Is this the way to cure it in soccer?
Speaking of performative injuries, the intersection of South Baldwin and Williamson streets is blocked off by protestors who need space to "mourn." They've managed to get the last and penultimate Concerts on the Square canceled too. For "mourning."
I'm just not part of our harmless ritual of belonging: fans rooting for their team.
I've been like that all my life. It's probably a deficit of character somehow. It's not at though I spend the time with more productive pursuits -- I manage to waste time other, generally less social, ways.
It certainly cuts down on the small-talk possibilities.
(*) My knees say playing baseball is much less likely than it used to be, and once I was out of school and away from PE, it was improbable even then.
UPDATE: For anyone looking back on this years from now, wondering what brought the subject up, the Super Bowl was a few days ago and the Winter Olympics is still on.
Sports are too much with us. Late and soon, sitting and watching - mostly watching on television - we lay waste our powers of identification and enthusiasm and, in time, attention as more and more closing rallies and crucial putts and late field goals and final playoffs and sudden deaths and world records and world championships unreel themselves ceaselessly before our half-lidded eyes.
People race them too.
If not, some lawyers are having a very unpleasant conversation right now.
Is anybody surprised? Stage fright's a real thing, and so is getting "energized" by a friendly crowd. It makes a difference in how you play if Dad is watching the softball game. Or your girlfriend. How could a crowd not have some effect? Well, maybe...
I've never been excited about sports, unless I was playing, and not always then. At the SuperBowl parties I've been to I spent more time in the kitchen with the snacks and good conversation than in front of the TVs. And what I don't care about I'm tempted to deprecate.
But we're not overburdened with things that bond us.
The Cubs aren't just Chicago, they're regional--Oak Park-ians can call them "our team" as easily as 4'th ward-ians. It may well be the only thing that links them--a trivial thing, but better than nothing.
The "laundry" isn't just a team symbol but a symbol of "membership in my region," and it's an American sort of ideal that you can change regional membership.
I'll try not to disdain "rooting for laundry."
And cat videos--anything benign that draws the disparate tribes together is beneficial. They won't cure our problems, but despising the little things is worse.
Steve Goodman, of course. Talkin' Baseball. Right Field (my position), and bunches and bunches of others.
Are there football songs (aside from school fight songs: On Wisconsin, etc)? Yes; though I've never heard these. (I have to filter out a lot of soccer anthems.) Google has "You'll never walk alone" classified as a football song; apparently because it is popular with "association football" clubs.
Tennis--The Tennis Song wasn't exactly about tennis.
Maybe the songs for team sports are less ironic. Score one for team sports, then.
So, in what sport-skills can women do as well or better? Endurance? In long distance swimming in cold water, they do better than men. Unfortunately that's not very action-packed--unless you are competing.
Precision?
Women do as well with a rifle as men, but not as well with a pistol, which is probably due to men's greater strength--they are holding a heavy gun out in the air. With a rifle you have more ways to get the rest of your body involved.
Women don't do quite as well in archery, possibly because men pull heavier bows which means faster arrows which means less wind deflection.
Can somebody think of some competitive events (not subjective, please--no dressage or ice dancing) that aren't speed and strength based?
Suppose MLB created an app that let you watch the game if you liked (this already exists, of course), but with the option of signaling your approval/disapproval in real time.
This would have to be with "buttons"--no way could the network or the servers handle the bandwidth from live-streaming 10,000 fan voices. But when the boo/yay/hit!/miss! tallies arrived at the server, it could drive the appropriate volumes of fan noise into large speakers around the stadium.
The players would get fan feedback and encouragement in real time, the fans would get to feel like they're doing something--and hear the noise that results, and MLB could rake in a little extra money for the app as well.
The user interface is absolutely critical. It would have to be extremely easy to use, maybe let you hear your cry (maybe record your voice and play it back to you?) in the mix, and have enough "resistance" to make it feel like you are actually doing something more than punching a button. By resistance I mean that you have to do something harder than touching a screen: but it has to be something natural. Maybe pushing a button and yelling?
It's an amusing jab at sports loyalties.
Anybody old enough, who was paying attention, sees the same thing in politics too.
A newer study bears that out. Alas, there are caveats.
Even though this analysis pooled data from several smaller studies to get more robust results, it still included less than 150 people. Results from running or cycling exercise tests also might not reflect how chocolate milk would impact recovery from other sports.
"Any food that provides carbohydrate, protein, fluid and electrolytes and is well-tolerated will help promote recovery," Spaccarotella said by email. "In addition to chocolate milk, other popular choices are cereal with milk, smoothies, sandwiches or soup. A small meal will even work, if the athlete is feeling hungry."
I'll chance it. Although they probably weren't studying people with my level of inactivity.
And given a choice between coffee and cocoa on a cold day, I'll go with cocoa.
You can probably see a pattern here.
I thought one simple way to test for fan annoyance is to monitor season ticket sales. But if this article is correct, brokers buy a huge fraction of the season tickets, so any measurement will be indirect. Better than nothing, though.
I'm sorry for him and his family. Closure is a good thing, but I wish they hadn't killed the crocs.
Not that I have any fondness for the creatures. If the last tiger on Earth were killing people in my neighborhood, I'd join the posse to go kill it. But Scott's case is a little different.
I want no wild threats to my home, and will be as thorough as I need to be to make sure of that.
A farmer who wants to harvest a steer or three wants as little fuss as possible.
A subsistence hunter needs food. If there's something dangerous out there, he would prefer that it either be elsewhere or be made incapable of harming him and his tribe. Man-eating bears interfere with the hunting he needs to do to keep his family alive.
A deer hunter wants the challenge of outwitting a deer on its native ground. He's not looking for danger, just the venison and the challenge. Similarly with geese, turkey, etc. If a pack of wolves started stalking hunters instead of just spooking deer, I think most of us would go along with relocating them--either far away or to the tanner's. Man-eating wolves would interfere with the sport.
But a crocodile hunter is hunting it precisely because it is dangerous. Likewise a lion hunter, or a grizzly hunter--only a jerk would go to a lion farm to shoot a quasi-tame lion. If the hunter has a very bad encounter with something wild, that just emphasizes the wildness and danger for the next hunter. Killing the dangerous animals to make it safe again interferes with the sport.
I wonder what Scott would have thought about it. I'm pretty sure his wife and kids wanted closure.
Just yesterday the story included "What did Jesus say to the Cubs?" says a popular T-shirt in Chicago. "Don’t do nothin’ til I get back."
Given the dangers from political violence and health risks I wonder if there's a little relief mixed in with the disappointment. The disappointments are huge--most athletes have very few chances at the Olympics, and missing this will mean that some will be too old/injured to compete next time. But I wonder how many have been having second thoughts about swimming/boating in a sewer, or relying on Brazilian security forces to keep terror attackers away.
I gather there's been a little excitement recently in Brazil.
My Better Half grew up a Cubs fan (one with 90% scar tissue, as George Will said), though she's learned to root for the Brewers. Some of the rest of the clan work up some desultory enthusiasm for the Packers if they do well, but mostly wait until SuperBowl parties to watch anything. Middle Daughter has been watching events from Brazil, though.
I didn't grow up in the US, but I think my lack of connection to sports is more temperament than environment. I can get involved enough in a softball or basketball or football or ultimate Frisbee game if I'm playing (Less than mediocre in all of them, though), or stay interested if I know somebody on the field, but otherwise I have to work to pay attention. I've a vague home team loyalty, of the "I hope the team my friends like wins" sort.
I used to have a kind of snobbish superiority about that: "I'm above such trivia." "I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me."
But sports enthusiasm gets people involved with each other, cheering for something together, joining in some facsimile of community. That's not a trivial thing when almost all other amusements isolate/atomize us: slouching in a seat watching cat videos or playing Angry Bird, or headphone-isolated into your own playlist. And we move around so much that no place is quite home (cosmopolitan=homeless); except for the place the home team has in the heart. We need something to bond us--sports are better than nothing (at least until we go all Blues and Greens). Not a very profound bond, but not nothing, mixing the generations in a way that even churches often don't.
I don't disparage sports anymore (I try not to, anyway), though I haven't tried to work up an interest in them yet.
