The Blade Runner

I read recently (broadly speaking) that it has been decided (by some committee somewhere, I suppose) that a man with artificial legs will be allowed to compete in the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a sprinter.

This just seems absurd to me. On the surface, yes, it might appear fair – why shouldn’t a disabled person be allowed to compete alongside able-bodied people? But that, I think, misses something extremely important: running, as a competitive activity, is something that depends on both the mind and the body. You can’t separate the runner from his body – you can’t be a “good runner” in the abstract, without part of that good runner-ness coming from the fact that your legs are longer, you have a lot of muscle, you don’t weigh much, etc.

And so, if you don’t have natural legs, but rather artificial steel legs, then whatever you’re doing when you move really fast using them, you’re not running, at least not in the sense that competitive runners are running. You’re not using your body to go fast, you’re using something that is not part of your body to go fast.

I think the idea that this man should be allowed to compete because it has not been proven that his legs give him an advantage misses the entire point and tends towards a flawed gnostic view of the world. It  says that the legs of a normal runner are just tools that he uses to run quickly, and if the artificial legs give roughly the same capability as natural legs, then they’re equivalent tools, and so a man with artificial legs should be able to compete in a contest normally performed with natural legs, no problem.

The thing is, the “tool” that natural legs supposedly are is of a power determined by the skill of the runner, and a good runner has better legs than a bad runner. Which of these is the artificial legs supposedly equal to? Are the steel legs specifically calibrated to be just as useful as the legs of your average Olympic sprinter? If so, a runner using these artificial legs will finish in the middle of the pack, and what’s the point of them competing? Are they calibrated to be as good as the best Olympic sprinter? Then a runner using them who wins the Olympics will be considered to have won because of his more powerful legs, not because of any achievement on his part. Either way, there is no point to a person with artificial legs competing in the Olympics. The Olympics, and sports in general, are to find who is the best whole person – mind and body, not divided – at the given activity.

Put simply – there is no way to nerf or buff artificial legs so that they put a runner using them on a level playing field with the other runners. They are fundamentally unbalanced. They take a part of the contest – the quality of the runner’s legs – and remove that from the control of the athlete, instead arbitrarily giving him legs of a given quality. It would be like having a contest to paint the best picture where one person was given an outline to work from and the rest were not – it doesn’t matter how good or bad the sketch would be, it wouldn’t be fair because it would remove any skill from that part of the contest, but from that person only.

I don’t mean to take anything away from what Oscar Pistorius has done – he is clearly a great athlete, and I have nothing against the disabled – but the fact remains that what is doing is not running, but something else. That’s why they have separate contests for it – the Paralympics, which he competes in. If the Olympic committee wants to add a sport where you use a standard-size, standard-quality metallic extension to the legs to move quickly, fine, do so and let this guy compete in it. But if they don’t, then this man should not be allowed to compete in the Olympics.

P.S.: This is somehow related, I think, to the discussion of performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball and other sports, but I’m not sure how yet. It is mostly, I suppose, a clear example of something that does too much to alter the body and make it so you’re not competing with the other players in the same way – I think it would be unacceptable in baseball, just as in running, for one of the players to have artificial legs. But where the line is drawn, I don’t know. I tend towards saying performance-enhancing drugs fall on the other side of it (and this applies even if they posed no danger to the user and were not illegal, neither of which are true), but I’m not sure.

Fandom

As you may recall from last year, I’m a baseball fan and during the regular season I occasionally talk about the Texas Rangers (my home-town team) and how their season’s going. And now the 2008 baseball season has begun.

I’m going to the game against the Baltimore Orioles tomorrow night, incidentally.

So far this season the Rangers are 3-4 (3 wins, 4 losses). That’s not exactly good, but not horrible either. It’s still early in the season. There’s hope. There’s…

Hell, no there’s not. The problem is the Rangers sucked last year and have done very little to improve. Their starting pitching situation has not improved (the new pitcher, Jason Jennings, had an ERA over 6 last season, and everyone else is pretty much the same), the major acquisition in the Mark Teixeira trade, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, isn’t even starting, the outfield is still pretty much in shambles and Marlon Byrd can’t be expected to produce at last year’s level, etc etc… I believe Jon Daniels, the general manager, has even said that they’re currently “rebuilding” and don’t plan on being competitive until 2010.

The person who really got screwed over in all of this is Michael Young. He signed an extension to his contract a year ago on the understanding that we would be competitive now. Instead we’re back in rebuilding mode, just like we have been for the last seven years. He could have gone somewhere else for good money and actually been on a winning team.

This is the Rangers’ basic problem – they have some good players, but not enough to build a team out of, and the ownership/management is completely inept. So as a fan, you find yourself liking the players, but really frustrated with the team as a whole.

I really wish Tom Hicks would sell the team…

Umpirical Infallibility

The baseball season is over. The Rangers’ record? 75-87. Disappointing, but not surprising, I would say. Better than one would have expected earlier in the season, at least. We were 23-42 on June 13. We actually had a winning record since that point in the season. But going 19 games below .500 a bit more than two months into the season is going to completely destroy any chances of, well, doing anything that season. On a side note, Michael Young managed to pull his average up to .315 (the highest on the team!) after going something like .192 for the first month. There’s a reason he’s my favorite current Ranger.

—

Anyway, the sports calendar presses onward, and now it’s football season. I really couldn’t care less. It is kind of cool that the best-known football team in the NFL is from here (the Cowboys), and it’s good for local morale that they’ve started the season 4-0 or something like that, but I just don’t like football. I watched the second half of the game against the Rams on Sunday for lack of anything better to do, and I was just kind of bored.

I also remembered one of the many reasons I don’t like football – ‘challenges’ and instant replay. For those not familiar with the sport: if the coach thinks a call went the wrong way against his team, he can throw out a challenge flag and the referees are obliged to watch the play again on these little TVs they have on the sidelines. If the refs decide it was a bad call, it gets reversed. If they decide it was called correctly, they charge the team that wasted 3 minutes of everybody’s time a timeout (in football, each team has something like 3 timeouts per half… I really don’t know exactly how it works). Each team can only make two challenges per game, though if they both result in a changed call they get a third challenge. You can’t make challenges in the last two minutes of a game.

Now, let’s assume that it makes sense that coaches should be able to challenge calls made on the field. Do any of the restrictions put on them make any sense? Well, the “only 2 challenges unless both are right and then you get at third” obviously makes no sense. If you accept that coaches should be able to protest bad calls, why can they only protest a certain number per game? Perhaps they should be penalized for frivolous challenges, but why should they be limited in the number of successful challenges be made? The same for the “last two minutes of a game” rule. The purpose of that rule is to make the end of games go quicker. But it just makes no logical sense that you wouldn’t be able to challenge at that point if the call was bad.

And what’s the deal with it using up a timeout if the call is frivolous? Football is a timed game (another reason I dislike it), so you have to penalize people for wasting time intentionally. But it just seems strange to me that you’d be penalized a time-out for frivolous challenges. I suppose this stems from my dislike of the entire system of “punishment” in football (and basketball and hockey and… well, the only sport other than baseball that gets it right is soccer). Unsportsmanlike conduct? 15 yard penalty! False start? 5 yards! And what about basketball? Technical foul? A free throw for the other team! Essentially, you make actions that don’t have to do with the game, but rather with player conduct, and punish them in ways that affect the result of the game itself. I much prefer the baseball method – if a player or coach does something so egregious as to merit punishment, eject them from the game. Otherwise, don’t do anything.

But my fundamental problem with instant replay hasn’t even been mentioned yet. It is the basic assumption that coaches should be allowed to challenge the referees’ calls while the game is still progressing. Baseball says, essentially, that for the purposes of the game the umpires are infallible. That’s not actually the case, but it is necessary to preserve the illusion, otherwise all respect for the umpires is lost. It turns from a sporting event into a contest of who can best convince the umpire to change his decision in order to favor their team. If an umpire makes a bad call, too bad. After the game is over, the umpire can be corrected for his error, but during the game the umpire’s word is law. (There’s actually 4 umpires, and the head umpire’s word is law – he can overrule the word of the other umpires.) This ensures that the game progresses smoothly, that there’s no stopping in mid-game to argue over the rules of the game, and that it’s a contest of athleticism and strategy rather than a contest of persuasion.

The principle can actually be extended to games other than sporting events. It is essentially that you need to decide before the game who is in charge of the rules and have that person, and only that person, adjudicate disputes. Otherwise you spend a bunch of time arguing over the nature of the rules and how to apply them in this or that situation. That can be fun as well, but it’s a different kind of fun. And if you’re trying to play an established type of game (baseball, soccer, Diplomacy, whatever), the former almost always works best. The latter is more for when making up a game among friends (as I and my brothers often do).

756*

Unfortunately, I must report that Barry Bonds has hit his 756th home run, moving past Hank Aaron for first place on the all-time home run list. He now is in sole possession of the record.

If you don’t know why I would view this even with such distaste, or why I put that asterisk in the title – let it be known that Barry Bonds is a known cheater. He’s admitted to taking steroids (though he said he didn’t know about them – as if I believe that). Yet he goes on unpunished, allowed to break baseball’s most hallowed record. And now the all-time triple crown – batting average, hits, and home runs – is held by a racist (Ty Cobb), a gambler (Pete Rose), and a cheat. That doesn’t reflect well on the sport.

But in San Francisco, everybody loves Barry Bonds.

I don’t understand this, really. He’s on their team, and so they can ignore the fact that he’s a foul cancer in the sport? I suppose allegiance to team takes precedence over all else.

And this isn’t specific to the Giants. Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, for example, is thought to have used steroids (though it’s nowhere near as certain as the fact that Bonds did), but we in Texas still love him. (I still cheer for him when he comes to the ballpark as an opposing player… after all, it was Tom Hicks who drove him away, not him who voluntarily left.) Why does this seem acceptable to us, and essentially everybody around baseball (Pudge isn’t universally reviled, far from it), while Barry Bonds is seen as the devil incarnate?

I think part of the reason has to do with him being such an unlikeable person. He intentionally gets people to hate him. With a personality like that, it’s no surprise he has few supporters outside of San Francisco – where they support him not because they like him, particularly, but because he’s theirs – they’re the ones benefiting from his cheating.

Anyway, it seems like the moral judgements we pass on people depend a lot, probably way too much, on how much we respect the person and on whether we have any personal interest in the person doing well. Pudge is loved because he’s a likable guy, and even more so in the cities where he’s played and brought success, even though he probably used steroids. While Barry Bonds is universally detested, except in his city of San Francisco, because he’s such a dislikable guy and no one wants him to do well except Giants fans – his using steroids is the purported cause for the hatred, but it probably goes beyond that..

Does this mean I should actually forgive Bonds and not grudge him his 756 home runs? I don’t think so. And does it mean that next time Pudge comes through Texas I should boo him instead of cheer him? Not really. Even if it did, those things wouldn’t happen. But I think it does mean I should have a bit more sympathy for Bonds than I do – I hate Bonds as a person, but I need to separate that from hatred of his breaking the record using steroids. And I love Pudge as a player and as a person, but I need to acknowledge the fact that he probably did cheat, and not love that part of him.

—–

ALL-TIME HOME RUNS

Barry Bonds – 756*
Hank Aaron – 755
Babe Ruth – 714
Willie Mays – 660
Sammy Sosa – 604*

*: These players are known to have used steroids to gain an unfair advantage in achieving their records.

Trade Deadline (August)

I’m writing this on July 31st, but… hey, it’s August GMT. The baseball trade deadline has passed… or at least it passes in the next few hours.

The Rangers have made three trades. The first sent Kenny Lofton (CF) away in exchange for a single-A catcher. Which may seem sort of odd – a major league player for a single-A player – but we only had Lofton for this year, we’re not doing anything this year, so we might as well get what we can for him. And we need to get rid of him so we can try out Nelson Cruz and Marlon Byrd.

Next, they traded Mark Texeira (1B) for Jared Saltalamacchia (C/1B) and a bunch of prospects. To this, I say – good job. We only had Teixeira until the end of 2008, we couldn’t re-sign him, and I won’t really miss him. And we got a good deal for him.

The Eric Gagne trade was a good idea too. We got a decent starting pitcher (though he is a rookie) who might develop into something good. And, like Lofton, we only had Gagne for the rest of the season. That said, I’ll miss him the most of these three, since he was a good player and we definitely could have re-signed him – he said he liked Texas and thought we had the best bullpen he’d ever been in.

Anyway, as you can see, it’s pretty easy to make good trades when you’re having a fire-sale – you just get rid of everybody you don’t have a long-term contract for and get what you can for them.

If you were wondering, this post is baseball-themed because that’s probably what a lot of my August is going to be about. I’m out of town for two weeks on vacation and three days in WashingtonDC (ugh), I won’t have a computer either of those places, and I’ll probably be paying a lot more attention to the Rangers during that time than I have been so far this summer. And I’m also going to go to as many baseball games as I can, since come September 1st I probably won’t be able to (I’ll be at college), and IIRC we have a lot of tickets left, a lot of games in August.

Anyway, let me think…. what Wesnoth character is most baseball-like? It seems to me it has to be a troll, you know, carrying a big club, like a big baseball bat – or maybe an outlaw, with a club for a bat and a sling representing his glove. Of course, I’ve never written a campaign with an outlaw or troll character, so I’ll have to pick someone from another campaign.

I chooose Baldras, from Liberty. Mainly because I prefer all-around good players to sluggers. Trolls remind me of David Ortiz, the designated hitter – “me big man with club. I hit ball far. Argh!!!”. Outlaws are more diverse in their skillset.

6-0-0

Last Wednesday (the 20th) I was at the Rangers baseball game where “Slamming” Sammy Sosa hit his 600th home run.

That was cool, I admit, but the very idea of celebrating the 600th occurance of something makes me think about the fact that the 600th occurance of something is only worth celebrating because we happen to use a counting system based on the number 10. If we had evolved with 3 fingers and a thumb instead of 4, we would have celebrated his 512th home run (though we would have called it home run number 1000), his 576th (=1100th), and, if he gets it, his 640th (=1200th).

And even given that we evolved the way we did, there’s no need for us to use base ten. The Babylonians used base twelve. (Incidentally, Tolkien’s Numenoreans did so as well.) And we could have counted base six on our hands just as easily as we do base ten. Use one hand for the ones digit and the other for the tens (well, sixes) digit, and you can count up to 100 in base six (36 in base 10). That seems to me considerably more efficient than using base ten, where you can only get up to 10 (that would be 14 in base six) on your hands. If you couldn’t tell, I’m partial to base six. Count with me now – one, two, three, four, five, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, twenty… fifty-four, fifty-five, one hundred!

My basic point is that the number ten has absolutely no significance. We use it only because we happen to have ten fingers and happen to have decided to count on our hands in one particular way (and not a particularly good way). It is absolutely meaningless when it comes to actual mathematics.

Yet we cannot escape from it, because we were brought up to count base ten, and it is very hard to change that habit. I don’t have any proposal to change that; and it isn’t like switching to a different base would really fix anything. But we could at least stop emphasizing in our culture the significance of insignificant things, by stopping this inane celebration of events that are only meaningful because they are divisible by the number 10 or some multiple thereof.

So some part of me wants to say – do not celebrate Sammy Sosa’s 600th home run. It is no greater an achievement than his 599th, or his 598th, or his 601st which he hit last night. We shouldn’t be comparing ballplayers against meaningless standards like 500 or 600 home runs, or 5000 strikeouts, or 300 wins, or 3000 hits. We should be comparing them against each other. Much more interesting than Sammy hitting 600 would be Barry Bonds passing Hank Aaron with 756. Celebrate (or boo, as I will) that as much as you want.

There is no Joy in Mudville

… mighty Casey has struck out.

I think +two months is enough time to at least render a preliminary verdict on the new Rangers manager, Ron Washington. Essentially – he’s no good. He should have stayed as a coach, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing as a manager. Reasons:

• He seems to me to be a micro-manager, especially with regards to defense, and this is why the Rangers’ defense sucks. He’s supposed to be leading a ‘return to the fundamentals’. But major league ballplayers already know the fundamentals. It’s’ not just condescending of Washington to lead such a return, its counterproductive. It makes the players not confident in their abilities. I had uneasy feelings when I first heard that he was ‘bringing back pepper’, but I was willing to be optimistic. No more.
• He’s overly optimistic. Even after our horrific May, he was talking about how we’re going to win 20 games in June. Well, 14 days in, I think we can see how much nonsense that was. Some optimism is OK, but not if its clouding your judgement. He seems to think that all the pieces are about to fall into place, and he doesn’t need to make any more changes. That’s clearly not true.
• He was brought in to be a player’s manager, but reports are that he isn’t all that popular in the clubhouse. Why would this be? Look at the above two reasons. He’s incompetent, and players can’t like an incompetent manager no matter how nice he is. Plus, if what I’ve been reading is true, he can’t handle the authority he’s been given. He was yelling at Teixeira for not trying hard enough. That’s nonsense.

But, but… we brought Washington in precisely because he was optimistic, popular with the players, and would improve the defense! Well, I would posit we made a horrible mistake. And we should have seen this from the beginning. Why would we hire someone with essentially no experience managing?

I hope I’m wrong with this assessment, but as it currently stands, I’d rather have Buck Showalter *shudder* as manager rather than Washington. We might not be the best team in the majors, but we sure as hell wouldn’t be 23-42. Nothing against Washington, but he wasn’t cut out to be a manager. Not everyone can do everything.

(I know that ‘Washington is no good’ is the verdict of most people up to this point, and for much the same reasons as I have above. There’s not a lot I can do about that. Sometimes the majority’s right.)

The Bats are Quiet…

What is going on with the Rangers? We’re two weeks into the season, and:

• Michael Young is hitting .185
• Mark Teixeira doesn’t yet have a home run
• The Rangers as a team are hitting around .215 – 2nd worst in the league
• 3 players are below .200
• 5 players are between .200 and .250
• 3 players are between .250 and .300,
• Only 2 players are above .300 (Kinsler, who is the only Ranger hitting decently right now, and Stewart – who has only had nine at-bats!)
• They were no-hit by the Chicago White Sox last week.

Traditionally it’s been the pitching that has been the problem for the Rangers, but it is quite clearly the hitting so far this year.

I’m particularly concerned about Michael Young. I have no doubt he will eventually come around and start hitting again – but when? Young’s one of my favorite players, and he needs to start producing to back up my high opinion of him.

[The pitching hasn't been particularly good either, but it's been better than the batting. The only pitcher I'm really concerned about is Brandon McCarthy, who so far hasn't proven to me that he can pitch.]

Baseball

The baseball season has begun! I’m going to my first Rangers game of the year tonight. (I went to an exhibition game two weeks ago, but that’s just not the same.) I might write later about why baseball is teh awesome, but for now, some random comments on baseball. These are really unrelated, not comprehensive, and not entirely serious, but I thought it would be fun to make a list of all of them…

About the Rangers in particular -

• Yes, they started this season 0-3. But that’s not so bad. The Dallas Mavericks started this season 0-4, and now they’re guaranteed top seed in the playoffs. So the Rangers are guaranteed to win 60, maybe even 70 games. :P
• I’m somewhat irritated that Kam Loe isn’t the 5th starter (instead he’s in the bullpen). He had an outstanding spring training, but they gave the spot to Jamey Wright, who really isn’t very good, and who is already old and not going to make anything of himself… but for the month of April, at least, Loe will do more good in the bullpen anyway.
• I doubt Sammy Sosa will make much of himself this year. He’s old, been out of baseball for a year, and just won’t do much. I’m glad they gave Nelson Cruz the everyday RF spot, and that they’re going to switch between Wilkerson, Sosa and Catalanato for LF and DH. Let the old guys fight it out amongst themselves.
• My favorite Rangers player is Michael Young, but he hasn’t had a great season so far (bear in mind it’s only been 8 games)… hopefully he’ll pick up the pace. Another 200+ hit season would be nice.

About baseball in general:

• The Red Sox outspent the Yankees this offseason. Here’s hoping it doesn’t pay off for them, and they both wind up losing to the Blue Jays. Of course, that’s not gonna happen, but you can always hope.
• Like everyone else, I’m predicting a Detroit world series win.
• You know A-Rod, K-Rod, and the rest of those guys? Well, the new Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka doesn’t need one of those. He first name already works for that – Dice-K. The question is… what the hell does “dike-k” mean? It’s luck whether or not he strikes you out?