Category Archives: Sports

From star to persona non grata

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The Tiger Woods saga is a reminder that fame and success can be fleeting: one can go from the toast of the world to a pariah pretty quickly.

Chicago’s version of this may be the tale of Sammy Sosa. Sosa’s story is remarkable: he grew up very poor, came to town as a skinny White Sox outfielder, was traded to the Cubs and became a prodigious home run hitter, and then quickly disappeared and according to one commentator “now is persona non grata in the entire city.”

As a profile in Chicago Magazine suggests, Sosa helped run himself out of town:

Sosa’s transformation from Chicago icon to pariah has a lot to do with the controversies that tarnished his image: his use of a corked bat in 2003; his walkout during the last game of the 2004 season; and his years of self-indulgent behavior, which exasperated teammates and management. Any discussion of Sosa’s perceived failings must also, of course, include the elephant in the locker room: the suspicion that steroids helped fuel his career total of 609 home runs, the sixth highest in major-league history.

In retrospect, some of these issues seem easy to spot – even the most ardent Cubs fan today can see some of the troubles Sosa brought. His part in the lingering steroids scandal, which will take years to sort out as voters consider more players for the Hall of Fame, is damaging.

Yet, at the same time, when times were good with Sammy, they were good:

For years he and the organization had formed a spectacularly successful theatrical partnership, staging the Sammy Show at sun-drenched, beer-sozzled Wrigley Field. If the production resembled home run derby more than actual baseball, that was OK—the show was a smash, and the team was happy to count the box office receipts that poured in.

The magnetic Sosa seemed born to play the role of Slammin’ Sammy, and the Cubs’ marketing muscle helped spread the image of a carefree and cuddly hero who hopped when he hit home runs, tapped his heart to show his love for his adoring fans, and blew kisses to the TV cameras. If the truth was more complicated—if the star could be a maddeningly self-absorbed diva offstage—that was OK as long as the baseballs kept flying out of Wrigley Field. And if he sprouted muscles like Popeye after an epic spinach bender, apparently that was OK, too, provided that the turnstiles at Wrigley Field kept spinning.

As the profile notes, even as the Cubs languished during some years, Sosa was the baseball show for numerous summers.

So now Sosa languishes in some odd celebrity limbo like Woods: once revered, they both have shown a more frail human side, and have not yet recovered. I think both of them could regain some measure of standing: Woods by winning again and Sosa perhaps coming clean about steroids or offering apologies to his teammates. But they may never again reach the peaks of fame they once knew. While we haven’t heard Woods comment on how this feels to him, it sounds like Sosa is still struggling with this lesser status.

Baseball as primitive religious ritual

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One common means that sociologists use to gain perspective on social phenomena is to consider what an alien might observe and conclude if they happened to see human social life. Hampton Stevens takes a similar tack at theAtlantic.com to report on baseball as a primitive religious ritual:

Essentially, the religion of baseball is based on the hurling of a small, white orb that represents the sins of believers, and the attempt to expiate those sins by the ritualized touching of three small white squares. Two bands of warrior-priests wage an intricate, highly symbolic battle to see who can cleanse the most of their followers’ sins.

Each sect has a high priest. He stands elevated atop a circular mound at the very heart of the temple, the sanctum sanctorum of, beneath which are buried his ancestors and martyrs to the faith. Hurling the white sphere, he thus symbolically accuses the entire community of some great wrongdoing, challenging them to defend themselves and their sacred honor.

A cleric from the opposing clan does just that. He holds a weapon, offering a defense by trying to strike the orb in the hopes of being allowed to progress through the series of small white squares and therefore disprove the accusation.

While this may seem like a silly essay, it has value:

1. It is always useful to be reminded how others view practices that we think of as “normal.” Whether the others are aliens or people from different cultures, it is a reminder that what is obvious to us may not be obvious to others. Indeed, social life is made of up of norms and rules that one must learn starting at a young age.

2. Sporting events can be thought of on religious terms. While I have joked that being a Cubs fan is almost like having another religion because of the amount of faith it requires, sports in American society can be analyzed as “functional religion.” Particularly with an event like the Super Bowl, the amount of attention, time, and money spent on sports is astounding. We gather in stadiums/”hallowed grounds” to lustily cheer on our “good” team versus the “evil” team from another place. We might even go so far as to suggest that it may be possible that more Americans pay more attention to sports than they do to religion.

The end of the Lou Pinella era

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As I listened to the Chicago Cubs pregame on WGN Radio, I heard the news that Lou Pinella is resigning after Sunday’s game against the Braves. A few of my thoughts about the Lou Pinella era:

1. This resignation spells the true end of this four year era of Cubs baseball. As the players leave (Lee, Theriot, Lilly) and now the manager is gone, the bottom has fallen out on the Cubs. The four year run included two playoff trips from two very good teams that couldn’t break through the first round.

2. Lou as a person has been fascinating to watch. He clearly has a wealth of baseball knowledge yet at the same time can often seem like another grumpy old man. He has one of the slowest walks to the mound. He can be grumpy with post-game questions. I have seen some pictures and I have read his statistics at Baseball-Reference.com but I still have a hard time believing he was a serviceable player for some good late 1970s New York Yankees teams.

3. I don’t know what to make of Pinella’s managerial skills. While he will certainly be remembered for two playoff losses (including yanking Carlos Zambrano early in Game 1 in 2007) and then asking for more left-handed hitting before 2009 (which seemed to backfire), I think managers are like the President of the United States: they get lots of credits when things are good, blamed for everything when things are bad. Ultimately, the players are the ones who make and break the team.

4. Hearing Ron Santo’s pregame interview with Pinella, I was reminded why some people don’t like listening to Santo and why some Cubs fans love him. Santo sounded depressed for much of the interview and talked about how much he enjoyed their friendship. Ron really does bleed Cubby blue.

5. I hope the Cubs go with a relative newcomer when selecting a new manager – the last two big names of Dusty Baker and Lou Pinella haven’t worked out. It looks like next year will be a rebuilding year and it would be interesting to see a younger guy (like a Ryne Sandberg?) mold a new Cubs team.

UPDATE 9:28 PM 8/22/10 – Listening to Pinella’s post-game press conference was touching as Pinella got choked up about his time in Chicago. He really did seem to enjoy his time with the Cubs – even if he may only be remembered for being another Cubs manager who couldn’t win a World Series.

Dynamic pricing at sporting events

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Kevin Arnovitz at Truehoop reports that the New Orleans Hornets are embracing variable pricing for tickets for the upcoming NBA season. But more interesting is the link to a story about tickets sold by the San Francisco Giants, the first team to completely embrace dynamic pricing.

Last season (2009), the Giants played around the concept of dynamic pricing. Based on demand for tickets for each game, the prices in this section of about 2,000 tickets would fluctuate. When I was in San Francisco last August and was looking for Giants tickets, I saw this section online and was intrigued by it. (For the record, I bought tickets in other seats on StubHub which were cheaper than the variably-priced seats.)

Based on the success of this small sample, the Giants went ahead and introduced dynamic pricing for all the tickets in AT&T Park (a beautiful stadium) during the 2010 season. They are the first team to do this and now several other teams are tinkering with the concept on a small scale.

Evaluating Scottie Pippen as “window into your [pro basketball] soul”

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I recently had a discussion with a colleague about Scottie Pippen, who is entering the Basketball Hall of Fame. My colleague, a long-time Detroit Pistons fan, could not help himself from laughing when I suggested that Pippen was one of the best 25 NBA players of all-time. Miffed, I used my own years of watching Pippen play for the Bulls, Bill Simmons’ ranking in The Book of Basketball (these rankings were the best part of the book – Simmons has Pippen at #24), and stats from basketball-reference.com to make my argument.

Apparently this interaction was not as isolated as I thought. Kevin Arnovitz at Truehoop writes that Pippen was a polarizing player and “how you feel about Scottie Pippen is window into to your soul as a fan of the pro game.”

How large is too large for football?

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The NFL has some large players, particularly on the offensive line where it seems like all the linemen are at least 6’3″ and 300 pounds.The game has evolved from one with fairly normal people to one where players have to be behemoths or physical specimens at each position.

Mississippi walk-on lineman Terrell Brown is even bigger: 6’11” and 390 pounds. This is huge, massive. A couple thoughts:

1. Can one even be a good football player at this size? I imagine if he locked up with a defensive player, Brown could win on size alone. But how difficult is it to move all that weight? I could imagine some smaller defense players could make it difficult as they run around him.

2. Can one remain healthy while playing at this size? Linemen take a beating and it seems like tall athletes, like Yao Ming, have special issues.

3. What will his future life be like if football doesn’t work out? Offensive linemen bulk up quite a bit to play football but this is not the weight one would want to stay at for a lifetime.

Brown has a long way to go before these questions are answered – he is just a walk-on who apparently played at a community college and is not listed on recruiting sites. I’d be curious to see how his football future plays out.

How statistics may change golf

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Statistics are part of many sports and are often used by managers, coaches, and players to make decisions.

Golf is not yet up to par with others sports (see the Moneyball craze in baseball or the efforts of some NBA teams to analyze games) but that moment might be just around the corner, according to Slate:

We’re in a golden age for golf research because the PGA Tour has opened ShotLink’s books to researchers. Two professors at the Wharton school, for example, looked at 1.6 million tour putts and concluded that professional golfers are risk-averse. They examined putts for par and putts for birdie from the same distances and discovered that pros make the birdie putts less often. They suggest that pros leave these birdie putts short out of fear of making bogey, and then calculate that this bogey terror—and the resultant failure to approach birdie putts in the same way as par putts—costs the average tour player about one stroke per tournament.

It’s insights like this that offer the provoking notion that a Moneyball-type revolution awaits golf.

It would seem like an advantage to players to have this kind of data and analysis in hand as long as they don’t completely overrule their instincts for the game. Just because one has statistics available doesn’t necessarily mean they will be used judiciously.

h/t Instapundit

Argument over Title IX ruling

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Two articles at ESPN.com debate the merits of Title IX after a recent court decision regarding the act at Quinnipiac University. While the court case was about the school inflating the number of female athletes in order to show parity in male and female sports programs, Gregg Easterbrook (a journalist/pundit) and Nancy Hogshead-Makar (law professor and “senior director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation”) debate the necessity of Title IX.

1. Easterbrook argues that the rule allows the government to intervene in situations where it should not. While Title IX was initially necessary to help women’s sports get the recognition they deserved, it is unnecessary today. In the case at hand, the court was left deciding whether playing volleyball was a “civil right” and whether the school could add a competitive cheer team. Easterbrook says, “The issue is whether Title IX has run amok.”

2. Hogshead-Makar argues that Title IX is still necessary as women’s college sports attract smaller “scholarships, budgets, coaching salaries, facilities and competitive opportunities” compared to male sports, male sports are larger at the high school level, schools in addition to Quinnipiac are miscounting female athletes in order to appear compliant, and Title IX has widespread public support (80% according to one poll).

Divergent perspectives on a legal act that affects many college students.

Baseball training now including cultural assimilation

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White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen recently made comments suggesting Latin American baseball players are not treated as well as Asian players. While reading an article about this on ESPN.com, I was interested to find that major league teams have stepped up efforts to help players assimilate to American culture:

[M]any teams are doing what Guillen has suggested. Although they aren’t hiring specific interpreters, many organizations have intensified their English and cultural assimilation classes at the minor league level. This is a recent development, which is why Guillen hasn’t seen its impact at the major league level.

Teams recognize that a player’s path to success depends on how quickly he can assimilate into the American culture. It’s not nearly enough to be able to throw 95 mph or to hit a ball 450 feet. Pity the teams that lag behind in realizing this. It’s to a team’s benefit to have its players focused on baseball and not on whether they can order dinner, pay their rent or call for a taxi. Teams should do this not for altruistic reasons but for simple economic reasons. It’s a sound fiscal decision to put your employees in the best position to succeed.

Take the case of star Cleveland Indians rookie catcher Carlos Santana. Although he had been bashing Triple-A pitching for most of this year, one of the reasons Cleveland waited until the middle of the season to call him up to the majors was because the team wanted him to focus on language training.

The writer portrays this as a sound business decision but surely there are more dimensions to the story than this. What is the responsibility of a sports team (or any business) to its employees? Helping players adjust to a new culture or helping players complete an education (an issue in baseball, football, and basketball) or navigate a new world of fame and money is an important consideration. Not only might it be a sound economic decision and boost on-field performance but it also suggests teams might also be interested in the human potential (and not just athletic potential) of their players.

The anger in Cleveland over LeBron

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While the story of a fan dressed in a LeBron James Miami Heat jersey being escorted out of the Cleveland Indians game last night makes the rounds, Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated writes about the anger present in the city of Cleveland. According to Posnanski, what makes this anger different from anger after  sports letdowns of the past (of which Cleveland has seen its share) is that the anger seems to be growing.

Those who don’t watch or follow sports sometimes say that it doesn’t matter who wins or loses or how the local team finishes. Posnanski is suggesting the opposite: this anger about an NBA transaction is present all over a large city.

My questions: how much does this sports move really diminish the quality of life in Cleveland? Are workers less productive or are fewer business deals made? Do less visitors come to Cleveland now that it is not the city of LeBron? Can the image of Cleveland across the United States sink (even with Forbes already earlier this year naming it the most miserable city in the United States)? Would residents move away from Cleveland because LeBron also moved away?