Why Baseball is (Still) Better Than Football and Basketball...and Always Has Been Better Than Soccer

Scanning through A.M. radio yesterday on my drive home, I had to stop on blowhard Sean Hannity’s Fox radio show. The topic was the wussification of American boys through youth league soccer. No argument from me here; soccer is gawdawful to watch (sorry Europe). And while World Cup soccer players are incredible athletes, probably more so than pro baseball, football, and basketball players, the idea behind mass youth soccer leagues is not great athletics but rather the idea of building up self-esteem through a sport where (while the good athletes will still stand out) the bad athletes won’t look so bad kicking the ball around, as opposed to Little League, where their deficiencies show in dropped pop-ups and swing-and-miss strikeouts.

Again, no quibble from me over the awfulness of youth soccer. My quibble is with Hannity’s suggestion of American football as the rugged individualistic antidote to soccer. Football is great; I played it, I watch it. But we have a better All-American game; a game truly steeped in our nation’s history: baseball.

This time of year, with the Super Bowl still fresh in mind, and the specter of college basketball’s March Madness front and center, it is easy to overlook America’s greatest sport, the sport that represents America’s truest values.

Sorry Sean Hannity, but your “football as symbol of rugged individualism” does not hold. Football, sad to say, is more symbolic of authoritarian communism (for those of you reading this from your far-from-reality socialist college classrooms, the only type of communism to ever exist is ruthless authoritarianism, but that is topic for another day). The rugged individualistic sport is basketball. Would this then make basketball America’s true pastime? No. Rugged individualism is not really the true American ethos. Baseball retains the title of national pastime by avoiding the extremes of both authoritarian communism and rugged individualism, offering us an American symbol of democratic togetherness where both team (community) and player (individual) shine.

In football, the coach is a Stalin-like dictator. Each player is just a pawn on the chessboard. Players at different positions, such as kicker or linebacker, don’t even really play the same game. The offensive lineman, for all his hard work, has not a statistic to quantify his value to the team. All hard work is solely for the collective.

Basketball is rugged individualism as ruthless capitalism. It is a team game, but it focuses on the individual. When we think basketball, we think not of great teams like the Celtics of old, the Showtime Lakers, or the 90’s Bulls; we think of Magic vs. Bird, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Lebron and Carmelo and Dwyane Wade. It is always and only the star players who are called upon to take the game winning shot. It is about finding Jordan (in the early 90’s) a supporting cast to win him a title; it is about (now) finding Lebron a supporting cast. It is all about the individual rising up, and the role player staying in his place.

Baseball, the truly American sport, is democratic togetherness. It is a truly team sport, but one where the individual, any individual, can shine. Every player plays both offense and defense. Depending on where the ball is hit, any player will have the opportunity to make the big catch. On offense, when it is time for the big hit, does the coach send up his best player? No. Whoever’s turn at-bat it is will swing. All nine players have an equal shot of being the player to swing for victory. This is America at it’s finest: each player has an opportunity, and it is up to him to do with it what he can to make the whole team better.

As for soccer, the top sport in Europe and Latin America? The mindless running around of kids kicking at the ball in suburbia with all those soccer mom minivans in the parking lot symbolizes the coming anarchy to Europe with its own demographic collapse. As for Latin America? They also love baseball, so there is hope.

Gambling: The NCAA's Best Friend

During my senior year at St. Michael’s, the student online magazine, the Echo, ran an NCAA basketball pool. It was free and open to all students. The student with the winning bracket would win a gift certificate or something like that. I don’t remember. The Echo posted the brackets of all the students who entered. After the first weekend of the tournament, my bracket was doing great. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to win, because someone in the SMC athletic department noticed, and forced the Echo to take down the brackets of all NCAA student-athletes.

I don’t blame the athletic department. I blame the NCAA for its asinine rules. No NCAA athlete is allowed to gamble on any other NCAA or professional sporting event. Somehow, by taking part in a free NCAA tourney bracket, or if had done a few $5 pools with my friends (which I of course would never do—wink wink), it would make me a cheater. Somehow, gambling on the Division I NCAA basketball tournament would have compromised my ability to play fairly at the Division 2 NCAA baseball level. The only people who should be banned from betting on the NCAA tournament are Division I basketball players, coaches, and officials. That is it.

The NCAA decries gambling as some sort of evil that is corrupting the integrity of its game. Yet, they know damn well that the popularity of college basketball is due to gambling. The reason the 64 (now 65) team tournament is so popular is because the games fit into neat single elimination brackets. People tune in to watch a first round 8-9 game not because they care about the two teams involved (save alumni and fans from the two schools), but because they want to see if their picks turn out correctly. The NCAA makes $1 billion per year from CBS. Why does CBS pay so much to televise the games? Because they get great ratings. Why do they get great ratings? Because everyone and his mother has money on the tournament, inducing interest. And it is that $1 billion the NCAA gets from CBS, plus millions from ESPN, and the millions from all the networks that televise college football (another sport whose popularity is partly due to gambling), that the NCAA uses to pay for championships and events in the dozens of money losing sports that other student-athletes play (such as myself, a former baseball player). Without gambling, there would be nothing more than local competitions between area colleges throughout the USA. The NCAA should stop its moral grandstanding and admit that gambling is what makes college sports both popular and financially viable.

American Idol musings

Susan Sarandon. Maureen Dowd. Brian Williams. One is a famous actress, another is a “witty” New York Times columnist, and last is the replacement for Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nightly News (who I might add is kicking Katie Couric’s ass in the ratings). What do these three have in common? They all attended Catholic University, my grad school alma mater. Other semi-famous alums, other than almost every other archbishop in the country (it is The Catholic University of America), include Terry McAuliffe and David Gillespie, the head of the 2004 Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee, respectively. More ancient alumni include Wally Pipp, 1912 CUA graduate and starting first baseman for the New York Yankees, until a random day in 1924 when he got sick, and was replaced in the lineup by a guy named Lou Gehrig, who would go on to play in 2130 consecutive games.

I am pretty damn proud to be an alumnus of such a celebrity making institution. And we can add one more celebrity, even if her fame will be of the fleeting 15-minute variety. Antonella Barba, a CUA student, is one of the final 16 contestants, and one of the final 8 girls, on American Idol. I never knew her personally when I was at CUA, but I remember seeing her in the dining hall. As I’ve told many people, she is…well…noticeable. And, she didn’t even stand out. There were a number of beautiful girls at Catholic University. It is a great place to go and learn.

Her time on American Idol will be coming to a close soon. Tonight, two guys and two girls will get voted off. She is definitely beautiful, but this is a singing competition. There are five girls who blow the rest of the candidates out of the water. I did not vote, but if I did, those five would have gotten my vote. Out of Antonella and the two others, I don’t know which of the three I would include to advance. But, one of the five girls with incredible voices deserves to win. The next American Idol will not be a Catholic U alum, but I can take solace that CUA is prominent on the New York Times editorial page, NBC news, and politically charged movies.

Thoughts on the Supposed Tomb of Jesus

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra comes down from the mountains and scolds the people for acting happy and frivolous. “God is dead,” he sternly tells them. “And it is you, all of you, who have killed him.” Zarathustra’s words shocked the people. These people were not Christians. They were atheists, having long since given up faith in God. Why would Zarathustra scold them? Shouldn’t he be scolding the few remaining Christians scattered around? He scolds the atheists because they are not willing to really let go of God. They say they no longer believe, but they still live as if there is a God, acting as if their lives have meaning and as if the moral rules they attempt to follow still apply. “You have killed God,” Zarathustra implores. “You can’t hold onto your old ways of life. If you are going to give up God, you must go all the way, and accept a world without meaning, purpose, or virtue.”

Nietzsche was one of the few honest atheists. Unlike the Richard Dawkins’s, Daniel Dennett’s, and Sam Harris’s of the world who rejoice in the supposed death of God, thinking themselves truly free to shape their own lives, Nietzsche sees the Enlightenment all the way through to its logical conclusion in a postmodern world devoid of meaning. Without God, life is ultimately pointless. You can’t let go of God and hold onto a view of life inexorably tied into a world with a God.

Recently, Titanic director James Cameron teamed up with scientists and archeologists to do a documentary on the discovered tomb of a man named Jesus who lived in first century Palestine. The goal of the documentary is to show that this might be the tomb of THE Jesus and his family. Other names encrypted on the tomb include Joseph, James (the supposed brother of Jesus), two Mary’s, and a Judah. The great hypothetical secret is that this tomb contains the bones of Jesus Christ, his parents Mary and Joseph, another Mary who was his wife, and his son Judah.

If these really are the bones of Jesus Christ, there are vast implications. Some theologians would say it doesn’t really matter. They say our faith is in the person of Jesus, the example he set, his revolutionary teachings, and the faith in the hearts of the early disciples. But that is baloney. Christian faith is a faith in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a faith that Jesus of Nazareth really is God made Man, and that Jesus, after his crucifixion, really did rise, body and soul, from the dead and ascended into heaven. Christian faith is a faith in the empty tomb. If those really are Jesus’ bones, then Jesus never rose from the dead and 2000 years of Christian history are meaningless. I’m not mincing words. There is no way around this. If those really are the bones of Jesus, the entire Christian religion is a giant fraud. The faith of every Christian who has ever lived is in vain. The faith of the two billion Christians alive today is meaningless.

If those really are the bones of Jesus, then the four summers I spent working at a Catholic summer camp are a waste of time. The friendships I made are still valuable, but the mission of the camp that I believed, the spiritual service we were providing to the campers, is a lie if the bones of Jesus are really still on earth. The friendships and experiences I had at Catholic University I hold dear, but the courses I studied and the degree I earned would be rendered obsolete if that tomb really has Jesus’ bones.

If those bones really are the remains of Jesus Christ, then life is meaningless. People can throw out all the vague sentimentalism they want. They can say what really mattered is that the disciples had faith in the message of Jesus, and that is how we can say Jesus is risen. We can say that Jesus’ command to love gives meaning to life, since what is greater than love? But, that is not enough. The whole point of the Resurrection is that love is stronger than death. If Jesus stayed dead after the crucifixion, love does not win; death does. Some would say that we can live on in the memories of our loved ones, who will in turn live on in the memories of their loved ones. But, eventually the sun will explode, the solar system will die, and the universe, scientists say, will either expand until everything cools to absolute zero and all elements will die, or the universe will collapse in on itself until there is nothing again, just like before the Big Bang. Besides, as Woody Allen said, no one wants to have eternal life by living on in the memory of others; we want eternal life by continuing to live after we die. The Resurrection tells us that love is stronger than death, that after we die, we will be raised to new life. Not a metaphorical sort of life, but a real living and breathing eternal life.

Most scholars have weighed in, saying that the possibility of the tomb really containing THE Jesus’ bones is a fantasy. Those of us with Christian faith have nothing to be worried about. But, if it really were Jesus’ bones, the implication would be that Nietzsche is the greatest prophet in world history. Considering Nietzsche was Hitler’s favorite philosopher, that is a scary thought. In a world with no meaning or purpose, ‘scary thought’ would just be an opinion, anyway.

Anecdotes

An anecdote is a brief story, often used to entice a reader into an essay, article, or larger story as a way to lead or transition into the main thesis, which in itself may not be enticing enough to draw the reader in as an opening. For example, if someone argued that it is morally imperative, for the sake of the American family, to eschew our commercialist lifestyle for a more eco-granola lifestyle, I might open a critique of this viewpoint with an anecdotal story about meeting a nice family at McDonald’s. If you read my writing frequently, you probably notice that I use anecdotes a lot, probably more than I should. This essay below consists of a series of anecdotes. Each anecdote leads to what appears to be the thesis of my essay, but it in itself turns out to be just another anecdote leading to yet another believed thesis that is sadly yet another anecdote. Enjoy!

Satire is, according to the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary: Third Edition, the use of derisive wit to attack folly or wickedness. Satire works best when it lampoons persons and things that take themselves way too seriously. Comedic movies such as The Naked Gun, Airplane!, Police Academy, and even Hot Shots are timeless works of movie humor because of the way they satirize serious dramas that came before them. Sadly, the movie spoofs that we are bombarded with nowadays neither poke real fun at nor offend the current crop of dramas, horrors, romances, and epic pictures. They are boring and dull us to death. What the producers of movies like Scary Movie, Date Movie, and Epic Movie don’t get is that it is not enough to have actors dress up in similar costumes to the characters they are spoofing. That is not satire; it’s just plain old referencing. Good satire creates characters of its own independent of the movies it spoofs, such as Leslie Nielsen’s cop in Naked Gun.

That said, one of the current crop of spoofs does get one thing right. Not Another Teen Movie, a spoof of high school movies like American Pie and Varsity Blues, is generally as bad as the rest of the “Insert Genre” Movie crop, but it nails a current movie truth with the introduction of an African-American character who calls himself the “token black guy.” This lampoons the practice in film of making sure there is a minority figure in a group of white friends who can act as the comic relief. The “token” character is inserted because of a concern for diversity, however it is easy to mock this practice because the implicit idea in the creators of shows and movies is that putting a “token” in the cast in some way really alleviates real racial problems in the world, when in reality, at best it does nothing and at worst it mocks true attempts at diversity.

We see this in more than just movies. Check out any college brochure for a lily-white campus such as St. Michael’s (my alma mater), and there will always be minorities in every picture, even though minorities are about two percent of the SMC college population. This “token”-izing goes beyond just race. It goes into all facets of our lives and relationships with others. The term That Guy (which I wrote on earlier: http://spidgetales.blogspot.com/2005/10/dont-be-that-guy.html) came into existence because we all know That Guy who always gets drunk or That Guy who doesn’t know how to answer ‘what’s up?’ with a simple ‘not much, you?’ or That Guy who always shows up to work late. The NBC show The Office resonates because of its many average characters that identify with traits of people we know.

Are people really so simple that they can be stereotyped into particular roles? The racial and sexual stereotyping of old, though still with us in remnants (and, in the cases of differences between men and women, are often very true, despite the derision of feminists), have to an extent given way to personality and characteristic stereotyping. There is the ‘dumb blond’ stereotype, the ‘hotheaded redhead’ stereotype, the ‘drunken frat-boy,’ the ‘meat-headed jock,’ the ‘comic relief’ guy, the ‘fat chick who is loose because she wants attention,’ the ‘snobby prep,’ the ‘frumpy middle-aged woman,’ the ‘absentminded professor,’ and many others.

No, individuals are not so simplistic as to be boxed into narrow categories such as these, but as humans, we think in narrative. We think in story. Our religious and cultural beliefs are passed down as narratives. We use narrative to make meaning out of our lives. And, since our lives are always intertwined with others, we give stereotypical characteristics to the people we interact with to make sense of our own lives, and to find meaning and direction in our own lives. A young adult may, for example, see his football coach as the token dictatorial Vince Lombardi type as a way of seeing his high school sports career as a defining moment in shaping how he grew from a ‘boy’ to a ‘man’.

We even think of ourselves as belonging to, or embodying, certain roles, in order to see our life narrative as not simply individual, but tied into the narrative of the communal whole. I have ‘performed’ many roles over the years. In Little League, I was the gawky uncoordinated kid who struck out every time. In middle school, I was the smart nerdy kid who always got picked on by the cool kids. In high school, I was the star baseball player and the guy who the social studies teacher always called on to read, because I read with passion and used proper inflection while most of my classmates read in a dull monotone. In college, I played baseball and got involved in student activities, which lead to me being ‘the well known guy who everybody liked’ (seriously. If Facebook was around during my undergrad years, I would have had about 800 people on my friend list under St. Michael’s alone). At pretty much every life stop, I have been the funny guy who makes everyone feel welcome. And, sadly, at pretty much every life stop as well, I have been the guy who girls love to hang out with, who makes them laugh, who they can have great conversations with, but is somehow not quite worthy of taking them out on a date and getting a kiss goodnight.

Because of that last role I play in the narrative of life, I have become as close to an expert as there is on the dreaded ‘Friend Zone.’ I know what it is like to get the ‘just friends’ talk. The ‘you are a great friend, but that is it’ talk, and the ‘I like you as a friend’ talk, and the best one of all, the ‘I don’t want to ruin our friendship by taking it to the next level’ talk. Are there times in the past where I wish the girls would have just said, ‘Sean, when I mean I don’t want to date someone I am friends with/someone I work with, I just mean you, because I would definitely date the right friend/coworker’ or ‘Sean, you are just not good looking enough for me’? I always used to say ‘yes, I’d rather just hear the awful truth’ and thought of the ‘you’re a great friend’ speech as a euphemism (to see my old essay on euphemisms, click here: http://spidgetales.blogspot.com/2005/11/euphemisms.html).

And, maybe it is a euphemism. But not all euphemisms are bullshit. Some are. I have gotten a couple letters already from places I applied for jobs that said “while we are sure all the applicants were more than qualified, we have chosen the candidate we feel is best for the job.” Bullshit. Maybe that candidate was best, but how the hell do you know that all the applicants were qualified? But, the ‘just friends’ speech is not really a euphemism. It results from this innate sense in all of us not to hurt others. We don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. If the stakes were turned, and it was girls I am not interested in asking me out, would I come right out and say, ‘sorry, you are not good looking enough,’ or ‘your personality sucks’ or ‘I don’t like the fact that you have already hooked up with dozens of guys,’ depending on whether I am turned off by her looks, her personality, her loose morals, or a combination thereof? No. I would be polite and friendly about it, try to deflect the issue as much as possible, and throw out euphemisms and half-truths such as ‘I’m not looking for a relationship right now’ or ‘I don’t want to ruin our friendship.’

It’s only natural to be polite and friendly to a fault. Sadly, this leads to false hopes and even bigger hurts when things don’t work out. I wish I could go back in time and visit my 10th grade self. I would say to 15-year-old me, “Sean, you’re making a mistake. Don’t ask the prettiest girl in school to be your homecoming date. She is going to say no. Learn your place in the school’s social status line. And, if you do make the mistake and ask her out, don’t be fooled by the ‘I’ll think about it’ answer. She’s trying to be nice and didn’t want to hurt your feelings right away. Later she will tell you she’d rather just go alone.” I would warn the 16-year-old 11th grade me, “Sean, save yourself from getting yelled at and swore at by the coach, save yourself from getting stuck on the bench most minutes of each game. Skip basketball and go out for bowling instead.” (I’ve chronicled my high school basketball incident here: http://spidgetales.blogspot.com/2005/10/i-begin-basketball-coaching.html)

Not only is it stupid to wish I could go back in time and give myself that advice, but it is redundant. I told myself the same thing when I lived through it. Intuition told me I was stepping out of my league in the dating department, especially as a 15-year-old who had never asked anyone out. Going for the prettiest girl the first time you try and date is like stepping up to bat against Roger Clemens before playing Little League. And, I knew going into the basketball season in 11th grade things weren’t going to work out. I was on Varsity during preseason in 10th grade, but got dropped to JV before the regular season to get more playing time. My JV coach moved up to Varsity and brought up two other guys, but not me. I knew then I wasn’t in the long term plans, even while I averaged 16 points per game on JV. No, surprisingly, those events really don’t bother me anymore. One, they happened in high school, and nothing from high school can truly be considered real life. And two, the real heartbreaks are not those events that you know deep down won’t work out. They are the things that you really believed would work out, but didn’t. For sports metaphors, think of the Boston Red Sox standing one out away from their first World Series championship in 68 years in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, or the New York Mets losing Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS after Endy Chavez made the game saving catch that seemed to shift the momentum.

I can think of a few examples (and will share a couple) of this type of empty feeling in my life. They don’t happen during the event, but sometime after. There comes a point where you just feel that knot in your stomach, knowing that something isn’t right. Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to. And not only that, they were completely out of your control. There was nothing you could have done to fix the problem. The first example takes place my senior year of high school during baseball season. Junior year, I finally got really good at baseball, making All-League, getting 32 hits, and hitting my first homerun (a grand slam, no less). We were a Class D school, playing in a league with all B and C schools. Our record was only 7-16 since we played against larger schools, and we got a low 9 seed in the Class D sectionals. We won four in a row to win the Section 2 championship, before losing in the state regionals, a game before the state final four. I went 11 for 20 (.550 average) during the five games. I was sad we lost, but ready for senior year. Again playing against B and C schools, we went 8-13. But, we were left out of the Class D sectionals, event though we crushed the top D seeds during non-league regular season games. I was upset. I started slow that year, but hit my stride, hitting 3 homeruns, including one my final home game. I really felt that this was the year we were meant to win states at the D level. I was going to lead my team to a state title, but my chance was taken away not by another team beating us on the field, but by an uneducated sectional committee that could not understand strength of schedule. The other empty feeling moment happened the final summer I worked at a certain summer job. A few days before the end of summer, one coworker had to leave early. This person hugged me goodbye and left, and at that moment I felt empty. I felt that things did not go the way they were supposed to, the way I believed they would earlier that summer. When this person was hired to work there with me, I thought we really connected, and I took it as a sign that the final role I had always played in the narrative of life would be going away. But it didn’t, and there was nothing I could have done to make things turn out any different. I hope life is going great for this person and that this person is happy, as I do for all my friends I worked with there and all my friends from high school, college, grad school, and all other walks of life. But would I mind if someday, I end up rich and famous, with supermodels on each arm, and this person sees me and feels a little jealous and wishes that she had taken the opportunity to be the one on my arm? No.

Are these examples of things to regret? No. They are events that I could not have changed, no matter what I did. Regrets are for things like robbing banks. If I did something that stupid, I would sure as hell regret it sitting in my prison cell. Regrets are for actions you could have done differently. We should regret not trying out for the high school soccer team. We should regret not asking the pretty girl to prom. We should regret not applying to our dream college. We should regret not sending a resume to that great company. Hell, we should regret not trying out for American Idol. At least the people we laugh at in the early episodes went for their dream. If they didn’t, there would be no one to mock on Fox television, and there would be no Randy, Paula, and Simon to satirize on SNL. Most of the fun in blowhard TV personalities such as Dr. Phil, and now Simon, is seeing them lampooned in sketch show satires.

Satire is, according to the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary: Third Edition, the use of derisive wit to attack folly or wickedness. Satire works best when it lampoons persons and things that take themselves way too seriously. Comedic movies such as The Naked Gun, Airplane!, Police Academy, and even Hot Shots are timeless works of movie humor because of the way they satirize serious dramas that came before them…

An Inconvenient Poop

As I sat on the john this morning, I thought of Al Gore. I did not think of the book I was reading or the snow and freezing rain coming down outside the window (living in the woods on the river, I can leave the blinds up when doing my bathroom thing) or the load I was getting off my…umm…mind. I thought of Al Gore.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar for teaching us about the dangers of global warming caused by environmental degradation. Unlike the last time he got the most votes for something, this time he actually got his reward. As individuals, we can each do our part to save the earth by recycling, driving less often, and drinking more beer to save water. Attractive girls can do their part by wearing less clothing, saving our natural resources from unfortunately being turned into excess garments. But, individual efforts are not enough. Corporations need to change their policies to be more eco-friendly. Unfortunately, when this gets in the way of profits, profits always wins out. This is why the government sometimes steps in and makes environmental laws.

These laws are needed; otherwise we would never see stars at night, even in rural areas. But sometimes environmental protection and conservation goes to far, actually causing more damage than just sitting back and doing nothing. A case in point is low flow toilets. One way, environmentalists believed, to reduce excess waste (pun definitely intended) is to require low flow toilets that use less water when you flush. The problem is these low flows don’t send enough water to get everything down into the sewage. Which brings me back to my morning on the john and my thoughts of Al Gore.

I thought of Al Gore as I flushed and the brown would not make its way down. I remained appreciative of Al Gore’s environmental warnings as I thrust the plunger into the hole, clearing a pathway to flush again. There are many ways we can work to counteract the threat of global warming. But ‘energy-efficient’ toilets is not one of them. I find myself regularly using two or three courtesy flushes each visit to my favorite seat in the house, for fear of using the plunger again and again.

I will continue contemplating the duality of man as I think of ways to smuggle an old-fashioned high flow toilet from Canada while dreaming of a day when the environment is saved from the danger Al Gore predicted if we don’t act. Before I craft plans, I must make a return visit to my favorite seat in the house. My two cups of coffee have run through me, and it is time for another inconvenient poop.