Good Men Can Surely Agree
Matt Welch | December 9, 2004, 12:21pm
Georges Bush and Will may no longer see eye-to-eye on Iraq, but they'll always have steroids! Here's Bush, via his mouthpiece:
[T]he President believes it's important for Major League Baseball -- management and the players' union -- to act by taking strong steps to address the problem. Professional baseball players are people our children look up to. Players use drugs -- players who use drugs undermine the efforts of parents and coaches to send the right message to our children. Drug use also poses some real risks, health risks to athletes, and it also diminishes the integrity of sports. And the President has made it very clear that he believes Major League Baseball needs to act to address the problem.
And the bow-tie:
Athletes chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued. Professional athletes stand at an apex of achievement because they have paid a price in disciplined exertion -- a manifestation of good character. They should try to perform unusually well. But not unnaturally well. Drugs that make sport exotic drain it of its exemplary power by making it a display of chemistry rather than character -- actually, a display of chemistry and bad character.
Will, to his credit, decries "the idea that everything is the federal government's business." He's on far shakier ground when he asserts that "only one radical demarcation has disrupted the game's continuity -- the divide, around 1920, between the dead ball and lively ball eras," but that's a whole 'nother debate.
Dayn Perry wrote about the "pumped-up hysteria" over steroids for Reason's January 2003 issue, and Jacob Sullum questioned why sports should be drug-free this January.
thoreau | December 9, 2004, 2:59pm | #
joe's comment reminds me of the recent experience with Jeopardy. There is something to be said for rules that "keep the playing field level", even if they do prevent people from reaching the full potential that may be possible with various techniques.
Oh, before I go any further, let me make it clear that I respect the right of any league, game show, or other sponsor of a competitive event to make its own rules. If I critique said rules it is not in any way a call for or acceptance of legal regulations of said competitions. It is simply my opinion as a fan. (Just gotta get that out of the way on this forum.)
Ken Jennings made Jeopardy boring. He didn't use any "unfair" enhancers that I know of, but he had a huge advantage with the buzzer, simply by virtue of experience. As somebody who won $850 of Ben Stein's money, I can tell you that winning a quiz show is as much about timing as it is about knowledge. No doubt some of Ken's opponents were more knowledgeable than him, but they could only ring in on the questions that he didn't know. He won his first several episodes on knowledge and raw skill, but after that his experience with the timing on the buzzer made him almost unstoppable, even against opponents who knew more than him.
If they had kept a limit to how many episodes you can win before being sent home to await the Tournament of Champions, it would have been much more interesting. Sure, there was some excitement initially, as we all watched to see how far he could go. But eventually every episode became the Ken Jennings show. And he so effectively froze out the competition that there wasn't even a competition for 2nd place in Final Jeopardy (2nd place gets $2000, 3rd place gets $1000), since frequently the scores going into Final Jeopardy would be something like $25,000 for Ken, $5,000 for the runner-up, and $800 for the guy in last place.
Since Ken lost the games have been more exciting. However, the next time some really knowledgeable person comes along and wins several games by knowledge, he or she will probably be able to go for weeks or even months on the accumulated skill with the buzzer.
I realize that this isn't directly analogous to the issue of steroids. But limits on competition, while undesirable in law and economics, are sometimes necessary to keep entertainment entertaining.
kevrob | December 12, 2004, 9:07am | #
Some of you may be old enough to remember when ice hockey was played in North America. In its final decade, goalie equipment had become entirely outsized, contributing to a dramatic drop in scoring. Boring!
Why, I can remember that like it was last night!
Cuz it was. See:
http://www.theahl.com
http://www.chl.ca/
http://www.centralhockeyleague.com/
http://www.echl.com/
http://www.ncaa.org/sports/icehockey/
http://www.universitysport.ca/e/m_icehockey/index.cfm
http://www.theuhl.com/cgi-bin/index.php
http://www.ushl.com/
http://www.ushsho.com/
True, there are no NHL games right now, and we may have to do without any kind of season, but there is still hockey.
I note the objection to oversized goal pads. Let's not stop the scrutiny there. Sticks made of metal or composites must be taken into account, as were sticks with extremely curved blades back when. Goalies whose pads are too wide can be challenged, just as a player with an excessively-curved stick can be.
Then there is the whole debate about helmets and face-shields, and how they affect reckless stick-work. More on point, pro hockey players gobble sudafed (or pseudofed) in order to be able to get enough oxygen into their systems to compete at a high level. When the NHLers went to the Olympics, they had to stay off it, as it was one of the substances the drug screening would catch.
Hey, if this season's Calder Cup champs challenged the winners of the European Elite league, couldn't the winner of that series claim the 2005 Stanley Cup?
Kevin
World's worst pond-hockey goalie (retired).
