I must start by issuing an apology to anyone who has been aching for a new post on this blog since October. Since then my career writing sports at a daily newspaper has pretty much consumed all my sports-writing energy. I have been blogging a bit, but it has been on my blog through the newspaper, which can be found at http://dgsports.areavoices.com/. I'm unfortunately one of those people that too easily gets caught up in the idea that life is too busy to deviate too much from a set schedule, which is of course completely ridiculous, because when we look back and see how we all spend our time, we all inevitably find that we waste an incredible amount on it on worthless tasks.
That being said, I've decided that continuing this blog is something I won't continue to put off any longer. I will provide at least a post a week for the next few weeks catching up on some of the things that have been on my list to write about, so there will actually be reason to keep an eye on this sight for those interested.
This first post of my comeback is dedicated to blog artist extraordinaire Tyler Hanck, who gave me the necessary motivation to get back to blogging. The actual post starts now:
When faced with moments of tragedy, it is human nature to take a step back from our everyday lives to reflect on the greater matters of life. Although some people treat sports as if they are a life or death affair (I can't properly attribute this quote, but I remember a British soccer fan once saying of their team's success, "It's not life and death - it's more important than that"), the truth of the matter is that they are about as far from a matter of life and death as there is.
After the devastating March 11th 8.9 scale earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan, one of the things I'm sure you haven't heard people worrying about is how it will affect the upcoming Japanese baseball season. It matters very little when there are thousands of people that have lost loved ones, and who are still without homes or steady access to food, water or electricity, and probably won't be able to go back to living an everyday life still for days, weeks or months to come. There are people who's lives were transformed in mere minutes by a completely unforeseeable act, and who are living through events that very few of us can imagine ourselves going through.
There is plenty of work that needs to be done for things to return to normal in Japan, but there is no doubt that things will become normal again. Japan is as good as any other place in the world at receiving a bad hand and overcoming the obstacles that are created. It is a country that modernized swiftly in the 19th Century after centuries of self-imposed isolation, that rebuilt after being bombed relentlessly in World War II to become one of the great economies of the world, and more recently rebuilt an entire city after the 1995 earthquake in Kobe.
The Japanese people don't want the rest of the world feeling sorry for them. They just want to get back on their feet.
One small way that Japan can focus on returning to normalcy is for the baseball season to go on as planned. The league (Nippon Professional Baseball) originally planned to start on schedule in late March even in the wake of the disaster, but inevitably had to postpone opening day to April 12. One of the league's 12 teams - the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles - is based in Sendai (the biggest city to be destroyed in the wake of the tsunami) and delaying the season makes perfect sense given the situation.
However, it is important that the season be only delayed and not canceled altogether. It is not unheard of for a professional sports season to be canceled - it has happened it times of war, and more recently in times of labor dispute - and a disaster of the scale of what has happened in Japan may seem a justifiable reason to cancel a season as well. But the act of not playing baseball doesn't change what happened, and it doesn't do anything to help alleviate the situation.
On the contrary - the act of playing baseball can actually make a difference.
On Saturday April 2, all 12 Japanese professional teams matched up and played baseball games. None of the games were a part of the actual season - all of them were played strictly for charity to raise funds to help with relief efforts. They will do the same again on April 3 (which is when this blog is being typed). Here is an article with more details.
I'm already getting a bit long winded, and will add more on this idea in a future post, but one of the major functions of professional sports is as a sector of a nation's economy - albeit it a sector that provides return in entertainment rather than in raw materials or physical products. People often complain about the business model of professional sports as funneling money straight to the top to create a class of people with way more money than they know what to do with (which of course holds truths), but as this situation demonstrates, the potential is also there for sports to create revenue that can be distributed to places where it is much more sorely needed.
This happens on a small scale in the most pro sports, with teams or individual players often making generous donations to charities , but unfortunately it doesn't happen often enough when there isn't a cause to rally around like there currently is in Japan. That being said, there have been some incredibly generous individual donations to relief efforts in Japan: Major League Baseball player Ichiro Suzuki made a $1.25 million donation to relief efforts, fellow Japanese MLB player Daisuke Matsuzaka made a $1 million donation and Japanese pro golfer Ryo Ishikawa pledged to donate his entire tournament winnings this year to the cause. A group of professional skiers also started up a charity where they pledged large chucks of their winnings to the cause - you can read more about this effort on their website, skiershelpingjapan.com.
But it isn't for the potential donations alone that it is important right now for Japanese baseball to get up and running. Life becomes a grim prospect when the only thing you have to think about it the necessities of survival - we all need distractions to retain our sanity. Sports provide us with such a distraction, and the presence of the distraction of sports is one way that life can start to return to normal for the people of Japan. The people of Japan have the ability to focus on both relief efforts and baseball at the same time, and in instances like April 2 and 3, they focused on both at exactly the same time.
There are unfortunately people in the world who find their lives filled with hardship and don't have the luxury of being able to use sports as an escape, but I can think of nowhere in the world where people would refuse to turn to sports where given the chance (be it playing crude soccer matches played with bare feet and a pieced together ball, or something even simpler). I've already brought up the idea in this blog of sports acting as a unifying force, and there is no better example of a time when people need to be unified than in tragedies such as Japan is currently facing - and the situations in New Zealand, Libya, and countless other nations where people's everyday lives have had to take a back seat in the face of natural disasters or political turmoil.
I hope that I have made any sense. Feel free to post comments with your thoughts, suggestions or ideas on where you think I could/should expand.
My next blog post will be coming shortly.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
UPDATE: The Chilean miners and the sporting world
There has been an incredible development since I wrote the post about the Chilean miners!
In my post I commented on how the rescue demonstrated a prime example of teamwork being played out in a real world situation. Funnily enough, the miners and the rescuers then translated this teamwork back into the sporting world to play a game of soccer against each other! Read about it here.
It's significant that in order to celebrate the rescue and to hand out medals that the venue of a soccer stadium was chosen - and that the celebration was extended through an actual game of soccer. They could have chosen to go out to dinner, maybe catch a movie together, perhaps visit a nice art museum and serve drinks and mini appetizers... but in the end, all they really wanted to do was to play soccer. Playing a sport was determined to be the best way for them all to connect in a post-rescue situation.
Chalk up one point for sports being a way to establish a social connection! A lot of the time in the press we spend a great deal of time reporting on professional sports and other competitive organized sports, where money and trophies and other factors always play a part. However, the reality is that for the majority of people on this planet, participation in sports serves an almost purely social purpose. The social side of sports may not always be the sole factor in recreational participation in sports, but seldom is it absent and more often than not it does take center stage.
Take some inspiration from reading about the miners vs. rescuers soccer match, and go out and find a couple friends you've been meaning to catch up with and find some sort of athletic activity to do together! Go for a jog, kick around a football, play tennis... the beauty of the sporting world is that there are so many sports to choose from! Though as we can see from the Chilean miner story, in Chile, soccer is obviously king.
-DK
In my post I commented on how the rescue demonstrated a prime example of teamwork being played out in a real world situation. Funnily enough, the miners and the rescuers then translated this teamwork back into the sporting world to play a game of soccer against each other! Read about it here.
It's significant that in order to celebrate the rescue and to hand out medals that the venue of a soccer stadium was chosen - and that the celebration was extended through an actual game of soccer. They could have chosen to go out to dinner, maybe catch a movie together, perhaps visit a nice art museum and serve drinks and mini appetizers... but in the end, all they really wanted to do was to play soccer. Playing a sport was determined to be the best way for them all to connect in a post-rescue situation.
Chalk up one point for sports being a way to establish a social connection! A lot of the time in the press we spend a great deal of time reporting on professional sports and other competitive organized sports, where money and trophies and other factors always play a part. However, the reality is that for the majority of people on this planet, participation in sports serves an almost purely social purpose. The social side of sports may not always be the sole factor in recreational participation in sports, but seldom is it absent and more often than not it does take center stage.
Take some inspiration from reading about the miners vs. rescuers soccer match, and go out and find a couple friends you've been meaning to catch up with and find some sort of athletic activity to do together! Go for a jog, kick around a football, play tennis... the beauty of the sporting world is that there are so many sports to choose from! Though as we can see from the Chilean miner story, in Chile, soccer is obviously king.
-DK
Friday, October 22, 2010
The Chilean miner rescue and the sporting world
The trapped Chilean miners have been above ground for over a week now, and in the aftermath of the rescue I've had a couple thoughts that relate the rescue to the sporting world in a couple of different ways.
This is a story in two parts: a look at the connection between the rescue and sports talk radio, and also a look at the meaning of the invitations that the miners have received to attend different sporting events.
(editor's note: in order to make this blog easier to read, I'll often try to set up my posts as 'a story in X parts.' Hope this achieves its desired effect.)
Part 1 - So what does the rescue have to do with sports talk radio? Well, as the miners were being rescued, I was driving north on Interstate 35 in southern Minnesota, listening to the radio in my car. I was tuned in to the ESPN station on AM radio, and mixed in with talk about the University of Minnesota football team, the radio hosts were giving an update every time a new miner was pulled from underground.
You may wonder why this would be a suitable topic for a sports talk show. First you must realize that the label "sports talk" is in a lot of cases simply a label used to draw an audience in to listen to whatever the hosts want to talk about. These shows are aimed almost completely at a male audience, and when scanning the radio waves a lot of men would be prone to stay listening to a station if it has anything to do with sports - this is of course a general observation, but one that rings true in most modern societies. So in reality, although these talk shows are supposed to be about sports, they are really just "man talk" radio shows.
If you spent some time listening to ESPN radio you'd understand what I'm saying. I am unfortunately a prime example of the guys I make reference to above - if I'm bored and scanning the airwaves, I'll immediately be drawn to a radio station claiming to specialize in sports. I have never heard a female host on ESPN radio any of the times I've listened to it, and I wouldn't expect to. Women have been making ground in the world of sports media, an industry traditionally heavily male dominated, more frequently attaining positions in print and television journalism (if you tune into ESPN's television broadcasts you will see female anchors and sideline reporters, and if you've been following the US sports headlines you'll have heard of TV Azteca's Ines Sainz, who made headlines for discomforting treatment given to her while interviewing a player in the New York Jets' locker room). However, sports radio has remained a male dominated industry.
The topics on these male-targeted shows can go all over the place, straying from sports talk as much as they please. I have heard a host talk about an attractive women that works out in the same gym as him, spending time strategizing how to pick her up, and have heard hosts talk about home DIY projects - I listened to a lengthy discussion on the best way to repair an outdoor electrical socket, with listeners calling in giving tips - and political discussion isn't out of the question either (it seems most corporate radio programming is unable to evade the strangle-hold of right-wing politics, but that's a whole other discussion). So it should be no surprise that the hosts I was listening to while driving that day on I-35 were intent on talking about the miners - particularly the one who was found to have a mistress.
The characteristics I have pointed out about sports talk radio are far from flattering, but the situation is unfortunately true: sports can be, and are used as a way to cement gender lines in society, characterizing talking about sports as a "manly" thing. Even after we've seen a flourishing of female involvement in sports at all levels, from the Title IX law that passed through the American education system in 1972 mandating equal opportunities for girls in sporting opportunities in schools, to greater career possibilities for women in sports in fields such as sports journalism, we still are left with fragments of sporting culture such as sports talk radio that still profess the sporting world to be a "man's world." My hope is that with each coming generation that attitudes such as this continue to be erased, but there is no denying the continued existence of these attitudes in the contemporary world. This post is of course just tapping on the door of a far bigger topic, but for now I'll just leave it here.
The above discussion about sports talk radio is somewhat ironic given the fact that this blog originated as a 3-year long sports talk radio show at Macalester College. I have to admit there were times on air where I became vastly distracted and talked about a whole variety of things, but the aim of that radio show was to cater to as wide and all-encompassing an audience as possible, and that is still the goal in this blog.
Part 2 - Following their rescue, the miners were immediately sent invitations to various sporting events. For example, one of the miners who was said to have run multiple miles every day while trapped underground was invited to the New York marathon, and the lot of them were invited to England to attend a Manchester United soccer match.
Here we witness one of the great, unique roles that sports play in society: they provide a guaranteed audience, no matter what. It may not seem that the Chilean miners themselves have many characteristics that necessarily connect them to the sporting world - besides that fact that one of them was a retired professional soccer player - but sports events attract celebrity attention from all over, and they are able to do so because in certain cases there is a guaranteed audience of millions that will be paying attention.
As an example, think of the Olympics. Can you think of a single event in the world that draws a bigger world-wide audience at any one time? Perhaps something on the scale of the 1966 moon landing, but examples of events with a bigger audience than the Olympics are hard to come by.
In a lot of cases, the results of individual sporting events hardly matter - somebody will always win, just as somebody will always lose. The important thing is that people are paying attention. And once people are paying attention (the sporting event acting as the hook), you can display anything you want. This could be a bizarre Olympic opening ceremony, or a Super Bowl half-time show, or a bunch of miners that were trapped underground for a couple of months. The hook can work the other way too - you can draw in audiences to a sporting event based on the bonus material - perhaps people who are eager to see the miners will end up watching the Manchester United soccer match and become fans.
This is a hugely important topic in the attempt to answer the question I posed in the creation of this blog: why do sports matter? They matter because few other aspects of society is capable of captivating the attention of huge masses of people in the same way that sports can.
I know I only promised two topics of discussion in this blog post, but here is a brief third topic. High school and collegiate sports often seem to possess little practical value contrasted to classroom studies, but one thing that is always said in response to this is that organized sports in schools build the ethics of teamwork in the kids that participate in them. Can there be any better real-world example of the importance of having strong ethics of teamwork that the miner rescue? Everyone survived, and they did so as a team together underground as they awaited rescue, and did so as a team in coalition with their rescuers on the surface. Without such a strong team effort on both sides people could have died, and perhaps all the miners could have been trapped for good. Teamwork isn't always life or death, but there can be no denying it is a crucial skill to develop, and organized sports help the cause.
My aim in the future is for this blog to develop into a forum of discussion where not just my thoughts are put forth, but every reader who has an opinion to share - go ahead and post a comment if you have anything to share, no matter how small, and hopefully this trend will kick-off.
This is a story in two parts: a look at the connection between the rescue and sports talk radio, and also a look at the meaning of the invitations that the miners have received to attend different sporting events.
(editor's note: in order to make this blog easier to read, I'll often try to set up my posts as 'a story in X parts.' Hope this achieves its desired effect.)
Part 1 - So what does the rescue have to do with sports talk radio? Well, as the miners were being rescued, I was driving north on Interstate 35 in southern Minnesota, listening to the radio in my car. I was tuned in to the ESPN station on AM radio, and mixed in with talk about the University of Minnesota football team, the radio hosts were giving an update every time a new miner was pulled from underground.
You may wonder why this would be a suitable topic for a sports talk show. First you must realize that the label "sports talk" is in a lot of cases simply a label used to draw an audience in to listen to whatever the hosts want to talk about. These shows are aimed almost completely at a male audience, and when scanning the radio waves a lot of men would be prone to stay listening to a station if it has anything to do with sports - this is of course a general observation, but one that rings true in most modern societies. So in reality, although these talk shows are supposed to be about sports, they are really just "man talk" radio shows.
If you spent some time listening to ESPN radio you'd understand what I'm saying. I am unfortunately a prime example of the guys I make reference to above - if I'm bored and scanning the airwaves, I'll immediately be drawn to a radio station claiming to specialize in sports. I have never heard a female host on ESPN radio any of the times I've listened to it, and I wouldn't expect to. Women have been making ground in the world of sports media, an industry traditionally heavily male dominated, more frequently attaining positions in print and television journalism (if you tune into ESPN's television broadcasts you will see female anchors and sideline reporters, and if you've been following the US sports headlines you'll have heard of TV Azteca's Ines Sainz, who made headlines for discomforting treatment given to her while interviewing a player in the New York Jets' locker room). However, sports radio has remained a male dominated industry.
The topics on these male-targeted shows can go all over the place, straying from sports talk as much as they please. I have heard a host talk about an attractive women that works out in the same gym as him, spending time strategizing how to pick her up, and have heard hosts talk about home DIY projects - I listened to a lengthy discussion on the best way to repair an outdoor electrical socket, with listeners calling in giving tips - and political discussion isn't out of the question either (it seems most corporate radio programming is unable to evade the strangle-hold of right-wing politics, but that's a whole other discussion). So it should be no surprise that the hosts I was listening to while driving that day on I-35 were intent on talking about the miners - particularly the one who was found to have a mistress.
The characteristics I have pointed out about sports talk radio are far from flattering, but the situation is unfortunately true: sports can be, and are used as a way to cement gender lines in society, characterizing talking about sports as a "manly" thing. Even after we've seen a flourishing of female involvement in sports at all levels, from the Title IX law that passed through the American education system in 1972 mandating equal opportunities for girls in sporting opportunities in schools, to greater career possibilities for women in sports in fields such as sports journalism, we still are left with fragments of sporting culture such as sports talk radio that still profess the sporting world to be a "man's world." My hope is that with each coming generation that attitudes such as this continue to be erased, but there is no denying the continued existence of these attitudes in the contemporary world. This post is of course just tapping on the door of a far bigger topic, but for now I'll just leave it here.
The above discussion about sports talk radio is somewhat ironic given the fact that this blog originated as a 3-year long sports talk radio show at Macalester College. I have to admit there were times on air where I became vastly distracted and talked about a whole variety of things, but the aim of that radio show was to cater to as wide and all-encompassing an audience as possible, and that is still the goal in this blog.
Part 2 - Following their rescue, the miners were immediately sent invitations to various sporting events. For example, one of the miners who was said to have run multiple miles every day while trapped underground was invited to the New York marathon, and the lot of them were invited to England to attend a Manchester United soccer match.
Here we witness one of the great, unique roles that sports play in society: they provide a guaranteed audience, no matter what. It may not seem that the Chilean miners themselves have many characteristics that necessarily connect them to the sporting world - besides that fact that one of them was a retired professional soccer player - but sports events attract celebrity attention from all over, and they are able to do so because in certain cases there is a guaranteed audience of millions that will be paying attention.
As an example, think of the Olympics. Can you think of a single event in the world that draws a bigger world-wide audience at any one time? Perhaps something on the scale of the 1966 moon landing, but examples of events with a bigger audience than the Olympics are hard to come by.
In a lot of cases, the results of individual sporting events hardly matter - somebody will always win, just as somebody will always lose. The important thing is that people are paying attention. And once people are paying attention (the sporting event acting as the hook), you can display anything you want. This could be a bizarre Olympic opening ceremony, or a Super Bowl half-time show, or a bunch of miners that were trapped underground for a couple of months. The hook can work the other way too - you can draw in audiences to a sporting event based on the bonus material - perhaps people who are eager to see the miners will end up watching the Manchester United soccer match and become fans.
This is a hugely important topic in the attempt to answer the question I posed in the creation of this blog: why do sports matter? They matter because few other aspects of society is capable of captivating the attention of huge masses of people in the same way that sports can.
I know I only promised two topics of discussion in this blog post, but here is a brief third topic. High school and collegiate sports often seem to possess little practical value contrasted to classroom studies, but one thing that is always said in response to this is that organized sports in schools build the ethics of teamwork in the kids that participate in them. Can there be any better real-world example of the importance of having strong ethics of teamwork that the miner rescue? Everyone survived, and they did so as a team together underground as they awaited rescue, and did so as a team in coalition with their rescuers on the surface. Without such a strong team effort on both sides people could have died, and perhaps all the miners could have been trapped for good. Teamwork isn't always life or death, but there can be no denying it is a crucial skill to develop, and organized sports help the cause.
My aim in the future is for this blog to develop into a forum of discussion where not just my thoughts are put forth, but every reader who has an opinion to share - go ahead and post a comment if you have anything to share, no matter how small, and hopefully this trend will kick-off.
Monday, September 20, 2010
The Grand Final
Thanks for waiting, here's the post:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Grand Final is the premier sporting event in the world, bar none. Yes, this is a biased statement, and yes, I'm probably only saying this because I was born in Melbourne and footy was the first sport etched into my soul, but I'm entitled to my opinion, right? Hopefully I'll have some of you feeling the same way after reading this post.
First off, I'll try to set the atmosphere for all of you that haven't experienced a Grand Final (I was a the stadium as a nine year old in 1997 to see my St. Kilda Saints play the Adelaide Crows - we're not gonna go into the result of that one). The game has always and will always be played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is more commonly called the MCG, and is without a doubt the greatest sports venue in the world (again my bias is in play here, but in all seriousness there probably isn't a single better venue in the world). The MCG sits 100,000 people, more than twice the number of the biggest baseball stadiums in the US, and sits on the southern edge on downtown Melbourne near the botanical gardens, right across the street from the Rod Laver Arena, where the Australian Open tennis is played.
I'm going to go ahead and make another statement: Melbourne is probably the sports capital of the world. And yes, I can back this up. First off Melbourne has the Grand Final, the premier sporting event in the world (my argument on this point will be finished below). Then there's the fact that one of the four major tennis events in the world is held there every single year, and no-one can deny that tennis is among the most global of professional sports. Melbourne has Olympic lineage, one of only 22 cities to have hosted the Summer Olympic Games (I think my math is right). It has also hosted the Commonwealth Games, a miniature version of the Olympics limited to just the former and current nations of the British Commonwealth (which is a very large percentage of the globe). Melbourne will also be the host of the 2022 soccer World Cup final, which some people argue is the single greatest sports match in the world (besides the Grand Final of course. And the fact that Melbourne will host the World Cup final is actually pretty hypothetical at this point - the 2022 World Cup venue has yet to be chosen - but I have faith). Melbourne also hosts world class cricket, rugby and soccer matches, is close enough to the ocean to incorporate most water sports, and is inhabited by perhaps the most sports loving population of anywhere on the globe (just go with me on this one, it's true).
Alright, so back to the Grand Final. Our first fact (that's right, fact) is that it takes place in the sports capital of the world. The next clue to its greatness is in its name - the GRAND Final. It's better than a Good Final, or even a Great Final, it is in every sense of the word a Grand one - greatness and dignity wrapped all into one label. Unlike for Major League Baseball, footy doesn't label its championship under a misnomer like the World Series, and unlike American Football half the audience doesn't just watch the game for the commercials and the chance to see Janet Jackson's clothes malfunction. In European soccer a final match isn't even played, with the winner just being the team with the most points in the standings at the end of the season (granted the Champions League is an exception to this, but they play so much other soccer in Europe that even the Champions League can get lost in the fray). Other sporting championships are diluted by having multiple games or multiple legs to find a champion. The Grand Final is only one day a year, a day dedicated solely to the greatest sport in the world...
... Here I go again making claims that may sound biased, but hear me out on this one too. Footy pretty much is composed of everything that is great about sports, from its game-play to the culture surrounding it. It is a game of non-stop action where you kick a ball, catch it, bounce it and punch it (I guess you can even head it if you really wanted to). You get the satisfaction of taking a mark (catching it) over opponents, kicking the ball through the posts for a goal, running up and down the field, and tackling your opponents (and for those of you not into contact sports, footy is very regulated with its contact with the aim of protecting the players from getting hurt - see, it's a game that makes a lot of sense!) In terms of footy culture, it well and truly belongs in the Australian paradigm as much as Gaelic football belongs to Ireland (see my previous blog post), but can be played by anyone in the world once they become exposed to it. The professional players don't get lucrative contracts like in most American pro sports, and players more often than not stay with the same team their entire careers, so fans can get as attached to their favorite players as they want. Also, there are no teams that compare to the Yankees or Red Sox (or increasingly the Phillies) such as are found in Major League Baseball - teams that monopolize championships - although some teams have better luck than others.
So the Grand Final has the right venue, it has the right name and it has the right sport. The last part of the equation is that it has the right fans and fan experience. Fans come decked out in their team colors (in my case red, white and black) from top to bottom - scarves and beanies are a must, t-shirts, jackets and jerseys are bonuses, and face-paint is definitely encouraged. Teams all have team songs (here's the Saints' team song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uUPY5EZwMU), and they enter the ground to the song and break through a giant decorated banner for every match; the teams' entrances make even rock stars jealous. Then there are Four N' Twenty meat pies. It's a toss up for me between them and the "Ichiroll" sushi rolls they serve at Seattle Mariners games as to which is the perfect stadium food. OK, it's no toss up, the Four N' Twenties win (for vegetarians, you can tucker in to Aussie chips and chocolate, or just eat after the game in Melbourne's rich culinary scene). Being at a Grand Final is about as good as it gets in terms of being inside a stadium - the only fans that I've seen that are more enthusiastic are Japanese baseball fans at every single game they go to, even if their team in in last place. Sorry footy fans, they just can't be beat.
So now I have you wondering how you could have possibly ever doubted that the Grand Final is the premier sporting event in the world, right? If you're still not convinced, tune in to this year's Grand Final - 2:30 pm Saturday, September 25th Melbourne time, 11:30 pm Friday, September 24th US Central Time Zone (adjust depending on your own time zone). That's right, it's less that 48 hours away!
And what does this post have to do with my stated mission for starting this blog, to find the greater meaning of sports? No-one's time on this Earth will ever truly be fulfilled if they haven't witnessed the Grand Final, it is one of the great luxuries that being human affords us to have (though I still haven't figured out for sure whether we are human or if we're dancer - watch this video if you don't get the reference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZdjT1472Y&ob=av2n).
Here's one last offering to get you prepped for this year's Grand Final - the picture is captain Nick Riewoldt taking a mark:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Grand Final is the premier sporting event in the world, bar none. Yes, this is a biased statement, and yes, I'm probably only saying this because I was born in Melbourne and footy was the first sport etched into my soul, but I'm entitled to my opinion, right? Hopefully I'll have some of you feeling the same way after reading this post.
First off, I'll try to set the atmosphere for all of you that haven't experienced a Grand Final (I was a the stadium as a nine year old in 1997 to see my St. Kilda Saints play the Adelaide Crows - we're not gonna go into the result of that one). The game has always and will always be played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is more commonly called the MCG, and is without a doubt the greatest sports venue in the world (again my bias is in play here, but in all seriousness there probably isn't a single better venue in the world). The MCG sits 100,000 people, more than twice the number of the biggest baseball stadiums in the US, and sits on the southern edge on downtown Melbourne near the botanical gardens, right across the street from the Rod Laver Arena, where the Australian Open tennis is played.
I'm going to go ahead and make another statement: Melbourne is probably the sports capital of the world. And yes, I can back this up. First off Melbourne has the Grand Final, the premier sporting event in the world (my argument on this point will be finished below). Then there's the fact that one of the four major tennis events in the world is held there every single year, and no-one can deny that tennis is among the most global of professional sports. Melbourne has Olympic lineage, one of only 22 cities to have hosted the Summer Olympic Games (I think my math is right). It has also hosted the Commonwealth Games, a miniature version of the Olympics limited to just the former and current nations of the British Commonwealth (which is a very large percentage of the globe). Melbourne will also be the host of the 2022 soccer World Cup final, which some people argue is the single greatest sports match in the world (besides the Grand Final of course. And the fact that Melbourne will host the World Cup final is actually pretty hypothetical at this point - the 2022 World Cup venue has yet to be chosen - but I have faith). Melbourne also hosts world class cricket, rugby and soccer matches, is close enough to the ocean to incorporate most water sports, and is inhabited by perhaps the most sports loving population of anywhere on the globe (just go with me on this one, it's true).
Alright, so back to the Grand Final. Our first fact (that's right, fact) is that it takes place in the sports capital of the world. The next clue to its greatness is in its name - the GRAND Final. It's better than a Good Final, or even a Great Final, it is in every sense of the word a Grand one - greatness and dignity wrapped all into one label. Unlike for Major League Baseball, footy doesn't label its championship under a misnomer like the World Series, and unlike American Football half the audience doesn't just watch the game for the commercials and the chance to see Janet Jackson's clothes malfunction. In European soccer a final match isn't even played, with the winner just being the team with the most points in the standings at the end of the season (granted the Champions League is an exception to this, but they play so much other soccer in Europe that even the Champions League can get lost in the fray). Other sporting championships are diluted by having multiple games or multiple legs to find a champion. The Grand Final is only one day a year, a day dedicated solely to the greatest sport in the world...
... Here I go again making claims that may sound biased, but hear me out on this one too. Footy pretty much is composed of everything that is great about sports, from its game-play to the culture surrounding it. It is a game of non-stop action where you kick a ball, catch it, bounce it and punch it (I guess you can even head it if you really wanted to). You get the satisfaction of taking a mark (catching it) over opponents, kicking the ball through the posts for a goal, running up and down the field, and tackling your opponents (and for those of you not into contact sports, footy is very regulated with its contact with the aim of protecting the players from getting hurt - see, it's a game that makes a lot of sense!) In terms of footy culture, it well and truly belongs in the Australian paradigm as much as Gaelic football belongs to Ireland (see my previous blog post), but can be played by anyone in the world once they become exposed to it. The professional players don't get lucrative contracts like in most American pro sports, and players more often than not stay with the same team their entire careers, so fans can get as attached to their favorite players as they want. Also, there are no teams that compare to the Yankees or Red Sox (or increasingly the Phillies) such as are found in Major League Baseball - teams that monopolize championships - although some teams have better luck than others.
So the Grand Final has the right venue, it has the right name and it has the right sport. The last part of the equation is that it has the right fans and fan experience. Fans come decked out in their team colors (in my case red, white and black) from top to bottom - scarves and beanies are a must, t-shirts, jackets and jerseys are bonuses, and face-paint is definitely encouraged. Teams all have team songs (here's the Saints' team song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uUPY5EZwMU), and they enter the ground to the song and break through a giant decorated banner for every match; the teams' entrances make even rock stars jealous. Then there are Four N' Twenty meat pies. It's a toss up for me between them and the "Ichiroll" sushi rolls they serve at Seattle Mariners games as to which is the perfect stadium food. OK, it's no toss up, the Four N' Twenties win (for vegetarians, you can tucker in to Aussie chips and chocolate, or just eat after the game in Melbourne's rich culinary scene). Being at a Grand Final is about as good as it gets in terms of being inside a stadium - the only fans that I've seen that are more enthusiastic are Japanese baseball fans at every single game they go to, even if their team in in last place. Sorry footy fans, they just can't be beat.
So now I have you wondering how you could have possibly ever doubted that the Grand Final is the premier sporting event in the world, right? If you're still not convinced, tune in to this year's Grand Final - 2:30 pm Saturday, September 25th Melbourne time, 11:30 pm Friday, September 24th US Central Time Zone (adjust depending on your own time zone). That's right, it's less that 48 hours away!
And what does this post have to do with my stated mission for starting this blog, to find the greater meaning of sports? No-one's time on this Earth will ever truly be fulfilled if they haven't witnessed the Grand Final, it is one of the great luxuries that being human affords us to have (though I still haven't figured out for sure whether we are human or if we're dancer - watch this video if you don't get the reference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZdjT1472Y&ob=av2n).
Here's one last offering to get you prepped for this year's Grand Final - the picture is captain Nick Riewoldt taking a mark:
The St. Kilda Saints are prepped to beat the Collingwood Magpies and win only their second ever title - the first was against the Magpies in 1966, and yes, history does repeat itself! The Saints are one of the teams that falls under the category 'unlucky' I mentioned above - the team's 137 years old and they've been to only 7 Grand Finals, and won just the one. Make that two after Saturday's win!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The North American Gaelic Athletic Association Championships, Chicago 2010
(This post is dedicated to my dad on his birthday - Happy Birthday Bubba!)
Just to prove to you that there's going to be nothing mainstream about this blog, we begin with an examination of sports that most of you have probably only vaguely heard of: gaelic football and hurling. Just so I don't completely lose any of you, I'll take some time to explain what the heck these sports are.
Gaelic football and hurling are the two main sports in Ireland, and are very similar to each other - except in one you're kicking a round ball with a rule against tackling, and in the other you have the potential to crack someone's skull open with a stick - sports that require helmets have never been ones I've been particularly drawn to, hence of the two my experience is with gaelic football.
I'm a firm believer in wikipedia, I encourage you to follow the links below of you want to get a thorough unerstanding of the sports, but nonetheless I will do my best to provide a description myself below the links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_football
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurling
So gaelic football then. Gaelic football is played with a round ball - a soccer style ball except with volleyball stitching - on a large rectangular field. At each end of the field are goalposts in the shape of a set of rugby posts with a soccer net occupying the space under the crossbar. Unlike soccer you use your hands in this game, kicking the ball by dropping it onto your foot from your hands most of the time (you are also allowed to kick it along the ground like a soccer ball). Throwing the ball is against the rules, but you can punch it out of the palm of your other hand. You can only run with the ball if you bounce it or tap it off the top of your foot (called soloing it) every four steps, without bouncing it two times in a row ever, but soloing it however many times you want. You score three points by kicking the ball in the soccer goal, one point for kicking or fisting it over the bar...
OK, that description even has MY head spinning. For hurling we'll just "stick" to wikipedia - pun intended.
Anyway, WHAT gaelic football and hurling are is not important to this blog post. The important thing is the culture they provide.
In the Republic of Ireland there are 32 counties, and each county has a representative gaelic football and hurling team. There are six levels of competition, and each county enters a team in each level: Senior, Intermediate, Junior A, Junior B, Junior C and Junior D. Both sports are governed by the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association), and, VERY IMPORTANTLY, both sports are not professional sports in Ireland - all the players earn a living and play gaelic football or hurling on the side. That means no multi-million dollar egos - the only thing that's at stake is a pint of blood or so and pride for your county.
I started playing gaelic football about a month and a half ago, and I thought that the people who played Irish sports in America were just trying to do a cheap imitation of what happens in Ireland - but after going to the National Championships in Chicago I found that the GAA in Ireland and the United States GAA are hardly different at all except for geography.
At the US Championships, there are teams from all over the United States competing, and all six levels of competition are represented by the same name. I participated in the tournament with the Twin Cities Gaelic Football Club (pictured above), a Junior D side - the Senior level sides are from cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and Boston.
The championships were held in a complex in Chicago called Gaelic Park - if you blindfolded someone, led them there and told them they were in Ireland, they'd definitely believe you. Never had I ever thought that there were so many Irish people living in the US (haha, don't give me any of that "on St. Patty's Day we're all Irish" nonsense). Sure there is an abundance of people with Irish surnames among the American populace - I'm one of them - but a large proportion of the people there had actually been born in Ireland. These people may not live in Ireland anymore, but they keep playing their Irish sports nonetheless, unbeknownst to anyone without a direct connection to it.
At the event there was Irish beer on tap (best Guinness I've ever had), Irish chocolate bars, Irish cooked breakfasts, and even bags of potato chips from Ireland. There were Irish accents from every county, and Irish swear words coming from all over that would be enough even to make a drunken priest from Craggy Island blush (time for a product placement - watch Father Ted! If you don't know what it is, wikipedia it. And no I am neither paid by the BBC or wikipedia).
Which brings us to the essence of this post, and the first of many times I will be trying to answer the question "why do sports matter?" If you didn't think it was possible to get a congregation pf pretty much every Irish born person in American together in one tiny park in Chicago for a whole three day weekend, it has just been proven that sports makes it possible. Irish sports are so intimately connected to Irish culture itself that it becomes a common ground through which all Irish people can relate. This hits on a theme that will constantly surface throughout this blog: sports bringing people together. Some people form bonds based on a common passion for music, some for computer programming, and some for a common love of a certain sport. For people in Ireland there is no monetary incentive for them to like their sports, no celebrity culture where news media spend 24 hours a day putting athletes through the tabloid treatment, there is just a love of being Irish, and one way to be Irish is to play a sport that nobody else in the world plays.
I'm going to avoid making my posts absurdly long, so I'll stop here for now, feel free to go right ahead and post a comment if you like - whether you thought this post was interesting or a useless waste of time.
If you want to hear more about the weekend in Chicago itself, buy me a Guinness and I'll be able to go on and on about it for hours. Or maybe just some whiskey in a jar while listening to "Whiskey in the Jar" would be nice ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M2jSzLBzK4
- DK
Just to prove to you that there's going to be nothing mainstream about this blog, we begin with an examination of sports that most of you have probably only vaguely heard of: gaelic football and hurling. Just so I don't completely lose any of you, I'll take some time to explain what the heck these sports are.
Gaelic football and hurling are the two main sports in Ireland, and are very similar to each other - except in one you're kicking a round ball with a rule against tackling, and in the other you have the potential to crack someone's skull open with a stick - sports that require helmets have never been ones I've been particularly drawn to, hence of the two my experience is with gaelic football.
I'm a firm believer in wikipedia, I encourage you to follow the links below of you want to get a thorough unerstanding of the sports, but nonetheless I will do my best to provide a description myself below the links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_football
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurling
So gaelic football then. Gaelic football is played with a round ball - a soccer style ball except with volleyball stitching - on a large rectangular field. At each end of the field are goalposts in the shape of a set of rugby posts with a soccer net occupying the space under the crossbar. Unlike soccer you use your hands in this game, kicking the ball by dropping it onto your foot from your hands most of the time (you are also allowed to kick it along the ground like a soccer ball). Throwing the ball is against the rules, but you can punch it out of the palm of your other hand. You can only run with the ball if you bounce it or tap it off the top of your foot (called soloing it) every four steps, without bouncing it two times in a row ever, but soloing it however many times you want. You score three points by kicking the ball in the soccer goal, one point for kicking or fisting it over the bar...
OK, that description even has MY head spinning. For hurling we'll just "stick" to wikipedia - pun intended.
Anyway, WHAT gaelic football and hurling are is not important to this blog post. The important thing is the culture they provide.
In the Republic of Ireland there are 32 counties, and each county has a representative gaelic football and hurling team. There are six levels of competition, and each county enters a team in each level: Senior, Intermediate, Junior A, Junior B, Junior C and Junior D. Both sports are governed by the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association), and, VERY IMPORTANTLY, both sports are not professional sports in Ireland - all the players earn a living and play gaelic football or hurling on the side. That means no multi-million dollar egos - the only thing that's at stake is a pint of blood or so and pride for your county.
I started playing gaelic football about a month and a half ago, and I thought that the people who played Irish sports in America were just trying to do a cheap imitation of what happens in Ireland - but after going to the National Championships in Chicago I found that the GAA in Ireland and the United States GAA are hardly different at all except for geography.
The championships were held in a complex in Chicago called Gaelic Park - if you blindfolded someone, led them there and told them they were in Ireland, they'd definitely believe you. Never had I ever thought that there were so many Irish people living in the US (haha, don't give me any of that "on St. Patty's Day we're all Irish" nonsense). Sure there is an abundance of people with Irish surnames among the American populace - I'm one of them - but a large proportion of the people there had actually been born in Ireland. These people may not live in Ireland anymore, but they keep playing their Irish sports nonetheless, unbeknownst to anyone without a direct connection to it.
At the event there was Irish beer on tap (best Guinness I've ever had), Irish chocolate bars, Irish cooked breakfasts, and even bags of potato chips from Ireland. There were Irish accents from every county, and Irish swear words coming from all over that would be enough even to make a drunken priest from Craggy Island blush (time for a product placement - watch Father Ted! If you don't know what it is, wikipedia it. And no I am neither paid by the BBC or wikipedia).
Which brings us to the essence of this post, and the first of many times I will be trying to answer the question "why do sports matter?" If you didn't think it was possible to get a congregation pf pretty much every Irish born person in American together in one tiny park in Chicago for a whole three day weekend, it has just been proven that sports makes it possible. Irish sports are so intimately connected to Irish culture itself that it becomes a common ground through which all Irish people can relate. This hits on a theme that will constantly surface throughout this blog: sports bringing people together. Some people form bonds based on a common passion for music, some for computer programming, and some for a common love of a certain sport. For people in Ireland there is no monetary incentive for them to like their sports, no celebrity culture where news media spend 24 hours a day putting athletes through the tabloid treatment, there is just a love of being Irish, and one way to be Irish is to play a sport that nobody else in the world plays.
I'm going to avoid making my posts absurdly long, so I'll stop here for now, feel free to go right ahead and post a comment if you like - whether you thought this post was interesting or a useless waste of time.
If you want to hear more about the weekend in Chicago itself, buy me a Guinness and I'll be able to go on and on about it for hours. Or maybe just some whiskey in a jar while listening to "Whiskey in the Jar" would be nice ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M2jSzLBzK4
- DK
Monday, September 13, 2010
Introduction to the blog
Welcome to Sports Nuts the blog! I'm Daniel Kerwin, and I'll be running this show.
This blog has been inspired by a radio show of the same name that I hosted while at Macalester College, and more generally by a love of playing, watching and writing about sports. As of this post I am one week into my professional career as a sports reporter for a daily newspaper, so this blog will be an extension of my thoughts and feelings on the world of sports, and hopefully we can get some good discussion going too.
In this world we have people whose involvement with sports fits along a wide spectrum, ranging from people who love sports with a passion, to people who are casually involved, all the way down to people who pay little or no attention to them. This blog is designed for all of them - this might seem a big ask, but I'll do my best.
As someone who has had a lifelong obsession with sports, I've often found myself pondering troubling questions. What do sports do to benefit mankind? Are they simply a waste of time compared to other aspects of life that actually serve a purpose to the betterment of society? Do sports exist simply so that we don't get bored?
I could list several other similar questions, but they all boil down to the same general question: in the grand scheme of things, why do sports matter?
Answering that question will be the mission of this blog, with every post always gravitating around this central question. In the process I will aim to both be as informative and entertaining as possible.
In my short lifetime already I have lived in six different countries, observing the different sporting cultures in each, and will try to maintain a strong international focus in my writing. My sporting experience ranges from a childhood in Australia following Aussie Rules Football (brought full circle by playing Aussie Rules for a team in Minnesota), to being a staunch supporter of the "Groovy" Yokohama Baystars in Japan's professional baseball league, to playing varsity golf for an NCAA Division III college, but I know there will be people reading this with expertise on sports and sporting cultures that I have never encountered, so please don't hesitate to post comments, questions and suggestions so we can build a solid base of knowledge of sports the world over through this blog.
My first post will be coming shortly, it will be based on my experience at the United States Gaelic Athletic Association Finals in Chicago last week (where I basically spent three full days immersed in all the best parts of Irish culture), so stay tuned!
Here's the whistle (tweeeeeeeeeet!), so let's start the game!
- DK
This blog has been inspired by a radio show of the same name that I hosted while at Macalester College, and more generally by a love of playing, watching and writing about sports. As of this post I am one week into my professional career as a sports reporter for a daily newspaper, so this blog will be an extension of my thoughts and feelings on the world of sports, and hopefully we can get some good discussion going too.
In this world we have people whose involvement with sports fits along a wide spectrum, ranging from people who love sports with a passion, to people who are casually involved, all the way down to people who pay little or no attention to them. This blog is designed for all of them - this might seem a big ask, but I'll do my best.
As someone who has had a lifelong obsession with sports, I've often found myself pondering troubling questions. What do sports do to benefit mankind? Are they simply a waste of time compared to other aspects of life that actually serve a purpose to the betterment of society? Do sports exist simply so that we don't get bored?
I could list several other similar questions, but they all boil down to the same general question: in the grand scheme of things, why do sports matter?
Answering that question will be the mission of this blog, with every post always gravitating around this central question. In the process I will aim to both be as informative and entertaining as possible.
In my short lifetime already I have lived in six different countries, observing the different sporting cultures in each, and will try to maintain a strong international focus in my writing. My sporting experience ranges from a childhood in Australia following Aussie Rules Football (brought full circle by playing Aussie Rules for a team in Minnesota), to being a staunch supporter of the "Groovy" Yokohama Baystars in Japan's professional baseball league, to playing varsity golf for an NCAA Division III college, but I know there will be people reading this with expertise on sports and sporting cultures that I have never encountered, so please don't hesitate to post comments, questions and suggestions so we can build a solid base of knowledge of sports the world over through this blog.
My first post will be coming shortly, it will be based on my experience at the United States Gaelic Athletic Association Finals in Chicago last week (where I basically spent three full days immersed in all the best parts of Irish culture), so stay tuned!
Here's the whistle (tweeeeeeeeeet!), so let's start the game!
- DK
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