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A Sneak Preview
-Wanda Gershwitz, ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:20 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #1. ‘Football is the ‘new’ National Pastime.’
-Pedro Gomez, ‘Treating Hall of Fame Vote with Honor’, ESPN.com, Dec. 4, 2006. We live in an age when football is the only true American sports obsession. -Gene Frenette, ‘Pastime's Glory Days Have Passed’, (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, July 15, 2003. [Football is'> the runaway No. 1 sport in this country. -Adam Schefter, ‘Giving Baseball the Boot’, Denver Post, Sept. 8, 2002. One of the most mystifying myths in modern sports is football’s supposedly surpassing baseball’s popularity in the good old US of A. It’s not hard to pick up the claim about the ‘new’ National Pastime. Highly influential, highly respected commentators, from Bob Costas to columnists Jason Whitlock and Michael Wilbon, have claimed that baseball’s long been surpassed in American hearts and minds. Sports Illustrated has mourned baseball’s sad slippage on multiple occasions. ESPN The Magazine believes the hype, too. So does Newsweek. And The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Along with The Boston Herald and Texas Monthly and The San Diego Union-Tribune and The Denver Post. And so on and on. Remarkably, football’s edge over baseball is supposedly so obvious that it doesn’t seem to require any hard evidence. That’s a curious omission but, as it turns out, a completely necessary one. Because the evidence doesn’t exist. Certainly, the National Football League’s flacks can’t point to any great attendance feats. In 2006, for instance, Major League Baseball’s 30 teams welcomed more than 75 million in paid attendance, or just over 2.5 million fans per team, while the NFL managed a yearly gate of just under 22.2 million, or about 690,000 for every one of its 32 franchises. If popularity is about the time, energy, and money devoted to live sporting events every year, baseball is far more than three times more popular than football. Football partisans tend to skip over the laughable attendance comparison, though, instead insisting their game is still America’s favorite reality TV show. Through its combination of flash, dash, and red-blooded violence, isn’t football the greatest draw in sports television? Nope. It’s true that pro football can average somewhere from 9.5 to 10.0 ratings in a typical year, working out to an average audience of about 10 million-plus households per contest. Those numbers blow away baseball’s average of 2.6 on Fox Sports’ national broadcasts and 1.6 rating on ESPN’s national cable broadcasts, which would be pretty impressive for the gridiron . . . except for a couple of rather large, inescapable facts. First, most baseball fans don’t have any particular reason to watch national broadcasts. Their rooting interest is in their home town teams, first and foremost, and they can access up to 150 of their regular season games through regional stations. Few see the need to supplement that vast schedule by viewing unfamiliar clubs playing half way across the country. Second, and more importantly, focusing on individual games completely misreads the entire basis of baseball’s appeal. With the longest season in sports- more than ten times longer than the NFL- the Major Leagues have an unmatched ability to sustain devotion from day-to-day and week-to-week and month-to-month. The rating of any individual game isn’t nearly as important as the year-end totals, and when it comes to those year-end totals, baseball’s viewership, like its attendance, simply blows away the NFL. In 2006, for instance, popular teams like the Red Sox, Mariners, Cardinals, and Tigers garnered 7.1 or higher in local ratings, translating to anywhere from about 101,000 to 252,000 households per game, and sustained those numbers for more than 100 local broadcasts each. The national Nielsen numbers completely ignore all that, as if tens of millions of local broadcast views simply never happened. If anyone did take those hometown fans into account, though, they’d notice something startling- Major League teams total more than twice the yearly household views of NFL clubs. Baseball’s numbers may be divided throughout dozens of markets- it’s very the local pastime in that way- but they do exist, and they do add up. What, you say? A three-to-one advantage in attendance and two-to-one advantage in overall viewers isn’t quite impressive enough for you? Well, that’s alright, because baseball clobbers football in other ways, too. There’s Hall of Fame attendance for instance. It’s in the way that the remote village of Cooperstown, New York sees almost twice as many visitors as centrally-located Canton, Ohio (it’s about 350,000 versus 180,000-plus in a typical year). Or in the fact that spring training exhibitions in Florida and Arizona draw more than 3.3 million visitors per year, as opposed to the negligible, largely uncounted crowds witnessing the grunt-a-thons that are NFL training camps. Or in the way that a leading blog tracker estimates that the Major Leagues’ fan sites outnumbered football sites by nearly three-to-one (1,400-plus vs. 500-plus in January 2007), and out-posted them at a rate of more than four-to-one (about 66,000 vs. 16,000). Or in the way that publishing industry sources estimate that baseball books outnumber football titles by more than five-to-one, year in and year out. Or in the way that fantasy baseball fans are believed to outnumber their football counterparts by several million. Or in a day-to-day media presence that virtually invented 24/7 sport talk radio and still dominates coverage from newspapers, local television, and ‘SportsCenter’ on a year-round basis. Or the unsurpassed cultural influence in everything from songs (‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’, ‘Centerfield’) and poems (‘Casey at the Bat’, ‘Tinker to Evers to Chance’) to the movies (‘The Natural’, ‘Field of Dreams’). All the way to the highest levels of society, where superinvestor Warren Buffett describes himself as a Ted Williams disciple (“I wait for the perfect pitch”) or Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito described himself as an umpire of the legal world . . . Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of there there. Lest it all the above appear to be too much piling-on, though, let it be said that the baseball vs. football comparison isn’t completely one-sided. To be a critic is to love counting the money, and there’s also the money to account. For decades football owners have acted as a single unit in negotiating TV packages and in licensing their logos on countless overpriced tchotchkes (underwear, beach towels, blah, blah), and collusion’s been very good to them- the NFL’s annual revenues still outpace the Major Leagues, rendering it the most successful sports business in America, if just barely (in 2007, the NFL pulled in an estimated $6.3 billion to the Majors’ $6.1 large). Now, some people think that the cash makes King Hut #1 overall. Presumably, these are the same people who believe sales make Jackie Collins an important author and Britney Spears an accomplished musician. Still, the money-is-everything crowd seems to be in the distinct minority. For most, America’s favorite sport is better defined by its incredible hold on our live crowds, overall television ratings, and unmatched hold on Americans’ hearts and minds. If that’s true, anyone looking for a ‘new’ National Pastime should try immigrating. Some Fun Comparisons in Baseball & Football Attendance If the Baseball Nation’s attendance was . . . . . . Counted as a country’s population, it would be the 17th biggest in the world. The NFL would be 50th. . . . Translated into height, it would be bigger than the difference between Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the world’s shortest woman (7’2” vs. 2’2”). . . . In weight terms, it would be bigger than the difference between John Goodman and Kate Moss (350 lbs. vs. 105). . . . In retail sticker price, it would be bigger than the difference between a fully loaded, luxe Porsche Boxster and a no-frills Hyundai Sonata ($54,700 vs. $17,300). . . . In age, it would be bigger than the difference between 1949 rookie Minnie Minoso and 2006 rookie Hanley Ramirez (age 82 vs. 24). . . . In speed, it would be the difference between driving the fastest Daytona 500 ever and clogging the middle lane of I-95 (178 miles per hour vs. 52). . . . In handsomeness, it would be the differential between George (‘Sexiest Man Alive’) Clooney and George (‘George Wendt’) Wendt. Poll This Ask a sports fan to name the most popular sport in America, and the most popular answer is ‘football’. Polls going back to the 1960’s have had the NFL galloping ahead of baseball as the fans’ favorite, and the gap has only widened as the years have gone by. A recent Harris survey, for instance, had the NFL finishing ahead of MLB by a margin of more than two-and-a-half-to-one (34% to 13%). What do I make of this? I make nothing of it. Because polls can be wrong. Polls can be very wrong. For years, The Flat Earth Society had popular opinion on its side. More recently, widely-cited polls have recorded a widespread belief in Elvis Presley’s life after death, UFOs’ existence, and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. And yet, even so, Christopher Columbus was right, The King had truly left the building, the little green men hadn’t arrived, and there were no nukes stashed under Saddam Hussein’s bed. Occasionally, apparently, polls reflect prejudice while hiding reality. When that happens, it’s still best to stick to reality. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:19 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #2. ‘The Super Bowl is bigger than the WS.'
-Paul Attner, 'Super Bowl 40', Sporting News, Feb. 5, 2006. . . . the Super Bowl, the biggest sporting event in our nation . . . -Dan Bickley, 'Valley Now Has a Perennial Contender for Super Bowl', Arizona Republic, June 28, 2006. . . . the biggest sporting event of the year . . . -‘American Morning’ television program, Jan. 30, 2004. OK, imagine you’re about to put on a spectacular show. Like any other producer, you’re interested in attracting the biggest possible audience, but in this particular situation, you have a choice on how to go about it. On the one hand, you can attract a truly gi-normous, blow-out crowd, but can do it just once. On the other hand, you have the option of attracting smaller but still substantial numbers over several nights. Different people would have their different reasons one option or the other, I suppose, but most would see tend to see the options as a ‘six-of-one’/’half-dozen-of-the-other’ sort of choice. Accumulating viewers over one night or multiple nights is mostly, if not entirely, irrelevant to getting them all in through the doors in first place. Most would say that as long as the final totals are there, that’s what matters. Keep that one in mind whenever you hear about the ratings for the Super Bowl and the World Series. The Super Bowl’s your prototypical one-shot extravaganza. From 2004 to 2006, for example, its ratings averaged a bit over 41 points/62 share, numbers that translate to a little more than 90 million regular viewers at any given time. For one night only, it’s a ratings monster. Baseball’s championship showcase, in contrast, has a smaller-but steady thing going. The World Series games of 2004-06 period averaged 12.3 points/20.3 share (21.8 million viewers), which was less than a third the average viewership for the Super Bowl, but still good enough to be the highest-rated prime time network programs for their respective time slots. The Series had very good nights, and many of them, more than enough to equal or surpass Super Bowl-levels of viewership over their several contests. In ’04-06, for instance, baseball’s championship games have been watched by averages of 94.9 million total viewers, versus the Super Bowls’ annual averages of 90.7 million. The mainstream media may have failed to notice the World Series’ rough equivalence to the Super Bowl’s total viewers, but Madison Avenue advertisers have. In the same 2004 to 2006 period, the Series featured relatively lackluster matchups and three near-sweeps, but still managed to average $140.9 million in ad revenue to the Super Bowl’s average of $156.3 million per year. It so happened that the 2004-06 period saw the smallest number of World Series games in any three year period in history, so, without a doubt, if the event had any luck at all in terms of compelling matchups or storylines, it would have had both the viewers and ad money to blow away the Super Bowl’s totals. As it is, though, it’s about a dead-heat between the Series and the Supe in terms of overall popularity. But that’s not to say that it’s a near dead-heat in the appeal of championship football and baseball. Actually, the Super Bowl’s attraction has little to do with its play and a lot to do with its promotion. For a variety of reasons, the Super Bowl simply doesn’t stand on its own football merits. It arrives in the darkest dead of winter, when baseball’s still in its sensible hibernation. Meanwhile, TV’s in the midst of a seasonal dead zone of TV reruns and b-movies. The game also takes place on the grandiosely labeled ‘Super Sunday’, an off-day when most of the country isn’t working. It’s the final payday of the schedule, so every gambler in the country is looking to even up on the year. The league sets the game off from the regular season by a couple of weeks, a time when they try to goose up interest with talking head segments and filler pieces on players’ pets, disabled relatives, most memorable arrests, et cetera. During the broadcast itself, of course, the Super Bowl’s stuffed with schlocky halftime shows and multi-million dollar ads for pickup trucks, potato chips, boner pills, and so on and on and on. How many ‘viewers’ are actually concentrating on the gridiron instead of the convenient TV party, the family room casseroles, the point spread, the mini-concert, and corporate America’s commercials . . . only God and, possibly, A.G. Nielsen, know for sure. It says here that, as a sport, the sport of football is a pretty distant afterthought to the marketing hoo-ha and showbiz excess swirling around it. The World Series, in contrast, has no outside boosts. October baseball’s up against the heart of the NFL schedule and the best new shows and films. For reasons unknown, the games still start off on Saturday, the least-watched night of the programming week. As with the rest of the baseball schedule, most Series viewers are rooting for their teams rather than their bets. It’s the conclusion of a postseason that can feature more than 30 games in the preceding weeks. The media coverage tends to tamp down on the nonsense factor while focusing on the game between the lines. The games don’t have any special need for a Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction or celebrity pitchmen, either. The World Series doesn’t cheat. All it sells is straight-up baseball, and that’s still enough to match or best the Super Bowl’s popularity. It’s All About Me(dia) Strip away the Super Bowl’s fortunate timing, unfortunate gambling, filler TV, and trash culture, and what remains is, well, not much. And yet sports fans hear media outlets never tire of nattering on about “a new national holiday” and The Biggest Sporting Event in the History of Western Civilization. Why oh why? The hype basically comes down to the way the NFL transforms the Supe into a media-first lovefest. Think about the event from the weary eyes of inner-circle reporters and commentators. They get to jet off from the middle of a snowy winter for a couple of weeks of sun, to a place where the NFL’s spent months setting up their deluxe hotel accommodations, facilities, and ‘radio row’. They get spoon-fed human-interest stories and intensely-choreographed ‘interview days’ from the league’s PR flacks. They get the best of the best in food and booze every day, all free. They get invitations to see-and be-seen parties with celebrity sightings and enough strippers to smother Charlie Sheen. They, basically, get treated like visiting royalty on paid vacation. After they’re sufficiently paid off, the media establishment’s all too willing to paint the Super Bowl as the most important gathering since the Constitutional Convention. For the media, at least, it is. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:17 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #3. ‘Record-low ratings for the ASG are bad news.'
-Gary Gillette, ‘32 Voices on the State of the Game’, Business Of Baseball.com, Dec. 15, 2006. Considering that World Series viewership hit an all-time low this year, something is very wrong with the postseason . . . -Dave Studenmund, ‘32 Voices on the State of the Game’, Business Of Baseball.com, Dec. 15, 2006. 'Looking around the country, how about the ratings for this World Series? Nobody’s watching the darn thing . . . Game Three of the World Series!’. -quoting WFAN radio host Chris Russo, 'Baseball Men: The Talker', Scout.com, Nov. 19, 2005. When it’s summertime the living isn’t always easy. Picnics may attract their share of ants, firework shows can feature a few duds, lemonades sometimes capture your stray bug. Sadly, the game of baseball’s hardly immune to the season’s unfortunate aspects- just consider the gloom that typically comes around every time the All-Star Game rolls around. Every July, fretting media commentators inevitably remind fans that their Midsummer Classic is supposedly declining in popularity, and they do have a point, at least in terms of Nielsen television ratings. The showcase’s numbers have been in a steep decline for years now, with 1990’s 18.5 number steadily shrinking down to 2002’s 9.2. It’s a stark drop-off by any standard, and one that translates to a lot of lost fans- 1970’s viewing audience of 51 million translated to about a 30 million average in the new millennium. For all of the dark clouds in the TV ratings, however, the Midsummer Classic’s real outlook is quite a bit more sunny than it first appears. Actually, according to their full context and most important measures, baseball and the All Stars are doing just fine. To understand what’s really going on, it’s important to remember that the annual All Star extravaganza is like any other television show in that it’s driven by simple supply and demand. More particularly, it’s is all about the supply of baseball relative to the fans’ interest. Up until relatively recently, the game’s track record was pretty dismal on that front. Well into the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was nearly impossible for fans to access more than a few dozen televised local ball games per year, many of them taking place during regular working hours. The LA Dodgers, playing in the second biggest market in the country, were seen over the air for just 26 games per year, for example. Apart from those occasional (at best) broadcasts, past generations had to make do with crackling radio broadcasts, brief beat reports, and about two minutes of highlights tacked at the end of the local news. And that was for in-market games. When it came to out-of-market teams, the only option was take-it-or-leave it viewing of the old ‘Game of the Week’ (a.k.a. ‘The Yankees vs. Everybody Else’ Show) or, later, ‘This Week in Baseball’ rehashes. Of course, old-time fans always had the option of heading out to the ball parks, but even then, they were screwed. Since baseball stars came in two distinct varieties- American Leaguers and National Leaguers- fans living outside two-team markets like New York & Chicago almost never saw fully half the greats in the game. Those living in a National League town like Cincinnati, for instance, never saw a meaningful regular season game featuring career American Leaguers like Al Kaline or Luis Aparicio. Similarly, Washington’s AL fans had no chance to watch erstwhile NL stars like Johnny Bench or Roberto Clemente. With previous generations of fans practically starved for access to the Major Leagues as a whole, the All Star Game, naturally, had a singular importance- it was a die-hard’s one and only chance to see all out-of-town and out-of-league talents in one place. With all that pent-up fan demand, of course the exhibition’s ratings went through the roof. Everything changed throughout the game when free agency dawned in the 1970’s, however. Intensive bidding on player contracts caused star player salaries to skyrocket, and those new costs forced team owners to revolutionize the Major Leagues’ overall marketing and outreach operations, and none of those proved more important than the introduction of comprehensive media coverage. Fledgling cable outfits called Turner Broadcasting and ESPN were important forces in bringing full broadcast slates to the fans in the early 1980’s, but every market was eventually swept up in the movement. In short order, the digital age took over from the stone age. Computers wiped out typewriters, cell phones took over from paper-cups-and-string. Today, thanks to the recent addition of satellite and streaming internet video, almost every one of the 2,430 Major League games played this season can be available to just about any one who wants it, anywhere. There’s ‘Baseball Tonight’ every night. It’s impossible to overstate how much more popular baseball has become as a result of the exploding media exposure. While ratings for all major programs have slipped as viewing options have multiplied, the game’s displayed remarkable resilience over the decades, to the point where baseball’s provided the most popular cable programming in nearly every one of its home markets. As the overall game of baseball has exploded in the modern era, though, its success had one tiny tradeoff- spectators simply don’t have to wait for all the stars to finally align in July. They’re now watching all their all stars every day. There has been drop-off from the past ratings but, thankfully, there are different, and better, measuring sticks to measure the All Star Game’s popularity in this era. If the event was still going strong, for instance, one would expect fan balloting to increase and fan attendance to rise. Guess what? Check and check. In the new millennium, fans have been registering tens of millions of All Star votes, year-in and year-out. Die-hards ballot in four languages, in seven countries, on paper and online, and in ballparks and retail outlets alike, and by the time they’re all finished, the Pastime’s fans tally up more than 80 million total ballots. Those are record levels of fan participation, and just think about what that means in comparative terms- voting for baseball’s All Star Game now stands behind only Congress and the Presidency in terms of American balloting. That’s in even-numbered years. In odd-numbered years like 2007, the All Star Game attracts the most voting participation of all. Take that, ‘American Idol’. What’s more, huge numbers of fans are voting for the Classic with their feet. The games are perpetual sellouts, of course, but an additional 100,000 or more fans typically join the fun through outside ‘Fan Fest’ celebrations instituted since the early 1990’s. What was once a small-time, one-shot exhibition as recently as the late-1980’s has become a wildly popular multi-day affair encompassing street fairs as well as home run derbies, celebrity appearances, and futures’ games. So the next time you think about the All Star Game’s decline, think again. Just consider how many passionate fans watch star performances throughout the year, take a look at the overflowing ballot boxes, and wade in among the crowded venues. The All Star Game’s in very fine shape. Stellar shape, really. Midsummer Classic / Fall Classic Aside from the fact that it’s in a whole different season and actually counts, the fan attraction that is the World Series has a lot in common with the All Star Game: 1) A history of over-inflated importance among out-of-market fans. 2) A gradual transition to an era of unlimited fan choices. 3) Declining ratings all the while. 4) Still-nifty attendance and ratings, relative to the new era. For both the All Star Game and World Series, the same basic dynamic was involved. Once upon a time, fans had no choices. They were so starved for year-round access to baseball that they’d gladly watch any national showcase events, no questions asked. But now they have choices. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:16 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #4. ‘Baseball used to be more popular.'
-Dave Winfield, ‘Dropping the Ball’ book, 2007. [M'>aybe baseball never will recover, never get back the pervasive influence it once had. -Bernie Lincicome, 'Baseball Stars Seem to be Extinct', Rocky Mountain News, June 13, 2007. Baseball has a smaller place in the national psyche than it did in those days of sainted memory. -Erik Brady, 'Baseball Endures Through Changing Times', USA Today, Oct. 29, 2000. Baseball isn’t poised for a renaissance- it’s in the middle of one right now. In every key indicator, the game’s popularity has skyrocketed over the years. A paid attendance of more than 76.2 million fans in 2007, for instance, meant that the Major Leagues increased their total count by about 60% over the last 20 years and more than 100% in the last 30 years. The overall count had increased for 12 straight years, and has grown at more than one-and-a-half times the rate of increase for the general population. That kind of skyrocketing attendance has translated to some fairly startling changes from past times. It’s gotten to the point where Yankee vs. Red Sox Spring Training games now average greater crowds than the regular season games of the late 1950’s. Where even last-place teams average gates that would have counted them among the six most popular MLB teams of the mid-1970’s. Where the average, run-of-the-mill, nothing-special game of the modern era can draw virtually the same attendance numbers (about 32,700) that made draw like Mark Fidrych a national phenomenon in a previous generation (the ’76 Tigers averaged 31,000 for The Bird’s starts). And, ever so quietly, the sport’s attendance boom’s spread to every corner of the United States of Baseball. For instance, the more than 200 organizations in the Minor Leagues have set their own attendance records in the new millennium, more than doubling their turnstile counts since the Reagan administration in the process of breaking records dating back to the pre-television era. At roughly 42.6 million in attendance, the 2007 Minors were within striking distance of the NFL and NBA’s combined draw (44.0 million). No doubt they were helped along by the over 100 Minor League ball parks that have been built since the late 1980’s, many of them built with the kind of facilities and amenities matching Major League venues of previous generations. Baseball’s media presence also mushroomed. Previous generations couldn’t have imagined access to nearly unlimited ball games in everything from cable television and internet streaming to satellite radio, or the possibility of playing fantasy sports via cyber sites and email. Today, it’s hard to imagine living without them. Popular demand’s sustained those new technologies through year after year of record appeal and revenues, and virtually every fan enjoying them is a new-generation fan. No matter where you look, it’s much the same success story. In Williamsport, Pennsylvania, there’s record interest in the Little League World Series. In Omaha, Nebraska, there are record gates for the College World Series. In Kansas City, Missouri and Dyersville, Iowa, there are record numbers of baseball tourists taking in stops like the Negro Baseball Hall of Fame or the ‘Field of Dreams’ site. On the White House lawn, there’s record attendance for kiddie t-ball tournaments. In every state, there are record prices for memorabilia ranging from baseball cards and game-used uniforms to ball park artifacts. There are a record number of records, presumably, so in any fair comparison to past times, the Pastime has never been more powerful. Baseball’s popularity may be too widespread and enduring to be particularly noticable at this point, but the fact remains. For anyone to say otherwise is akin to saying, ‘Day is night’ or ‘War is peace’. ‘Mike Lupica stands 6’5”’. ‘Bring back Astroturf’. ‘John Kruk’s should be doing my retirement planning’. ‘David Wells would make a fine Attorney General’. If anyone can possibly deny that baseball’s more popular than ever, it’s because it now faces increased competition among the major team sports. It’s probably in the fact that the Major Leagues are no longer completely unchallenged as the only serious sports league in the country. The National Football League, for instance, still hasn’t come close to the Major Leagues’ popularity in terms of either attendance or media viewership, but its numbers in both areas have multiplied to the point where they’re at least in the same conversation as baseball. That’s a compliment that would have been unimaginable as recently as the late 1950’s, when the college game was noticeably more popular than the NFL’s brand of bashing. The NBA, likewise, can’t hold a candle to MLB’s contemporary numbers, but as recently as the late 1970’s, basketball was widely perceived as too troubled and urban (read: ‘too black’) to ever court mainstream acceptance. Today no one blinks an eye in placing it among the ‘big three’ in American sports. The unstated notion in all that new competition from football and basketball is that it necessarily came at the expense of baseball’s ancient preeminence. To the critics, at least, when others gain, that means baseball had to retreat. All the same, the hard evidence tells us that baseball had the latent potential to grow ever stronger as the years have gone on. It’s been more than equal to the challenges and I, for one, tend to believe that NFL & NBA’s new presence actually helped baseball’s image, on balance. It helped reminded fans of all that’s utterly timeless about the game, why it’s such an alternative to the violence, frenzy, and clock-watching to be found elsewhere in American life, much less American sports. Far from making baseball obsolete, seeing the others only made baseball look more refreshing in comparison. Anyway, different people can come up with their own explanations for baseball’s surging popularity. They’re entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts- those tell us that today’s game’s never been watched and enjoyed by more millions of Americans. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:15 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry 5. ‘The number of blacks in baseball has declined'
-Erin Grace, ‘Baseball Becomes a Hard Sell for Blacks’, Omaha World-Herald, June 24, 2006. From a high of 27% in 1974, just 9% of the players on Opening Day rosters in the Majors last year were black. -Tom Gage, 'National Pastime Strikes Out with Black Athletes', Detroit News, April 10, 2005. Where have all the black ballplayers gone? -Mike Fish, 'Major League Problem', Sports Illustrated.com, May 16, 2003. One of the received articles of conventional wisdom on baseball is its backsliding in terms of black athletes. In recent years splashy, high-profile articles carrying titles like ‘Blackout’ and ‘A Game Behind’ have informed fans that the game has a weakening appeal among black players and fans alike. The fear is that Jackie Robinson’s sport, the sport that led the way in American integration, may now be turning away from minority inclusion. That would be sad, if true. Happily, it’s false. To understand how the premise is off base, consider the context for the numbers. According to surveys from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, about 9% of all players on Major League rosters are US-born African-Americans. That’s less than half the group representation of the mid-1990’s (about 19%) and a mere one-third of the mid-1970’s level. There’s no great cause for celebration in those numbers, but neither is there any great cause for alarm, either. After all, African-Americans are roughly 12% of the overall national population, so a 3% representation gap is by no means a problem, much less a crisis. In the past, baseball’s African-Americans were vastly over-represented in relation to the overall population; nowadays, they’re roughly equal to society’s look. More importantly, all those polling numbers aren’t even reliable for their intended purpose of tracking ‘black’ representation in the game of baseball. The really, really important to remember that the widely-reported statistics refer only to ‘U.S.-born African-Americans’, and that it’s important to keep in mind that they aren’t the only black people in the world. Not even close. In fact, Afro-Latino players can also hail from countries like the Dominican Republic (David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, for instance), Cuba (Jose Contreras, Orlando Hernandez) and Puerto Rico (Carlos Delgado, Bernie Williams), to name a few. The above examples are both high-profile and dark-skinned, but the polls completely ignore them. To their lights, it’s impossible to be ‘black’ if you have a Spanish accent. Apparently, everyone from blond Cubans to Manny Ramirez has to be lumped into the catch-all ‘Latino’ category instead. Toss those assumptions aside, though, and include all African-heritage players in the black category . . . and, presto, the black representation gap disappears altogether. If anything, the picture indicates that African descendants are still being over-represented in the game. If anything, the presence of ‘double minorities’ indicates that game is substantially more inclusive, since it now accepts talented players from all nationalities and all cultures as well as all races. Wasn’t that what Jackie Robinson was all about? No doubt, baseball’s composition has changed over the years. And, no doubt, the game’s more diverse and inclusive than ever, too, but that only leads to an obvious question: why do so many sportswriters still latch on to the same old storyline on the supposed decline and fall of blacks in baseball? There’s an obvious answer: stereotypes. In today’s sports world, it goes without saying that African-American athletes tend to dominate all out of proportion to their share of the general population. They make up more than two-thirds of the NFL and four-fifths of the NBA, for instance, and a similarly overwhelming portion of track and field stars. As noted, back in the 1970’s, they were drastically over-represented in baseball as well. For time out of mind, that’s been taken as the inevitable order of things. Given that history, baseball’s balanced composition can seem bizarre, even sinister. It goes against something that’s never said, but always assumed- African-Americans are supposed to dominate sports. From that stereotype, commentators will constantly question why there aren’t ‘enough’ African-Americans in baseball. And they’ll never get around to asking why there aren’t ‘enough’ whites in football or why we can’t all go out and recruit ‘enough’ Latinos to play basketball. America’s Game, Looking Like America Here’s how Major League Baseball compares to the country around it, according to data provided by the University of Central Florida and the Census Bureau: MLB USA White 63% 68% Latino 26% 14% African-American 9% 13% Asian-American 2% 5% In recent years, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport’s given baseball an ‘A+’ grade for the opportunity in its on-field rosters, an ‘A’ for its managers and coaches, and an ‘A+’ for its executive ranks. The Institute didn’t measure the players’ popularity, but the Sports Business Journal did. In 2005, the magazine found that baseball’s ten most marketable figures included three white ball players (Curt Schilling, Roger Clemens, and Randy Johnson), four Latinos (Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Carlos Beltran, and Ortiz), one African-American (Derek Jeter), and two players of Asian descent (Ichiro and Johnny Damon). Not that it’s a big deal or anything, but Major League Baseball is the most thoroughgoing, spectacular racial integration program this side of the U.S. military. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:13 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #6. ‘. . . But MLB can change through recruiting.’
-Ray Melick, ‘Who's to Blame for Baseball Losing Blacks?’, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 12, 2007. Jackie Robinson would say baseball has to go out and take affirmative action again. -John Helyar, ‘Robinson Would Have a Mixed View of Today’s Game’, ESPN.com, April 9, 2007. Baseball is not doing a good job of selling itself to African-American males as a sport. -‘U.Va. Law Professor Asks, Is MLB Dropping the Ball?’, UVA Today, Oct. 30, 2006. When it comes to the subject of race & baseball, the ironies abound. As it turns out, it’s the racial-sensitivity crowd that doesn’t have any reliable handle on what ‘race’ means in the real world. It’s an opportunity discussion led by those who steadily ignore the game’s proud record in integrating talented players from all colors and all nations. And it’s the nominally enlightened critics who implicitly cling to stereotypes of how many are ‘supposed’ to be playing various sports. But forget all that for a moment. Those who still insist that there’s a problem in black representation in baseball, and they have a favorite solution to the problem- recruitment. The game, supposedly, can gain improved African-American representation by sponsoring programs like Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI), whereby the Major Leagues sponsor youth programs in minority-intensive districts. Through a combination of good intentions and generous donations, we’re led to believe, more black kids will be playing the game. What a crock. In previous generations, African-Americans loved baseball and wanted to be a part of the game, but where met with exclusion on the Majors’ playing fields and cold shoulders in the stands. Breaking the color line was a pivotal event because it was the beginning of the end of that evil system. He showed a way past the very real barriers that prevented baseball from becoming a true competition, an arena where talent and character counted over color. It was a long and difficult struggle, but those 1940’s-era challenges have long been met. Today ball clubs desperately need winning players. Of course they’re going to put the best talent on the field, regardless of race. Organizations desperately need smart executives to assemble winning rosters, too. Of course they’re going to recruit the best personnel, whatever their ethnic backgrounds. And organizations desperately need money to make it all happen. Of course they’re going to reach out to all neighborhoods and communities. How can there be any moral equivalency between a past generation that fought to keep players and fans out, and a new generation that’s desperately fighting to pull them in? Now, if a single demographic group isn’t participating despite the open arms . . . it must be their choice. Apparently African-Americans see football or basketball as more in tune with a taste for flashy personalities and physical play. Meanwhile, some see baseball as . . . whatever. ‘Boring’ instead of ‘subtle’. ‘Slow’ instead of ‘relaxing’. ‘Waiting around’ instead of ‘anticipating’. No doubt, some would-be jocks prefer the cushy NCAA life over the Minor Leagues’ brand of hard, reality-based education. For whatever reason that people don’t like the game, a number of African-American players don’t seem to like the game, at least not as much as they used to. At least not as much as the record number of white, Latino, and Asian players. If they’ve been marginalized, it’s because they marginalized themselves. There’s no other sensible explanation. Declining participation numbers can’t be blamed on declining socio-economic factors, for instance. African-Americans actually made great strides in the golden 1990’s economy, especially among their middle class, which saw increasing numbers of two-parent families. Besides, if poverty is so detrimental to baseball recruiting, why is interest in the game exploding in third-world countries? You can’t blame rising game expenses, either. Baseball’s no more or less affordable a sandlot game than it was ten or thirty years ago and, beside, expenses have never been any terrible obstacle to Caribbean-based players, most of whom get their starts by using tree branches and taped-up socks in place of proper bats and balls. Costs haven’t prevented ultra-expensive football programs from becoming a secular religion in America’s inner cities, for that matter. Some fault a lack of NCAA scholarships for the declining black numbers, but this one doesn’t make sense, either. College-groomed players from Jackie (Robinson) to Jacque (Jones) have always been exceptions among amateurs, in that their parents genuinely valued education first and foremost. However, the vast majority of future Major Leaguers, like all pro athletes, don’t grow up looking for the security provided in a phys ed major at State U. Instead, they grow up seeing baseball as their future profession and they take their first opportunity to earn a good signing bonus and start on a path to big-time salaries. That’s exactly what they get in baseball. Columnist Jason Whitlock, for one, blames culture and scouting for the decline in African-American participation. He claims some (conveniently unnamed) scouts may avoid America’s inner cities because they’re uncomfortable with their brand of hip hop culture. It’s possible. I, myself, think rap peaked when ‘The Chronic’ came out back in ’92 and maybe pro scouts feel the same way, but why would they really prefer the alternatives to seeking all-American talent? It can’t be fun, trekking into the tiny foreign villages and squalid jungles to scout players thousands of miles from home. Not if there are any untapped possibilities in Newark or Detroit or anywhere else in the land of the free and the home of the brave. American players, of all colors, might be more expensive to sign than foreign-based free agents, but that hasn’t stopped players of other races from signing, has it? The Perpetually Concerned go on to blame the declining participation numbers on other things. Not enough role models. Or facilities. Or money. Or ads. There’s a lack of this, a lack of that, not quite enough somethingorother. Yet those are all just symptoms, re-statements of the underlying lack of interest in baseball among African-American players, and no one’s ever quite gotten around to explaining how any amount of feel-good speeches, preferential recruiting, charity giveaways, or social engineering will ever reverse it. How can they? To paraphrase Yogi Berra, if kids don’t want to come out to the playground, you can’t stop them. ‘Irreplaceable’? New York Times columnist Harvey Araton recently wrote that the National Pastime’s declining numbers in African-American players meant that the game was “at risk of losing a most extraordinary part of the 20th century, an irreplaceable piece of itself.” Leaving aside the fact that one-in-eleven representation means that African-Americans are hardly disappearing from anywhere, it’s worth remembering that baseball’s never seen any group with a permanent hold on its rosters. Throughout its history, the game’s transformed itself. In the early 1900’s, Irish-Americans dominated the National Pastime, making up over one-third of all players and two-thirds of all managers at one point. Those numbers gradually decreased as new immigrant groups took their place, first Italian-Americans and Polish-Americans, then other white ethnics. Only in the 1950’s and 1960’s did great numbers of African-Americans and dark-skinned Latinos come into the game. The mid-1990’s arrival of Hideo Nomo signaled the latest wave, this one among Asian-Americans. Heaven knows what the future might bring. Maybe more Australians and Chinese. It’s only a matter of time before the baseball-crazy nation of Cuba wins the freedom to join in the fun. The point is, it’s been completely natural for racial group or another to wax and wane in their overall representation. No one’s ever been bigger than the game. No one’s ever been irreplaceable. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:13 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #7. ‘Demographics say the fans are too old.’
-Gary Gillette, ESPN.com, Aug. 4, 2006. The game’s fan base is aging and baseball is doing little to attract a younger following. -The Brookings Institution, 'New book Examines the Troubled Business of Major League Baseball', 2003. Find me a nine-year-old who loves baseball these days. It used to be impossible to find one who didn't. -Mitch Albom, ‘Kids' Love of the Game is Fading Fast’, Los Angeles Business Journal, Nov. 6, 2000. If you go by conventional wisdom, baseball is a grand old game in more ways than one. According to a recent ESPN/Chilton sports poll, just 12% of ‘average’ Major League Baseball fans are between the ages of 12 and 17. Different polls vary in their exact numbers, but the typical baseball follower seems to be anywhere from 45 to 51 years old, with the other major sports leagues featuring dramatically lower median ages. Those graying poll numbers do sound pretty negative for baseball, but the numbers are, to say the least, shaky. The first thing to keep in mind is that baseball never polls very well among its fans, even in the best of times. For instance, the Major Leagues faced deep, dark gloom among poll respondents in the late 1990’s and new millennium, even as the game bounced back from the 1994 strike with record-shattering attendance, ratings, revenues, and franchise values. For whatever reason, there’s always been a big difference between fans’ real-world appreciation and their paper answers. No one seems to know the reasons behind the low numbers. Flawed polling methods and negative media portrayals undoubtedly contribute, especially when it comes to accounting for something as complex and vague as the kids’ sports interest. The one thing that’s certain is that the polls are far from certain. And, crucially, incomplete. The most interesting, and important, baseball polling number has never been measured. The number crunchers know that older fans tend to actually buy tickets- they do have the jobs and the money- but they don’t have any idea how many of professional baseball’s paid tickets are then passed down to kids. It’s apparently too expensive and complex to get that kind of complete polling picture, and that’s a huge, huge omission. When many fans look back on their first love for baseball, their most likely recollection goes to the first time they saw a live game. The moment is practically a literary genre by itself (‘My First Ball Game’), one featuring the vivid splash of greenness, the sight of baseball-card figures coming to life, everytihing that comes with taking in all that there is to take in at a ball game. Very often, it’s all about a kid’s rare shot to communicate with a parent. It’s a gold mine of memories, one that can lead to many happy returns later in life. Despite that crucial importance, mainstream pollsters have never bothered to gauge kids’ baseball attendance numbers. It’s not like they tried and, predictably, screwed up- they’ve never even tried. Until they do, the old ‘baseball-is-losing kids’ numbers are, at best, not good. More likely, they’re worthless. Demographics and Destiny If you were trying to build the perfect sporting audience for the 21st century, you’d build its appeal on the most important, young demographic groups in the nation. You’d build baseball. It so happens that the National Pastime’s an absolute passion among Latino fans, ranking just behind soccer and well ahead of football and basketball in their list of preferences, and that support will to grow increasingly significant as time marches on. Latinos are both the largest non-white group in America and the youngest group in the country as well as the fastest-growing minority. Add the surging Latino fandom to baseball’s existing hold on relatively influential, well-educated Asian-Americans and, always, the white majority, and you have a very rosy picture indeed. Far from going gray, baseball figures to remain a favorite with the majority of American kids for decades to come. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:10 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #8. ‘Late-night WS hurt baseball's youth appeal.'During the past 25 years, millions of kids, especially in the East and Midwest, probably have grown up having never watched a complete World Series game. Little wonder that few of them grew up with a love of the game. -Doug Nye, ‘Poor TV Ratings Reflect MLB's Popularity Slide’, The (Columbia, SC) State, Nov. 3, 2006. These kids have lost out on a bond that isn't going to cost baseball this year, or next, but someday. After these old owners are long gone, they'll leave a sad, sorry legacy of indifferent fans. ‘Baseball is taking a big chance’, [Yankee broadcaster Michael'> Kay said. ‘They're maximizing their money now, but they're risking the backbone of their future ticket buyers. I really wonder if they think about the game 20 or 30 years from now. I wonder if they care’. -Adrian Wojnarowski, ‘Baseball is Too Late for Next Generation’, The (Bergen County, NJ) Record, Oct. 12, 2001. 'You can't have the most important games of the year end at midnight on a school night and not have that come back to bite you’. -David Leonhardt, 'The National Pastime Falls Behind in the Count', New York Times, Aug. 12, 2001. There’s a popular old baseball tale out there. Maybe you’ve heard it. It’s said that, once upon a time, all World Series games were played in the daylight, out in the Good Lord’s own sunshine. Oh, those were the carefree, happy days when kids smuggled transistor radios into their classrooms to catch score updates, thereby forming some of the precious memories that won them over as lifelong fans of the game. And all was well. But wickedness came upon the land, through men known as ‘broadcasting executives’ and ‘team owners’. They introduced night games, thereby pushing World Series games past the youngsters’ usual bedtimes. By banishing the beloved Series into the night, the bad men turned off the next generation of would-be followers and tragically, ominously, baseball began ‘losing the kids’. Or so goes the tale. The reality is not quite as simple, but it can be summed up this way: the times changed, baseball changed. Night World Series games weren’t produced by MLB greed and, outside the tale-spinners, they haven’t caused any real-world problems at all. The first thing to note is that baseball wasn’t doing a particularly good job in bringing the game to the fans back in the old days. Stealing away a few daylight moments on a wireless transistor radio is a romantic image, all right, but since the 1970’s execs wised up to the fact that fans shouldn’t have to go through heroic measures to catch a postseason game. They decided to provide real, unimpeded fan access, and, due to the fan’s working for a living, that meant providing games during the night-time’s down-time. It was a common sense decision for fans of all ages, of course, but it was especially valid in times when kids’ daylight hours grew increasingly packed with school work, extracurriculars, day jobs, and miscellaneous errands. No doubt some kids nod off due to starting times’ shift into prime time, but there’s every reason to believe that they’re in the minority. Current policy has many, though not all, of the World Series games ending by about 11.30 pm Eastern, when the networks want baseball to give way to their lucrative late-night talk shows. Now, 11.30 might have been dark, forbidden territory for a ‘50s-era that Michael Kay remembers so well, but it’s pretty much standard operating procedure for a ‘round-the-clock, on-the-go Generation Y crowd. Believe it or not, ratings actually increase as the ratings go on through the nights, even among kids, if only because casual fans are tuning in to check out the late-inning scores. And for those who do doze . . . so what? 2008 isn’t 1968, when the World Series was one of the relatively rare chances for viewers to take in national, high-profile stars. With all local markets receiving hundreds of regular season games on air, today’s kids are positively barraged with chances to buy into baseball from March through October. It’s pretty safe to assume that they’ve made up their minds about baseball fandom well before the last innings of the last games. Finally, it’s worth asking who really loses out in the modern-day scheduling. Certainly, no one frets about the World Series starts on weekend nights. Kids from the midwest to the west coast don’t mind the starting times, either, since their later time zones already mean early ending times. It’s only the east coast and weekdays that are the only potential problem and, even there, kids have plenty of alternative means of access- they’re given nearly inescapable highlights and recaps on the day after, not to mention whatever they save through acronym’s like VCR’s and TiVO’s. When all is said and done, then, the critics are basically worried about nothing at all. Old tales aside, prime time World Series games work. And, yeah, the kids are alright. More Proof that the Media Hates Baseball Since baseball is the sport constantly singled out in its supposed danger of ‘losing the kids’, you’d think it has the latest ending times for its showcase events. You’d think wrong. Here are average sign-offs for the three major team sports, circa 2005: MLB playoffs 11.23 pm EST The media’s favorite whipping boy actually provides the most kid-friendly, bedtime-accommodating schedule among the major sports. Strange but true. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:07 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #9: ‘Expansion diluted the talent pool.' (I)The expanding leagues have diluted the talent. -Rick Maese, ‘Since Talent is Watered Down, Don't Blame Juice’, Baltimore Sun, June 13, 2006. [B'>aseball's biggest mistake probably occurred when it decided to expand in 1998, putting teams in Tampa and Arizona. Just five years earlier, Colorado and Florida had been added and even then the talent pool had been diluted to a point where it severely hurt the game's level of play. -Mark Bodenrader, ‘What's Wrong with Baseball’, The Sports Network, June 27, 2003 .The quality of baseball was at an all-time high after World War II because there was such a concentration of talent on just 16 teams. -Ralph Kiner, ‘Baseball Forever’ book, 2004 .It still sticks to the game like George Brett’s pine tar or Gaylord Perry’s Vaseline. Most baseball critics have parroted the line multiple times. Whenever someone wants to bash the National Pastime’s supposed shortcomings, it’s one of the favorite weapons in the arsenal. It’s the dreaded ‘talent dilution’ myth in the modern game. We’ve all heard the theory. It’s the notion that the quality of play in the Major Leagues diminished in the 1990’s and into the new millennium because baseball added four new expansion teams within five years. As the lament goes, the talent level within was inevitably diminished (‘diluted’) by handing out 100 new jobs to players who would otherwise be toiling away in the Minors. Interesting concept. Completely wrong, but interesting. In reality, away from the overactive imaginations of the more stressed out critics, the ‘talent dilution’ theory has always been bogus, mostly because it ignores and misreads the two most vital factors in the game’s quality of play. First off, the dilution theory ignores that a number of training factors make talented players perform at a higher level. Better weight training, year-round workout routines, more precise nutrition, readily available coaching, medical miracles, vast computer databases of every possible action on the diamond, more sophisticated understandings of the game’s basic mechanics . . . all of these have a tremendous bearing on how well ball players do their job. That’s to say, a lot of new factors are making players more capable ~ ’talented’. It’s beyond dispute that as the rewards for baseball success have skyrocketed, those quality-building cottage industries have thrived as never before. To compare new millennium ball players to demonstrably smaller, weaker, slower, and less knowledgeable baseball players of the past is kind of like saying car performance hasn’t improved in the last few decades. Faded, nostalgia-tinged memories can only stretch so far. Even worse than those elementary mistakes regarding training and good health, the talent dilution myth is faulty for another reason- it completely misreads the ‘quality’ concept by fixating on the number of roster spots. This has to be emphasized- the talent level of Major League rosters has nothing to do with the number of available jobs. Rather, the overall talent level depends on the number of players competing for available jobs. To see why this is true, imagine a random selection of 100 young people competing for a highly skilled job. There’s a certain likelihood that this group will have a terrific worker within it, but if the group suddenly expands to 500, then the odds of finding a star increase. Expand that pool of competitors to 1,000 and the star search looks even better. Get a million involved and, all else being equal, you’re likely to find a one-in-a-million superduperstar in the process. As Branch Rickey once said, quantity is quality when it comes to finding the best of the best, in sports or any other field. Therefore, as long as the number of would-be competitors increases at an even faster rate than the number of available MLB slots, the overall talent level should continue to rise. Fortunately, astoundingly, that’s exactly what has happened during baseball's modern popularity boom. Consider how the expanding Major Leagues have been nearly matched by an expanding American population. In the years between 1960 and 2000, the Majors went moved away from its old 16-team configuration to a 30-team league, a whopping 88% increase. In the same time frame, though, the US increased from about 179 million to over 274 million, a 65% increase. While 448,000-plus Americans were available for Major League roster spot back in 1960, the ratio was around 375,000 per job in 2000. America’s growth, alone, was within shouting distance of the Major Leagues’ roster growth, but that’s hardly the whole picture. We can’t forget that, simultaneous with the United States’ growth, interest in the game has exploded in countries throughout the Caribbean, the Americas, and the length of the Pacific Rim. The game now effectively draws on an overseas population of more than half a billion people. With globalization rendering MLB’s potential talent pool so much deeper and richer than ever, no one can doubt that it’s yielded incredible results. We’re already at the point where the modest Dominican Republic, alone, now produces more Major League starters than any state in America on a per capita basis. Where more than one-quarter of all Major Leaguers, and nearly half of All Star teams, are born in not-America. Where, basically, the greatest players in the world are as likely to emerge from San Pedro, Caracas, and Yokohama as they are to arrive from Bakersfield, Altoona, or Norwalk. There’s been more than enough fresh talent to fuel baseball’s roster increase, so the expanded Major Leagues of the 1990’s simply caught up to rising number of available ballplayers. Rickey’s increased quantity met increased quality. Now, it will always be fashionable in some quarters to say that, some how, some way, there aren’t ‘enough’ quality Major Leaguers. Everything was better back in the day . . . still, the basic facts say something different. There was no terrible price in bringing the Major Leagues to the grateful fans of Denver, Miami, Tampa/St. Petersburg, and Phoenix. Not at all. Because so many great young talents loved it, a great game grew even stronger. No myth. All-American Baseball’s internationalization has, without a doubt, transformed teams rosters even as it bolstered the game’s quality of play. And there’s no ignoring the larger message sent when the game recruits among foreign-born talents. In an age where more and more politicians express skepticism over this nation’s ability to accept immigrants, baseball’s embraced the high, time-honored aspirations of ‘a shining city on a hill’. When more and more Americans are retreating into the divisions formed by race or region or creed, one game unites all in a common endeavor. In a time when more and more countries doubt both the United States’ intentions and policies, baseball’s still revered as the most fair-minded, strict meritocracy of them all. Of the immigrant ball players, Bill James once said: It’s a good thing for baseball. It is a way in which baseball is very American in the best sense. We live in a society which searches out the best in everything and embraces it without disfavor. We go all over the world looking for baseball players and say, ‘We don't care how weird you are. We don't care what color you are. We don't care what habits you have. If you can play baseball, we want you’. And that's very American. Amen, brother. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:04 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry #10: ‘Expansion diluted the talent pool.' (II)
-Joe Morgan, ESPN.com chat, June 27, 2006. Today, half these guys don't belong in the big leagues. -John Kuenster, ‘Former Players Tell How to Improve Game at Major League Level’, Baseball Digest, March 2002. Without the new jobs provided by expansion teams, dozens of otherwise marginal players were suddenly given a shot to work on the Major Leaguer level. Did that lower the quality of play in the Majors, or not? ‘Yes’. On the one hand, there’s no doubt that the new ball clubs allow more opportunities for players that would otherwise be retired or toiling away at the Minor League level. More overall roster spots also allow more room for struggling rookies, too, so, sure the quality of play in a 30-team league is lower than it would be if there were 26 teams. Or 16, for that matter. Taken to its logical extreme, the highest possible quality of play would come in a two-team league, one manned exclusively by All Stars. However, the talent dilution theory doesn’t make comparisons in the number of teams, but the different eras, and to make that trans-historical comparison, it necessarily assumes that ‘quality of play’ represents a single standard over time. That’s wrong. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the quality of the talent in the game depends on the number of potential competitors for each available job, and that number has, indeed, been rising for decades. With more money than ever to be gained from playing the game, more players than ever are working harder than ever to earn it. Contemporary players have improved at every level, mostly because a new influx of competitors have forced them to improve just to get ahead. The rising tide’s lifted all boats, quality-wise, and that includes today’s older players, AAA Minor Leaguers, and rookies. If the ‘marginal players’ of this (drastically improved) era had a time machine to go back 20 or 30 years, it’s likely they’d have the skills to place them among the well-established Major Leaguers of the day. Meaning, there’s been no dilution. Posted 1/3/2008 @ 3:02 PM | 'The 99 Most Popular Myths in Baseball' | Read Entry Exotic Stats That Don't Make Sense
Posted 8/1/2007 @ 11:36 AM | Exotic Stats That Don't Make Sense | 0 Comments ‘The Most Popular Myths in Baseball: Barry Bonds & Steroids’ -Senator Jim Bunning, Statement before the House Government Reform Hearing on Steroids and Major League Baseball, March 17, 2005. [Without drugs'> there is no reason to believe Bonds could have approached, much less broken, any of the all-time marks for which he lusted so much that he has now ruined his name. -Thomas Boswell, ‘The truth lies in numbers’, Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2004. Saying that Barry Bonds has been a great veteran performer because of home runs is like saying Albert Einstein was famous due to his unique hairstyle. A man’s most memorable features aren’t necessarily his most important ones. To be sure, Bond’s homers, like Einstein’s ‘do, have been especially hard to overlook. In 2001, Bonds set the single-season home run record, part of a multi-year power-hitting assault that put him in position to break Hank Aaron’s career home run record in 2007. When most players were winding down, Bonds was just ramping up- he was first or second in the National League in slugging for the five straight full seasons after his 35th birthday. Bond’s latter-day value as an offensive force went far homer power, however. He was an all time performer because he excelled in almost all areas of the game: • At the same time he was proving himself to be the most dangerous hitter in baseball, Bonds established himself as the most patient one, too. In the years after 1999, he put together the top three single-season walk totals of all time- his 177 (2001), 198 (2002), and astounding 232 (2004) bases on balls all shattered Babe Ruth’s 170 total from 1923. From ages 35 to 40 (1999 to 2004), Bonds’ was getting on base at a .535 clip that surpassed the peak performances of Ted Williams and everyone else who had ever picked up a bat. • Bonds’ late-career greatness would have been useless without incredible durability. After an injury-plagued 102-game season in 1999, the San Francisco star averaged 143 games per season up to age 40, proving to be the most resilient Hall of Fame-quality outfielder of all time. (He earned the distinction the hard way, too, without breathers as a designated hitter or games at first base). • The new millennium Bonds found a way to become a terrific pressure player. In four career playoff series with Pittsburgh and San Francisco, coming between 1990 and 1997, he’d compiled a woeful on-base-plus-slugging (OPS) average of .613. In his golden twilight, however, Bonds became the spectacular October hitter that he’d always been in the regular season- in five playoff series from 2000 to 2003, Bonds averaged a 1.217 OPS that vaulted him to among the top eight hitters in both playoff on-base percentage and slugging. Oh, and five of his six best seasons in batting with runners in scoring position (RISP) came after his 35th birthday, too. • Finally, Bonds earned the unofficial distinction as the ‘smartest man in baseball’ in his later years. After spending much of his early career coating on the talent he inherited from his father, a former All-Star in his own right, Bonds extended his work ethic to the mental game. It was said that he knew opponents to the point he could recognize a pitch as it left a pitcher’s hand. From 1998 on, he also found ways to rework his swing mechanics into a deadly uppercut that reduced his groundball-to-fly ball ratio from a ‘very good’ career average of .75 down to an ‘unbelievable’ .55-.62 range. In assessing Bonds’ late career, no one can possibly overlook Bonds’ utterly unique physique, but focusing on his muscles risks losing sight of all the other factors in his greatness. Here was a man who found new levels of patience & durability & poise & intelligence to match his improved athleticism. Any one of them could have made him epic. The fact he had all of them made him Barry Bonds. Bonds late-career improvements can be explained through loads of hard work and mental adjustments, but nothing out of BALCO steroids mess offers any answers: • How were chemicals supposed to make Bonds a more selective batter? Steroid-aided muscles should make hitters less discriminating, as home-run visions tempt them into chasing after more borderline pitches and offering more big swings. The fact that petrified pitchers were only willing to chance, maybe, one hit-able pitch per game, that alone should have robbed BB of his timing. But Bonds only grew more disciplined/deadly as time went on. • How were steroids supposed to keep Bonds healthy? Over-muscled users like Ken Caminiti, Jose Canseco, and Jason Giambi (#36) just about ruined their careers while on steroids. At the ages when the others had retired or broken down, Bonds remained almost as resilient as he was in his 20’s. • Were chemicals supposed to transform Bonds into a superb pressure player? At his 2000 to 2004 record-breaking peak, Bonds was contending with . . . where to begin? A few distractions: an absolutely venomous press, unprecedented fan heckling (including multiple death threats), a federal grand jury investigation, the prolonged illness and death of his beloved father, a nasty child custody battle with his ex-wife, the acrimonious break up of a long-term romance. It’s safe to say that no sports figure in American history has ever been so hated by so many. Any one of them could have transformed a grown man into a quivering, orange-and-black bowl of jelly. Yet, through it all, Bonds remained more locked-in than ever. • Are steroids balms supposed to make you a more smarter, efficient ball player, too? The most wide-eyed conspiracy theorist might have scratched his head over those puzzlers, and rightly so. There were no answers to be found. Steroids don’t begin to explain why Barry Bonds got so good. Posted 7/30/2007 @ 10:15 AM | Barry Bonds & Steroids | 0 Comments ‘The Most Popular Myths in Baseball: Barry Bonds & Steroids’ -Chuck Klosterman, ‘The Breaking Point’, ESPN The Magazine, April 24, 2006. [T'>he eye-popping stats that [Bonds'> has accrued stand all too literally as too good to be true. -Tom Verducci, ‘The Consequences’, Sports Illustrated, March 13, 2006. [Bonds'> denied using steroids, but he hasn't convinced everybody. An unprecedented torrent of 213 home runs in four seasons covering his late 30's can have that effect. -Murray Chass, 'Owners Have Not Acted To Stop Use of Steroids', New York Times, April 14, 2004. Through 1998, at age 34, Barry Bonds hit one home run for every 16.1 of his career at-bat’s, thereby establishing himself as one of the most outstanding power hitters of his time. In the five years beginning in 1999, however, Bonds out-did his own standard, beginning a five-year stretch where he hit home runs for every 8.2 at-bat’s. By the time he was through, he’d made his case as the most outstanding offensive force of anyone’s time. As with Bonds’ physical buildup, his performance jump was taken as an occasion for indignation rather than celebration. The bestselling ‘Game of Shadows’ bluntly claims that the later period, from ages 35 to 39 (1999 to 2003), represented the years when Bonds was using steroids, and devotes an entire appendix to the ways Bonds’ exploits match up to his supposed usage. The fact that the Giant’s power numbers went through the roof so relatively late in his career was often taken, in itself, as convincing evidence for a steroidal connection. The image has reached the point it’s nearly unassailable, which is a shame, because the more facts come into the discussion, the more the image should be assailed. While Bonds’ late career improvement was outstanding, it wasn’t so outstanding as to be beyond all previous performance limits. There was no inherent reason to connect them to steroids. Question: Was Barry Bonds late career power-hitting unprecedented in Major League history? Answer: No. Multiple stars have done a whole lot better as they aged, as confirmed by data assembled by Sean Forman of Baseball Reference. In his 2004 study, Forman looked at Major Leaguers who compiled at least 1,000 official at-bat’s from ages 30 to 34 and from 35 to 39, then compared home run/AB ratios from the before and after. Here are Forman’s findings: HR/AB (ages 30-34) HR/AB (ages 35-39) Improvement Tony Phillips 58.8 33.3 81% Tony Gwynn 76.9 45.5 72% Carlton Fisk 31.3 18.9 66% Barry Bonds 13.2 8.2 61% Bonds did something incredible, but not so incredible as to re-define the possibilities in late-career improvement. Until someone gets around to explaining how Tony Phillips, Tony Gwynn, and Carlton Fisk were all steroid users, too, Bonds finds himself well in the range of their all-natural improvement. Question: Did Bonds’ single best home run season come at an unprecedented age? Answer: No. When Bonds reached a personal-best slugging percentage in 2001, at age 37, he was among the oldest players ever to peak in his later 30’s. But he wasn’t the only one. The heroic Hank Aaron, for instance, also had his single best power year at age 37 (1971), as did Hank Sauer (1954). The oldest player to slug his personal best was Fisk, who was 40 in 1988. Again, analysts are free to explain how the two Hanks and Pudge were on steroids, too. Until they do, there’s no reason to believe that Bonds got a bit ‘too good’ when he was too old. Question: Did Bonds produce an unprecedented one-year spike in home run production? Answer: No. It goes without saying that Bonds did something stupendous when he hit a record 73 home runs during the 2001 season. In the process of besting everyone else’s single-season total, Bonds bested his own previous high (46) by a remarkable 59%. Bonds’ mark was highly age-inappropriate, but it wasn’t earth-shattering, either, at least not in the context of Major League history. Howard Johnson, for instance, went from a career-high of 12 homers all the way up to 36 in 1987, a 200% improvement. Davey Johnson went from 18 up to 43 in 1973, a 138% improvement. Brady Anderson went from 21 to 50 in 1996 (another 138% jump). Ted Kluszewski went from 25 to 40 in 1953 (60%). Bonds wasn’t even the first home run king to stay hot throughout his career year- Roger Maris set his single-season record by going from a persona-best 38 homers to 61 in ’61 (a neat jump of, yes, 61%). Question: Did Bonds get too good? Answer: No. This goes to the heart of the matter. Even if Bonds didn’t have historic, only-explainable-through-steroids breakthroughs in his late career, he did have unprecedented final numbers. The San Francisco star wasn’t a Tony Phillips or Tony Gwynn, improving from mediocre slugging, but an established power hitter who vaulted to all-time heights. Unlike Aaron, Bonds set single-season records at his late career peak. His jump in performance didn’t come from a less-than-immortal player, but from a great one who’d already earned multiple MVP awards. Maybe Bonds was suspicious because he got so good compared to already-incredible standards. The problem with this version of the Bonds over-achievement ‘problem’ is in its pinched, vague understanding of baseball potential, which is to say human potential. Who’s to say what Bonds was really capable of all along? Maybe he found ways to work even harder and play even smarter, so as to combine a younger man’s strength with an older man’s experience. Maybe he didn’t over-achieve as an older superduperstar as much as he under-achieved as a younger superstar. Maybe he was the kind of baseball-playing genius who comes around every 130 years or so. It is possible, isn’t it? It may have been unexpected, even shocking, in its way, but such is the nature of greatness. Stars are stars because they’re utterly unprecedented in both their physical and mental gifts. I’ve never known why it’s always accept Babe Ruth as an authentic baseball genius, but never OK to believe Barry Bonds might just be the same thing. Posted 7/29/2007 @ 9:51 AM | Barry Bonds & Steroids | 0 Comments ‘The Most Popular Myths in Baseball: Barry Bonds & Steroids’ -Dayn Perry, ‘The race against Barry,’ Chicago Sports Review, April 3, 2007. I don't believe in coincidences, or physical transformations so stark that you do a double-take. I don't believe the numbers of 2001. -Gene Wojciechowski, ‘Latest revelations seal the deal for Bonds' legacy’, ESPN.com, March 8, 2006. You don't significantly change your body type when you're in your 30’s. Not in any good way, at least. -Bill Reynolds, ‘Fans too jaded to care about steroid use’, Providence Journal, April 6, 2004. The fact that Barry Bonds isn’t close to being the biggest, most muscle-bound athlete in the three major team sports doesn’t quite let him off the hook. Even if there are nearly two dozen basketball and football stars out there with even more impressive physiques, Bonds is still under a steroids suspicion for the way that he got big in the first place. As multiple writers have gleefully pointed out, Bonds’ muscle buildup wasn’t gradual, but fairly sudden- from the ages of 33 to 36 (from 1997 to 2000) the San Francisco slugger gained about 38 lbs. in lean muscle. By all accounts, it was an absolutely unprecedented gain in terms of late-career physicality, one that directly correlated to a surge in Bonds’ home run production. To critics’ minds, Bonds could only get so big so fast because he was using testosterone-based steroids. It’s a convincing argument, but only if you believe in ‘because I said so’ lines of debate. The first reason to doubt the steroid solution is in its believers. It’s worth mentioning, in passing, that Tom Verducci, Bob Costas, and other Bonds haters have all the real-world medical credentials of Dr. Pepper. To all personal appearances, most of the sportswriters offering weight-lifting insights haven’t lifted anything heavier than a jelly donut since college, either, so asking that crowd about modern medicine or optimum physical performance is like asking Yogi Berra for grammar tips. And it’s not like Bonds critics support their utterly empty say-so with any outside study or scientific evidence, either. The one stab in that direction came from Lance Williams & Mark Fainaru-Wada authors of the anti-Bonds ‘Game of Shadows’, who cited a 1995 study published by Dr. Harrison Pope in The Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine. It was a nice try, except that Pope was a psychiatrist, not a physiologist. Presumably, he could have counseled Bonds’ biceps. Measuring them was a different story. Apart from that single, irrelevant study, other credible experts have concluded that Bonds’ mid-thirties achievements were natural. Longtime body-building columnist Tony Cooper of the San Francisco Chronicle, among others, has claimed that the anti-Bonds accusations were “ludicrous” and wrote that the Giants’ star “merely looks like a man who keeps himself in condition.” And the most obvious explanations for Bonds’ size increase are in conditioning, and legendary amounts of it. Bonds exercises like a fiend, year-round, with three full-time assistants with advanced degrees. He’s been know to begin his training day before 6am, end it more than 12 hours later, and works through some of the most tortuous, painstaking exercises ever devised in the time in between. A regime involving ballistic stretching, variable resistance exercises, and isometrics have been well-documented by reporters from Muscle & Fitness and New York Times Magazine. Now that the great Jerry Rice has retired from the NFL, Bonds may be the single American athlete with the most complete, fanatical devotion to his own athleticism. It’s worth asking- just how much work would Bonds have to put in to escape the Dr. Verducci & Professor Costas’ exquisitely-tuned sense of suspicion? Now, Bonds’ one-of-a-kind work ethic did get some serious outside help, of course, but that help’s hardly been nefarious or secret. As it happened, his 20-plus year career has neatly coincided with the most dramatic fitness revolution in human history, one that’s allowed him to access an array of (perfectly) legal nutritional supplements and state-of-the-art equipment. With all that in mind, asking how many home runs he 'should' have hit based on pre-1990's conditioning is sort of like asking how modern 747’s ‘should’ be flying based on the Wright Brothers’ know-how. Of course, critics are always free to mistrust their lyin’ eyes. They’re perfectly free to quote nobody at all or maybe a psychiatric-turned-weight-lifting guru but, maybe, in this case, the obvious answer is the best answer. Maybe Barry Bonds was the first to become so strong because he was the first with the work ethic and tools to become so strong. Posted 7/28/2007 @ 10:07 AM | Barry Bonds & Steroids | 0 Comments ‘The Most Popular Myths in Baseball: Barry Bonds & Steroids’ -Mark Fainaru-Wada & Lance Williams, ‘Game of Shadows’ book, 2005. The first time I saw him in 2001, I said to myself: ‘He's juiced’.' I didn't say it in this column because I didn't have proof. But I was sure of it. -Gwen Knapp, ‘'A big confession: I lied about Bonds', San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 24, 2005 .Bonds used a shocking array of banned substances, notably steroids, to transform himself into a grotesquely overstuffed behemoth. -Steve Buckley, ‘Giant cheater shouldn't prosper’, Boston Herald, March 9, 2006 .Barry Bonds was supposed to be too big. As he reached for new season- and career-power hitting records in the years after 2000, he was variously described as a redwood, as the Incredible Hulk or Godzilla or a muscled-up monster. In the print media he was called “grotesque.” “Thick.” Fans were solemnly told that told he “just doesn’t look right.” Bonds was so big, in fact, that his physique was taken as convincing evidence of steroid use. With him supposedly pushing beyond nature’s physical boundaries, the unnatural (steroids) came into the picture. Or so the critics believe. Others, who know the full context of modern athletic size, are free to believe otherwise. On the one hand, there’s no reason to doubt that Barry Bonds is one of the most powerful baseball athletes of all time. Among healthy, non-obese males, body mass is measured in terms of pounds per inch in height and, according to research from University of Nebraska professors Ben Rader and Kenneth Winkle, the Major League hitters of 2006 averaged a ratio of 2.65 lbs./inch. Bonds, meanwhile, averaged an astounding 3.11 lbs./ inch. While the typical position player at Bonds’ height (6’2”) could be expected to come in at 196 lbs., the star’s official weight, 228 lbs., surpasses that figure with more than 30 lbs. of lean muscle. Among modern-day power hitters, only Frank Thomas (3.34 lbs./inch- 6’5”, 257 lbs.) is more stocky than Barry Bonds. BB’s a Giant in more ways than one. On the other hand, it’s not fair to limit Bonds’ comparisons to baseball athletics, is it? After all, basketball and football attract some pretty great athletes in their own right. If Bonds’ frame is really so extraordinarily muscle-bound, it stands to reason that he’d surpass them, too. Well, he doesn’t. When it comes to the whole context of elite sports, Bonds isn’t very big at all. Consider the best athletes in the other two major sports, the members of All-NBA teams and the ‘skill position’ players (quarterback, wide receiver, offensive & defensive backs) from the NFL Pro Bowl. Here are some of the athletes who match or surpass Bonds’ 3.11 weight / height ratio from 2002 to 2006: League Position Weight Height Lbs./Height Shaquille O'Neal NBA C 300 7’3” 3.53 Daunte Culpepper NFL QB 265 6’4” 3.49 Jamal Lewis NFL RB 245 5’11” 3.45 Yao Ming NBA C 310 7’6” 3.44 Elton Brand NBA PF 275 6’8” 3.43 Donovan McNabb NFL QB 240 6’2” 3.24 LaDainian Tomlinson NFL RB 221 5’10” 3.16 Ron Artest NBA SF 244 6’6” 3.13 Travis Henry NFL RB 215 5’9” 3.12 Steve McNair NFL QB 230 6’2” 3.11 Those are some of the more famous names, but there are an additional 13 NBA and NFL stars with more muscle-bound bodies than Barry Bonds. Bonds may be huge by baseball standards, but when it comes to elite team athletes, he isn’t even in the Top 20. How to explain that one? Logic is logic. If steroids are the explanation for Bonds’ size, then most, if not all, of those other players must be guilty, too. Daunte Culpepper must be far, far too big to be natural. Elton Brand must be grotesque. LaDanian Tomlinson must be juicing. Ron Artest must be overstuffed. Except no one seems to believe any of that. Everyone seems to believe that football and basketball stars reach the top of their game because they were born with superb size, then do the utmost to build themselves up even further. That’s what athletes do. They’re congratulated for it, not criticized. That is, if they don’t play baseball. If they’re not Barry Bonds. Posted 7/27/2007 @ 8:29 AM | Barry Bonds & Steroids | 0 Comments ‘The Most Popular Myths in Baseball: Barry Bonds & Steroids’ -John Feinstein, 'An Era to Forget', Washington Post, April 30, 2007. There's a mountain of evidence suggesting [Bonds''> steroid use . . . -Richard Justice, 'Bonds will be remembered forever as a cheat', AOL Sports, May 9, 2006. [The ‘Game of Shadows’'> the book smashes the apologia of the blind-eyed supporters in and out of baseball who want to believe that what quacks, waddles and swims like a duck is not, in fact, a duck. Only the most delusional cling to the life of denial. -Tom Verducci, ‘The Consequences’, Sports Illustrated, March 13, 2006. JOURNALISM 101 QUIZ: BARRY BONDS & STEROIDS 1) Victor Conte, the central figure in the BALCO scandal, proved to be a motor-mouthed individual who had no problem in naming nearly a dozen of his former clients as steroid users. However, he’s repeatedly denied that Bonds used the drugs and ultimately went to prison rather than implicate someone he says is innocent. What to make of this?: A) Conte knew that Bonds wasn’t using steroids. B) Maybe Conte knew that Bonds wasn’t using steroids. C) Who’s Victor Conte? 2) Secret recordings of Bonds’ personal trainer, Greg Anderson, have him talking about supplying Bonds with steroids. Bonds-haters in and out of the FBI are absolutely convinced that his ‘T’, ‘G’, and ‘E’ calendar notations refer to doping. However, Anderson went under oath denying that Bonds ever knowingly used the stuff, and neutral experts are absolutely convinced that the ‘T’, ‘G’, and ‘E’ notes refer to letters in the English alphabet. How to explain this one?: A) Bonds must not have known about the steroids. B) Bonds probably didn’t know about the steroids. C) Bonds must have known about the steroids. 3) Anderson confessed to supplying Bonds with steroids called ‘the cream’ or ‘the clear’ at one point in late 2003. However, Bonds has repeatedly denied knowing that they were steroids. Several times, he ingested Anderson’s supplements while in full view of reporters in the Giants clubhouse. What’s the best conclusion to draw out of those facts?: A) Bonds must have thought the stuff was flaxseed oil and arthritis balm. No man would be stupid enough to knowingly take an illegal drug in front of a gaggle of reporters who hate him so much it makes their eyes bleed. B) It’s hard to say. Bonds sure seemed oblivious, anyway. C) That’s just the kind of thing a brazen, crazed steroid user like Bonds would do, just parade around with his steroids, then taking steroids in a steroidal manner. He’s on steroids. Furthermore, steroids. And, in conclusion, steroids. 4) Bonds has stated that he never questioned Anderson about the details of the workout supplements and schedules. This claim is: A) Believable. Bonds and Anderson were childhood friends- he trusted Anderson. B) Kinda believable. Trainers hand them stuff all the time- how can all athletes do independent testing for everything that goes into or onto their bodies? C) Unbelievable. All athletes do independent testing for everything that goes into or onto their bodies. 5) Bonds’ chief accuser is Kimberly Bell, his former mistress. Shortly after Bonds dumped her in favor of his current wife and allegedly reneged on paying her $100,000, she claimed to have verbatim memories of conversations from up to seven years before, conversations in which Bonds supposedly confessed his personal motivations for using steroids. There isn’t independent confirmation for a word of this, but Bell is willing to pose nude for Playboy. These statements have the approximate witness credibility of: A) A $3 bill. B) Anyone else’s unbelievably angry ex-girlfriend. C) A bus full of nuns. 6) In a story sourced to former Giants player Jay Canizaro, Bonds displayed acute back acne from his steroid usage. In a story sourced to fellow star Ken Griffey Jr., Bonds confessed to using steroids due to personal jealousy. In other stories, players like Cory Lidle and Turk Wendell were quoted on their belief that Bonds was on steroids. However, Canizaro quickly recanted his statement, Griffey insisted the supposed conversation was a fiction, and Lidle and Wendell were noted loudmouths/journeymen who’ve never played with Bonds. Out of the three stories, which have any credibility?: A) None of them. B) All of them are iffy. C) All of them. 7) Consider the following facts on Bonds and steroids: • Bonds has been subject to dozens of random, third-party steroid tests since 2004, but has never tested positive. • Bonds denied knowingly using steroids while under a grand jury oath and pain of federal perjury charges. • There are no witnesses to Bonds’ ever buying or possessing steroids. • There are no documents of him paying BALCO for anything other than nutritional balance testing and wholly legal supplements. Which of those make it less likely that Bonds ever used steroids?: A) All of them. B) Most of them. C) None of them. 8) Which of the following facts tend to cast doubt on ‘The Game of Shadows’ case against Bonds? • Bonds’ refusal to speak to the authors. • The authors’ abiding conviction that they can read Bonds’ thoughts and emotions anyway (“he was in fact feeling unappreciated, grumpy, and terribly jealous”, “in his mind, he was the best”, et cetera). • The authors interviewing more than 200 people and reviewing 1,000 documents without finding any evidence that Bonds ever used syringes/drug vials or obtained steroid prescriptions. A) All of them. B) Hmmm. C) None of them. 9) Which of the following facts tend to cast doubt on the credibility of the Bonds investigation? • A California state drug agent’s statements that it was initiated by an IRS accountant he described as a “failed athlete” who was “jealous of all the attention Bonds received.” White alleged Jeff Novitzky called Bonds “a - - - - - -”* and mused about gaining a lucrative book deal from of the controversy. • The investigators’ tipping off the media prior to their conducting the BALCO raid. • The agents’ allegedly knocking down doors and drawing weapons on a startled company receptionist. • The investigators’ claim that Conte initially named Bonds as a steroid user, despite a complete lack of notes or recordings and Conte’s emphatic denials that such a conversation ever happened. • Former Major Leaguer Jason Grimsley’s statement that investigators leaked his identity in retaliation for his refusal to name Bonds as a fellow steroid user. A) All of them. B) Most of them. C) None of them. * Here are some hints about the word: it’s seven letters long, begins in the letter ‘a’, ends in ‘e’, and is not ‘awesome’. 10) In 2003 federal prosecutors decided that ball players’ workout routines were a subject worthy of the kind of grand jury investigations otherwise reserved for cocaine trafficking, rape, murder, and organized crime. Which of the following facts tend to cast doubt on the lawyers’ case against Barry Bonds?: • Their being forced to drop 40 of the 42 indictments against Conte. • Their taking token four-month sentences for the remaining charges. • Their inability to either issue indictments or terminate the grand jury investigation after more than three and a half years. • Their steadfast refusal to account for the taxpayer costs involved in the investigation. • The Bush Administration’s firing US Attorney Michael White for incompetence, a fate comparable to being fired by bears for shitting in the woods. A) All of them. B) Most of them. C) None of them. 11) Follow the logic: A) It’s said that a competent prosecutor could have a ham sandwich indicted. B) Prosecutors have never indicted Bonds, much less convicted him of a thing. What’s the most logical conclusion from these facts?: A) Bonds is even less guilty than a ham sandwich. B) Bonds is about as guilty as a ham sandwich. C) Bonds is even more guilty than a ham sandwich. 12) The term ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is: A) The highest ideal in American justice. B) A good idea. C) A fairy tale. 13) Bonds has said “I’ve never taken steroids.” What is the proper punctuation for this message?: A) “I’ve never taken steroids.” B) “I . . . Never? . . . Taken steroids?” C) “I’ve . . . taken steroids.” 14) The infinity symbol represents: A) The media’s willingess to fashion Bonds into some kind of a Darth Vader villain in cleats. B) The degree to which Bonds is both talented and troubled. C) The wickedness within Bonds’ heart. Scoring: Give yourself one point for every ‘A’ response, two points for every ‘B’, and three for every ‘C’. 14-23 score- You’re the kind of journalist demands a lot of common sense and hard evidence before you start tossing around the kind of accusations that can ruin someone’s reputation, career, and life. 24-33 score- You’re significantly more trusting of Big Media Establishment’s commitment to finding the truth through sound journalism rather than money through . . . whatever. 34-42 score- Good luck in the Big Media Establishment. ‘First the Sentence, Verdict Afterwards’ . . . . . . said the Queen of Hearts. ‘Alice in Wonderland’-style justice has apparently been a big inspiration for the media covering Barry Bonds: “An evil man. A truly evil man.” -Jeff Pearlman, ESPN.com “Personally, I hope Barry dies.” -Mark Kriegel, FoxSports.com “A scourge,” “an ailment,” “a felon.” -Wallace Matthews, (New York) Newsday “Tonya Harding. A punch line. An object of ridicule . . . a bastard prince without a true claim to the throne.” -Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated “A Giant freak show . . . something sinister, disgusting.” -Bruce Jenkins, San Francisco Chronicle “A thief.” -Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated “[A'> bad guy . . . the symbol of an era that baseball can't forget soon enough.” -John Feinstein, Washington Post “A drug-tainted asshat.” -Neal Pollack, Slate.com “A monumental fraud.” -Mark Starr, Newsweek “Vile.” -Paul Finebaum, Mobile Register “A liar” -King Kaufman, Slate.com “O.J. Simpson.” -Terence Moore, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Reporters have long hated Bonds, and the feeling has long been mutual. Still, I wonder what they’re holding anything back, just in case Barry Bonds is ever proven guilty of anything except possession of a rotten personality. Posted 7/26/2007 @ 10:02 AM | Barry Bonds & Steroids | 0 Comments Tristate Tour '007
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