Sports, part three

Flaw #3: Why the hell do these people get paid so much? Derek Jeter, for example, was paid a sum of $23,428,571 by the New York Yankees in 2007. How come Jeter gets so much more money just for fielding ground balls than researchers and scientists get for curing diseases or exploring other planets?

This leads to a broader question: Why are celebrities in general so much richer than the people who teach us to read and write? The people who make medicines? We can easily imagine a world without the Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans – but a world without teachers? Doctors? Those that keep society moving forward and running smoothly?

The explaination for this is presumably that people like celebrities, and will pay money to see them; as a result, celebs are rich. Maybe rich celebs isn’t really the problem. But shouldn’t the people who contribute more to society than a few home runs be equally more recognized?

I’m not saying I have any idea how to bring that about, but it seems to me that it needs to be brung.

Sports, part two

Flaw #2: Flaw #2 is the question, “Is this really a sport?” We’ve all heard about Michael Phelps winning a swimming event by .01 seconds in Beijing this year. To this, I say, “Why bother?” It seems likely that Phelps and his competitors have all hit the same basic ceiling of how fast a man can move himself through the water; maybe such .01 second variations are random, the result of an involuntary twitch or the accidental position of Phelps’ toes during a flip-turn. If this is the case, again, what’s the point? If the results are essentially random, why not just flip coins for sport instead?

Sports, part one

Don’t get me wrong; I like sports. Lately, however, I’ve been pondering some of their flaws, which seem rather serious.

Flaw #1: The first flaw that comes to mind is athletes’ use of steroids. Yes, I can understand that an incredibly competitive environment drives people to cheat, but an athlete using steroids isn’t just cheating the sport, he’s cheating the folks who pay his salary: the sponsors, the fans, etc. The people who pay to see athletes pay to see them demonstrate their skill in hitting/base running/cycling/swimming etc, not to watch an artificial display of “talent” arrived at through performance-enhancing drugs. It’s as though everyone on the Tour de France gave up pedaling forever in favor of Mopeds. What’s the point?

Look for Flaw #2 tomorrow…