Obsidian Wings

Women in Professional Sports

by wj

A few days ago, the Economist had a post on their Game Theory blog entitled Playing with Pink Balls. The thumbnail photo (and it really is that small) showed someone with some kind of bat. The teaser read, in full, "Why has it taken so long to play the first...."

Having my own share of cultural mypoia, I figured this would be a story about the lack of women in Major League baseball. Wrongo! (It was actually about the challenges of trying to play cricket at night, and why they still haven't been met. The problem seems to be finding a color for the balls which provides equivalent visual characteristics.) But it would have been an interesting discussion, too.

Look at the three largest sports in the US. It is pretty clear why there are no women playing professional (American) football. The sport requires huge size and bulging muscles -- the sort you only get with the help of a big dose of testosterone. The only players who are anything like normal size are the kickers. And, indeed, occasionally a girl at the high school level, who has played soccer (football to the rest of the world), does play as a kicker. But that's all.

Similarly, basketball requires extreme height -- and women average substantially shorter than men. Plus, there are women's basketball teams (and leagues) in high school and college (and even professionally). So a tall woman will have spent years playing in that environment. Still, a very tall woman, even for women's basketball, who tried to play with the NBA would find herself suddenly much shorter than those around her.

But then there is baseball. The physical requirements for baseball are two: exceptionally fast reflexes and exceptionally keen eyesight -- typically in the neighborhood of 20/12 or 20/10. Neither of those are particularly sex-linked. Girls are common in Little League, and do quite well. So why no further?

In high school, boys play baseball, but girls are expected to play softball. There is no obvious reason why girls couldn't play high school baseball . . . but it doesn't happen. (And at the college level, I believe that the NCAA actually has a rule against it.) So there is nowhere to learn the game at an advanced level.

Actually, women do play professional baseball in Japan and in Europe. However, in the US there is no real path which would let them get the experience necessary to play professionally. (Which is probably the proximate cause for why it has taken so long for a woman to play Major League baseball.) But why not?

No, this wasn't planned

by liberal japonicus

Though one might think so, given that the first open thread was sports and the second was pets. I was up early to get stuff done and saw wonkie's comment in the open thread, where she talked about a Lab who apparently had been abandoned and said this

He was obviously a former pet who desperately wanted pet status again.

which reminded me of this Malcolm Gladwell piece. Sometimes, Gladwell overreaches, and I think he may a bit in this piece, but wonkie's comment made me think of this:

The most damaged, scarred, and belligerent of Michael Vick’s dogs—the hardest cases—were sent to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, on a thirty-seven-hundred-acre spread in the canyons of southern Utah.

...

What happens at Best Friends represents, by any measure, an extravagant gesture. These are dogs that will never live a normal life. But the kind of crime embodied by dogfighting is so morally repellent that it demands an extravagant gesture in response. In a fighting dog, the quality that is prized above all others is the willingness to persevere, even in the face of injury and pain. A dog that will not do that is labelled a “cur,” and abandoned. A dog that keeps charging at its opponent is said to possess “gameness,” and game dogs are revered.

In one way or another, plenty of organizations select for gameness. The Marine Corps does so, and so does medicine, when it puts young doctors through the exhausting rigors of residency. But those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff—and dogfighting fails this test. Gameness, Carl Semencic argues, in “The World of Fighting Dogs” (1984), is no more than a dog’s “desire to please an owner at any expense to itself.” The owners, Semencic goes on,

understand this desire to please on the part of the dog and capitalize on it. At any organized pit fight in which two dogs are really going at each other wholeheartedly, one can observe the owner of each dog changing his position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master.

This is why Michael Vick’s dogs weren’t euthanized. The betrayal of loyalty requires an act of social reparation. (emphasis mine)

I know we have a few NFL fans here, so there might be some pushback against the notion that football has anything to do with such a heinous phenomenon as dog-fighting. Gladwell is a big football fan as well, and so I also direct y'all to where Gladwell answers questions from the readers. 

(I'd also note that Gladwell gives a glowing recommendation to Bill Simmons book about the NBA, a book that seems to have its own problems. But that is a whole nother topic.)

For another view of NFL injuries, this article is worth reading. 

Dr. Science mentioned the phenomenon of people coming into a conversation about marriage equality with complaints about the social construction of marriage, which often seem at cross purposes. I'm not pointing any fingers right now, I have done this in other topics, wading into a conversation where I feel like I have a logically unassailable position, and pressing it to the point that it raises hackles. There's an obvious danger of that here as well. This might be viewed as the perfect opportunity to discuss the immorality of pampering pets while there are people in the world who are much worse off. Which is why I move this to the front page, because I don't think that this sort of thought should be embedded in an open thread devoted to pet stories. Anyone is welcome to argue for the 'we'd be better off without pets (at least until we cure world hunger') line, but I'd just suggest that this might not be the place to do it, but no one is going to stop you.

The Amazing Michael Phelps: Open Thread

by hilzoy

Check out this photo, from this morning/last night's 100 meter butterfly finals:

That's Michael Phelps on the left, a split second before he and Cavic reached the wall. Look where his hands are. Look where Cavic's hands are.

And he won.

I am in awe.

Open thread.

***

UPDATE: This, via Gary, is a wonderful video, in which a penguin, already a Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Army, is knighted. Really. The proclamation is wonderful:

"We being well satisfied with loyalty, courage, and good endowments of our trusty and well-beloved Nils Olav, and reposing entire trust and confidence in you, as a penguin, in every way qualified to receive the honor and dignity of knighthood, and the office aforesaid."

Nils Olav looks somewhat bemused by the whole affair, though he does an admirable job of walking in a straight line past the rows of guards standing at attention, and only very occasionally decides that some of them seem to require closer inspection.

Well done, Nils Olav. And well done, Harald V of Norway.

Does Cheating Actually Help?

by publius shawn johnson

As I get mentally prepared for the gymnastics competition tonight, I had a question for those of you who actually know something about gymnastics.

As I'm sure you've heard, one of the big Olympic controversies is that the Chinese gymnasts appear to be 6 years old. So here's the question -- is being too young actually a net benefit? Does it really provide a competitive advantage?

In my expert opinion, it seems like a mixed bag. While I'm sure I could do better on the balance beam if I weighed 67 pounds, I suspect being that small would hurt in other events. For instance, being tiny seems to be a disadvantage on the uneven bars. And I imagine you need more strength to do better at the vault.

That said, I suppose having underage gymnasts helps in the team competition (where you can pick and choose who does what), but provides less of an advantage in the individual all-around.

But to say I'm ignorant about this stuff is too generous to me. Does anyone know? (On an aside, I love how everyone becomes a self-appointed gymnastics expert for about one week every four years).

Induction Falsified Again!

by hilzoy

I had no great hopes for tonight's Red Sox game. I know the Red Sox. I grew up in Boston. I used to love the Red Sox, until I decided that they were not a baseball team, but an instrument of torture in the hands of a sadistic God. My prediction for the game was essentially the same as the one I made three years ago, except for the Pedro Martinez part:

"They will be ahead 843-0 in the 9th, with two outs, when Pedro Martinez, who has pitched a no-hitter so far, walks three people in succession. He is replaced, and replaced again, but the walks keep coming, until the entire Red Sox pitching staff has done its best and our opponents, they who shall not be named, have scored 294 runs without a single hit. At this point the Red Sox stop walking people and start committing horrible errors: dropped pitches, lazy pop flies that miraculously drop through the gloves of outfielders, and so on and so forth. Still, we will think, it's 843-502; surely they won't be able to get another 341 runs before we manage one out. But they will. And then, having tied the game... I leave the rest to your imaginations."

I can't believe they won. I just can't believe it. I'm still expecting to wake up and discover that I fell asleep on the couch and missed the disastrous ninth inning in which they blew it all.

But they won.

The Red Sox actually won.

YAAAAAY!!!!!

CATS!

by publius

I also trust everyone is fully aware of the pure awesomeness that was the UK-LSU game. I'm tempted to get a virtual Blue-White cheer going. Farley maybe? -- you're an adopted Kentuckian (not the real thing like me, but close enough, assuming you can now pronounce Louisville with two syllables).

Doomed To Disappointment

by hilzoy

I was looking at the BBC News home page a few days ago, and glanced at some of the World Cup coverage. I think it's wonderful that the US made it, and I hope they do well, but what really captivated me was the discovery that tiny Togo had qualified. I am a sucker for underdogs, and so naturally I began rooting for Togo to win. I mean: Togo is a very poor country (per capita income $310 in 2005; it has about 6 million people, nearly half of whom are below 15; since (presumably) around half of those over 15 are women, who are ( I assume) not eligible for the team, Togo has to find its players among a mere 1.5 million men over 15. And yet, somehow, it has qualified for the World Cup! Yay for Togo!

(It's the same streak in me that led me to get a license plate holder that says: 'The starry skies above; the moral law within': I thought: if anyone sees this and knows where it comes from, they will get such a kick out of it! Very unlikely, but such a big payoff. Likewise, if Togo wins the World Cup, it will presumably mean a lot more to the Togolese than, say, Italy's victory would mean to the Italians.)

Alas, they were defeated 2-1 by South Korea yesterday. The BBC account makes it sound as though they could have won, but no. They play Switzerland on Monday, and then France on the following Friday, after which the matches depend on who wins in the various groups. I hope Togo will sweep to victory, leaving Argentina, Brazil and even David Beckham in the dust. But somehow I doubt it.

***

OMG! In doing the research for this, I just noticed that Angola has qualified! Now my loyalties are well and truly divided: tiny scrappy Togo versus war-ravaged Angola. If either of them win, I will be a very happy person. Alas, Angola has not only lost; it lost to Portugal, its former colonial ruler. That has to hurt.

Coda

by Slartibartfast

As sore as the orbs are tonight, I felt this couldn't go without note: to add an exclamation point to an otherwise highly punctuated season, Ryan Lochte has...well, listen:

SHANGHAI, China, April 9. WHEN the week started, Ryan Lochte had never established a world record. Now, he has three to his credit. Completing a stellar week at the World Short Course Championships, the University of Florida sensation set a pair of global standards on Sunday. Having claimed the world record in the 200 individual medley earlier in the week, Lochte added the 100 and 200 backstroke marks to his resume.

In the 200 backstroke, Lochte obliterated Austrian Markus Rogan’s record from last December by swimming an eye-popping time of 1:49.05, well under Rogan’s 1:50.43. Lochte split 53.74 at the 100-meter mark, was at 1:21.54 at the 150-meter point and cruised to the wall in impressive fashion. Rogan was second with a time of 1:50.97 and Australian Matt Welsh took bronze in 1:53.10.

For a finale, Lochte led off the American 400 medley relay with the first sub-50 100 backstroke in history. Lochte stroked to a clocking of 49.99 to better the world record of 50.32, set in 2004 by Peter Marshall.

Ok, now this pretty much defines peak performance.  What makes it all the more jaw-dropping is that he did it just two weeks after the NCAA Championships.  Two weeks after the taper.

Maybe things are different now; maybe the taper isn't such a fine thing as it was.  I swam YMCA State about two weeks after high school state, and although I won the 100 breaststroke and was 2nd or third (have to go look) in the 200 breaststroke (an event I'd never swam competetively until then) with fairly respectable times, I was at least a half second off in the 100.

The Aussies were, as a group, just incredible as well.  If you're an Aussie and interested, go read; it's all on the front page over at Swiminfo.com.

And that is all for this evening.  Swimfans, enjoy; the rest a yez, move along.

GO GATORS!

I just finished watching the Florida Gators completely dominate UCLA to win the NCAA men's basketball national title.  It was by far the best basketball game I've ever watched.  It wasn't so much that it was a flawless game, or that there was any particular standout player, or notable pyrotechnics, so much as it was an extraordinary team effort from a bunch of guys who have skills that fit well together.  Taurean Green handles the ball like few others, Corey Brewer is everywhere and always on the ball, Joachim Noah is the CHAMPEEN shot-blocker (7 blocks tonight, a championship record)...outstanding efforts also came from Al Horford and Lee Humphrey.

I know next to nothing about basketball, despite having grown up Hoosier, but the Gators were a great team tonight.  I remember well watching games at my high school and college and witnessing the team crumble and re-form as possession of the game changed hands; this was nothing like that.  It's not that it was a flawless game, it's more that when mistakes were made, they were acknowledged and then they proceeded to attack the game again with the confidence of victors.

Congratulations, Gators.  And thanks; I doubt I'll ever see a better game of basketball.  Looks as if ESPN agrees; UCLA was way overmatched.

Season wrapup

Having been busy tearing up carpet and padding, etc, and preparing the house and dinner for a birthday feast (my wife's birthday), I hadn't much time to pay attention to the last bits of the swimming season.

My only prediction for the day was the kind that doesn't count: the kind that no one else hears you make.  I predicted (to myself) that Ryan Lochte would break his own 200 yard backstroke record, and of course that he did.  The new record is 1:37.68, which is about six-tenths of a second faster than his old record.  Call it about three and a half feet improvement at the touch.  Lochte also had the second-fastest leadoff leg in the 4x100 free relay, which is an amazing stat given that he's not really considered to be a world-class sprint freestyle swimmer.  Overall Lochte had an outstanding meet, setting four NCAA records, winning three individual events and contributing greatly to Florida's place in the team standings.  If Lochte doesn't get the MVP award (can't recall offhand what it's called exactly) then there is no justice.

Other outstanding swimming today had Michigan senior Davis Tarwater scare Melvin Stewart's fourteen-year-old 200 butterfly record; missed it by 0.06 seconds.  Georgia sophomore Sebastien Rouault also put the scare on Chris Thompson's record in the 1650 with a 14:29.43.  He's got 2.8 seconds to go, but he's also got a couple of years in which to bring the time down.

Purdue (my alma mater) had an unusually high scoring day, with breaststroker Giordan Pogioli grabbing fifth place in the 200 breaststroke finals, and diver Steven LoBue earning third place in the platform diving.  LoBue also took sixth on the 3m board and seventh on the 1m board.

I don't have access to all of the final team scores, but Auburn took first, Arizona second, Stanford third, Texas fourth and Florida fifth.  Purdue placed sixteenth overall with 59 total points.