The Sports Curmudgeon®

You already know the concept of adding by subtracting. It works in algebra; it works in real life; it certainly works in sports. Well, I was musing over the weekend about how the sporting world might be better off with the subtraction of a few misguided people and/or things and decided to try to focus in on five things in sports today that do not add to my enjoyment of sports. I think the sporting cosmos would be better off without them.

Two of the “things” have to do with baseball and so, in no particular order I give you:

The First Thing I Can Do Without: The salary-be-damned goofball teams in MLB who make a mockery of the game with the rosters they seek to compile. There are a few teams in this category; but clearly, the most serious offender is the New York Yankees. Starting the season, they had already outspent – for their major league roster only – every other team in baseball by more than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays will spend on their entire roster for all of this year and probably for half of next year too. For the month of April, the team stunk and so they decided to solve that problem by paying Roger Clemens a jillion dollars to pitch for them whenever he feels like it and it simultaneously happens to be convenient for him to show up wherever the Yankees will play that day. The Yankees ownership pushes the front office and the field manager and then has to spend money like a drunken sailor to try to keep the team from disappearing from the baseball landscape. And now the owner has the gall to say that the GM is on the hook for this season - - as if the GM were really an independent actor/thinker within the structure of the team and as if an independent actor/thinker might actually be tolerated within the structure of the team. Steroids are a black mark on the game of baseball; the profligate salary structure of a few teams – led by the New York Yankees – is an even blacker mark.

The Second Thing I Can Do Without: The designated hitter has been an annoyance since the day it was implemented and now, it really needs to go away. The knee-jerk reaction by DH-enthusiasts to that suggestion is to say that it is not exciting to watch a pitcher bat for himself because most pitchers are hugely inept at the plate. And truth be told, watching the really bad hitting pitchers at the plate is about as enjoyable as oral surgery. Nevertheless, I find it even less appealing to watch some superannuated player who would embarrass himself and his family and most of humanity if he had to play the field every day in the lineup. The only position he has a prayer of playing is “batter” and the designated hitter rule enables that situation to obtain. I think baseball players – people, who can actually play a position on the field and then step into the batter’s box and swing the bat – should play baseball. And if it is so bad to watch inept pitchers at the plate, how come it isn’t equally bad to watch “good field/no hit” shortstops play the game?

One of the entries on my list turns out to be a person. He’s not an evil person; he’s just sufficiently annoying that he diminishes my enjoyment of the game he tries to lead and so I give you:

The Third Thing I Can Do Without: And that would be David Stern. As I said, this is not an evil man with devilish intentions; he is simply annoying to the max. Tony Kornheiser has correctly identified the fact that David Stern always thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. Who knows; maybe he is? But it is time that David Stern stopped allowing people to continue in the deluded belief that David Stern saved professional basketball. He didn’t. Julius Erving, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan did that. David Stern presides over a league so filled with spoiled brats and anti-social thugs that he had to impose a dress code on a bunch of nominally professional adults. His smug and literal interpretation of draconian rule instituted to make thuggery a serious offense in the league led to the suspension of Amare Stoudamire and Boris Diaw in the best playoff match-up of the year. The Spurs should vote him a full share of their championship bonuses if they win it all; David Stern was the Spurs second most valuable person in that series.

And by the way, David Stern demonstrates his belief that he’s the smartest person in the room whenever he talks about the glorious times the NBA experiences now. Horse Hockey!! Attendance is down in at least 40% of the cities; regular season TV ratings were down; in the last couple of weeks, nine consecutive NBA telecasts showed ratings declines from the equivalent games last year; the overall playoff ratings on TNT are down 13% while the ratings on ESPN and ABC are down 19% and 20% respectively. That means that David Stern’s healthy league that has never seen better times is not only failing to draw new fans; it isn’t even holding onto its hard-core fans.

The NCAA football bowl games and the ways in which teams are selected to appear in bowl games are so stupid that it sends me to Roget’s Thesaurus to come up with new adjectives to describe those things. “Senseless”, “moronic”, “retarded” and “preposterous” are the only ones I can come up with by myself… And so:

The Fourth Thing I Can Do Without: The myriad college bowl games, the BCS and the polls that put teams into those myriad meaningless games. To fill out the dance cards for all of these meaningless games, it is not uncommon to find two teams playing each other with 6-6 or 7-5 records and both having losing records within their conferences. I can’t imagine changing any trivial happenstance of my life to make sure I tune into a game like that. Even the alums from South Flatulence State and Nowhere A&M don’t care enough to show up at that kind of game in any numbers. Therefore, I can’t imagine why any company would pay money to have its “brand” associated with a useless encounter of this type. But the bowl games do find sponsors out there; I wonder when there will be a shareholders revolt over that. Some of those games deserve to be sponsored by Fleet Enemas, but the folks at Fleet are smart enough to keep their money in their pockets.

And I hope I don’t have to spend any great time convincing you that the polls that determine the teams to get into the “prestige bowl games” and the BCS processes are all worthless. Who votes in the polls? Sportswriters, former players/coaches, broadcasters and active coaches, that’s who. Now tell me how many of them take the time from what they actually do for a living to sit down and watch all – as in each and every one – of the games played by the teams they think are the 15 best teams in the nation every week in order to make an informed decision in their voting. I’ll tell you how many do that - - NONE OF THEM. And they shouldn’t because they have lives to lead with far more important things to do – such as pick the lint balls off their underwear as it comes out of the dryer.

In order to keep my list from growing beyond five things, I had to restrain myself from getting into a lather over commonplace annoyances in sports such as the NCAA or any of the goofs who run the anti-doping authorities around the world or the various Olympic Committees around the world. Once I got past those things, I focused on the final entry here:

The Fifth Thing I Can Do Without: Needless entertainment at sporting events – particularly at baseball games. We don’t need to hear the glee club from one of the suburban middle schools sing the National Anthem before a game. The major reason for that is that middle school glee clubs – by and large – stink. You could have a bunch of trained seals play the anthem on bicycle horns and it would be as good as the glee club – and probably more entertaining. And we don’t need C-List celebrities out there in the seventh inning to sing God Bless America. As a corollary, any C-List celeb performing this act should be subject to 30-days in jail if they don’t know the words. The same goes for dolts who show up at the park to sing Take Me Out To The Ball Game and who don’t know the words. I think everyone can do without those fools for a 30-day stretch. If teams feel the need to have a live hominid perform these musical interludes – instead of an instrumental rendition or a recorded rendition – the teams should assemble a roster of half a dozen local performers who have the talent to perform these acts and then rotate among those talented performers.

And if you think I’m picking on baseball games here, don’t even get me started on the abjectly awful and hugely moronic halftime shows during the Super Bowl…

That’s it; that’s my list; I’m sticking to it.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…