Asterisks and Athletic Achievement

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
- Blaise Pascal

Why?- Baseball’s short off-season is essentially over as pitchers and catchers will soon begin reporting. The NCAA basketball tournament that comprises “March Madness” is not yet upon us; and the NFL season has just ended- so why in the hell would someone write a jumble of things about sports that don’t seem all that timely? Yeah, I’m crazy- I really should be writing about how I should take a Condiment Allocation Technique class so that I could learn how much ketchup, barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, mustard, and salad dressing I should use on my food, because I can’t test out of the most remedial of condiment-usage classes. But, no one would read that blog either . . .

Frick(in) asterisks- It was Ford Frick, who as commissioner of baseball in 1961, added an asterisk to Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs in a season because he played in 8 more games than did Babe Ruth- (Ruth hit 60 homers in 1927). Some revisionists have claimed that this is unfair. Why? With 8 more games played- that equates to roughly 30 more at bats- 30 more chances to hit a home run than Ruth had. Napoleon said: "Ability is nothing without opportunity". Of course, he was probably applying that more toward the hostile military takeover of countries than to an athlete’s total number of chances at success or victory; even so, the quote is just as applicable to sports as it is to despotism- (the two may be more closely aligned than one might think- think of Adolf Hitler and Duke basketball- more on this later). It seems that Frick’s fine use of the asterisk is the best thing done by a commissioner since the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508. Yep, about 450 years separate great decisions by commissioners. As the baseball season gets underway, and Bonds strides closer to Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record- Bud Selig, as commissioner should put at least one asterisk next to Bonds’ name in the record book, because the guy has been using steroids for at least the last 5 years which enabled him to hit so many home runs.

The wealth of opportunity- Along with the increase in the number of games added to the regular season in baseball, there have been more teams qualifying for the playoffs in baseball, football, hockey, and college and professional basketball over the past 30 years. Aside from providing more owners in the leagues, and the leagues themselves with increased revenue, it affords more individuals and teams to win games and break records set in shorter post-seasons. When assessing degrees of success in sports, as in life, you must gauge the opportunities one has and if the opportunities are unequal to another competitors then you have to be objective about the achievement- and use asterisks if you have to. It may seem as if noting where the playing field is not exactly level is a nuance of the game that many sports fans overlook.

* when an ESPN anchor indicates that Andy Petitte is the pitcher who has won the most games in the post-season, an asterisk should be next to his name which indicates that he had three times the opportunities as Whitey Ford.

* when Barry Bonds breaks Henry Aaron's career home run record an asterisk should go in the record books which indicates that he used steroids. The opportunity, and likely the inclination, were never there for Hank Aaron to do the same. Yeah, this is a stretch of my theme about objectivity and opportunity, but I felt like nailing Bonds.

* when it is stated that Mike Krzyzewski holds the record for most coaching victories in the NCAA tournament (66)- it must be kept in mind that two additional rounds were added in the late 70s, a few years after John Wooden (47 victories) retired. Duke coach Krzyzewski plays cupcake opponents the first two rounds every year- there was tougher competition for Wooden. John Wooden won 10 National Championships- give him 20 more wins (two for each year he won the title because the field was much smaller than the 64 teams that have particpated since 1979, four years after Wooden retired) and one more for each of the championship years because they gave byes to the top seeds- and Wooden would have 77 tournament wins. Coach K will still break that record, but Coach Ke has already coached more NCAA tournament games (87) than Wooden who has coached no more than 70.

* Kobe Bryant took four fewer shots (24) in last night’s ALL-STAR GAME than the rest of the Western Conference’s starting lineup combined; the epitome of selfish; this guy elbowed an opponent in the head in an unnatural follow-through to his shot after it was blocked a couple of weeks ago and complained that he was suspended for one game; then you see the former NBA brainiacs complain that Kobe should not have been suspended at all, that the punishment is extreme because he doesn’t have a history of violence- he was suspended last year for going after someone’s head in a regular season game; his elbows could have been registered as lethal weapons during the Lakers’ first round playoff series with the Phoenix Suns last year, and lest we forget, he “allegedly” anally raped a woman in a Colorado hotel room a few years ago (yeah, there is no history of violence there);

* Shawne Merriman, a linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, was suspended for four games under the NFL’s substance abuse policy and was judged worthy enough to go to the Pro Bowl . . . after a season in which he was suspended for using an illegal drug that enhanced his performance;

* Next, someone will tell me that a NASCAR driver will be allowed to race in the Daytona 500 after his car’s engine will be found to contain a substance used in jet fuel . . . what’s that? Oh, that just happened- unbelievable judgment displayed by the governing bodies of professional sports.

I would rather- defend Richard Simmons as a heterosexual, teach a sheep to de-tassle a field of corn, or be forced to have sex with a female pig, knowing my life depended on them having a good time- and being aware that it takes them 30 minutes to climax (hello Viagra) than to teach my son that one player or coach is better than someone else simply because they have taken the most shots or scored the most points, hit the most home runs, have the most victories, or even because they have the most asterisks next to their name. Sometimes the asterisk is the mark of shame; sometimes it denotes special achievement; sometimes it qualifies the numbers or the words that follow it and sometimes, to me at least, it is noticeably absent from the shreds of information people see fit to include as the weight of one man's athletic achievement. I will teach my son to be aware that those that write history and the history of sports are human *.

* - human and therefore flawed