we find the values “grown in its soil”: being, beauty, truth, excellence, transcendence. Work, friends, society and history will eventually pass us by. But the aforementioned qualities will never cease. They will forever maintain their value and utility. These qualities are reality. The study of and the participation in sport is imperative because sport works to better ourselves and reveals to us the important qualities of a good and rigorous life. Again, this is not to say that we should abandon work and progress. Instead, we can look to sport for the qualities that aid and inform our work and relationships—but we should not deny that these qualities are illuminated most brightly in sport.

[i] Nemec et al., 87.
[ii]Michael Novak, The Joy of Sports: End Zones, Bases, Baskets, Balls and the Consecration of the American Spirit, (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1976), xxi.

The Roots of American Disdain of Sport

Many people firmly believe that sport does not deserve a moments thought nor any form of dedicated study. Indeed, many share a passionate disdain for sport—and baseball in particular—as a distraction from the important things in life. Surely three hours in the library, plowing the fields, or engaging in civic activism is time better spent than watching a ball game. Surely conversation should be more concerned with politics and fine art than the World Series or the designated hitter. Surely conversation centered on Plato, or Joyce is more rewarding and builds more character than a debate over who will win the NL West or who should be MVP. As a journalist once said, “to love sports is to love the lowest common denominator, to be lower-class, adolescent, patriotic in a corny way.” I dissent, respectfully.

Nevertheless, if we are to assert that baseball does indeed breed national character and that it is inherently American, then we must do our due diligence in exploring why so many pass over sport as being a side-car, a distraction. After all, America's roots in the Puritan work ethic in some ways necessitate an opposition to sports. For the most part, as America was being built and was growing, her citizens did not play—they worked. When Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to America he was somewhat intrigued by American values of work. He noted that Americans did not play, had no real sports, teams or leagues. He found that Americans centered their lives on work not leisure.

Play for play's sake was frowned upon during de Tocqueville's visit and continued throughout the 19th century. The Puritan and Victorian values that were en mode at the time were particularly antithetical to sports and play. These ethics and principles have led us to seriously undervalue sports. Back then sports were not only a distraction from work but led to individual and societal moral degradation.

Baseball Is America

In many ways, baseball, much more so than basketball and football, is a sport whose character most closely resembles the American spirit and the Anglo-Saxon Protestant myth of our nation’s beginnings. It is a thinking man’s game, cerebral in every way imaginable. Moreover, out of the Enlightenment came our respect for reason and the idea that the proof of things rests in our ability to observe, measure, count and quantify them. In this regard, baseball satisfies this passion one-hundred times over—all sports pale in comparison to baseball when it comes to statistics. There are runs to count, hitting percentages to compute, steals to total and hits to tally. The game is exceedingly orderly and when combined with its cerebral undertones it satisfies the American appreciation for enlightened reason.

Baseball, like America, has a high regard for the individual and his achievements. Baseball puts each player in the spotlight at a single time. Standing alone in the chalked box, the batter has only himself and all of his instinct and experience in making the decision to swing or not. If he strikes out he is chastised. It he belts one over the fence he is revered. Indeed, the story is the same on defense. Tradition puts fielders where they play and each man has his distinct position or territory. When the ball is hit between second and third base it is the shortstop—not the second basemen or the outfielder—that must play the ball. Each player’s position has its traditional sovereignty. Just like countries, when defenders invade one another’s space trouble is bound to ensue.

Unlike baseball, football requires a supremely close interaction of players. The linemen need to block in order for the quarterback to throw or for the running-back to run. In this sense, basketball and football is corporate—it depends on the fluid and unitary movement of several athletes. Baseball is associational. As Michael Novak asserts, “baseball is a Lockean game, a kind of contract theory in ritual for a set of atomic individuals who assent to patterns of limited cooperation in their mutual interest.” Yes, there is a team baseball. But it is the amalgamation of distinctly individual efforts that achieve the team goal.

Nevertheless, while baseball elevates and accentuates individual achievement, there are elements of justness and equality that likewise show American values of the same elements. Though baseball teams have managers and captains and players are compensated at different levels, the importance of ‘team’ remains high.

The viability of communal strength rests in baseball’s intrinsic balances of power. Here too, we see the innate undercurrents of Americanism running and weaving through the sport of baseball. Baseball is to games what “the Federalist Papers are to books: reasoned, judiciously balanced, incorporating segments of violence and collision in a larger plan of rationality, absolutely dependent on an interiorization of public rules.” Like the balance between a judge and the accused, there is a similar balance of power between a pitcher and a hitter, and between a runner and an umpire. Even the field itself is balanced: the distance between the pitchers slab and home plate, the height of fences, the length and weight of the bat. Slight changes to any of these things could fundamentally shift the balance and outcome of events.

Finally, baseball can be said to resemble a form of checks and balances—much like the design of our federal government. It requires a bit of poetic license but, in a sense, batters step up to the plate one by one and are like unitary executive; the defense, acting together like the legislature, forms a check on the batters, their executive counterparts; the umpires lay down their judgments like the judiciary checking both the batters and the defense. The analogies are far from exact. But they do work to show that the principles of balance at work in our system of government, of which we are so fond, exist in baseball as well.

Quote of the Week: Dicky V

If you could choose another sport for Dick Vitale to call, what would it be? Football? Eh, probably not. Baseball? Definitely not! Though I can't imagine the guy not doing college basketball, perhaps he'd be most suited to call a boxing match. I could see, no wait, hear that in my head.

But it turns out Vitale wants none of that. In another life, he said he'd want to announce tennis. Tennis?

"Tennis. I would change the complexion of tennis broadcasting. It'd be a hoot. They wouldn't know what hit him," Dick said with the requisite enthusiasm that could only emanate from his vocal chords.

Tennis? Haha, are you kidding me?

Fantasy (Reality) Sports-- Test Case in UK Soccer

Branching out, researching and learning about other sports is one of my favorite aspects of writing this blog. Soccer has been particularly interesting to learn about—from league structures, to marketing strategies and from player transactions to fan culture.

This is a great idea out of the UK’s Ebbsfleet United fans. First, imagine a team that needs to raise capital. Now imagine a group of fans frustrated with management and the team’s direction. Seizing these sentiments, Will Brooks, a former advertising executive, set up the website MyFootballClub.co.uk. He created a trust to raise money to buy a team that would allow investors to take part in all of the team’s decisions, from player acquisitions to jersey design.

Successful? Brooks’ fund raised $400,000 dollars on the first day and now has approximately 31,000 members/owners. This past February the members voted to purchase Ebbsflleet for just over $1,000,000. What was once fantasy is now a fabled story as the team that once struggled just won the equivalent of a minor league championship.

The team has a one investor, one vote principle. So as long as you pay the sixty dollar annual fee you too can have a say in the club’s operations. In fact, the members voted on the team’s website to sell striker John Akinde for a quarter million.

Sure there are potential hiccups. Should the coach or the fans/owners/non-experts be making the day to day decisions? But while there are weekly votes, most fans are acquiescing and are ceding most authority to the coach. Nevertheless, this experiment in fan ownership is fascinating. In an age of mass consumerism many fans feel like just another face in the crowd, another guy to be pitched to. But this creates the closest relationship one can have with his team. Fans/owners of Ebbsfleet have expressed a true family feeling. The team has gained serious recognition and is attracting marketers and advertisers enthralled with the concept.

It remains to be seen, however, if this concept could ever be replicated in other sports—let alone work with teams in larger more lucrative leagues. The answer is probably not but I could see this concept making its way to minor league baseball or the Canadian Football League.