Why I Hate The Masters

I've never been a big fan of professional golf, and I rarely if ever pay attention to the PGA Tour. For the most part, my attitude toward the sport is a question of exquisite indifference, but there is one part of it that I actively dislike - The Masters tournament, and the venue that hosts it every year, Augusta National Golf Club. Why? Because, in the face of the withering and thoroughly justifiable criticism golf has received over the years as a patrician endeavor for rich, well-connected white men, Augusta National not only continues to embrace the problematic values of the sport's past but, without any apparent irony, declares the tournament it hosts "a tradition unlike any other". Much as I detest misogyny and elitism, I don't really have a problem with a private golf club deciding it doesn't want to admit women, or "riffraff", or whatever - but I can't abide one that does so, while at the same time pompously declaring itself a national sporting treasure and insisting that visitors tread its course as if it were sacred ground. Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist John Gonzalez pretty much nails the prevailing attitude at Augusta National in this column (I particularly enjoyed the underwhelmed reaction of the little boy, cutting through the bullshit and mutual self-delusion of adults as only one with a child's eyes can). We really are talking about grown men whacking around little white balls with metal clubs here - an activity that, viewed by someone from a culture to which golf was unknown, would appear an absurd waste of time and resource. To enjoy it, or even to celebrate it, is one thing, and I don't begrudge that to golf fans - but to treat it with the reverence of a papal procession is ridiculous. The English say that soccer is a gentleman's game played by thugs, whilst rugby is a thug's game played by gentlemen. Golf, at least as played at Augusta, is a weekender's game played by pretentious twits.

Moral Improvement Through Moral Failure, Tiger Woods Edition

Personally, I don't think there's much point in commenting on the Tiger Woods scandal - he's far from the first celebrity to rampantly cheat on his wife, or to conceal a rather scuzzy personal life behind a stone wall of inaccessibility - his role model as a sporting/global marketing icon, Michael Jordan, beat him to that by at least twenty years, and if you'd put a gun to my head and asked me for a yes-or-no answer as to whether I believed Tiger had ever cheated on his wife, cynic that I am would have bet "yes". Certainly I think less of Woods as a person in the wake of these revelations, but I don't really want to waste any more oxygen thinking about it, and it's certainly true that I don't want to read hypocritical, sanctimonious screeds condemning his behavior in the paper.

What I also don't need to read, however, are pieces of apologeia like this. For a man with a wife and child, getting caught screwing his way through a parade of cocktail waitresses, club bunnies, starfuckers, and other assorted bimbos, and being forced to apologize publicly because you were caught, is not an opportunity for personal growth. It's a forced end to a pattern of egocentric, self-entitled, and frankly disgraceful behavior that it seems likely would have gone on had it not been uncovered. Tiger may mean it when he says he's sorry, but I suspect what he's really sorry about is getting caught, and it's as easy to read his apology as self-serving as sincere. If he really felt all that bad about betraying his family, he wouldn't have gone on doing it again and again, would he? If a normal married guy engaged in this kind of behavior, most people would consider him childish, irresponsible, and self-centered at the very least, and more likely a complete asshole. So please, Mr. Reilly, lets not wrap this turd up in a nice Hallmark bow and try to sell it as a learning experience or an endearingly human flaw that makes a superb athlete less distant from the rest of us, shall we?

Whenever there's a scandal of this sort in entertainment or sports, journalists who cover those fields seem to split into three camps - the titillators, the scolds, and the apologists. The titillators report every lurid detail they can uncover with barely concealed glee, the scolds issue sanctimonious lectures on how we shouldn't be titillated, and the apologists write puff and spin aimed at rescuing the tarnished image of the celebrity in question. None of these are useful journalistic functions and the fact that they are so prevalent is one of the main reasons the mainstream media in these fields, for lack of a better word, sucks. I don't expect entertainers or athletes to be model human beings, and most adults I know (especially those who've actually had encounters with celebrities) don't either. When a celebrity has done some scummy things in his or her personal life and it becomes news as in this case, or as in the Steve McNair case earlier this year, I can form my own opinions on it. I don't need the mainstream media to admonish me for thinking a guy who runs around cheating on his wife left and right is a scumbag (and I might add, I wouldn't be as inclined as I am to articulate that "judgmental" opinion if the media didn't adopt "hero worship" as a default attitude toward its subjects and place these people on pedestals to begin with). And I also don't need a load of warm-and-fuzzy horseshit about how the experience of being exposed as a scumbag makes you a better person. Just put a sock in it, please.

The New York Sports Media Strikes Again

In anticipation of the MLB League Championship Series, New York Times columnist Bill Rhoden offers up this truly inane column opining that baseball needs a Yankees-Dodgers World Series matchup to take the game back to its roots and "recover a portion of the trust" that it has lost in the wake of the P.E.D. scandals of the past several years. Say what?!?!? Even for a member of the notoriously egocentric New York media, this statement boggles the mind. How, pray tell, would a matchup between teams starring Alex "A-Roid" Rodriguez and Manny "I was just trying to get pregnant" Rodriguez, two of the biggest fish yet netted in the steroids crackdown, restore trust in the integrity of the game? If anything, a series featuring two superstars who were just busted for using THIS YEAR would remind viewers of MLB's disgraceful recent history of ignoring and/or tacitly enabling steroid abuse. I'm not naive enough to believe that no player on either the Phillies or the Angels has ever used steroids, but as far as I know neither team has a player who's publicly known to have been busted, which is not the case with the Yankees or Dodgers.

Furthermore, Rhoden ought to realize that outside of New Yorkers of the Baby Boom generation or older, nobody gives a New York subway rat's you-know-what about having a World Series that hearkens back to the so-called golden era of the game, when subway matchups between New York teams were a regular event. The 2000 World Series, the one featuring the Mets and the Yankees, was one of the lowest rated on record, which certainly suggests that sports fans outside of New York don't care about New York teams nearly as much as New Yorkers seem to think they do. If the matchup ends up being Yankees vs. Dodgers, it will likely get better ratings than a Phillies-Angels series would, but only because 1.)it would involve the nation's two largest media markets, and 2.)lots of people outside New York (including me) despise the Yankees and will tune in to root against them. History will have nothing to do with it.

As a Philadelphian, of course I'd like to see the Phillies against either A.L. team over Yankees-Dodgers, but even failing that I think I'd rather watch a "Three-Hours-In-Hellish-Freeway-Traffic" Series between the Dodgers and Angels than have to suffer through the orgy of self-indulgent New York baseball nostalgia a Yankees-Dodgers tilt would engender. As for restoring my trust in the sanctity of the sport? I fear that horse has left the barn, but if it is possible, it'll take a lot more than a historically resonant World Series matchup to do it. Like, say, publicly identifying every player who has been caught using performance enhancing drugs since testing was instituted, and banning players who test positive from making All-Star teams, winning postseason awards, being eligible for the Hall of Fame, or otherwise being recognized. I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime, I am rooting passionately against both the Yankees and the Dodgers, and, thus, I guess, against the best interests of the game, as well as purity, mom, and apple pie. Oh, well. Go Phillies!

Not So Fast

So Nike says they haven't signed an endorsement deal with Michael Vick after all, only that they're providing him with free equipment. This leads me to wonder - was the initial report in error, or did someone at Nike re-think the public relations implications of hiring a convicted dog-killer to endorse their merchandise?

Is Nike Trying To Expand Its Sportswear Empire Into Dogfighting?

I happen to think that Michael Vick deserves a second chance. He has paid his debt to society by spending two years of his prime in federal prison and being driven to bankruptcy, and he has stated his contrition and his willingness to atone for his crimes by doing charity work and advocating for the humane treatment of animals. Personally, I am not yet convinced of his sincerity, but if as a society we really believe in redemption, we ought to give him a chance to prove it. Furthermore, I don't have a problem with him returning to the NFL. I would have preferred it had it not been with the Eagles, my favorite team, as I don't like the cognitive dissonance that comes with rooting for people who have done despicable things to succeed, but again - if we really believe that felons can be rehabilitated and become productive members of society, we ought to afford them a chance to employ their talents to produce for society in whatever capacity they are best able. For Vick, that's as a football player, so - give him a shot.

All that said, this is too much. Nike signing Vick (who has yet to accomplish much on the field in his NFL return, incidentally) to an endorsement deal sends a really terrible message - that if you fall from grace, you won't have to work to redeem yourself and make it back to the top if you were talented and glamorous enough before you screwed up. That forgiveness is pro forma if you make the flimsiest and most cursory attempt to make amends. I suspect the rush to strike this deal is partially a result of America's cultural obsession with redeeming lost souls, and partially simple corporate greed on Nike's part, but I think we really ought to wait a bit longer to see how Vick handles himself before restoring to him his lost laurels. Getting out of prison was the first step of a long climb back to respectability, and he's still at the bottom of the mountain - not the top. If - and I hope this is not the case - it proves that Vick has not actually changed, I hope Nike's business suffers mightily as a result of their haste to embrace him.

No wonder the newspaper industry is dying

This has to be just about the worst sports column I've ever read. It's insensitive, tasteless and idiotic, sure, but perhaps worst of all, it's indicative of the pathologically skewed priorities that too many people in modern America have. I love sports. To play, they're fun, relaxing, and edifying to both body and spirit. As entertainment, watching a close contest in any sport is far more compelling than most of the formulaic scripted rubbish that comes out of Hollywood, the TV networks, or the record industry. Despite the fact that many athletes, professional and otherwise, are juvenile, narcissistic boors and not at all admirable people, what they do is fantastic entertainment. But it is just entertainment. For this columnist to write about sports as if they have any degree of consequence when considered beside truly important things like war or peace or opportunity or, in the case of Jaycee Dugard, human dignity, exhibits an appaling lack of perspective. It's commonplace for sports commentators to remark that these things are what really matters, that the troops fighting in Afghanistan are the real heroes, etc. I wish it were so that everyone acted as if they really believed that.