Still the Metric System in Short Pants
Yahoo has decided to promote the World Cup by prominently featuring scores to games on its home page. Last night, I saw a World Cup game playing on some of the TVs at a local sports bar. Thus does an event that used to receive as much coverage in America as spelling bees in Uzbekistan creep slowly into the American consciousness.
This is not a good thing. As I noted four years ago, soccer is the metric system in short pants. It's akin to the invasive foreign species that disrupt our landscape and waterways, like the ugly but prolific Asian carp moving ever closer to the Great Lakes, much to the horror of local anglers.
That soccer has made great progress in America as a sport children play, and even some progress as a spectator sport, cannot be denied. I remember the brilliant SCTV parody of The Godfather, in which one Mafia family was trying to force its cable channel, "Ugazzo Home Vision," on the other families, who were understandably unpersuaded of the merits of a channel featuring Bollywood movies and "hours and hours of soccer." Now, of course, many cable systems do indeed offer "hours and hours of soccer."
What has stalled the progress of soccer in this country—apart from the fact that it is so boring as to be sleep-inducing—is the same thing that prevented the metric system from supplanting our customary system of weights and measures in the 1970's: It is seen as an unnecessary foreign intrusion. After all, we Americans invented three great spectator sports: football, baseball, and basketball. We don't need to import an inferior spectator sport from abroad, even if the rest of the world likes it. Or maybe because the rest of the world likes it. Indeed, the American rejection of both soccer and the metric system represents a healthy spirit of patriotic defiance. Of course, such defiance is directly contrary to the steady drumbeat for globalization that has been sounding from the elite media for decades.
I don't want to see America globalized, and that includes American sports. I want soccer to remain of interest only to those who play it. Which is why I was a little disappointed when Yahoo told me that the American soccer team had come from behind and tied Slovenia today. I have nothing against the athletes representing our country in the World Cup, but there is nothing like defeat to cause the TVs in sports bars now showing the World Cup to be turned to different channels.
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Dr. Fleming @90: "baseball, by far America’s greatest game"
Joe Sobran wrote a cover piece for NR in 1990 entitled "The Republic of Baseball" which I think wonderfully captures the sentiment that it is America's game. He wrote "we are players or spectators of other sports, but citizens of baseball... inextricably part of the American imagination." And, "baseball wasn't just something we played and watched. It was something we lived." It is great reading, if you can find it.
By the way, much earlier in the thread, someone complained that baseball is more boring than soccer because games may last over four hours. It wasn't always so. I never tire of referring to game 7 of the 1960 World Series between the Yankees and the Pirates, famous for Bill Mazeroski's 9th inning homerun that gave Pittsburgh a 10-9 victory. Consider:
- 19 total runs and 24 total hits
- five walks and a single error
- 7 pitching changes, 3 pinch hitters and two pinch runners
- an injury delay in the 8th inning when Tony Kubek had to leave the game after being hit in the throat with a bad hop grounder
Official time of the game? 2:36.
I hope Sempronius enjoys his penne and recovers his equanimity. Mr. Piatak obviously wrote most of this in fun. Years ago I proposed an ethnic Golden Rule, which is to grant every other ethnicity the right to its point of view and sense of dignity that you demand for your own. I don't think Tom Piatak is suggesting that Europeans and Latin Americans should give up soccer, only that Americans might be unwise to dump their own traditional sports in favor of foreign games, especially when, in the case of American soccer, it is to some extent the sport of liberal snobs. Hence Hank Junior's line, "I'm not a soccer fan, I'm an Oilers man ."
In the interests of full disclosure, I should say "Baseball been very good to me," since the income my father derived from his minor league baseball team paid for my college and left me a modest inheritance. For even fuller disclosure, I shall add that my father's cousin Grace married Charles Comiskie II, which meant we were always treated well at White Sox games.
All modern sports are being ruined by TV, which requires time wasted on commercial breaks. On the other hand, baseball is a slower game, requiring thoughtful attention. I learned how to watch baseball from my father and from professional players, managers, and coaches. I remember sitting in the dugout with the pitchers assigned to recording what pitches the opposing pitcher was throwing, how many, and who swung at what. My father hated TV coverage of baseball, because the subtle ballet of player movements could be caught only by the most well-informed crew--and those are rare enough--and even they will miss something. All TV cares about are long balls or perhaps some hit-and-run action. But then, TV ruins almost everything it touches, including Shakespeare and Mozart.
Dr. Fleming's memories of what baseball was for American kids is exactly on target.
As well, he observes, baseball is a thinking man's game. In the deadball era, the game was not a power game where fans were looking for a player to knock it out of the park. Indeed, the parks were much bigger back then.
It was a game of strategy and tactics, including hitting the ball to targeted areas of the field. That is why Ty Cobb used a spread-handed grip on the bat.
Mr. McCabe is right that coaches are now the strategists in football. But that was not always so. Johnny Unitas called his own plays and ran his team like a battlefield general.
Because criminals have taken over the NBA and NFL, and multi-bazillion dollar salaries have ruined baseball, along with the other two, I have no interest in professional sports except for golf. Yes, the money is big there, but those who don't win don't get paid.
Gene McCarthy once pointed out to me that Jack Kemp was one of the first quarterbacks not allowed to call plays on the field. Jack--the genius of the GOP--was apparently too dumb.
I tend to sympathise with the attitude of Sempronius.
While defiance (of soccer, of the Oxford lexicon, of decent beer, etc.) for its own sake has its place occasionally, I would eschew it if one's opponent is liberal internationalist cosmopolitanism. Such defiance is usually but unconsciously succumbing to the foe. I am tempted to say that the defiant one is being duped into becoming a Hegelian antithesis, so as to create new landscapes and define questions. But more practically-speaking, given that we're talking of soccer, I'd say there isn't any reason to cut off one's nose... [Mr. Piatik may be given to eating Freedom Fries, but I will stick to my French ones. Call me a globalist I guess.]
Either you like the sport or you don't. Does it fit the world around you or not? Ultimately my biggest complaint against the Metric system is not that it is foreign to me, but that it is foreign to everyone, and represents an attempt to design the world to fit Cartesian-thinking. [How is it that meter-haters don't bemoan the loss of the furlong or the league? Could it be easier to be an anti-, than to be oneself?]
I can't really say what sport is truly traditional for me (besides hunting and fishing), so I won't be starting up a Gaelic Athletic Association any time soon. Perhaps baseball, the modern phenomenon that grew up in the industrialisation of the land, should be considered most traditional. Or motor sports, given that this is undoubtedly a car and roadway country. Or basketball, just because I am from Kentucky.
While soccer stars are super athletes no doubt, anybody can play soccer at a basic level. In this, it is the opposite of golf (Talk about a preposterous spectator sport!), which requires considerable skill to play at all. To this extent, soccer is a potentially universalist sport, playable by almost all human beings from the age of four on. How is this a damnable quality?
With Fithugh, and contra Dworkin and Rorty, I want no new worlds. The fact that the French play soccer is, to my mind, not much of a positive, but it is not a negative per se.
My money is on Argentina.
Kirkwood@2,
The ignorance on display in your comments regarding the skills needed to play soccer is amazing.
Requires no catching: The reception and bringing under control of a soccer ball on the fly without the use of hands is called a catch. It is manifestly a catch, and is as difficult, if not more difficult, than catching a ball with one's hands aided by huge fielder's gloves or sticky football gloves.
Requires no hitting of a moving target: Every player is constantly hitting moving targets; the ball can't be advanced without passing it from one to another, always on the move .
Any kid can do it, no matter how uncoordinated: And I'm sure all the little basket, foot and baseball players scampering on fields of play every Saturday are only the most coordinated ones, the legions of parents of the less favorably endowed having somehow been convinced that they must keep their clumsy little bumblers away.
Soccer is an alien game imported by alienated Americans and their immigrant cohort: well I'm alienated, all right - from the sporting equivalent of the Republicrat political duopoly - and I didn't need any foreign help. It is the sports that have removed themselves from me, not I from them, and loyalists to football and basketball are very like those who continue to be captured by our political parties; baseball is another story, though it's trending badly.
I will remand you to the custody of your own conscience regarding the mean-spirited remark about brains.
Pace Mr. Eagle, who wants to soar above us all as the paragon of equanimity, objectivity, and non-silliness (while not taking it too seriously):
Soccer is a game made for conservatives: nothing much happens, there is little change, there is great freedom of movement, players regulate themselves to a great degree. Like life, it is largely muddled through, in a direction hard to discern; and suddenly a goal is scored - and life looks completely different now. As the saying goes, life is what happens while we're making plans.
Kicking a spherical object around must be one of the most ancient of man's proto-sporting activities. As our civilization crumbles around us, it is fitting that men return to a game that is played with, beside the ball, no more equipment than what we are born with, and that requires above all the will to endure.
As someone who played the game as a youngster (before I was being told to hate it because I am "conservative") for my Catholic school team (soccer being much less expensive than football for my parish school to pay for), I can offer this perspective: Soccer can have a niche market in the U.S. similar to that of hockey (which has even deeper roots and more of following in many parts of the country) or lacrosse, tennis or figure skating for example, but it will never approach the status big four of U.S. sports culture: basketball, football, baseball and golf.
The reason being is the passion for the game found all over the world simply cannot be replicated here. There's too much to do, too much to choose from and too much else going on compared to the rest of the world. I myself played when I was young and when I grew up, that was it. I showed no more concern for soccer than I would for say, track and field. I might follow the U.S. team in the World Cup every four years but other than that, nothing more. That's the way most youth soccer players approach the game as well. It's nice while it lasted, then we move on.
But that's okay because in many cases, we don't want the passion replicated here in the U.S., whether its the murder of a soccer star after they lose a game for their national club, to stadium riots that also kill people, to even a full-scale war caused by the outcome of a World Cup qualifying match.
It never fails, every time the World Cup comes up the "soccer debate" follows in dreary repetition. One the one hand are the globalizers indignant that everything in the U.S. doesn't come to a halt when the World Cup is on like the "rest of the world" to the neanderthals like Stephen Moore who fear soccer is some sort of collectivist plot to subvert America (has he heard of that collectivist sport known as American football? Hmm?) Let's just call a truce and say while soccer will have its fans and its youth leagues, red-blooded, true-blue Americans need not worry that the Chicago Fire will outdraw the Chicago Bears or get more media attention anytime soon.
@2 R. Cort Kirkwood
"Soccer is popular among parents of small children because it requires no physical dexterity at the level most kids play it, and it certainly requires no brains, unlike baseball and football, which require strategy and tactics. As well, it is unlike baseball and football, which require throwing, catching, and hitting a ball (in baseball) or moving target (in football)."
Sure, and it also requires no steroids, and requires you to run non-stop for the duration of the game. Yes, sadly we find a way here to turn a 60 minute game into a five hour affair. But obviously, you have never managed to time a jump so perfectly as to hit a "moving" ball with your forehead (without breaking your nose and while on the run) and redirect that ball into the back of a net. I would love to see a baseball player do this just once in my life, with all their dexterity.
What I find odd though is that the author thinks that "the American rejection of both soccer and the metric system represents a healthy spirit of patriotic defiance". I once attended a soccer match abroad where the crowd danced and sang for the entire duration of the match (no sitting at all). I also once saw a baseball game where I saw the majority of the morbidly obese fans eat 15 hot-dogs and never get off their rear ends once. If the latter is patriotic defiance, then I must be a neocon or something, and I wouldn't mind importing the former. As for the metric system, well I won't even touch that one with a 10 meter pole...err foot?
When arguing with friends about sports, usually defending the athleticism and toughness of soccer players, I've found the following hypothetical to be a pretty powerful examination.
If you took a few handfuls of players from each pro league and had them compete in a decathlon, which sport's players would on average perform the best?
Although some football players would probably have the best chance of winning the whole competition, just as many wouldn't finish in the top half of the standings in any event, save shotput. Basketball players wouldn't fare too well either but probably better than hockey. Baseball would also probably do pretty well, but those guys are not built for long speed or agility. I'd have to say soccer players would do pretty well.
I also like Mr. Scallon's approach but think he stopped short. Soccer will probably eclipse hockey and golf in our country fairly soon (in my lifetime) and be on par with basketball, though it will remain an outsider to football and baseball. Basketball and soccer are the two biggest sports for kids across the country.
All that said, still, the hardest thing in all of sports to do is to hit a baseball.
@108 Mr. Jacobi:
If Mr. Jacobi cannot see the difference between the skils required for baseball and football compared to soccer, then he's living in a different-colored world. As Mr. McCabe (#112) notes, "the hardest thing in all of sports to do it a hit baseball."
That was Ted Williams assessment, which he concluded from a simple fact: A batter is hitting a round object with a round object.
Yes, there is passing in soccer. But it ain't like the passing in football, or hitting in baseball.
Nothing in soccer compares to standing in a batter's box with a 100-mph fastball bearing down on you, or trying to hit a knuckleball that suddenly drops to the plate.
Nothing in soccer compares to the pure physicality required for football. If Mr. Jacobi, doesn't believe it, let's let him take a hand-off and try to make it through a defensive backfield without getting his lights knocked out. Then there's the skill required to throw a ball and put in on target 70 yards away.
Soccer players may certainly be in great shape physcially and possess many talents within the ambit of their sport, but comparing the skills needed to play that game versus football or baseball is preposterous.
Soccer is a game made for conservatives: nothing much happens, there is little change, there is great freedom of movement, players regulate themselves to a great degree. Like life, it is largely muddled through, in a direction hard to discern; and suddenly a goal is scored – and life looks completely different now.
Kicking a spherical object around must be one of the most ancient of man’s proto-sporting activities. As our civilization crumbles around us, it is fitting that men return to a game that is played with, beside the ball, no more equipment than what we are born with, and that requires above all the will to endure.
BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL, SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!! THANK YOU MR. JACOBI.
PS And all the rest of you Chronicle Cave Dwellers!!!
@ Kirkwood 113 who said, "Nothing in soccer compares to the pure physicality required for football. If Mr. Jacobi, doesn’t believe it, let’s let him take a hand-off and try to make it through a defensive backfield without getting his lights knocked out. Then there’s the skill required to throw a ball and put in on target 70 yards away."
I grew up watching and enjoying American football, especially at the college level. Then I had the wonderful opportunity of seeing a live rugby match. I have never been able to watch American football in the same way since. The only thing I can think is get rid of the 25+ coaches and co-ordinators on the sideline, take off all the equipment and don't stop the play and clock every 5 seconds and let's see how tough these NFLers really are. I guarantee you that your average lineman would have a coronary within 5 minutes.
Google Sebastien Chabal, a french rugby player, and imagine getting creamed by that man. AND, he runs non-stop for the entire game. In addition, the guy is clever and witty as hell. Most American football players can't string together one sentence.
To those who claim that soccer players are running non-stop during a game - I've taken the time to watch a little World Cup soccer and it looks like there is a lot of slow or moderate speed running, but not a lot of full speed running. It looks like the primary strategy is to bring the ball up the side and pass it to another player crossing in front of the goal for a head-shot or kick-in. Concerning which athletes would perform best at various sports, I may be wrong, but I think we humans have fast-twitch muscle fibers and slow-twitch muscle fibers. The proportion of those fibers (as well as the proportion of two chemicals – maybe enzymes is the proper term - in the muscles related to strength and endurance) determine if one is better suited to predominately endurance sports or to sports that predominately require short bursts of speed and power. I suspect that soccer may be an endurance sport, similar to bicycle road racing or long-distance running, and American football requires short bursts of speed and power, similar to weightlifting or sprinting. Concerning the chemicals or enzymes related to strength and endurance, I cannot remember their names, but you can engage in endurance training to increase the proportion of the endurance chemical, and thus improve your endurance, or you can engage in power training to increase the strength chemical, and thus increase your explosive power. Because the two chemicals are inversely proportional, you cannot achieve your maximum endurance and maximum strength and power at the same time. Because you cannot change your muscle composition, you are naturally suited to one type of sport or another depending on the role that strength and endurance play. (You adjust the balance between endurance and strength training to suite your individual requirements.) Of course, you also need coordination, but I think repetitive training can compensate to some degree for a lack of natural coordination. Perhaps another reader has some insight into “muscular coordination.” (And perhaps someone can correct me if I have misstated anything regarding endurance and strength). I am speaking here from some experience. In my misspent youth I was a competitive weightlifter. I entered only one competition (Championships of the South Atlantic Association of the AAU) each year just to see how well I could do training on my own. One year I employed a crash-diet weight loss regimen to move down a weight class. I did not perform very well in the meet. I bought a ten-speed bike and used it to gradually lose weight before the next meet. As my endurance on the bike increased, I lost weight, but I also lost strength. When I reached my weight goal, I cut back on the biking and increased my strength training. I was able to place first in my weight class that year.
To Sempronius – it looks like the enemy warriors are out-foxing our generals in Afghanistan.
To those who claim that all of the strategic thinking during a football game is done by the coaches - I think, based on my own experience, that players develop strategies and tactics, too. As a line backer, I had techniques that I would use to avoid blocks and get to the ball carrier. I developed these into a series of moves, never always the same, but varied in sequence, to fake out a larger player or to set up a smaller one. As a running back, I had another set of strategies and tactics, one of which involved hitting the defensive man before he could hit me. Run low through the line and, if there was a defender in the hole, swing my forearm into his chest under his pads to stand him up and keep him away from my legs while I drove him back. Once into the secondary, I would angle away from any defenders. As they converged on an angle, just before contact I would change direction and run right at the closest defender, hitting him at a 90 degree angle to his forward motion. If I timed it right, I would hit the defender while he was in full stride and was easy to run over, then it was often clear sailing downfield to the end zone.
To Dr. Fleming - we have a slight White Sox connection. I went to high school with John Berres, son of long-time White Sox pitching coach Ray Berres(who was actually a catcher). I didn't know John well because he played baseball, while I was on the track team. He was a slow junk-ball pitcher who I faced once playing Babe Ruth League baseball. I hammered one of his pitches a mile, but it was just a long out because we were playing on a field without an outfield fence. I guess that he out-foxed me. I was not a power hitter; my strength was as a place-hitter who could get the clutch hit with men in scoring position. I just couldn't resist that high floater. I learned a lesson then.
Thanks, Robert. I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun to light up them stogies and show you a bit of Chicago - skipping the mau mau parts. And remember to bring poetry; you have a knack for picking ones I didn't know that it turns out I like.
@113 Mr. Kirkwood:
Nothing in my post shows that I don't understand the difference between the skills needed for one game and another. It was your denigration of soccer skills and your outright failure to see a catch as a catch and movement where there is movement that were my targets.
I will say that baseball trully is America's sport. And I myself enjoy watching live games at the ballpark with friends - though some of the fans at major league games are getting obnoxious just as society in general is getting more obnoxious. Memories of games from childhood are happy ones...old Tigers Stadium...Jack Morris and the 1980s Detroit team...the '84 Series of which I was fortunate enough to have seen game 4 at the park.
In the spirit of Dr. Fleming's transparency, I will also confess that "football (soccer) been good to me". My father was a second league player in Germany for just a few years before emigrating to North America. No sums of money were inherited by me from any of this as those player earned little. But while growing up my dad was a respected refree in semi-pro circles and amateur tournaments. He was at one point asked to referee in America's original and now failed big soccer league, the NASL. He turned it down at the time knowing that it would put him on the road for too long a time and he would not be with family. In retrospect, knowing how much he loved the game, this is a statement to his loyalty to his family. But I did have a good time playing in a few games with and against him and also serving as his linesman.
I am surpsied by some of Mr. Kirkwood's vehement stands on the skills question. Some of this is subjective. But to portray soccer as a near skill-less sport is a bit un-objective.
And to judge baseball's merits on how hard it is to hit a fast pitch is not doing justice to America's great past-time.
It may be diificult to hit a hole in one (or throw a bottlecap across a parking lot and into a paint pail for that matter) but it doesn't necessarily mean that this makes the activity any more or less respectable than another athletic activity.
Baseball is unique. It's great for a number of reasons, but not purely on skill.
Besides, wasn't it John Kruk that once said: 'I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player'?
Baseball does stand in a league of its own in the US. But that does not mean soccer is a terrible sport or its American fans unworthy.
Dr. Fleming wrote something very true in #97: "Working mothers and divided schedules are far more significant, and if the two working parents, after sticking their kids in soccer camp and music camp, can say, “we’re doing this for the kids, so they can get into Yale. We’re making sacrifices because we are being good parents,” then they can feel good about themselves for abandoning their children."
This, I think, explains the popularity of the pre-K, pre-pre-K, and, now, pre-pre-pre-K programs. Mom and Dad can tell themselves that their tiny tot is going to school and it's good for them. No guilt over abandonment.
foscl@78,
Thanks. Yes, the possibility of confusion between hand using and non-hand using sports has crossed my mind, but I can't resist seeing my son play, the more the merrier. He seems happy to play anything. Good luck to Brazil.
I watched some of the College World Series. Most of it seemed pretty exciting to me. South Carolina plays UCLA in the first game of the finals today.
Well, it's today (Monday) on the East coast, but it's still Sunday in Rockford.
#9 Comment by Sempronius on 18 June 2010:
"Three thug/ghetto sports."
Nonsense. Especially baseball, which isn't even popular among blacks in the hood, or blacks in general.
In fact, there is nothing inherently ghetto about any of those sports.
Football may look black in the NFL and, much of Division I NCAA, but in the small towns and, suburbs of America, it's players reflect the places they come from. In Pennsylvania, it common to have 100% white teams win the state title games in all levels. Some teams are mixed somewhat, while the only black dominated teams come from cities and, old mill towns. And that doesn't guarantee they'll win. Maybe 20, or 30 years ago, silly white fans believed in magical blacks, but now, they've seen too many counterexamples of their kids beating those teams.
The same can be said for white teams in basketball. If you come from a majority white area (which is most areas in a state with only 10% black) your teams are white and, many do quite well in the championships.
What happens in the Division 1 and, Pro ranks is up for debate. But at the grass roots level, all three sports are hardly ghetto.
Here is a small anecdote to illustrate one of Eagle's points. My younger son is fairly athletic but we did not allow him to devote his life to soccer. At the Catholic high school he attended, there is a very powerful program and some of his best friends were on the team and played a lot with him. But, he said, they had developed such reflexes and skills that he could never make up for the time he had not spent in soccer leagues. On the other hand, when the football coach saw him goofing around on the field with some of his buddies on the football team--his school was a major force in its class, statewide--he invited him to start practicing with the team and suiting up. After watching one of his friends get creamed and sent to the hospital by a gorilla from Chicago, he wisely decided to abandon his mild enthusiasm for gridiron glory. I don't like soccer but it is a difficult and rough sport. One of my sons best friends, who attended a major university on a soccer scholarship, had his jaw broken. This became slightly amusing when later on, this kid--rather notorious as a bully, though I quite liked him--got into a barroom brawl and his potential victim rebroke the jaw.