Sports & things

 I've made a reasonable facsimile of trying to play sports and watched all kinds of sports my whole life. I even watched jai alai once back in the 70s.

This will ramble a bit but here goes. Lately I've been kind of dismayed with sports in general. It seems to be just about money. It's always been about money, but money seems to be the only thing. And it's mostly about media, leagues and gamblers making money and individual teams, players and fans get left behind. It's sort of like Boeing being totally focused on it's stock price, that safety, customers and employees were an afterthought.

Like with pro sports or politics or anything that is media driven, the whole point seems to be a consistent product. It's not about winning at all cost, it's about a consistent product. Generally every event should be a 50-50 tossup, with consistent play. Gamblers won't all make a lot but they will make enough to keep coming back because they can make informed choices. People think the country is so divided because of mean people and Russian bots, but it's really that media wants a match race on anything that is too close to call, but is data driven so that people feel like they can make informed choices. Even if info is faulty, it doesn't matter, so long as the the media and leagues keep making money. It's sort of like garbage companies and utilities, they will always make money.

So teams just look at the data and try to be consistent. And it starts in little league. The most talented and charismatic are fed up through the system. And all the teams look for the same things. Hard throwers and free swingers. Mostly I'm about baseball but in other sports it's speed and strength. And teams won't try to get their hitters to shorten their swing and hit to the opposite field or teach their pitchers to be location change-up pitchers, they'll just try to obtain another hot player at the trading deadline.

And players are never gone. They just become talking heads on media. It used to be, they'd sell insurance, open a bar or sell cars. Heck, Richie Hebner used to dig graves in the off-season. But now they could be all dead, but you could put holograms up, because they spout the same things every year and it's all pretty much meaningless. But I suppose it gives gamblers something to base their bets on.

I'm pretty much done with organized sports. I'm still enough of a stats nerd, to check on the Mariners gamecast and the family are all Seahawks fans, so probably watch that but read a book at the same time.

But I'd like to watch pick up sports. I'd like to see youth sports with no adult involvement until high school. And adult sports, with no organization or refs, just people playing in the sandlot. But no sandlots anymore. All the empty lots have either buildings or organized city ballfields where you have to schedule games. And any sandlots have chain-link fences around because owners are afraid they'd get sued if someone got hurt. I think Ted Williams grew up in San Diego and him and his buddies would play ball, sun up to sundown. Can you imagine watching those games?

There's a little ballfield I see on the bus sometimes where kids are playing ball. I wish there was a spot online where you could see a schedule for games at the field. Or instead of organized city leagues; bars, churches or workplaces or neighborhood adults would just get together for a pickup game and post it online. I wouldn't mind seeing that. Sometimes I'll go to the local pickleball courts and watch people play. 

And it could be I'm all wet. Because once I played in a "recreational" co-ed soccer league but as soon as the whistle blew recreational went out the window and everything was cutthroat. Maybe people do just care about winning and not about how you play the game.

Maybe it's just me and maybe it's because I'm older that I just like to see a good play, no matter which team makes it. Whether it's sports, politics or work, there are good plays made on all sides. And a lot of times, maybe most times there are more than two sides to any question. We just don't hear about it. Everyone is focused on the pinnacle. But there's a lot of strength and action at the base of the pyramid. It's a lot easier and sometimes more interesting to go horizontal than vertical.